[As overheard and reported by the court jester this historic prayer reads as follows: “Ah, my good Lady, my gentle mistress, my only friend, in whom alone I have resource, I pray you to supplicate God in my behalf, and to be my advocate with him that he may pardon me the death of my brother whom I caused to be poisoned by that wicked Abbot of Saint John. I confess my guilt to thee as to my good patroness and mistress. But then what could I do? he was perpetually causing disorder in my kingdom. Cause me then to be pardoned, my good Lady, and I know what a reward I will give thee.”]
After this extraordinary contract with the object of his adoration, Louis recited, apparently with deep devotion, the seven penitential psalms [the 6th, 32d, 38th, 51st, 102d, 130th, and 143d, so called from their penitential character] in Latin, and several aves and prayers especially belonging to the service of the Virgin. He then arose, satisfied that he had secured the intercession of the Saint to whom he had prayed, the rather, as he craftily reflected, that most of the sins for which he had requested her mediation on former occasions had been of a different character, and that, therefore, the Lady of Clery was less likely to consider him as a hardened and habitual shedder of blood than the other saints whom he had more frequently made confidants of his crimes in that respect.
When he had thus cleared his conscience, or rather whited it over like a sepulchre, the King thrust his head out at the door of the hall, and summoned Le Balafre into his apartment. “My good soldier,” he said, “thou hast served me long, and hast had little promotion. We are here in a case where I may either live or die; but I would not willingly die an ungrateful man, or leave, so far as the Saints may place it in my power, either a friend or an enemy unrecompensed. Now I have a friend to be rewarded, that is thyself – an enemy to be punished according to his deserts, and that is the base, treacherous villain; Martius Galeotti, who, by his impostures and specious falsehoods, has trained me hither into the power of my mortal enemy, with as firm a purpose of my destruction as ever butcher had of slaying the beast which he drove to the shambles.”
“I will challenge him on that quarrel, since they say he is a fighting blade, though he looks somewhat unwieldy,” said Le Balafre. “I doubt not but the Duke of Burgundy is so much a friend to men of the sword that he will allow us a fair field within some reasonable space, and if your Majesty live so long, and enjoy so much freedom, you shall behold me do battle in your right, and take as proper a vengeance on this philosopher as your heart could desire.”
“I commend your bravery and your devotion to my service,” said the King. “But this treacherous villain is a stout man at arms, and I would not willingly risk thy life, my brave soldier.”
“I were no brave soldier, if it please your Majesty,” said Balafre, “if I dared not face a better man than he. A fine thing it would be for me, who can neither read nor write, to be afraid of a fat lurdane, who has done little else all his Life!”
“Nevertheless,” said the King, “it is not our pleasure so to put thee in venture, Balafre. This traitor comes hither, summoned by our command. We would have thee, so soon as thou canst find occasion, close up with him, and smite him under the fifth rib. – Dost thou understand me?”
“Truly I do,” answered Le Balafre, “but, if it please your Majesty, this is a matter entirely out of my course of practice. I could not kill you a dog unless it were in hot assault, or pursuit, or upon defiance given, or such like.”
“Why, sure, thou dost not pretend to tenderness of heart,” said the King; “thou who hast been first in storm and siege, and most eager, as men tell me, on the pleasures and advantages which are gained on such occasions by the rough heart and the bloody hand?”
“My lord,” answered Le Balafre, “I have neither feared nor spared your enemies, sword in hand. And an assault is a desperate matter, under risks which raise a man’s blood so that, by Saint Andrew, it will not settle for an hour or two – which I call a fair license for plundering after a storm. And God pity us poor soldiers, who are first driven mad with danger, and then madder with victory. I have heard of a legion consisting entirely of saints; and methinks it would take them all to pray and intercede for the rest of the army, and for all who wear plumes and corselets, buff coats and broadswords. But what your Majesty purposes is out of my course of practice, though I will never deny that it has been wide enough. As for the Astrologer, if he be a traitor, let him e’en die a traitor’s death – I will neither meddle nor make with it. Your Majesty has your Provost and two of his Marshals men without, who are more fit for dealing with him than a Scottish gentleman of my family and standing in the service.”
“You say well,” said the King; “but, at least, it belongs to thy duty to prevent interruption, and to guard the execution of my most just sentence.”
