Chapter 5 - The Closet where Monsieur Louis of France Recites his Orisons
The reader perhaps remembers that Quasimodo, a moment before catching sight of the nocturnal band of truands and scrutinizing Paris from the height of his steeple, saw but a single remaining light twinkling at a window in the topmost storey of a grim and lofty building beside the Porte Saint-Antoine. The building was the Bastille, the twinkling light was the taper of Louis XI.
The King had, in fact, been in Paris these two days past, and was to set out again the next day but one for his citadel of Montilz-les-Tours. He made but rare and short visits to his good city of Paris, not feeling himself sufficiently surrounded there by pitfalls, gibbets, and Scottish archers.
That day he had come to sleep at the Bastille. The great chamber, five toises square, which he had at the Louvre, with its splendid chimney-pieces bearing the effigies of twelve great beasts and thirteen great prophets, and his bed, eleven feet by twelve, were little to his taste. He felt lost amid all these grandeurs. The good homely King preferred the Bastille, with a chamber and bed of more modest proportions; besides, the Bastille was stronger than the Louvre.
This chambrette which the King reserved for his own use in the famous prison was spacious enough, nevertheless, and occupied the uppermost storey of a turret forming part of the donjon-keep. It was a circular apartment hung with matting of shining straw, the rafters of the ceiling being decorated with raised fleurs de lis in gilt metal interspaced with colour, and wainscotted with rich carvings sprinkled with metal rosettes and painted a beautiful vivid green made of a mixture of orpiment and fine indigo.
There was but one window, a long pointed one, latticed by iron bars and iron wire, and still further darkened with fine glass painted with the arms of the King and Queen, each pane of which had cost twenty-two sols.
There was also but one entrance, a door of the contemporary style under a flattened arch, furnished inside with a tapestry hanging, and outside with one of those porches of Irish wood—delicate structures of elaborately wrought cabinet-work which still abounded in old mansions a hundred and fifty years ago. “Although they disfigure and encumber the places,” says Sauval in desperation, “our old people will not have them removed, but keep them in spite of everybody.”
Not a single article of the ordinary furniture of a room was to be seen here—neither benches, nor trestles, nor forms; neither common box-stools, nor handsome ones supported by pillars and carved feet at four sols apiece. There was one folding arm-chair only, a very magnificent one, its frame painted with roses on a crimson ground, and the seat of crimson Cordova leather with a quantity of gold-headed nails. The solitary state of this chair testified to the fact that one person alone was entitled to be seated in the room. Beside the chair and close under the window was a table covered by a cloth wrought with figures of birds. On the table was a much-used inkstand, a few sheets of parchment, some pens, and a goblet of chased silver; farther off, a charcoal brasier and a prie-dieu covered with crimson velvet and ornamented with gold bosses. Finally, at the other end of the room, an unpretentious bed of red and yellow damask with no decoration of any sort but a plain fringe. This bed, famous as having borne the sleep or sleeplessness of Louis XI, was still in existence two hundred years ago in the house of a councillor of state, where it was seen by the aged Mme. Pilou, celebrated in Le Grand Cyrus under the name of Arricidie and of La Morale Vivante.
Such was the room known as “the closet where Monsieur Louis of France recites his orisons.”
At the moment at which we have introduced the reader into it, this closet was very dark. Curfew had rung an hour back, night had fallen, and there was but one flickering wax candle on the table to light five persons variously grouped about the room.
The first upon whom the light fell was a gentleman superbly attired in doublet and hose of scarlet slashed with silver and a cloak with puffed shoulder-pieces of cloth of gold figured with black, the whole gorgeous costume appearing to be shot with flames wherever the light played on it. The man who wore it had his heraldic device embroidered in vivid colours on his breast—a chevron and a stag passant, the scutcheon supported by a branch of olive dexter and a stag’s horn sinister. In his girdle he wore a rich dagger, the silver-gilt hilt being wrought in the form of a helmet and surmounted by a count’s coronet. He had a venomous eye, and his manner was haughty and overbearing. At the first glance you were struck by the arrogance of his face, at the second by its craftiness. He stood bareheaded, a long written scroll in his hand, behind the arm-chair in which sat a very shabbily dressed personage in an uncouth attitude, his shoulders stooping, his knees crossed, his elbow on the table. Picture to yourself in that rich Cordovan chair a pair of bent knees, two spindle shanks poorly clad in close-fitting black worsted breeches, the body wrapped in a loose coat of fustian the fur lining of which showed more leather than hair, and to crown the whole, a greasy old hat of mean black felt garnished all round by a string of little leaden figures. This, with the addition of a dirty skull-cap, beneath which hardly a hair was visible, was all that could be seen of the seated personage. His head was bowed so low on his breast that nothing was visible of his deeply shadowed face but the end of his nose, on which a ray of light fell, and which was evidently very long. By his emaciated and wrinkled hands one divined him to be an old man. It was Louis XI.
