xplained all sudden pains and evils, involuntary sadness, ill-turns of
fortune among the Touraineans. Even at court most persons attributed
to Cornelius that fatal influence which Italian, Spanish, and Asiatic
superstition has called the "evil eye." Without the terrible power
of Louis XI., which was stretched like a mantle over that house,
the populace, on the slightest opportunity, would have demolished La
Malemaison, that "evil house" in the rue du Murier. And yet Cornelius
had been the first to plant mulberries in Tours, and the Touraineans at
that time regarded him as their good genius. Who shall reckon on popular
favor!

A few seigneurs having met Maitre Cornelius on his journeys out of
France were surprised at his friendliness and good-humor. At Tours he
was gloomy and absorbed, yet always he returned there. Some inexplicable
power brought him back to his dismal house in the rue du Murier. Like a
snail, whose life is so firmly attached to its shell, he admitted to
the king that he was never at ease except under the bolts and behind the
vermiculated stones of his little bastille; yet he knew very well that
whenever Louis XI. died, the place would be the most dangerous spot on
earth for him.

"The devil is amusing himself at the expense of our crony, the
torconnier," said Louis XI. to his barber, a few days before the
festival of All-Saints. "He says he has been robbed again, but he can't
hang anybody this time unless he hangs himself. The old vagabond came
and asked me if, by chance, I had carried off a string of rubies he
wanted to sell me. 'Pasques-Dieu! I don't steal what I can take,' I said
to him."

"Was he frightened?" asked the barber.

"Misers are afraid of only one thing," replied the king. "My crony the
torconnier knows very well that I shall not plunder him unless for good
reason; otherwise I should be unjust, and I have never done anything but
what is just and necessary."

"And yet that old brigand overcharges you," said the barber.

"You wish he did, don't you?" replied the king, with the malicious look
at his barber.

"Ventre-Mahom, sire, the inheritance would be a fine one between you and
the devil!"

"There, there!" said the king, "don't put bad ideas into my head.
My crony is a more faithful man than those whose fortunes I have
made--perhaps because he owes me nothing."

For the last two years Maitre Cornelius had lived entirely alone with
his aged sister, who was thought a witch. A tai