ith equal facility,
the one his conscience, the other his religion; they loved the same
Virgin, one by conviction, the other by policy; in short, if we may
believe the jealous tales of Olivier de Daim and Tristan, the king went
to the house of the Fleming for those diversions with which King
Louis XI. diverted himself. History has taken care to transmit to our
knowledge the licentious tastes of a monarch who was not averse to
debauchery. The old Fleming found, no doubt, both pleasure and profit in
lending himself to the capricious pleasures of his royal client.

Cornelius had now lived nine years in the city of Tours. During those
years extraordinary events had happened in his house, which had made
him the object of general execration. On his first arrival, he had spent
considerable sums in order to put the treasures he brought with him in
safety. The strange inventions made for him secretly by the locksmiths
of the town, the curious precautions taken in bringing those locksmiths
to his house in a way to compel their silence, were long the subject
of countless tales which enlivened the evening gatherings of the city.
These singular artifices on the part of the old man made every
one suppose him the possessor of Oriental riches. Consequently the
_narrators_ of that region--the home of the tale in France--built rooms
full of gold and precious tones in the Fleming's house, not omitting to
attribute all this fabulous wealth to compacts with Magic.

Maitre Cornelius had brought with him from Ghent two Flemish valets, an
old woman, and a young apprentice; the latter, a youth with a gentle,
pleasing face, served him as secretary, cashier, factotum, and
courier. During the first year of his settlement in Tours, a robbery of
considerable amount took place in his house, and judicial inquiry showed
that the crime must have been committed by one of its inmates. The old
miser had his two valets and the secretary put in prison. The young man
was feeble and he died under the sufferings of the "question" protesting
his innocence. The valets confessed the crime to escape torture; but
when the judge required them to say where the stolen property could
be found, they kept silence, were again put to the torture, judged,
condemned, and hanged. On their way to the scaffold they declared
themselves innocent, according to the custom of all persons about to be
executed.

The city of Tours talked much of this singular affair; but the
criminal