"Yes, certainly!" retorted the king with a smile of satis-faction which he strove in vain to disguise.
"In all their petitions to the Parliament, they claim to have but two masters. Your majesty and their God, who is the devil, I believe.""Eh! eh!" said the king.
He rubbed his hands, he laughed with that inward mirth which makes the countenance beam; he was unable to dissimulate his joy, although he endeavored at moments to compose himself. No one understood it in the least, not even Master Olivier. He remained silent for a moment, with a thoughtful but contented air.
"Are they in force?" he suddenly inquired.
"Yes, assuredly, sire," replied Gossip Jacques.
"How many?"
"Six thousand at the least."
The king could not refrain from saying: "Good!" he went on,--"Are they armed?"
"With scythes, pikes, hackbuts, pickaxes. All sorts of very violent weapons."The king did not appear in the least disturbed by this list.
Jacques considered it his duty to add,--
"If your majesty does not send prompt succor to the bailiff, he is lost.""We will send," said the king with an air of false seriousness.
"It is well. Assuredly we will send. Monsieur the bailiff is our friend. Six thousand! They are desperate scamps!
Their audacity is marvellous, and we are greatly enraged at it.
But we have only a few people about us to-night. To-morrow morning will be time enough."Gossip Jacques exclaimed, "Instantly, sire! there will be time to sack the bailiwick a score of times, to violate the seignory, to hang the bailiff. For God's sake, sire! send before to-morrow morning."The king looked him full in the face. "I have told you to-morrow morning."It was one Of those looks to which one does not reply.
After a silence, Louis XI. raised his voice once more,--"You should know that, Gossip Jacques. What was--"He corrected himself. "What is the bailiff's feudal jurisdiction?""Sire, the bailiff of the palace has the Rue Calendre as far as the Rue de l'Herberie, the Place Saint-Michel, and the localities vulgarly known as the Mureaux, situated near the church of Notre-Dame des Champs (here Louis XI. raised the brim of his hat), which hotels number thirteen, plus the Cour des Miracles, plus the Maladerie, called the Banlieue, plus the whole highway which begins at that Maladerie and ends at the Porte Sainte-Jacques. Of these divers places he is voyer, high, middle, and low, justiciary, full seigneur.""Bless me!" said the king, scratching his left ear with his right hand, "that makes a goodly bit of my city! Ah! monsieur the bailiff was king of all that."This time he did not correct himself. He continued dreamily, and as though speaking to himself,--"Very fine, monsieur the bailiff! You had there between your teeth a pretty slice of our Paris."All at once he broke out explosively, "~Pasque-Dieu~!"What people are those who claim to be voyers, justiciaries, lords and masters in our domains? who have their tollgates at the end of every field? their gallows and their hangman at every cross-road among our people? So that as the Greek believed that he had as many gods as there were fountains, and the Persian as many as he beheld stars, the Frenchman counts as many kings as he sees gibbets! Pardieu! 'tis an evil thing, and the confusion of it displeases me. I should greatly like to know whether it be the mercy of God that there should be in Paris any other lord than the king, any other judge than our parliament, any other emperor than ourselves in this empire! By the faith of my soul! the day must certainly come when there shall exist in France but one king, one lord, one judge, one headsman, as there is in paradise but one God!"He lifted his cap again, and continued, still dreamily, with the air and accent of a hunter who is cheering on his pack of hounds: "Good, my people! bravely done! break these false lords! do your duty! at them! have at them! pillage them! take them! sack them!....Ah! you want to be kings, messeigneurs?
On, my people on!"
Here he interrupted himself abruptly, bit his lips as though to take back his thought which had already half escaped, bent his piercing eyes in turn on each of the five persons who surrounded him, and suddenly grasping his hat with both hands and staring full at it, he said to it: "Oh! Iwould burn you if you knew what there was in my head."Then casting about him once more the cautious and uneasy glance of the fox re-entering his hole,--"No matter! we will succor monsieur the bailiff.
Unfortunately, we have but few troops here at the present moment, against so great a populace. We must wait until to-morrow.
The order will be transmitted to the City and every one who is caught will be immediately hung.""By the way, sire," said Gossip Coictier, "I had forgotten that in the first agitation, the watch have seized two laggards of the band. If your majesty desires to see these men, they are here.""If I desire to see them!" cried the king. "What! ~Pasque-Dieu~! You forget a thing like that! Run quick, you, Olivier!
Go, seek them!"
Master Olivier quitted the room and returned a moment later with the two prisoners, surrounded by archers of the guard. The first had a coarse, idiotic, drunken and astonished face. He was clothed in rags, and walked with one knee bent and dragging his leg. The second had a pallid and smiling countenance, with which the reader is already acquainted.
The king surveyed them for a moment without uttering a word, then addressing the first one abruptly,--"What's your name?"
"Gieffroy Pincebourde."
"Your trade."
"Outcast."
"What were you going to do in this damnable sedition?"The outcast stared at the king, and swung his arms with a stupid air.
He had one of those awkwardly shaped heads where intelligence is about as much at its ease as a light beneath an extinguisher.
"I know not," said he. "They went, I went."
"Were you not going to outrageously attack and pillage your lord, the bailiff of the palace?""I know that they were going to take something from some one.
That is all."