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 Hôtel 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.


  By PanEris using Melati.

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