“I will do so against all Peronne,” said Le Balafre. “Your Majesty need not doubt my fealty in that which I can reconcile to my conscience, which, for mine own convenience and the service of your royal Majesty, I can vouch to be a pretty large one – at least, I know I have done some deeds for your Majesty, which I would rather have eaten a handful of my own dagger than I would have done for any one else.”
“Let that rest,” said the King, “and hear you – when Galeotti is admitted, and the door shut on him, do you stand to your weapon, and guard the entrance on the inside of the apartment. Let no one intrude – that is all I require of you. Go hence, and send the Provost Marshal to me.”
Balafre left the apartment accordingly, and in a minute afterwards Tristan l’Hermite entered from the hall.
“Welcome, gossip,” said the King; “what thinkest thou of our situation?”
“As of men sentenced to death,” said the Provost Marshal, “unless there come a reprieve from the Duke.”’
“Reprieved or not, he that decoyed us into this snare shalt go our fourrier to the next world, to take up lodgings for us,” said the King, with a grisly and ferocious smile. “Tristan, thou hast done many an act of brave justice – finis – I should have said funis coronat opus [the end – I should have said the rope – crowns the work] – thou must stand by me to the end.”
“I will, my Liege,” said Tristan, “I am but a plain fellow, but I am grateful. I will do my duty within these walls, or elsewhere; and while I live, your Majesty’s breath shall pour as potential a note of condemnation, and your sentence be as literally executed, as when you sat on your own throne. They may deal with me the next hour for it if they will – I care not.”
“It is even what I expected of thee, my loving gossip,” said Louis; “but hast thou good assistance? – The traitor is strong and able bodied, and will doubtless be clamorous for aid. The Scot will do naught but keep the door, and well that he can be brought to that by flattery and humouring. Then Oliver is good for nothing but lying, flattering, and suggesting dangerous counsels; and, Ventre Saint Dieu! I think is more like one day to deserve the halter himself than to use it to another. Have you men, think you, and means, to make sharp and sure work?”
“I have Trois Eschelles and Petit Andre with me,” said he, “men so expert in their office that, out of three men, they would hang up one ere his two companions were aware. And we have all resolved to live or die with your Majesty, knowing we shall have as short breath to draw when you are gone, as ever fell to the lot of any of our patients. – But what is to be our present subject, an it please your Majesty? I love to be sure of my man; for, as your Majesty is pleased sometimes to remind me, I have now and then mistaken the criminal, and strung up in his place an honest labourer, who had given your Majesty no offence.”
“Most true,” said the other. “Know then, Tristan, that the condemned person is Martius Galeotti. – You start, but it is even as I say. The villain hath trained us all hither by false and treacherous representations, that he might put us into the hands of the Duke of Burgundy without defence.”
“But not without vengeance!” said Tristan, “were it the last act of my life, I would sting him home like an expiring wasp, should I be crushed to pieces on the next instant!”
“I know thy trusty spirit,” said the King, “and the pleasure which, like other good men, thou dost find in the discharge of thy duty, since virtue, as the schoolmen say, is its own reward. But away and prepare the priests, for the victim approaches.”
“Would you have it done in your own presence, my gracious Liege?” said Tristan.
Louis declined this offer; but charged the Provost Marshal to have everything ready for the punctual execution of his commands the moment the Astrologer left his apartment.
“For,” said the King, “I will see the villain once more, just to observe how he bears himself towards the master whom he has led into the toils. I shall love to see the sense of approaching death strike the colour from that ruddy cheek, and dim that eye which laughed as it lied. – Oh, that there were but another with him, whose counsels aided his prognostications! But if I survive this – look to your scarlet, my Lord Cardinal! for Rome shall scarce protect you – be it spoken under favour of Saint Peter and the blessed Lady of Clery, who is all over mercy. – Why do you tarry? Go get your rooms ready. I expect the villain instantly. I pray to Heaven he take not fear and come not! – that were indeed a balk. – Begone, Tristan – thou wert not wont to be so slow when business was to be done.”
“On the contrary, an it like your Majesty, you were ever wont to say that I was too fast, and mistook your purpose, and did the job on the wrong subject. Now, please your Majesty to give me a sign, just when you part with Galeotti for the night, whether the business goes on or no. I have known your Majesty once or twice change your mind, and blame me for over dispatch.”
