Notre-Dame de Paris
about him enough pitfalls, gibbets, and Scotch archers.
He had come, that day, to sleep at the Bastille. The great
chamber five toises[64] square, which he had at the Louvre, with
its huge chimney-piece loaded with twelve great beasts and
thirteen great prophets, and his grand bed, eleven feet by
twelve, pleased him but little. He felt himself lost amid all
this grandeur. This good _bourgeois_ king preferred the Bastille
with a tiny chamber and couch. And then, the Bastille was
stronger than the Louvre.
This little chamber, which the king reserved for himself in the
famous state prison, was also tolerably spacious and occupied the
topmost story of a turret rising from the donjon keep. It was
circular in form, carpeted with mats of shining straw, ceiled
with beams, enriched with fleurs-de-lis of gilded metal with
interjoists in color; wainscoated with rich woods sown with
rosettes of white metal, and with others painted a fine, bright
green, made of orpiment and fine indigo.
There was only one window, a long pointed casement, latticed with
brass wire and bars of iron, further darkened by fine colored
panes with the arms of the king and of the queen, each pane being
worth two and twenty sols.
There was but one entrance, a modern door, with a flat arch,
garnished with a piece of tapestry on the inside, and on the
outside by one of those porches of Irish wood, frail edifices of
cabinet-work curiously wrought, numbers of which were still to be
seen in old houses a hundred and fifty years ago. “Although they
disfigure and embarrass the places,” says Sauvel in despair, “our
old people are still unwilling to get rid of them, and keep them
in spite of everybody.”
In this chamber, nothing was to be found of what furnishes
ordinary apartments, neither benches, nor trestles, nor forms,
nor common stools in the form of a chest, nor fine stools
sustained by pillars and counter-pillars, at four sols a piece.
Only one easy arm-chair, very magnificent, was to be seen; the
wood was painted with roses on a red ground, the seat was of ruby
Cordovan leather, ornamented with long silken fringes, and
studded with a thousand golden nails. The loneliness of this
chair made it apparent that only one person had a right to sit
down in this apartment. Beside the chair, and quite close to the
window, there was a table covered with a cloth with a pattern of
birds. On this table stood an inkhorn spotted with ink, some
parchments, several pens, and a large goblet of chased silver. A
little further on was a brazier, a praying stool in crimson
velvet, relieved with small bosses of gold. Finally, at the
extreme end of the room, a simple bed of scarlet and yellow
damask, without either tinsel or lace; having only an ordinary
fringe. This bed, famous for having borne the sleep or the
sleeplessness of Louis XI., was still to be seen two hundred
years ago, at the house of a councillor of state, where it was
seen by old Madame Pilou, celebrated in _Cyrus_ under the name
_Arricidie_ and of _la Morale Vivante_.
Such was the chamber which was called “the retreat where Monsieur
Louis de France says his prayers.”
At the moment when we have introduced the reader into it, this
retreat was very dark. The curfew bell had sounded an hour
before; night was come, and there was only one flickering wax
candle set on the table to light five persons variously grouped
in the chamber.
The first on which the light fell was a seigneur superbly clad in
breeches and jerkin of scarlet striped with silver, and a loose
coat with half sleeves of cloth of gold with black figures. This
splendid costume, on which the light played, seemed glazed with
flame on every fold. The man who wore it had his armorial
bearings embroidered on his breast in vivid colors; a chevron
accompanied by a deer passant. The shield was flanked, on the
right by an olive branch, on the left by a deer’s antlers. This
man wore in his girdle a rich dagger whose hilt, of silver gilt,
was chased in the form of a helmet, and surmounted by a count’s
coronet. He had a forbidding air, a proud mien, and a head held
high. At the first glance one read arrogance on his visage; at
the second, craft.
He was standing bareheaded, a long roll of parchment in his hand,
behind the arm-chair in which was seated, his body ungracefully
doubled up, his knees crossed, his elbow on the table, a very
badly accoutred personage. Let the reader imagine in fact, on the
rich seat of Cordova leather, two crooked knees, two thin thighs,
poorly clad in black worsted tricot, a body enveloped in a cloak
of fustian, with fur trimming of which more leather than hair was
visible; lastly, to crown all, a greasy old hat of the worst sort
of black cloth, bordered with a circular string of leaden
figures. This, in company with a dirty skull-cap, which hardly
allowed a hair to escape, was all that distinguished the seated
personage. He held his head so bent upon his breast, that nothing
was to be seen of his face thus thrown into shadow, except the
tip of his nose, upon which fell a ray of light, and which must
have been long. From the thinness of his wrinkled hand, one
divined that he was an old man. It was Louis XI. At some distance
behind them, two men dressed in garments of Flemish style were
conversing, who were not sufficiently lost in the shadow to
prevent any one who had been present at the performance of
Gringoire’s mystery from recognizing in them two of the principal
Flemish envoys, Guillaume Rym, the sagacious pensioner of Ghent,
and Jacques Coppenole, the popular hosier. The reader will
remember that these men were mixed up in the secret politics of
Louis XI. Finally, quite at the end of the room, near the door,
in the dark, stood, motionless as a statue, a vigorous man with
thickset limbs, a military harness, with a surcoat of armorial
bearings, whose square face pierced with staring eyes, slit with
an immense mouth, his ears concealed by two large screens of flat
hair, had something about it both of the dog and the tiger.
