"Nay, Sire, can you doubt my devotion—you, the only man I love?"
"Words, words!" said the King, turning to face the miser. "You ought not to have waited for this to be of use to me. You are selling me your patronage—Pasques Dieu! to me—Louis the Eleventh! Are you the master, I would know, and am I the servant?"
"Ah, my liege," replied the old usurer, "I had hoped to give you an agreeable surprise by news of the communications I had established with the men of Ghent. I expected confirmation of it by the hand of Oosterlinck's apprentice. But what has become of him?"
"Enough," said the King. "Another error. I do not choose that any one should interfere, uncalled for, in my concerns. Enough! I must think all this over."
Maître Cornélius found the agility of youth to fly to the lower room, where his sister was sitting.
"Oh, Jeanne, dear heart, we have somewhere a hoard where I have hidden the thirteen hundred thousand crowns. And I—I am the thief!"
Jeanne Hoogworst rose from her stool, starting to her feet as if the seat were of red-hot iron. The shock was so frightful to an old woman accustomed for many years to exhaust herself by voluntary abstinence, that she quaked in every limb and felt a terrible pain in her back. By degrees her color faded, and her face, in which the wrinkles made any change very difficult to detect, gradually fell, while her brother explained to her the disease to which he was a victim, and the strange situation in which they both stood.
"King Louis and I," said he in conclusion, "have just been telling each other as many lies as two miracle-mongers. You see, child, if he were to watch me, he would be sole master of the secret of the treasure. No one in the world but the King can spy on my nocturnal movements. Now I do not know that the King's conscience, near on death as he is, could stand out against thirteen hundred and seventeen thousand crowns. We must be beforehand with him, find the nest, and send all treasure to Ghent. Now you alone——"
Cornélius suddenly stopped short, as if he were gauging the heart of this King, who, at two and twenty, had dreamed of parricide. When the treasurer had made up his mind as to Louis XI., he hastily rose, as a man in a hurry to escape some danger.
At this sudden movement, his sister, too weak or too strong for such a crisis, fell down flat; she was dead. Cornélius lifted her up and shook her violently, saying: