Maitre Cornelius

“How?” she asked naively.

They were in such great peril that their tenderest words were devoid of love.

“This evening,” he replied, “I shall offer myself as apprentice to Maitre Cornelius, the king’s silversmith. I have obtained a letter of recommendation to him which will make him receive me. His house is next to yours. Once under the roof of that old thief, I can soon find my way to your apartment by the help of a silken ladder.”

“Oh!” she said, petrified with horror, “if you love me don’t go to Maitre Cornelius.”

“Ah!” he cried, pressing her to his heart with all the force of his youth, “you do indeed love me!”

“Yes,” she said; “are you not my hope? You are a gentleman, and I confide to you my honor. Besides,” she added, looking at him with dignity, “I am so unhappy that you would never betray my trust. But what is the good of all this? Go, let me die, sooner than that you should enter that house of Maitre Cornelius. Do you not know that all his apprentices – ”

“Have been hanged,” said the young man, laughing.

“Oh, don’t go; you will be made the victim of some sorcery.”

“I cannot pay too dearly for the joy of serving you,” he said, with a look that made her drop her eyes.

“But my husband?” she said.

“Here is something to put him to sleep,” replied her lover, drawing from his belt a little vial.

“Not for always?” said the countess, trembling.

For all answer the young seigneur made a gesture of horror.

“I would long ago have defied him to mortal combat if he were not so old,” he said. “God preserve me from ridding you of him in any other way.”

“Forgive me,” said the countess, blushing. “I am cruelly punished for my sins. In a moment of despair I thought of killing him, and I feared you might have the same desire. My sorrow is great that I have never yet been able to confess that wicked thought; but I fear it would be repeated to him and he would avenge it. I have shamed you,” she continued, distressed by his silence, “I deserve your blame.”

And she broke the vial by flinging it on the floor violently.

“Do not come,” she said, “my husband sleeps lightly; my duty is to wait for the help of Heaven – that will I do!”

She tried to leave the chapel.

“Ah!” cried the young man, “order me to do so and I will kill him. You will see me to-night.”

“I was wise to destroy that drug,” she said in a voice that was faint with the pleasure of finding herself so loved. “The fear of awakening my husband will save us from ourselves.”

“I pledge you my life,” said the young man, pressing her hand.

“If the king is willing, the pope can annul my marriage. We will then be united,” she said, giving him a look that was full of delightful hopes.

“Monseigneur comes!” cried the page, rushing in.

Instantly the young nobleman, surprised at the short time he had gained with his mistress and wondering at the celerity of the count, snatched a kiss, which was not refused.

“To-night!” he said, slipping hastily from the chapel.

Thanks to the darkness, he reached the great portal safely, gliding from column to column in the long shadows which they cast athwart the nave. An old canon suddenly issued from the confessional, came to the side of the countess and closed the iron railing before which the page was marching gravely up and down with the air of a watchman.

A strong light now announced the coming of the count. Accompanied by several friends and by servants bearing torches, he hurried forward, a naked sword in hand. His gloomy eyes seemed to pierce the shadows and to rake even the darkest corners of the cathedral.

“Monseigneur, madame is there,” said the page, going forward to meet him.

The Comte de Saint-Vallier found his wife kneeling on the steps of the alter, the old priest standing beside her and reading his breviary. At that sight the count shook the iron railing violently as if to give vent to his rage.

“What do you want here, with a drawn sword in a church?” asked the priest.

“Father, that is my husband,” said the countess.

The priest took a key from his sleeve, and unlocked the railed door of the chapel. The count, almost in spite of himself, cast a look into the confessional, then he entered the chapel, and seemed to be listening attentively to the sounds in the cathedral.

“Monsieur,” said his wife, “you owe many thanks to this venerable canon, who gave me a refuge here.”

The count turned pale with anger; he dared not look at his friends, who had come there more to laugh at him than to help him. Then he answered curtly:

“Thank God, father, I shall find some way to repay you.”

He took his wife by the arm and, without allowing her to finish her curtsey to the canon, he signed to his servants and left the church without a word to the others who had accompanied him. His silence had something savage and sullen about it. Impatient to reach his home and preoccupied in searching for means to discover the truth, he took his way through the tortuous streets which at that time separated the cathedral from the Chancellerie, a fine building recently erected by the Chancellor Juvenal des Ursins, on the site of an old fortification given by Charles VII. to that faithful servant as a reward for his glorious labors.

The count reached at last the rue du Murier, in which his dwelling, called the hotel de Poitiers, was situated. When his escort of servants had entered the courtyard and the heavy gates were closed, a deep silence fell on the narrow street, where other great seigneurs had their houses, for this new quarter of the town was near to Plessis, the usual residence of the king, to whom the courtiers, if sent for, could go in a moment. The last house in this street was also the last in the town. It belonged to Maitre Cornelius Hoogworst, an old Brabantian merchant, to whom King Louis XI. gave his utmost confidence in those financial transactions which his crafty policy induced him to undertake outside of his own kingdom.