At some distance behind them, two men habited after the Flemish fashion were conversing in low tones. They were not so completely lost in the gloom but that any one who had attended the performance of Gringoire’s Mystery could recognise them as the two chief Flemish envoys: Guillaume Rym, the sagacious pensionary of Ghent, and Jacques Coppenole, the popular hosier. It will be remembered that these two men were concered with the secret politics of Louis XI.
And finally, quite in the dim background near the door, there stood, motionless as a statue, a brawny, thick-set man in military accoutrements and an emblazoned coat, whose square, low-browed face with its prominent eyes, immense slit of a mouth, ears concealed beneath two wide flaps of smooth hair, seemed a cross between the bulldog and the tiger.
All were uncovered except the King.
The knightly personage standing behind the King was reading out items from a sort of long memorandum, to which his Majesty appeared to listen attentively. The two Flemings whispered together.
“By the rood!” grumbled Coppenole, “I’m tired of standing. Is there never a chair here?”
Rym replied with a negative gesture, accompanied by a discreet smile.
“Croix-Dieu!” resumed Coppenole, sorely exercised at having to lower his voice, “I am devoured by the desire to plump myself down cross-legged on the floor as I do in my own shop.”
“You had best beware of doing so, Ma?tre Jacques,” was the reply.
“Heyday! Ma?tre Guillaume, may a man then be only on his feet here?”
“Or on his knees,” said Rym. At that moment the King raised his voice and they ceased their talking.
“Fifty sols for the gowns of our valets, and twelve livres for the mantles of the crown clerks! That’s the way! Pour out the gold by tons! Are you crazed, Olivier?”
As he spoke the old man raised his head, and you could see the golden shells of the collar of Saint-Michael glittering round his neck. The candle shone full on his fleshless and morose countenance. He snatched the paper from the hands of the other.
“You are ruining us!” he cried, casting his hollow eyes over the schedule. “What’s all this? What need have we of so prodigious a household? Two chaplains at ten livres a month each, and a chapel clerk at a hundred sols! A valetde-chambre at ninety livres a year! Four kitchen masters at a hundred and sixty livres a year each! A roaster, a soupdresser, a sauce-dresser, a head cook, an armourer, two sumpter men at the rate of ten livres a month each! Two turnspits at eight livres! A groom and his two helpers at four and twenty livres a month! A porter, a pastry-cook, a baker, two carters, each at sixty livres a year! And the marshal of forges a hundred and twenty livres! And the master of our exchequer chamber twelve hundred livres! And the comptroller five hundred livres! And God knows what besides! It’s raving madness! The wages of our domestics are simply stripping France bare. All the treasure of the Louvre would melt away before such a blaze of expense! We shall have to sell our plate! And next year, if God and Our Lady (here he raised his hat) grant us life, we shall have to drink our tisanes from a pewter pot!”
At which he glanced at the silver goblet sparkling on the table, coughed, and went on:
“Master Olivier, princes who reign over great realms as kings and superiors should not allow sumptuousness to be engendered in their households, inasmuch as that is a fire which will spread from thence to the provinces. And so, Master Olivier, make no mistake about this. Our expenses increase with every year, and the thing displeases us. Why, pasque-Dieu! up till ’79 it never exceeded thirty-six thousand livres. In ’80 it rose to forty-three thousand six hundred and nineteen livres. I have the figures in my head. In ’81 it was sixty-six thousand six hundred and eighty livres, and this year, faith of my body! it will come to eighty thousand livres. Doubled in four years! Monstrous!”
He stopped to take breath, then resumed with vehemence: “I see none about me but people fattening on my leanness. Ye suck my money from me at every pore!”
All kept silence. It was one of those fits of anger that must be allowed to run their course. He continued his complaints.
“It is the same thing with that Latin memorial from the great lords of France requesting us to re-establish what they call the great offices of the Crown. Offices! call them rather burdens—burdens that crush us to the ground. Ah, messieurs! you tell us we are no King to reign dapifero nullo buticulario nullo!1 But we will let you see, pasque-Dieu! whether we are a King or no!”
