“Eh, Manjour!” cried the baron, with another crack of the whip, “I hope you will tell him all. I have received you in this way that you may tell him, indeed, that he may learn in what light I hold his orders,” cried the old gentleman, unable to restrain his anger; “the Provençal nobility has known how, in the last century, to drive from its province the insolent Duke d’Epernon and his Gascons, as unworthy of governing it, and shall we not drive away a Vitry, a wretched assassin, who acts like an Italian bandit, who leaves our coasts without defence, who obliges us to protect ourselves, and then comes to take away from us the means of resisting the pirates! Get out of here, you rogue, and go to draw up your scrawls elsewhere than in my house!”
“I will not get down!” cried the recorder.
“Do you want me to smoke you out of the tree like a badger in the trunk of a willow?”
Believing Raimond V. capable of anything, Master Isnard slowly descended the tree. His clerk, who had remained silent, imitated his example, and reached the ground at the same time with his master.
“Stop!” said the baron, putting a few pieces of silver in the scribe’s hand. “You can drink to the health of the king, our count. All this is not your fault, clerk.” “I forbid you to accept one coin!” cried the recorder. “You shall be obeyed, Master Isnard,” said the scribe. “These are two silver crowns, and not one coin,” and he pocketed the present.
“And I will add in my report, sir, that you tried to corrupt my agents,” said the recorder.
“Out of here, out, out, you stinking beast!” cried the baron, cracking his whip.
“You give people strange hospitality, Baron des Anbiez,” said the recorder.
This reproach seemed to touch Raimond deeply; he said: “Manjour! all the country knows that the lord and the peasant have found free refuge and loyal hospitality in this house. But I am and will be without pity for the petty tyrants of a tyrant cardinal. Out of here, I say, or I will whip you like a bad dog!”
“It will sound well,” cried the recorder, purple with rage, and walking backward toward the bridge, “It will sound well that you have attempted the life of an officer of the king’s justice, and that you have driven him away from your house with blows of the whip, instead of allowing him to execute peaceably the orders of his Eminence, the cardinal, and of the marshal.”