Arriving at this time, Master Isnard excited these dissensions, fanned the fire, and spoke at length of his cruel reception at Maison-Forte. Although he was not of the country, he succeeded in making the outrage done him appear as a question between the nobility and the citizens.
The recorder induced the consuls to withdraw within the limits of their dignity, and, instead of continuing the amicable negotiations already initiated, to insist upon the baron’s appearance before the tribunal of overseers.
This malevolent disposition once gaining ground, the malcontents did not stop there. They forgot the real services that Raimond V. had rendered to the city, his generous hospitality, the good that he was doing in the neighbourhood, to remember that he was abusive, hotheaded, and always ready to lift his rod.
They exaggerated the havoc made by his dogs in the chase; they spoke of the brutal manner in which he had treated the citizens at the time of their complaint concerning the fishing-nets; in short, after the appearance of the recorder in La Ciotat, they began to speak of the Baron des Anbiez as a veritable feudal tyrant.
While the storm was gathering on that side, the most perfect tranquillity reigned in Maison-Forte.
Raimond V. drank and hunted in the finest style, going through his domains almost every day, with an unequalled activity; he visited his neighbours at their country-seats, in order to preserve, as he said, the sacred fire, or, rather, the general opposition to the Marshal of Vitry, demanding from each one his signature, appended to a supplication addressed to the king.
In this manifesto, or public declaration, the Provençal nobility formally demanded the recall of the marshal, reminding Louis XIII. that his father, of glorious memory, the great Henri, had, under similar circumstances, recalled the Duke d’Epernon, in order to redress the just complaints of the country.
Finally, the nobility expressed, in this act, their respectful regrets not to be able to submit to the orders of the cardinal, in renouncing their right to arm their houses, inasmuch as their own safety required that they should always be in a state of defence.
Redoubling his activity, the baron regained, as he said, the legs and arms of twenty years, in this crusade against Marshal of Vitry.
Such was the moral aspect of Maison-Forte some days after the event of which we have spoken.