"Sire, I assure you that you will be in despair if you do.The so-called thief has stolen nothing. If you will promise me his pardon, I will tell you everything, even if you should visit it on me."
"Oh, ho! This looks serious," said Louis XI., setting his cap aside. "Speak, my child."
"Well," said she, in a low voice, and speaking with her lips close to her father's ear, "the gentleman spent the night in my room."
"He may have gone to see you, and yet have robbed Cornélius—a double larceny."
"Sire, I have your blood in my veins, and I am not the woman to love a vagabond. This gentleman is the nephew of the captain-general of your crossbowmen."
"Go on," said the King. "It is very hard to get anything out of you."
As he spoke, Louis flung his daughter off to some distance; and she stood trembling while he ran to the door into the next room, but on tiptoe, and without making a sound. A moment since the light from a window in the outer room, shining beneath the door, had shown him the shadow of a pair of feet close to the entrance. He suddenly opened the iron-bound door, and surprised the Comte de Saint-Vallier, who was listening.
"Pasques Dieu!" cried he, "this is such insolence as deserves the axe."
"My liege," said Saint-Vallier, boldly, "I would rather have the axe at my neck than the ornament of the married on my forehead."
"You may live to have both," said the King. "Not a man of you all is secure against those two misfortunes, my lords. Go into the farther ante-room. Conyngham," he went on, addressing the Scottish captain, "were you asleep? And where is Monsieur Bridoré? Do you allow me to be thus invaded? Pasques Dieu! the plainest citizen in Tours is better served than I am."