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 G.o.d! 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 gla.s.s at the blow of a pebble. Many lords were then slain by low-born knaves; and Monsieur de Chateau-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 inc.u.mbent 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 st.u.r.dy 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 s.h.a.green, 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-Lo 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!"