"Where are those thousand gold crowns?" he called to him.

"Ah! sire, you are too great a king! there is no sum that can pay for
your justice."

Louis XI. smiled. The courtiers envied the frank speech and privileges
of the old silversmith, who promptly disappeared down the avenue of
young mulberries which led from Tours to Plessis.

Exhausted with fatigue, the young seigneur had indeed fallen soundly
asleep. Returning from his gallant adventure, he no longer felt the same
ardor and courage to defend himself against distant or imaginary dangers
with which he had rushed into the perils of the night. He had even
postponed till the morrow the cleaning of his soiled garments; a great
blunder, in which all else conspired. It was true that, lacking the
moonlight, he had missed finding all the screws of that cursed lock; he
had no patience to look for them. With the "laisser-aller" of a tired
man, he trusted to his luck, which had so far served him well. He did,
however, make a sort of compact with himself to awake at daybreak, but
the events of the day and the agitations of the night did not allow him
to keep faith with himself. Happiness is forgetful. Cornelius no longer
seemed formidable to the young man when he threw himself on the
pallet where so many poor wretches had wakened to their doom; and this
light-hearted heedlessness proved his ruin. While the king's silversmith
rode back from Plessis, accompanied by the grand provost and his
redoubtable archers. The false Goulenoire was being watched by the old
sister, seated on the corkscrew staircase oblivious of the cold, and
knitting socks for Cornelius.

The young man continued to dream of the secret delights of that charming
night, ignorant of the danger that was galloping towards him. He saw
himself on a cushion at the feet of the countess, his head on her knees
in the ardor of his love; he listened to the story of her persecutions
and the details of the count's tyranny; he grew pitiful over the poor
lady, who was, in truth, the best-loved natural daughter of Louis XI. He
promised her to go on the morrow and reveal her wrongs to that terrible
father; everything, he assured her, should be settled as they wished,
the marriage broken off, the husband banished,--and all this within
reach of that husband's sword, of which they might both be the victims
if the slightest noise awakened him. But in the young man's dream the
gleam of the lamp, the flame of their eyes, the colo