Meanwhile, the king thrummed gayly with his fingers on the arm of his chair, the March of Pont-Audemer. He was a dissembling prince, but one who understood far better how to hide his troubles than his joys. These external manifestations of joy at any good news sometimes proceeded to very great lengths thus, on the death, of Charles the Bold, to the point of vowing silver balustrades to Saint Martin of Tours; on his advent to the throne, so far as forgetting to order his father’s obsequies.
“Hé! sire!” suddenly exclaimed Jacques Coictier, “what has become of the acute attack of illness for which your majesty had me summoned?”
“Oh!” said the king, “I really suffer greatly, my gossip. There is a hissing in my ear and fiery rakes rack my chest.”
Coictier took the king’s hand, and begun to feel of his pulse with a knowing air.
“Look, Coppenole,” said Rym, in a low voice. “Behold him between Coictier and Tristan. They are his whole court. A physician for himself, a headsman for others.”
As he felt the king’s pulse, Coictier assumed an air of greater and greater alarm. Louis XI. watched him with some anxiety. Coictier grew visibly more gloomy. The brave man had no other farm than the king’s bad health. He speculated on it to the best of his ability.
“Oh! oh!” he murmured at length, “this is serious indeed.”
“Is it not?” said the king, uneasily.
“Pulsus creber, anhelans, crepitans, irregularis,” continued the leech.
“Pasque-Dieu!”
“This may carry off its man in less than three days.”
“Our Lady!” exclaimed the king. “And the remedy, gossip?”
“I am meditating upon that, sire.”
He made Louis XI. put out his tongue, shook his head, made a grimace, and in the very midst of these affectations,
“Pardieu, sire,” he suddenly said, “I must tell you that there is a receivership of the royal prerogatives vacant, and that I have a nephew.”
“I give the receivership to your nephew, Gossip Jacques,” replied the king; “but draw this fire from my breast.”
“Since your majesty is so clement,” replied the leech, “you will not refuse to aid me a little in building my house, Rue Saint-André-des-Arcs.”
“Heugh!” said the king.
“I am at the end of my finances,” pursued the doctor; “and it would really be a pity that the house should not have a roof; not on account of the house, which is simple and thoroughly bourgeois, but because of the paintings of Jehan Fourbault, which adorn its wainscoating. There is a Diana flying in the air, but so excellent, so tender, so delicate, of so ingenuous an action, her hair so well coiffed and adorned with a crescent, her flesh so white, that she leads into temptation those who regard her too curiously. There is also a Ceres. She is another very fair divinity. She is seated on sheaves of wheat and crowned with a gallant garland of wheat ears interlaced with salsify and other flowers. Never were seen more amorous eyes, more rounded limbs, a nobler air, or a more gracefully flowing skirt. She is one of the most innocent and most perfect beauties whom the brush has ever produced.”
“Executioner!” grumbled Louis XI., “what are you driving at?”
“I must have a roof for these paintings, sire, and, although ’tis but a small matter, I have no more money.”
“How much doth your roof cost?”
“Why a roof of copper, embellished and gilt, two thousand livres at the most.”
“Ah, assassin!” cried the king, “He never draws out one of my teeth which is not a diamond.”
“Am I to have my roof?” said Coictier.
“Yes; and go to the devil, but cure me.”
Jacques Coictier bowed low and said,
“Sire, it is a repellent which will save you. We will apply to your loins the great defensive composed of cerate, Armenian bole, white of egg, oil, and vinegar. You will continue your ptisan and we will answer for your majesty.”
A burning candle does not attract one gnat alone. Master Olivier, perceiving the king to be in a liberal mood, and judging the moment to be propitious, approached in his turn.
“Sire ”
“What is it now?” said Louis XI. “Sire, your majesty knoweth that Simon Radin is dead?”
“Well?”
“He was councillor to the king in the matter of the courts of the treasury.”
“Well?”
“Sire, his place is vacant.”
As he spoke thus, Master Olivier’s haughty face quitted its arrogant expression for a lowly one. It is the only change which ever takes place in a courtier’s visage. The king looked him well in the face and said in a dry tone, “I understand.”