[The Provost Marshal was often so precipitate in execution as to slay another person instead of him whom the King had indicated. This always occasioned a double execution, for the wrath or revenge of Louis was never satisfied with a vicarious punishment. S.]
“Thou suspicious creature,” answered King Louis, “I tell thee I will not change my mind – but to silence thy remonstrances, observe, if I say to the knave at parting, ‘There is a Heaven above us!’ then let the business go on; but if I say ‘Go in peace,’ you will understand that my purpose is altered.”
“My head is somewhat of the dullest out of my own department,” said Tristan l’Hermite. “Stay, let me rehearse. – If you bid him depart in peace, I am to have him dealt upon?”
“No, no – idiot, no,” said the King, “in that case, you let him pass free. But if I say, ‘There is a heaven above us,’ up with him a yard or two nearer the planets he is so conversant with.”
“I wish we may have the means here,” said the Provost.
“Then up with him, or down with him, it matters not which,” answered the King, grimly smiling.
“And the body,” said the Provost, “how shall we dispose of it?”
“Let me see an instant,” said the King – “the windows of the hall are too narrow; but that projecting oriel is wide enough. We will over with him into the Somme, and put a paper on his breast, with the legend, ‘Let the justice of the King pass toll free.’ The Duke’s officers may seize it for duties if they dare.”
The Provost Marshal left the apartment of Louis, and summoned his two assistants to council in an embrasure in the great hall, where Trois Eschelles stuck a torch against the wall to give them light. They discoursed in whispers, little noticed by Oliver le Dain, who seemed sunk in dejection, and Le Balafre, who was fast asleep.
“Comrades,” said the Provost to his executioners, “perhaps you have thought that our vocation was over, or that, at least, we were more likely to be the subjects of the duty of others than to have any more to discharge on our own parts. But courage, my mates! Our gracious master has reserved for us one noble cast of our office, and it must be gallantly executed, as by men who would live in history.”
“Ay, I guess how it is,” said Trois Eschelles; “our patron is like the old Kaisers of Rome, who, when things came to an extremity, or, as we would say, to the ladder foot with them, were wont to select from their own ministers of justice some experienced person, who might spare their sacred persons from the awkward attempts of a novice, or blunderer in our mystery. It was a pretty custom for Ethnics; but, as a good Catholic, I should make some scruple at laying hands on the Most Christian King.”
“Nay, but, brother, you are ever too scrupulous,” said Petit Andre. “If he issues word and warrant for his own execution, I see not how we can in duty dispute it. He that dwells at Rome must obey the Pope – the Marshalsmen, must do their master’s bidding, and he the King’s.”
“Hush, you knaves!” said the Provost Marshal, “there is here no purpose concerning the King’s person, but only that of the Greek heretic pagan and Mahomedan wizard, Martius Galeotti.”
“Galeotti!” answered Petit-Andre, “that comes quite natural. I never knew one of these legerdemain fellows, who pass their lives, as one may say, in dancing upon a tight rope, but what they came at length to caper at the end of one – tchick.”
“My only concern is,” said Trois Eschelles, looking upwards, “that the poor creature must die without confession.”
“Tush! tush!” said the Provost Marshal, in reply, “he is a rank heretic and necromancer – a whole college of priests could not absolve him from the doom he has deserved. Besides, if he hath a fancy that way, thou hast a gift, Trois Eschelles, to serve him for ghostly father thyself. But, what is more material, I fear you most use your poniards, my mates; for you have not here the fitting conveniences for the exercise of your profession.”
“Now our Lady of the Isle of Paris forbid,” said Trois Eschelles, “that the King’s command should find me destitute of my tools! I always wear around my body Saint Francis’s cord, doubled four times, with a handsome loop at the farther end of it; for I am of the company of Saint Francis, and may wear his cowl when I am in extremis [at the point of death] – I thank God and the good fathers of Saumur.”
“And for me,” said Petit Andre, “I have always in my budget a handy block and sheaf, or a pulley as they call it, with a strong screw for securing it where I list, in case we should travel where trees are scarce, or high branched from the ground. I have found it a great convenience.”