He smiled in the consciousness of his power, his ill-humour was allayed, and he turned to the Flemings:
“Look you, Gossip Guillaume, the grand baker, the grand butler, the grand chamberlain, the seneschal are not worth the meanest valet. Bear this in mind, Gossip Coppenole, they are of no use whatever. Standing thus useless about the King, they put me in mind of the four evangelists that surround the face of the great clock of the palace, and that Philippe Brille has just renovated. They are gilded, but they do not mark the hour, and the clock hand could do excellently well without them.”
He mused for a moment and added, shaking his old head: “Ho! ho! by Our Lady, I am not Philippe Brille, and I will not regild the great vassals of the crown. Proceed, Olivier.”
The person thus addressed received the schedule-book from his hands and went on reading aloud:
“To Adam Tenon, assistant keeper of the seals of the provostry of Paris, for the silver, workmanship, and engraving of the said seals which have had to be renewed, inasmuch as the former ones, being old and worn out, could no longer be used, twelve livres parisis.
“To Guillaume Frére, the sum of four livres four sols parisis for his wages and trouble in having fed and maintained the pigeons of the two pigeon-houses at the H?tel des Tournelles during the months of January, February, and March of this year, for the which he has furnished seven sestiers of barley.
“To a Franciscan for shriving a criminal, four sols parisis.”
The King listened in silence. From time to time he coughed, and then raised the goblet to his lips and drank a mouthful with a wry face.
“In this year have been made,” continued the reader, “by order of the law, by sound of trumpet, through the streets of Paris, fifty-six public proclamations. Account not yet rendered.
“For search made in divers places in Paris and elsewhere after treasure said to be conceled in the said places, but nothing has been found, forty-five livres parisis.”
“Burying a florin to dig up a sou,” commented the King.
“—For putting in, at the H?tel des Tournelles, six panes of white glass, at the place where the iron cage stands, thirteen sols. For making and delivering on the day of the mustering of the troops, four escutcheons bearing the arms of our said lord, wreathed round with chaplets of roses, six livres. A pair of new sleeves to the King’s old doublet, twenty sols. A pot of grease to grease the King’s boots, fifteen deniers. A new sty for lodging the King’s black swine, thirty livres parisis. Several partitions, planks, and trap-doors, for the safe-keeping of the lions at the H?tel Saint-Paul, twenty-two livres.”
“Costly beasts, these,” said Louis XI. “But no matter, it is a magnificence befitting a King. There is a great tawny lion that I love for his engaging ways. Have you seen him, Ma?tre Guillaume? It is fitting that princes should keep these marvellous animals. For dogs, we kings should have lions; and for cats, tigers. The great beseems a crown. In the days of the pagan worshippers of Jupiter, when the people offered a hundred bullocks and a hundred sheep in the churches, the emperors gave a hundred lions and a hundred eagles. That was very fierce and noble. The kings of France have always had these roarings around their throne. Nevertheless, to do me justice, it must be admitted that I spend less in that way than my predecessors, and that I am less ostentatious in the matter of lions, bears, elephants, and leopards.—Continue, Ma?tre Olivier. This was for the benefit of our friends, the Flemings.”
Guillaume Rym bowed low, while Coppenole, with his surly face, looked much like one of the bears of whom his Majesty had spoken. The King paid no attention; he had just taken a sip from the goblet, and was spitting out the beverage again with a “Faugh! the nasty stuff!”
The reader went on: “For the food of a rogue and vagabond kept locked up for the last six months in the cell at the Skinners’ yard until it should be known what was to be done with him, six livres four sols.”
“What’s that?” interrupted the King. “Feeding what ought to be hanged! Pasque-Dieu! I’ll not give another sol for that food. Olivier, arrange this matter with M. d’Estouteville, and see to it that this very night preparations are made to unite this gallant with the gallows. Go on.”
Olivier made a mark with his thumb-nail against the item rogue and vagabond, and proceeded:
“To Henriet Cousin, chief executioner at the Justice of Paris, the sum of sixty sols parisis, to him adjudged and accorded by the Lord Provost of Paris for having purchased, by order of the said Lord Provost, a great broad-bladed sword, to be used for executing and decapitating the persons condemned by law for their delinquencies, and having it furnished with a scabbard and all necessary appurtenances; and similarly for the repair and putting in order of the old sword, which had been splintered and notched in executing justice on Messire Louis of Luxembourg, as can be plainly shown.”
