Olivier, seeing that the king was in a jesting mood, and that it was impossible to put him out of temper, left the room to obey his orders, grumbling as he went.
The king rose, stepped to the window, and suddenly opening it with strange agitation, clapped his hands, exclaiming,— “Oh, yes, there is a red glow in the sky over the City! The provost is burning; it can be nothing else. Ah, my good people! ‘tis thus at last you help me to crush their lordships!”
Then turning to the Flemings: “Gentlemen, come and look. Is not that a fire which flares so high?”
The two men of Ghent approached.
“A great fire,” said Guillaume Rym.
“Oh,” added Coppenole, whose eyes flashed, “that reminds me of the burning of the lord of Hymbercourt’s house! There must be a fine riot yonder!”
“Do you think so, Master Coppenole?” And the face of Louis XI was almost as full of joy as that of the hosier. “’T will be hard to suppress it, eh?”
“By the Mass, Sire! your Majesty will make great gaps in many a company of troops in doing it.”
“Oh, I! that’s quite another thing,” rejoined the king. “If I chose—”
The hosier answered boldly,—
“If this rebellion be what I suppose, you may choose to no purpose, Sire.”
“Friend,” said Louis XI, “two companies of my ordnance and the discharge of a serpentine would win an easy victory over the groundlings.”
The hosier, in spite of the signs made to him by Guillaume Rym, seemed determined to oppose the king.
“Sire, the Swiss were groundlings too. My lord duke of Burgundy was a great gentleman, and he despised that vulgar mob. At the battle of Grandson he cried, ‘Gunners, fire upon those low-lived villains!’ and he swore by Saint George. But magistrate Schar nachtal fell upon the proud duke with his club and his people, and at the onslaught of the peasants with their bull-hides, the brilliant Burgundian army was broken like a pane of glass by a stone. Many knights were killed that day by base clowns; and my lord of Chateau-Guyon, the grandest noble in Burgundy, was found dead beside his great grey charger in a small marshy meadow.”
“Friend,” replied the king, “you talk of battles. This is only a mutiny; and I will quell it with a single frown whenever it pleases me.”
The other answered indifferently,— “That may be, Sire. In that case it will merely be because the people’s hour has not yet come.”
Guillaume Rym felt obliged to interfere:— “Master Coppenole, you are speaking to a powerful king.”
“I know it,” gravely answered the hosier.
“Let him talk, friend Rym,” said the king. “I like such frankness. My father, Charles VII, said that Truth was sick. I, for my part, thought she had died, without a confessor. Master Coppenole has undeceived me.”
Then, laying his hand familiarly upon Coppenole’s shoulder, he added,— “You were saying, Master Jacques—”
“I was saying, Sire, that perhaps you were right,—that the people’s hour had not yet come in this land.”
Louis XI looked searchingly at him:— “And when will that hour come, sirrah?”
“You will hear it strike.”
“By what o‘clock, pray?”
Coppenole, with his homely, peaceful face, drew the king to the window.
“Listen, Sire! Here you have a donjon, a bell-tower, cannon, burghers, soldiers. When the bell rings, when the cannon growl, when the donjon falls with a crash, when burghers and soldiers shout and slay one another, then the hour will strike.”
The king’s face became dark and thoughtful. For an instant he stood silent; then he gently patted the thick donjon wall, as he might have caressed the flank of his favorite horse.
“Oh, no!” he said; “you will not crumble so easily, will you, my good Bastille?”18
Then, turning with an abrupt gesture to the daring Fleming,— “Did you ever see a revolt, Master Jacques?”
“I made one,” said the hosier.
“And how,” said the king, “do you set to work to make a revolt?”
“Ah!” replied Coppenole, “it is not very difficult. There are a hundred ways of doing it. In the first place, discontent must be rife in the town; that is not an uncommon occurrence. And then you must consider the character of the inhabitants. The men of Ghent are always ready to rebel; they always love the prince’s son, never the prince. Well, I will suppose that one morning somebody comes into my shop and says: Friend Coppenole, this thing or that thing has happened,—the Lady of Flanders is resolved to maintain the Cabinet; the high provost has doubled the tax on vegetables or something else; whatever you please. I drop my work on the spot; I leave my shop, and I run out into the street, crying, ‘Storm and sack!’ There is always some empty hogshead lying about. I mount upon it, and I proclaim aloud, in the first words that come to me; all that distresses me; and when you belong to the people, Sire, there is always something to distress you. Then there is a gathering of the clans; there are shouts; the alarm bell rings; the people disarm the troops and arm themselves; the market-men join in; and so it goes on. And it will always be so, so long as there are nobles in the seigniories, burghers in the towns, and peasants in the country.”