“That will suit us well,” said the Provost Marshal. “You have but to screw your pulley into yonder beam above the door, and pass the rope over it. I will keep the fellow in some conversation near the spot until you adjust the noose under his chin, and then – ”
“And then we run up the rope,” said Petit Andre, “and, tchick, our Astrologer is so far in Heaven that he hath not a foot on earth.”
“But these gentlemen,” said Trois Eschelles, looking towards the chimney, “do not these help, and so take a handsel of our vocation?”
“Hem! no,” answered the Provost, “the barber only contrives mischief, which he leaves other men to execute; and for the Scot, he keeps the door when the deed is a-doing, which he hath not spirit or quickness sufficient to partake in more actively – every one to his trade.”
[The author has endeavoured to give to the odious Tristan l’Hermite a species of dogged and brutal fidelity to Louis, similar to the attachment of a bulldog to his master. With all the atrocity of his execrable character, he was certainly a man of courage, and was in his youth made knight in the breach of Fronsac, with a great number of other young nobles, by the honour giving hand of the elder Dunois, the celebrated hero of Charles the Fifth’s reign. S.]
With infinite dexterity, and even a sort of professional delight which sweetened the sense of their own precarious situation, the worthy executioners of the Provost’s mandates adapted their rope and pulley for putting in force the sentence which had been uttered against Galeotti by the captive Monarch – seeming to rejoice that that last action was to be one so consistent with their past lives. Tristan l’Hermite sat eyeing their proceedings with a species of satisfaction; while Oliver paid no attention to them whatever; and Ludovic Lesly, if, awaked by the bustle, he looked upon them at all, considered them as engaged in matters entirely unconnected with his own duty, and for which he was not to be regarded as responsible in one way or other.
Thy time is not yet out – the devil thou servest
Has not as yet deserted thee. He aids
The friends who drudge for him, as the blind man
Was aided by the guide, who lent his shoulder
O’er rough and smooth, until he reached the brink
Of the fell precipice – then hurl’d him downward.
OLD PLAY
When obeying the command, or rather the request of Louis – for he was in circumstances in which, though a monarch, he could only request Le Glorieux to go in search of Martius Galeotti – the jester had no trouble in executing his commission, betaking himself at once to the best tavern in Peronne, of which he himself was rather more than an occasional frequenter, being a great admirer of that species of liquor which reduced all other men’s brains to a level with his own.
He found, or rather observed, the Astrologer in the corner of the public drinking room – stove, as it is called in German and Flemish, from its principal furniture – sitting in close colloquy with a female in a singular and something like a Moorish or Asiatic garb, who, as Le Glorieux approached Martius, rose as in the act to depart.
“These,” said the stranger, “are news upon which you may rely with absolute certainty,” and with that disappeared among the crowd of guests who sat grouped at different tables in the apartment.
“Cousin Philosopher,” said the jester, presenting himself, “Heaven no sooner relieves one sentinel than it sends another to supply the place. One fool being gone, here I come another, to guide you to the apartments of Louis of France.”
“And art thou the messenger?” said Martius, gazing on him with prompt apprehension, and discovering at once the jester’s quality, though less intimated, as we have before noticed, than was usual, by his external appearance.
“Ay, sir, and like your learning,” answered Le Glorieux. “When Power sends Folly to entreat the approach of Wisdom, ‘t is a sure sign what foot the patient halts upon.”
“How if I refuse to come, when summoned at so late an hour by such a messenger?” said Galeotti.
“In that case, we will consult your ease, and carry you,” said Le Glorieux. “Here are half a score of stout Burgundian yeomen at the door, with whom He of Crevecoeur has furnished me to that effect. For know that my friend Charles of Burgundy and I have not taken away our kinsman Louis’s crown, which he was ass enough to put into our power, but have only filed and clipt it a little, and, though reduced to the size of a spangle, it is still pure gold. In plain terms, he is still paramount over his own people, yourself included, and Most Christian King of the old dining hall in the Castle of Peronne, to which you, as his liege subject, are presently obliged to repair.”
“I attend you, sir,” said Martius Galeotti, and accompanied Le Glorieux accordingly – seeing, perhaps, that no evasion was possible.
“Ay, sir,” said the Fool, as they went towards the Castle, “you do well; for we treat our kinsman as men use an old famished lion in his cage, and thrust him now and then a calf to mumble, to keep his old jaws in exercise.”
“Do you mean,” said Martius, “that the King intends me bodily injury?”