Observing the outline of the houses occupied respectively by Maitre Cornelius and by the Comte de Poitiers, it was easy to believe that the same architect had built them both and destined them for the use of tyrants. Each was sinister in aspect, resembling a small fortress, and both could be well defended against an angry populace. Their corners were upheld by towers like those which lovers of antiquities remark in towns where the hammer of the iconoclast has not yet prevailed. The bays, which had little depth, gave a great power of resistance to the iron shutters of the windows and doors. The riots and the civil wars so frequent in those tumultuous times were ample justification for these precautions.

As six o’clock was striking from the great tower of the Abbey Saint-Martin, the lover of the hapless countess passed in front of the hotel de Poitiers and paused for a moment to listen to the sounds made in the lower hall by the servants of the count, who were supping. Casting a glance at the window of the room where he supposed his love to be, he continued his way to the adjoining house. All along his way, the young man had heard the joyous uproar of many feasts given throughout the town in honor of the day. The ill-joined shutters sent out streaks of light, the chimneys smoked, and the comforting odor of roasted meats pervaded the town. After the conclusion of the church services, the inhabitants were regaling themselves, with murmurs of satisfaction which fancy can picture better than words can paint. But at this particular spot a deep silence reigned, because in these two houses lived two passions which never rejoiced. Beyond them stretched the silent country. Beneath the shadow of the steeples of Saint-Martin, these two mute dwellings, separated from the others in the same street and standing at the crooked end of it, seemed afflicted with leprosy. The building opposite to them, the home of the criminals of the State, was also under a ban. A young man would be readily impressed by this sudden contrast. About to fling himself into an enterprise that was horribly hazardous, it is no wonder that the daring young seigneur stopped short before the house of the silversmith, and called to mind the many tales furnished by the life of Maitre Cornelius, – tales which caused such singular horror to the countess. At this period a man of war, and even a lover, trembled at the mere word “magic.” Few indeed were the minds and the imaginations which disbelieved in occult facts and tales of the marvellous. The lover of the Comtesse de Saint-Vallier, one of the daughters whom Louis XI. had in Dauphine by Madame de Sassenage, however bold he might be in other respects, was likely to think twice before he finally entered the house of a so-called sorcerer.

The history of Maitre Cornelius Hoogworst will fully explain the security which the silversmith inspired in the Comte de Saint-Vallier, the terror of the countess, and the hesitation that now took possession of the lover. But, in order to make the readers of this nineteenth century understand how such commonplace events could be turned into anything supernatural, and to make them share the alarms of that olden time, it is necessary to interrupt the course of this narrative and cast a rapid glance on the preceding life and adventures of Maitre Cornelius.

CHAPTER II. THE TORCONNIER

Cornelius Hoogworst, one of the richest merchants in Ghent, having drawn upon himself the enmity of Charles, Duke of Burgundy, found refuge and protection at the court of Louis XI. The king was conscious of the advantages he could gain from a man connected with all the principal commercial houses of Flanders, Venice, and the Levant; he naturalized, ennobled, and flattered Maitre Cornelius; all of which was rarely done by Louis XI. The monarch pleased the Fleming as much as the Fleming pleased the monarch. Wily, distrustful, and miserly; equally politic, equally learned; superior, both of them, to their epoch; understanding each other marvellously; they discarded and resumed with equal facility, the one his conscience, the other his religion; they loved the same Virgin, one by conviction, the other by policy; in short, if we may believe the jealous tales of Olivier de Daim and Tristan, the king went to the house of the Fleming for those diversions with which King Louis XI. diverted himself. History has taken care to transmit to our knowledge the licentious tastes of a monarch who was not averse to debauchery. The old Fleming found, no doubt, both pleasure and profit in lending himself to the capricious pleasures of his royal client.

Cornelius had now lived nine years in the city of Tours. During those years extraordinary events had happened in his house, which had made him the object of general execration. On his first arrival, he had spent considerable sums in order to put the treasures he brought with him in safety. The strange inventions made for him secretly by the locksmiths of the town, the curious precautions taken in bringing those locksmiths to his house in a way to compel their silence, were long the subject of countless tales which enlivened the evening gatherings of the city. These singular artifices on the part of the old man made every one suppose him the possessor of Oriental riches. Consequently the narrators of that region – the home of the tale in France – built rooms full of gold and precious tones in the Fleming’s house, not omitting to attribute all this fabulous wealth to compacts with Magic.