Louis XI., now in his fifty-seventh year, had scarcely three more years to live, and was already made aware of the approach of death by attacks of illness. Delivered now from his enemies, and on the eve of adding to the kingdom of France all the possessions of the duchy of Burgundy, by means of a marriage, arranged by Desquerdes, the captain-general of his army in Flanders, between the Dauphin and Marguerite, sole heiress of Burgundy; having secured his authority in every part of his realm, while still planning wise improvements, he saw time slipping from his grasp, nothing left to him but the troubles of advancing years. Deceived by everybody, even by his creatures, experience had increased his natural distrustfulness. The desire to live had become in him the egoism of a king who had made himself one incarnate with his people, and who craved for long life to carry out vast schemes.
Everything that the good sense of public-spirited statesmen or the instinct of revolution has since achieved in reforming the monarchy, Louis XI. had thought out. Equality of taxation, and that of all subjects in the eye of the Law—the Sovereign was the Law then—were objects he boldly strove for. On the day before All Saints he had assembled certain learned goldsmiths to establish uniform weights and measures throughout France, as he had already established uniform authority. Thus his great mind soared eagle-like above the whole kingdom, and Louis XI. added to the cautiousness of a king the eccentricities that are natural to men of lofty genius.
So grand a figure would at no period have appeared more poetical or more dignified. A strange mixture of contrasts! A great will in a feeble frame; a mind incredulous as to earthly things, credulous as concerned religious practices; a man combating two forces greater than himself—the present and the future: the future, when he dreaded to endure torment, which made him sacrifice so largely to the Church; the present, his actual life, for whose sake he was a slave to Coyctier. This King, who could crush whom he would, was crushed by remorse, and yet more by sickness, in the midst of all the mysterious prestige that enwraps a suspicious king, in whom all power centres.
It was the stupendous and always impressive struggle of man in the fullest expression of his power, rebelling against nature.
While waiting till the dinner hour, at that time between eleven o'clock and noon, Louis XI., after a short walk, was sitting in a large tapestried armchair in the chimney-corner of his own room. Olivier le Daim and Coyctier, the leech, looked at each other without a word, standing in a window-bay, and respecting their master's slumbers. The only sound to be heard was that made in the ante-room by the two chamberlains-in-waiting, as they paced to and fro; the Sire de Montrésor and Jean Dufou, Sire de Montbazon. These two, gentlemen of the Touraine, kept an eye on the captain of the Scottish Guard, who was probably asleep in his chair, as was his custom.
The King seemed to be dozing; his head was sunk on his breast; his cap, pulled over his brow, almost concealed his eyes. Thus huddled in his raised throne, which was surmounted by a crown, he looked like a man who had fallen asleep in the midst of some deep calculation.
At this moment Tristan and his party were crossing the bridge of Sainte-Anne over the canal, at about two hundred paces from the entrance to the château.
"Who goes there?" asked the King.
The courtiers looked inquiringly at each other in surprise.