do with our flour, sire?" she cried, not the least
impressed by his royal majesty.

"Old fool!" said Cornelius, "go and execute the orders of our gracious
master. Shall the king lack flour?"

"Our good flour!" she grumbled, as she went downstairs. "Ah! my flour!"

Then she returned, and said to the king:--

"Sire, is it only a royal notion to examine my flour?"

At last she reappeared, bearing one of those stout linen bags which,
from time immemorial, have been used in Touraine to carry or bring, to
and from market, nuts, fruits, or wheat. The bag was half full of flour.
The housekeeper opened it and showed it to the king, on whom she cast
the rapid, savage look with which old maids appear to squirt venom upon
men.

"It costs six sous the 'septeree,'" she said.

"What does that matter?" said the king. "Spread it on the floor; but be
careful to make an even layer of it--as if it had fallen like snow."

The old maid did not comprehend. This proposal astonished her as though
the end of the world had come.

"My flour, sire! on the ground! But--"

Maitre Cornelius, who was beginning to understand, though vaguely, the
intentions of the king, seized the bag and gently poured its contents
on the floor. The old woman quivered, but she held out her hand for the
empty bag, and when her brother gave it back to her she disappeared with
a heavy sigh.

Cornelius then took a feather broom and gently smoothed the flour till
it looked like a fall of snow, retreating step by step as he did so,
followed by the king, who seemed much amused by the operation. When they
reached the door Louis XI. said to his silversmith, "Are there two keys
to the lock?"

"No, sire."

The king then examined the structure of the door, which was braced with
large plates and bars of iron, all of which converged to a secret lock,
the key of which was kept by Cornelius.

After examining everything, the king sent for Tristan, and ordered him
to post several of his men for the night, and with the greatest
secrecy, in the mulberry trees on the embankment and on the roofs of the
adjoining houses, and to assemble at once the rest of his men and escort
him back to Plessis, so as to give the idea in the town that he himself
would not sup with Cornelius. Next, he told the miser to close his
windows with the utmost care, that no single ray of light should escape
from the house, and then he departed with much pomp for Plessis along
the embankment; but ther