He resumed,
“Master Olivier, the Marshal de Boucicaut was wont to say, ‘There’s no master save the king, there are no fishes save in the sea.’ I see that you agree with Monsieur de Boucicaut. Now listen to this; we have a good memory. In ’68 we made you valet of our chamber: in ’69, guardian of the fortress of the bridge of Saint-Cloud, at a hundred livres of Tournay in wages (you wanted them of Paris). In November, ’73, by letters given to Gergeole, we instituted you keeper of the Wood of Vincennes, in the place of Gilbert Acle, equerry; in ’75, gruyer of the forest of Rouvray-lez-Saint-Cloud, in the place of Jacques le Maire; in ’78, we graciously settled on you, by letters patent sealed doubly with green wax, an income of ten livres parisis, for you and your wife, on the Place of the Merchants, situated at the School Saint-Germain; in ’79, we made you gruyer of the forest of Senart, in place of that poor Jehan Daiz; then captain of the Château of Loches; then governor of Saint-Quentin; then captain of the bridge of Meulan, of which you cause yourself to be called comte. Out of the five sols fine paid by every barber who shaves on a festival day, there are three sols for you and we have the rest. We have been good enough to change your name of Le Mauvais (The Evil), which resembled your face too closely. In ’76, we granted you, to the great displeasure of our nobility, armorial bearings of a thousand colors, which give you the breast of a peacock. Pasque-Dieu! Are not you surfeited? Is not the draught of fishes sufficiently fine and miraculous? Are you not afraid that one salmon more will make your boat sink? Pride will be your ruin, gossip. Ruin and disgrace always press hard on the heels of pride. Consider this and hold your tongue.”
These words, uttered with severity, made Master Olivier’s face revert to its insolence.
“Good!” he muttered, almost aloud, “’tis easy to see that the king is ill to-day; he giveth all to the leech.”
Louis XI. far from being irritated by this petulant insult, resumed with some gentleness, “Stay, I was forgetting that I made you my ambassador to Madame Marie, at Ghent. Yes, gentlemen,” added the king turning to the Flemings, “this man hath been an ambassador. There, my gossip,” he pursued, addressing Master Olivier, “let us not get angry; we are old friends. ’Tis very late. We have terminated our labors. Shave me.”
Our readers have not, without doubt, waited until the present moment to recognize in Master Olivier that terrible Figaro whom Providence, the great maker of dramas, mingled so artistically in the long and bloody comedy of the reign of Louis XI. We will not here undertake to develop that singular figure. This barber of the king had three names. At court he was politely called Olivier le Daim (the Deer); among the people Olivier the Devil. His real name was Olivier le Mauvais.
Accordingly, Olivier le Mauvais remained motionless, sulking at the king, and glancing askance at Jacques Coictier.
“Yes, yes, the physician!” he said between his teeth.
“Ah, yes, the physician!” retorted Louis XI., with singular good humor; “the physician has more credit than you. ’Tis very simple; he has taken hold upon us by the whole body, and you hold us only by the chin. Come, my poor barber, all will come right. What would you say and what would become of your office if I were a king like Chilperic, whose gesture consisted in holding his beard in one hand? Come, gossip mine, fulfil your office, shave me. Go get what you need therefor.”
Olivier perceiving that the king had made up his mind to laugh, and that there was no way of even annoying him, went off grumbling to execute his orders.
The king rose, approached the window, and suddenly opening it with extraordinary agitation,
“Oh! yes!” he exclaimed, clapping his hands, “yonder is a redness in the sky over the City. ’Tis the bailiff burning. It can be nothing else but that. Ah! my good people! here you are aiding me at last in tearing down the rights of lordship!”
Then turning towards the Flemings: “Come, look at this, gentlemen. Is it not a fire which gloweth yonder?”
The two men of Ghent drew near.
“A great fire,” said Guillaume Rym.
“Oh!” exclaimed Coppenole, whose eyes suddenly flashed, “that reminds me of the burning of the house of the Seigneur d’Hymbercourt. There must be a goodly revolt yonder.”
“You think so, Master Coppenole?” And Louis XI.’s glance was almost as joyous as that of the hosier. “Will it not be difficult to resist?”
“Cross of God! Sire! Your majesty will damage many companies of men of war thereon.”
“Ah! I! ’tis different,” returned the king. “If I willed.”
The hosier replied hardily,
“If this revolt be what I suppose, sire, you might will in vain.”
“Gossip,” said Louis XI., “with the two companies of my unattached troops and one discharge of a serpentine, short work is made of a populace of louts.”
The hosier, in spite of the signs made to him by Guillaume Rym, appeared determined to hold his own against the king.
“Sire, the Swiss were also louts. Monsieur the Duke of Burgundy was a great gentleman, and he turned up his nose at that rabble rout. At the battle of Grandson, sire, he cried: ‘Men of the cannon! Fire on the villains!’ and he swore by Saint-George. But Advoyer Scharnachtal hurled himself on the handsome duke with his battle-club and his people, and when the glittering Burgundian army came in contact with these peasants in bull hides, it flew in pieces like a pane of glass at the blow of a pebble. Many lords were then slain by low-born knaves; and Monsieur de Château-Guyon, the greatest seigneur in Burgundy, was found dead, with his gray horse, in a little marsh meadow.”
