“So, ho!” said the King, scratching his left ear with his right hand, “that comprises a good slice of my town! Ah, Monsieur the Provost was king of all this!”
This time he did not correct himself. He continued cogitating and as if talking to himself: “Softly, Monsieur the Provost, you had a very pretty piece of our Paris!”
Suddenly he burst out: “Pasque-Dieu! what are all these people that claim to be highway-reeves, justiciaries, lords and masters along with us! that have their toll-gates at the corner of every field, their gibbet and their executioner at every cross-way among our people, so that, as the Greek thought he had as many gods as he had springs of water, the Persian as many as the stars he saw, the Frenchman reckons as many kings as he sees gibbets. Pardieu! this thing is evil, and the confusion of it incenses me! I would know if it be God’s pleasure that there should be in Paris any keepers of the highways but the King, any justiciary but our Parliament, any emperor but ourself in this empire? By my soul, but the day must come when there shall be in France but one king, one lord, one judge, one headsman, just as in paradise there is but one God!”
He lifted his cap again and went on, still deep in his own thoughts, with the look and tone of a huntsman uncoupling and cheering on his pack:
“Good, my people! Well done! Pull down these false lords! Do your work! At them! At them! Pillage, hang, sack them! Ah, you would be kings, my lords! At them! my people, at them!”
He stopped himself abruptly, bit his lips as if to regain possession of his escaping thoughts, bent his piercing eye in turn on each of the five persons around him, and suddenly taking his hat in both hands and regarding it steadfastly, he exclaimed: “Oh, I would burn thee, didst thou know what I have in my head!”
Then casting around him the alert and suspicious glance of a fox stealing back to his hole—“No matter,” he said, “we will send help to Monsieur the Provost. Most unfortunately we have very few troops here at this moment to send against such a mob. We must wait till to-morrow. Order shall then be restored in the city, and all who are taken shall be promptly hanged.”
“That reminds me, Sire,” said Coictier, “I forgot in my first perturbation, the watch have seized two stragglers of the band. If your Majesty pleases to see these men, they are here.”
“If it be my pleasure!” cried the King. “What! Pasque-Dieu! canst thou forget such a thing? Run quick. Olivier, do thou go and bring them here.”
Maître Olivier went out and returned immediately with the two prisoners, surrounded by archers of the body-guard. The first of the two had a wild, imbecile face, drunken and wonder-struck. He was clad in rags and walked with one knee bent and dragging his foot. The other presented a pale and smiling countenance, with which the reader is already acquainted.
The King scrutinized them a moment without speaking, then abruptly addressed the first prisoner:
“What is thy name?”
“Gieffroy Pincebourde.”
“Thy trade?”
“Truand.”
“What wast thou doing in that damnable riot?”