"You will set forth this night to treat of my business with the Signors of Venice. Do not be uneasy; I will bring your wife home with me this evening to my château of Le Plessis; there, at least, she will be safe. Henceforth I shall take better care of her than I have done since you wedded her."
Marie, as she heard these words, silently pressed her father's arm to thank him for his clemency and good grace. As to Louis, he was laughing in his sleeve.
Louis XI. dearly loved to interfere in his subjects' concerns, and was ever ready to mingle in his own royal person in scenes of middle-class life. This fancy, severely blamed by some historians, was no more than the passion for the incognito which is one of the chief amusements of princes, a sort of temporary abdication which enables them to bring a breath of work-a-day life into an existence which is insipid for lack of opposition; but then Louis XI. played at an incognito without any disguise. In this sort of adventures, too, he was always good-humored, and did his utmost to be pleasant to the citizen class, of whom he had made friends and allies against the feudal lords.
It was now some little time since he had an opportunity of thus making himself popular, or taking up the defence of a man enmeshed in some actionable offence, so he was ready to enter vehemently into Maître Cornélius' alarms and the Countess' secret griefs.
Several times during dinner he said to his daughter:
"But who can have robbed my old gossip? He has lost more than twelve hundred thousand crowns' worth of jewels, stolen within the last eight years. Twelve hundred thousand crowns, my lords," he repeated, looking round on the gentlemen in attendance. "By our Lady, for such a sum of money a great many absolutions may be bought of the Court of Rome. I could have embanked the Loire for the money, or, better still, have conquered Piedmont—a fine bulwark, ready made, for our kingdom."
When dinner was ended, Louis XI. led away his daughter, his physician, and the Provost Marshal, and made his way with an escort of his guard to the Hôtel de Poitiers, where, as he had expected, he found the Comte de Saint-Vallier, who was awaiting his wife, perhaps to get rid of her.
"Monsieur," said the King, "I had instructed you to depart as soon as possible. Take leave of your wife and get across the frontier; you will be granted an escort of honor. As to your instructions and letters of credit, they will be at Venice sooner than you."
Louis gave his orders, adding certain secret instructions, to a lieutenant of the Scottish Guard, who was to take a company and attend his envoy to Venice. Saint-Vallier went off in great haste, after giving his wife a cold kiss, which he would gladly have rendered fatal.