“Friend,” returned the king, “you are speaking of a battle. The question here is of a mutiny. And I will gain the upper hand of it as soon as it shall please me to frown.”
The other replied indifferently,
“That may be, sire; in that case, ’tis because the people’s hour hath not yet come.”
Guillaume Rym considered it incumbent on him to intervene,
“Master Coppenole, you are speaking to a puissant king.”
“I know it,” replied the hosier, gravely.
“Let him speak, Monsieur Rym, my friend,” said the king; “I love this frankness of speech. My father, Charles the Seventh, was accustomed to say that the truth was ailing; I thought her dead, and that she had found no confessor. Master Coppenole undeceiveth me.”
Then, laying his hand familiarly on Coppenole’s shoulder,
“You were saying, Master Jacques?”
“I say, sire, that you may possibly be in the right, that the hour of the people may not yet have come with you.”
Louis XI. gazed at him with his penetrating eye,
“And when will that hour come, master?”
“You will hear it strike.”
“On what clock, if you please?”
Coppenole, with his tranquil and rustic countenance, made the king approach the window.
“Listen, sire! There is here a donjon keep, a belfry, cannons, bourgeois, soldiers; when the belfry shall hum, when the cannons shall roar, when the donjon shall fall in ruins amid great noise, when bourgeois and soldiers shall howl and slay each other, the hour will strike.”
Louis’s face grew sombre and dreamy. He remained silent for a moment, then he gently patted with his hand the thick wall of the donjon, as one strokes the haunches of a steed.
“Oh! no!” said he. “You will not crumble so easily, will you, my good Bastille?”
And turning with an abrupt gesture towards the sturdy Fleming,
“Have you never seen a revolt, Master Jacques?”
“I have made them,” said the hosier.
“How do you set to work to make a revolt?” said the king.
“Ah!” replied Coppenole, “’tis not very difficult. There are a hundred ways. In the first place, there must be discontent in the city. The thing is not uncommon. And then, the character of the inhabitants. Those of Ghent are easy to stir into revolt. They always love the prince’s son; the prince, never. Well! One morning, I will suppose, some one enters my shop, and says to me: ‘Father Coppenole, there is this and there is that, the Demoiselle of Flanders wishes to save her ministers, the grand bailiff is doubling the impost on shagreen, or something else,’ what you will. I leave my work as it stands, I come out of my hosier’s stall, and I shout: ‘To the sack?’ There is always some smashed cask at hand. I mount it, and I say aloud, in the first words that occur to me, what I have on my heart; and when one is of the people, sire, one always has something on the heart. Then people troop up, they shout, they ring the alarm bell, they arm the louts with what they take from the soldiers, the market people join in, and they set out. And it will always be thus, so long as there are lords in the seignories, bourgeois in the bourgs, and peasants in the country.”
“And against whom do you thus rebel?” inquired the king; “against your bailiffs? against your lords?”
“Sometimes; that depends. Against the duke, also, sometimes.”
Louis XI. returned and seated himself, saying, with a smile,
“Ah! here they have only got as far as the bailiffs.”
At that instant Olivier le Daim returned. He was followed by two pages, who bore the king’s toilet articles; but what struck Louis XI. was that he was also accompanied by the provost of Paris and the chevalier of the watch, who appeared to be in consternation. The spiteful barber also wore an air of consternation, which was one of contentment beneath, however. It was he who spoke first.
“Sire, I ask your majesty’s pardon for the calamitous news which I bring.”
The king turned quickly and grazed the mat on the floor with the feet of his chair,
“What does this mean?”
“Sire,” resumed Olivier le Daim, with the malicious air of a man who rejoices that he is about to deal a violent blow, “’tis not against the bailiff of the courts that this popular sedition is directed.”
“Against whom, then?”
“Against you, sire?’
The aged king rose erect and straight as a young man,
“Explain yourself, Olivier! And guard your head well, gossip; for I swear to you by the cross of Saint-Lô that, if you lie to us at this hour, the sword which severed the head of Monsieur de Luxembourg is not so notched that it cannot yet sever yours!”
The oath was formidable; Louis XI. had only sworn twice in the course of his life by the cross of Saint-Lô.
Olivier opened his mouth to reply.
“Sire ”
“On your knees!” interrupted the king violently. “Tristan, have an eye to this man.”