“Nay, that you can guess better than I,” said the jester; “for though the night be cloudy, I warrant you can see the stars through the mist. I know nothing of the matter, not I – only my mother always told me to go warily near an old rat in a trap, for he was never so much disposed to bite.”
The Astrologer asked no more questions, and Le Glorieux, according to the custom of those of his class, continued to run on in a wild and disordered strain of sarcasm and folly mingled together, until he delivered the philosopher to the guard at the Castle gate of Peronne, where he was passed from warder to warder, and at length admitted within Herbert’s Tower.
The hints of the jester had not been lost on Martius Galeotti, and he saw something which seemed to confirm them in the look and manner of Tristan, whose mode of addressing him, as he marshalled him to the King’s bedchamber, was lowering, sullen, and ominous. A close observer of what passed on earth, as well as among the heavenly bodies, the pulley and the rope also caught the Astrologer’s eye; and as the latter was in a state of vibration he concluded that some one who had been busy adjusting it had been interrupted in the work by his sudden arrival. All this he saw, and summoned together his subtilty to evade the impending danger, resolved, should he find that impossible, to defend himself to the last against whomsoever should assail him.
Thus resolved, and with a step and look corresponding to the determination he had taken, Martius presented himself before Louis, alike unabashed at the miscarriage of his predictions, and undismayed at the Monarch’s anger, and its probable consequences.
“Every good planet be gracious to your Majesty!” said Galeotti, with an inclination almost Oriental in manner. “Every evil constellation withhold its influence from my royal master!”
“Methinks,” replied the King, “that when you look around this apartment, when you think where it is situated, and how guarded, your wisdom might consider that my propitious stars had proved faithless and that each evil conjunction had already done its worst. Art thou not ashamed, Martius Galeotti, to see me here and a prisoner, when you recollect by what assurances I was lured hither?”
“And art thou not ashamed, my royal Sire?” replied the philosopher, “thou, whose step in science was so forward, thy apprehension so quick, thy perseverance so unceasing – art thou not ashamed to turn from the first frown of fortune, like a craven from the first clash of arms? Didst thou propose to become participant of those mysteries which raise men above the passions, the mischances, the pains, the sorrows of life, a state only to be attained by rivalling the firmness of the ancient Stoic, and dost thou shrink from the first pressure of adversity, and forfeit the glorious prize for which thou didst start as a competitor, frightened out of the course, like a scared racer, by shadowy and unreal evils?”
“Shadowy and unreal! frontless as thou art!” exclaimed the King. “Is this dungeon unreal? – the weapons of the guards of my detested enemy Burgundy, which you may hear clash at the gate, are those shadows? What, traitor, are real evils, if imprisonment, dethronement, and danger of life are not so?”
“Ignorance – ignorance, my brother, and prejudice,” answered the sage, with great firmness, “are the only real evils. Believe me that Kings in the plenitude of power, if immersed in ignorance and prejudice, are less free than sages in a dungeon, and loaded with material chains. Towards this true happiness it is mine to guide you – be it yours to attend to my instructions.”
“And it is to such philosophical freedom that your lessons would have guided me?” said the King very bitterly. “I would you had told me at Plessis that the dominion promised me so liberally was an empire over my own passions; that the success of which I was assured, related to my progress in philosophy, and that I might become as wise and as learned as a strolling mountebank of Italy! I might surely have attained this mental ascendency at a more moderate price than that of forfeiting the fairest crown in Christendom, and becoming tenant of a dungeon in Peronne! Go, sir, and think not to escape condign punishment. – There is a Heaven above us!”
“I leave you not to your fate,” replied Martius, “until I have vindicated, even in your eyes, darkened as they are, that reputation, a brighter gem than the brightest in thy crown, and at which the world shall wonder, ages after all the race of Capet [the surname of the kings of France, beginning with Hugh Capet, 987] are mouldered into oblivion in the charnels of Saint Denis.”
“Speak on,” said Louis. “Thine impudence cannot make me change my purposes or my opinion. – Yet as I may never again pass judgment as a King, I will not censure thee unheard. Speak, then – though the best thou canst say will be to speak the truth. Confess that I am a dupe, thou an impostor, thy pretended science a dream, and the planets which shine above us as little influential of our destiny as their shadows, when reflected in the river, are capable of altering its course.”