All were uncovered except the king.
The gentleman who stood near the king was reading him a sort of
long memorial to which his majesty seemed to be listening
attentively. The two Flemings were whispering together.
“Cross of God!” grumbled Coppenole, “I am tired of standing; is
there no chair here?”
Rym replied by a negative gesture, accompanied by a discreet
smile.
“Croix-Dieu!” resumed Coppenole, thoroughly unhappy at being
obliged to lower his voice thus, “I should like to sit down on
the floor, with my legs crossed, like a hosier, as I do in my
shop.”
“Take good care that you do not, Master Jacques.”
“Ouais! Master Guillaume! can one only remain here on his feet?”
“Or on his knees,” said Rym.
At that moment the king’s voice was uplifted. They held their
peace.
“Fifty sols for the robes of our valets, and twelve livres for
the mantles of the clerks of our crown! That’s it! Pour out gold
by the ton! Are you mad, Olivier?”
As he spoke thus, the old man raised his head. The golden shells
of the collar of Saint-Michael could be seen gleaming on his
neck. The candle fully illuminated his gaunt and morose profile.
He tore the papers from the other’s hand.
“You are ruining us!” he cried, casting his hollow eyes over the
scroll. “What is all this? What need have we of so prodigious a
household? Two chaplains at ten livres a month each, and, a
chapel clerk at one hundred sols! A valet-de-chambre at ninety
livres a year. Four head cooks at six score livres a year each! A
spit-cook, an herb-cook, a sauce-cook, a butler, two
sumpter-horse lackeys, at ten livres a month each! Two scullions
at eight livres! A groom of the stables and his two aids at four
and twenty livres a month! A porter, a pastry-cook, a baker, two
carters, each sixty livres a year! And the farrier six score
livres! And the master of the chamber of our funds, twelve
hundred livres! And the comptroller five hundred. And how do I
know what else? ’Tis ruinous. The wages of our servants are
putting France to the pillage! All the ingots of the Louvre will
melt before such a fire of expenses! We shall have to sell our
plate! And next year, if God and our Lady (here he raised his
hat) lend us life, we shall drink our potions from a pewter pot!”
So saying, he cast a glance at the silver goblet which gleamed
upon the table. He coughed and continued,—
“Master Olivier, the princes who reign over great lordships, like
kings and emperors, should not allow sumptuousness in their
houses; for the fire spreads thence through the province. Hence,
Master Olivier, consider this said once for all. Our expenditure
increases every year. The thing displease us. How, _pasque-Dieu!_
when in ’79 it did not exceed six and thirty thousand livres, did
it attain in ’80, forty-three thousand six hundred and nineteen
livres? I have the figures in my head. In ’81, sixty-six thousand
six hundred and eighty livres, and this year, by the faith of my
body, it will reach eighty thousand livres! Doubled in four
years! Monstrous!”
He paused breathless, then resumed energetically,—
“I behold around me only people who fatten on my leanness! you
suck crowns from me at every pore.”
All remained silent. This was one of those fits of wrath which
are allowed to take their course. He continued,—
“’Tis like that request in Latin from the gentlemen of France,
that we should re-establish what they call the grand charges of
the Crown! Charges in very deed! Charges which crush! Ah!
gentlemen! you say that we are not a king to reign _dapifero
nullo, buticulario nullo!_ We will let you see, _pasque-Dieu!_
whether we are not a king!”
Here he smiled, in the consciousness of his power; this softened
his bad humor, and he turned towards the Flemings,—
“Do you see, Gossip Guillaume? the grand warden of the keys, the
grand butler, the grand chamberlain, the grand seneschal are not
worth the smallest valet. Remember this, Gossip Coppenole. They
serve no purpose, as they stand thus useless round the king; they
produce upon me the effect of the four Evangelists who surround
the face of the big clock of the palace, and which Philippe
Brille has just set in order afresh. They are gilt, but they do
not indicate the hour; and the hands can get on without them.”
He remained in thought for a moment, then added, shaking his aged
head,—
“Ho! ho! by our Lady, I am not Philippe Brille, and I shall not
gild the great vassals anew. Continue, Olivier.”
The person whom he designated by this name, took the papers into
his hands again, and began to read aloud,—
“To Adam Tenon, clerk of the warden of the seals of the