Olivier knelt down and said coldly,
“Sire, a sorceress was condemned to death by your court of parliament. She took refuge in Notre-Dame. The people are trying to take her from thence by main force. Monsieur the provost and monsieur the chevalier of the watch, who have just come from the riot, are here to give me the lie if this is not the truth. The populace is besieging Notre-Dame.”
“Yes, indeed!” said the king in a low voice, all pale and trembling with wrath. “Notre-Dame! They lay siege to our Lady, my good mistress in her cathedral! Rise, Olivier. You are right. I give you Simon Radin’s charge. You are right. ’Tis I whom they are attacking. The witch is under the protection of this church, the church is under my protection. And I thought that they were acting against the bailiff! ’Tis against myself!”
Then, rendered young by fury, he began to walk up and down with long strides. He no longer laughed, he was terrible, he went and came; the fox was changed into a hyæna. He seemed suffocated to such a degree that he could not speak; his lips moved, and his fleshless fists were clenched. All at once he raised his head, his hollow eye appeared full of light, and his voice burst forth like a clarion: “Down with them, Tristan! A heavy hand for these rascals! Go, Tristan, my friend! slay! slay!”
This eruption having passed, he returned to his seat, and said with cold and concentrated wrath,
“Here, Tristan! There are here with us in the Bastille the fifty lances of the Vicomte de Gif, which makes three hundred horse: you will take them. There is also the company of our unattached archers of Monsieur de Châteaupers: you will take it. You are provost of the marshals; you have the men of your provostship: you will take them. At the Hôtel Saint-Pol you will find forty archers of monsieur the dauphin’s new guard: you will take them. And, with all these, you will hasten to Notre-Dame. Ah! messieurs, louts of Paris, do you fling yourselves thus against the crown of France, the sanctity of Notre-Dame, and the peace of this commonwealth! Exterminate, Tristan! exterminate! and let not a single one escape, except it be for Montfaucon.”
Tristan bowed. “’Tis well, sire.”
He added, after a silence, “And what shall I do with the sorceress?”
This question caused the king to meditate.
“Ah!” said he, “the sorceress! Monsieur d’Estouteville, what did the people wish to do with her?”
“Sire,” replied the provost of Paris, “I imagine that since the populace has come to tear her from her asylum in Notre-Dame, ’tis because that impunity wounds them, and they desire to hang her.”
The king appeared to reflect deeply: then, addressing Tristan l’Hermite, “Well! gossip, exterminate the people and hang the sorceress.”
“That’s it,” said Rym in a low tone to Coppenole, “punish the people for willing a thing, and then do what they wish.”
“Enough, sire,” replied Tristan. “If the sorceress is still in Notre-Dame, must she be seized in spite of the sanctuary?”
“Pasque-Dieu! the sanctuary!” said the king, scratching his ear. “But the woman must be hung, nevertheless.”
Here, as though seized with a sudden idea, he flung himself on his knees before his chair, took off his hat, placed it on the seat, and gazing devoutly at one of the leaden amulets which loaded it down, “Oh!” said he, with clasped hands, “our Lady of Paris, my gracious patroness, pardon me. I will only do it this once. This criminal must be punished. I assure you, madame the virgin, my good mistress, that she is a sorceress who is not worthy of your amiable protection. You know, madame, that many very pious princes have overstepped the privileges of the churches for the glory of God and the necessities of the State. Saint Hugues, bishop of England, permitted King Edward to hang a witch in his church. Saint-Louis of France, my master, transgressed, with the same object, the church of Monsieur Saint-Paul; and Monsieur Alphonse, son of the king of Jerusalem, the very church of the Holy Sepulchre. Pardon me, then, for this once. Our Lady of Paris, I will never do so again, and I will give you a fine statue of silver, like the one which I gave last year to Our Lady of Écouys. So be it.”
He made the sign of the cross, rose, donned his hat once more, and said to Tristan,
“Be diligent, gossip. Take Monsieur Châteaupers with you. You will cause the tocsin to be sounded. You will crush the populace. You will seize the witch. ’Tis said. And I mean the business of the execution to be done by you. You will render me an account of it. Come, Olivier, I shall not go to bed this night. Shave me.”
Tristan l’Hermite bowed and departed. Then the king, dismissing Rym and Coppenole with a gesture,
“God guard you, messieurs, my good friends the Flemings. Go, take a little repose. The night advances, and we are nearer the morning than the evening.”
Both retired and gained their apartments under the guidance of the captain of the Bastille. Coppenole said to Guillaume Rym,
“Hum! I have had enough of that coughing king! I have seen Charles of Burgundy drunk, and he was less malignant than Louis XI. when ailing.”
“Master Jacques,” replied Rym, “’tis because wine renders kings less cruel than does barley water.”