“And how know’st thou,” answered the Astrologer boldly, “the secret influence of yonder blessed lights? Speak’st thou of their inability to influence waters, when yet thou know’st that ever the weakest, the moon herself – weakest because nearest to this wretched earth of ours – holds under her domination not such poor streams as the Somme, but the tides of the mighty ocean itself, which ebb and increase as her disc waxes and wanes, and watch her influence as a slave waits the nod of a Sultana? And now, Louis of Valois, answer my parable in turn. – Confess, art thou not like the foolish passenger, who becomes wroth with his pilot because he cannot bring the vessel into harbour without experiencing occasionally the adverse force of winds and currents? I could indeed point to thee the probable issue of thine enterprise as prosperous, but it was in the power of Heaven alone to conduct thee thither; and if the path be rough and dangerous, was it in my power to smooth or render it more safe? Where is thy wisdom of yesterday, which taught thee so truly to discern that the ways of destiny are often ruled to our advantage, though in opposition to our wishes?”
“You remind me – you remind me,” said the King hastily, “of one specific falsehood. You foretold yonder Scot should accomplish his enterprise fortunately for my interest and honour; and thou knowest it has so terminated that no more mortal injury could I have received than from the impression which the issue of that affair is like to make on the excited brain of the Mad Bull of Burgundy. This is a direct falsehood. – Thou canst plead no evasion here – canst refer to no remote favourable turn of the tide, for which, like an idiot sitting on the bank until the river shall pass away, thou wouldst have me wait contentedly. – Here thy craft deceived thee. – Thou wert weak enough to make a specific prediction, which has proved directly false.”
“Which will prove most firm and true,” answered the Astrologer boldly. “I would desire no greater triumph of art over ignorance, than that prediction and its accomplishment will afford. – I told thee he would be faithful in any honourable commission. – Hath he not been so? – I told thee he would be scrupulous in aiding any evil enterprise. – Hath he not proved so? – If you doubt it, go ask the Bohemian, Hayraddin Maugrabin.”
The King here coloured deeply with shame and anger.
“I told thee,” continued the Astrologer, “that the conjunction of planets under which he set forth augured danger to the person – and hath not his path been beset by danger? – I told thee that it augured an advantage to the sender – and of that thou wilt soon have the benefit.”
“Soon have the benefit!” exclaimed the King. “Have I not the result already, in disgrace and imprisonment?”
“No,” answered the Astrologer, “the End is not as yet – thine own tongue shall ere long confess the benefit which thou hast received, from the manner in which the messenger bore himself in discharging thy commission.”
“This is too – too insolent,” said the King, “at once to deceive and to insult. – But hence! – think not my wrongs shall be unavenged. – There is a Heaven above us!”
Galeotti turned to depart.
“Yet stop,” said Louis; “thou bearest thine imposture bravely out. – Let me hear your answer to one question and think ere you speak. – Can thy pretended skill ascertain the hour of thine own death?”
“Only by referring to the fate of another,” said Galeotti.
“I understand not thine answer,” said Louis.
“Know then, O King,” said Martius, “that this only I can tell with certainty concerning mine own death, that it shall take place exactly twenty-four hours before that of your Majesty.”
[This story appropriated by Scott was told of Tiberius, whose soothsayer made the prediction that his own death would take place three days before that of the Emperor. Louis received a similar reply from a soothsayer, who had foretold the death of one of his favourites. Greatly incensed, he arranged for the death of the soothsayer when he should leave the royal presence after an interview. When Louis questioned him as to the day of his death, the astrologer answere that “it would be exactly three days before that of his Majesty. There was, of course, care taken that he should escape his destined fate, and he was ever after much protected by the King, as a man of real science, and intimately connected with the royal destinies.” S… Louis was the slave of his physicians also. Cottier, one of these, was paid a retaining fee of ten thousand crowns, besides great sums in lands and money. “He maintained over Louis unbounded influence, by using to him the most disrespectful harshness and insolence. ‘I know,’ he said to the suffering King, ‘that one morning you will turn me adrift like so many others. But, by Heaven, you had better beware, for you will not live eight days after you have done so!’ S.]
“Ha! sayest thou?” said Louis, his countenance again altering. “Hold – hold – go not – wait one moment. – Saidst thou, my death should follow thine so closely?”