“Hah!” said the king.
He rubbed his hands; he laughed that inward laugh which makes the face radiant; he could not disguise his joy, although he tried at times to compose himself. No one understood his mood, not even Master Olivier. He was silent for a moment, with a pensive but contented air.
“Are they strong in numbers?” he asked suddenly.
“Indeed they are, Sire,” replied Compere Jacques.
“How many?”
“At least six thousand.”
The king could not help exclaiming, “Good!” He added, “Are they armed?”
“With scythes, pikes, hackbuts, mattocks, and all sorts of danger ous weapons.
The king seemed by no means alarmed at this account. Compere Jacques felt obliged to add,— “If your Majesty send not promptly to the provost’s aid, he is lost.”
“We will send,” said the king, with an assumed expression of seriousness. “It is well. Certainly we will send. The provost is our friend. Six thousand! They are determined knaves. Their boldness is marvelous, and we are greatly wroth at it; but we have few people about us tonight. It will be time enough in the morning.”
Compere Jacques exclaimed, “Straightway, Sire! The provost’s house may be sacked twenty times over, the seigniory profaned, and the provost hanged, by then. For the love of God, Sire, send before tomorrow morning!”
The king looked him in the face. “I said tomorrow.” It was one of those looks which admit of no reply. After a pause, Louis XI again raised his voice. “Compère Jacques, you must know—What was—” He corrected himself. “What is the Provost’s feudal jurisdiction?”
“Sire, the Provost of the Palace has jurisdiction from the Rue de la Calandre to the Rue de l‘Herberie, the Place Saint-Michel, and the places commonly called the Mureaux, situated near the church of Notre-Dame des Champs [here the king lifted the brim of his hat], which residences are thirteen in number; besides the Court of Miracles, the lazaretto known as the Banlieue, and all the highway beginning at this lazar-house and ending at the Porte Saint-Jacques. Of these divers places he is road-surveyor, high, low, and middle justiciary, and lord paramount.”
“Hey-day!” said the king, scratching his left ear with his right hand; “that is a goodly slice of my city. And so the provost was king of all that?”
This time he did not correct himself. He continued to muse, and as if speaking to himself, said,— “Have a care, Sir Provost! You had a very pretty piece of our Paris in your grasp. ”
All at once he burst forth. “By the Rood! Who are all these people who claim to be commissioners of highways, justiciaries, lords, and masters in our midst; who have their toll-gate in every bit of field, their gibbet and their hangman at every cross-road among our people, in such fashion that, as the Greek believed in as many gods as there were fountains, and the Persian in as many as he saw stars, the Frenchman now counts as many kings as he sees gallows? By the Lord! this thing is evil, and the confusion likes me not. I would fain know whether it be by the grace of God that there are other inspectors of highways in Paris than the king, other justice than that administered by our Parliament, and other emperor than ourselves in this realm! By the faith of my soul! the day must come when France shall know but one king, one lord, one judge, one heads-man, even as there is but one God in paradise!”
He again raised his cap, and went on, still meditating, with the look and tone of a hunter loosing and urging on his pack of dogs: “Good! my people! bravely done! destroy these false lords! do your work. At them, boys! at them! Plunder them, capture them, strip them! Ah, you would fain be kings, gentlemen? On, my people, on!”
Here he stopped abruptly, bit his lip, as if to recall a thought which had half escaped him, bent his piercing eye in turn upon each of the five persons who stood around him, and all at once, seizing his hat in both hands, and staring steadily at it, he thus addressed it: “Oh, I would burn you if you knew my secret thoughts!”
Then again casting about him the attentive, anxious glance of a fox returning by stealth to his earth, he added,— “It matters not; we will succor the provost. Unfortunately, we have but few troops here to send forth at this moment against so large a populace. We must needs wait until tomorrow. Order shall be restored in the City, and all who are taken shall be strung up on the spot.”
“By-the-bye, Sire!” said Compere Coictier, “I forgot it in my first dismay,—the watch has caught two stragglers of the band. If it please your Majesty to see these men, they are here.”