"If I spend it, you would say, in feasting and revelry," said the king, "I shall make the people murmur, and my best friends quit me. But," continued he in a gayer tone, "let us quit all sad thoughts, and talk of the feast,--the gay and splendid feast,--where you shall smile, Guerin, and make the guests believe you the gentlest counsellor that ever king was blest withal. Nay, I will have it so, by my faith! As to the guests, they are all choice and gay companions, whom I have chosen for their merriment. Thou shalt laugh heartily when placed between Philip of Champagne, late my sworn enemy, but who now becomes my good friend and humble vassal, and brings his nephew and ward, the young Thibalt, count of all Champagne, to grace his suzerain's feast--when placed between him, I say, and Pierre de Courtenay, whose allegiance is not very sure, and whose brother, the Count of Namur, is in plain rebellion. There shalt thou see also Bartholemi de Roye, and the Count de Perche, both somewhat doubtful in their love to Philip, but who, before that feast is over, shall be his humblest creatures. Fie, fie, Guerin!" he added, in a more reproachful tone, "will you never think that I have a deeper motive for my actions than lies upon the surface? As to the tournament, too, think you I do not propose to try men's hearts as well as their corslets, and see if their loyalty hold as firm a seat as they do themselves?"
"I never doubt, sire," replied the bishop, "that you have good and sufficient motives for all your actions; but, this morning, a sad account has been laid before me of the royal domains; and when I came to hear of banquets and tournaments, it pained me to think what you, sire, would feel, when you saw the clear statement."
"How so?" cried Philip Augustus. "It cannot be so very bad!--Let me see it, Guerin!--let me see it. 'Tis best to front such things at once.--Let me see it, man, I say!"
"I have it not here, sire," answered the bishop; "but I will send it by the clerk who drew it up; and who can give you farther accounts, should it be necessary."
"Quick then!" cried the king,--"quick, good bishop!" And walking up and down the hall, with an unquiet and somewhat irritated air, he repeated, "It cannot be so bad! The last time I made the calculation, 'twas somewhere near a hundred thousand livres. Bad enough, in truth--but I have known that long! Now, sir clerk," he continued, as a secretary entered, "read me the account, if it be as I see on wax. Was no parchment to be had, that you must draw the charter on wax[[10]] to blind me? Read, read!"
The king spoke in the hasty manner of one whose brighter hopes and wishes--for Imagination is always a great helpmate of Ambition, and as well as its first prompter, is its indefatigable ally--in the manner of one whose brighter hopes and wishes had been cut across by cold realities; and the clerk replied in the dull and snuffling tone peculiar to clerks, and monstrously irritating to every hasty man.
"Accounts of the Prévôt de Soissons, sire," said the clerk: "Receipts: six hundred livres, seven sous, two deniers. Expenses: eighteen livres, to arm three cross-bowmen; twenty livres to the holy clerk; seventy livres for clothing and arming twenty serjeants on foot. Accounts of the sénéchal of Pontoise," continued the clerk, in the same slow and solemn manner: "Receipts: five hundred livres, Parisis. Expenses: thirty-three livres, for wax-tapers for the church of the blessed St. Millon; twenty-eight sous for the carriage to Paris of the two living lions, now at the kennel of the wolf-hounds, without the walls; twenty livres, spent for the robes for four judges; and baskets for twenty eels--for seventeen young wolves."
"Death to my soul!" cried the impatient king: "make an end, man!--come to the sum total! How much remains?"
"Two hundred livres, six sous, one denier," replied the clerk.
"Villain, you lie!" cried the enraged monarch, striking him with his clenched fist, and snatching the tablets from his hand. "What! am I a beggar? 'Tis false, by the light of heaven!--It cannot be," he added, as his eye ran over the sad statement of his exhausted finances,--"it cannot surely be! Go, fellow! bid the bishop of Senlis come hither! I am sorry that I struck thee. Forget it! Go, bid Guerin hither,--quick!"