PAGE 28
Maitre Cornelius
by
“You cannot die now. There is time enough later–Oh! it is all over. The old hag never could do anything at the right time.”
He closed her eyes and laid her on the floor. Then the good and noble feelings which lay at the bottom of his soul came back to him, and, half forgetting his hidden treasure, he cried out mournfully:–
“Oh! my poor companion, have I lost you?–you who understood me so well! Oh! you were my real treasure. There it lies, my treasure! With you, my peace of mind, my affections, all, are gone. If you had only known what good it would have done me to live two nights longer, you would have lived, solely to please me, my poor sister! Ah, Jeanne! thirteen hundred thousand crowns! Won’t that wake you?–No, she is dead!”
Thereupon, he sat down, and said no more; but two great tears issued from his eyes and rolled down his hollow cheeks; then, with strange exclamations of grief, he locked up the room and returned to the king. Louis XI. was struck with the expression of sorrow on the moistened features of his old friend.
“What is the matter?” he asked.
“Ah! sire, misfortunes never come singly. My sister is dead. She precedes me there below,” he said, pointing to the floor with a dreadful gesture.
“Enough!” cried Louis XI., who did not like to hear of death.
“I make you my heir. I care for nothing now. Here are my keys. Hang me, if that’s your good pleasure. Take all, ransack the house; it is full of gold. I give up all to you–“
“Come, come, crony,” replied Louis XI., who was partly touched by the sight of this strange suffering, “we shall find your treasure some fine night, and the sight of such riches will give you heart to live. I will come back in the course of this week–“
“As you please, sire.”
At that answer the king, who had made a few steps toward the door of the chamber, turned round abruptly. The two men looked at each other with an expression that neither pen nor pencil can reproduce.
“Adieu, my crony,” said Louis XI. at last in a curt voice, pushing up his cap.
“May God and the Virgin keep you in their good graces!” replied the silversmith humbly, conducting the king to the door of the house.
After so long a friendship, the two men found a barrier raised between them by suspicion and gold; though they had always been like one man on the two points of gold and suspicion. But they knew each other so well, they had so completely the habit, one may say, of each other, that the king could divine, from the tone in which Cornelius uttered the words, “As you please, sire,” the repugnance that his visits would henceforth cause to the silversmith, just as the latter recognized a declaration of war in the “Adieu, my crony,” of the king.
Thus Louis XI. and his torconnier parted much in doubt as to the conduct they ought in future to hold to each other. The monarch possessed the secret of the Fleming; but on the other hand, the latter could, by his connections, bring about one of the finest acquisitions that any king of France had ever made; namely, that of the domains of the house of Burgundy, which the sovereigns of Europe were then coveting. The marriage of the celebrated Marguerite depended on the people of Ghent and the Flemings who surrounded her. The gold and the influence of Cornelius could powerfully support the negotiations now begun by Desquerdes, the general to whom Louis XI. had given the command of the army encamped on the frontiers of Belgium. These two master-foxes were, therefore, like two duellists, whose arms are paralyzed by chance.
So, whether it were that from that day the king’s health failed and went from bad to worse, or that Cornelius did assist in bringing into France Marguerite of Burgundy–who arrived at Ambroise in July, 1438, to marry the Dauphin to whom she was betrothed in the chapel of the castle–certain it is that the king took no steps in the matter of the hidden treasure; he levied no tribute from his silversmith, and the pair remained in the cautious condition of an armed friendship. Happily for Cornelius a rumor was spread about Tours that his sister was the actual robber, and that she had been secretly put to death by Tristan. Otherwise, if the true history had been known, the whole town would have risen as one man to destroy the Malemaison before the king could have taken measures to protect it.