“Ma belle dame,” replied Louis, “I swear to you that I would rather lose a hundred thousand francs than betray you. Since you have promised, keep your oath, but at any cost I will find out who has revealed our secrets.”
Therefore Louis went that night to supper with his wife, to whom he made himself as pleasant as he well knew how to do. By soft words, love-making and persuasion he prevailed upon her to tell him that it was Pierre de Craon who had revealed the affair to her.
Next morning he rode to the Louvre in a furious rage and met the King going to Mass. Charles, who was very fond of him, seeing his disturbed looks, stopped and asked what was the cause of them. Louis poured out his indignation to his brother, adding that besides this, Craon was always reproaching him with his love of necromancy. “To hear him,” he said, “one would think I was a wizard. By the faith I owe you, monseigneur, if it were not for my respect for you I would kill him.”
“Do not do that,” replied Charles. “I will send him word that I have no further occasion for his services and he is to leave my hôtel; you can turn him out of yours too.” Accordingly that day the Sires de la Rivière and de Noviant from the King, and two gentlemen of the household of the Duc d’Orléans, brought orders to Craon to retire.
He demanded an explanation, but neither the King nor the Duke would see him. Unable to get any information, and vowing vengeance against the unknown enemy, he retired to the court of his cousin, the Duc de Bretagne, and, after consulting together, they came to the conclusion that it must have been the Constable de Clisson who had done this, and resolved to avenge themselves on him.
Pierre de Craon therefore returned secretly to Paris and concealed himself in his hôtel, which was a splendid house, and which he had well stored with food and necessaries, and in his anxiety that his presence should not be known, he even took the precaution of locking up the wife and daughter of his concierge for fear they should disclose it.
On the 13th June there was a fête at the hôtel St. Paul. There were joustes in the afternoon and then a supper, followed by a ball which went on until about an hour after midnight.
The Constable de Clisson was the last to depart. He took leave of the King and Duc d’Orléans, and then, with eight valets of whom two carried torches, he proceeded towards the rue St. Catherine, at the corner of which Craon was lying in wait for him with a band of forty brigands. As he rode down the street, on a sudden the torches were snatched from his men and thrown to the ground. Clisson thought it was a trick of Louis d’Orléans and called out, “By my faith, monseigneur, this is too bad, but I forgive you because you are young and think of nothing but jokes.” But to his astonishment the answer was, “A mort! à mort Clisson! Si vous faut mourir,” as Craon drew his sword and with the gang of assassins attacked the Constable, who, after defending himself desperately, was flung from his horse against the door of a baker’s shop which gave way and he fell down two steps into the house. The baker and his people rushed out to pick him up, and the assassins, most of whom only now discovered that they had been hired to murder the Constable of France, fled in terror. Craon rode for his life through the Porte Saint Antoine, gained his own castle of Sablé, and from thence got safe to Bretagne. Meanwhile, the news spread rapidly through the city. The King who was going to bed, was just undressing in the hôtel St. Paul, when he was told that his Constable had been murdered.
“Murdered! My Constable! By whom?” he exclaimed.
“It is not known, but it is close by, in the rue St. Catherine.”