"Was he frightened?" asked the barber.
"Misers are afraid of only one thing," replied the king. "My crony the

torconnier knows very well that I shall not plunder him unless for
good reason; otherwise I should be unjust, and I have never done

anything but what is just and necessary."
"And yet that old brigand overcharges you," said the barber.

"You wish he did, don't you?" replied the king, with the malicious
look at his barber.

"Ventre-Mahom, sire, the inheritance would be a fine one between you
and the devil!"

"There, there!" said the king, "don't put bad ideas into my head. My
crony is a more faithful man than those whose fortunes I have made--

perhaps because he owes me nothing."
For the last two years Maitre Cornelius had lived entirely alone with

his aged sister, who was thought a witch. A tailor in the neighborhood
declared that he had often seen her at night, on the roof of the

house, waiting for the hour of the witches' sabbath. This fact seemed
the more extraordinary because it was known to be the miser's custom

to lock up his sister at night in a bedroom with iron-barred windows.
As he grew older, Cornelius, constantly robbed, and always fearful of

being duped by men, came to hate mankind, with the one exception of
the king, whom he greatly respected. He fell into extreme misanthropy,

but, like most misers, his passion for gold, the assimilation, as it
were, of that metal with his own substance, became closer and closer,

and age intensified it. His sister herself excited his suspicions,
though she was perhaps more miserly, more rapacious than her brother

whom she actually surpassed in penurious inventions. Their daily
existence had something mysterious and problematical about it. The old

woman rarely took bread from the baker; she appeared so seldom in the
market, that the least credulous of the townspeople ended by

attributing to these strange beings the knowledge of some secret for
the maintenance of life. Those who dabbled in alchemy declared that

Maitre Cornelius had the power of making gold. Men of science averred
that he had found the Universal Panacea. According to many of the

country-people to whom the townsfolk talked of him, Cornelius was a
chimerical being, and many of them came into the town to look at his

house out of mere curiosity.
The young seigneur whom we left in front of that house looked about

him, first at the hotel de Poitiers, the home of his mistress, and
then at the evil house. The moonbeams were creeping round their

angles, and tinting with a mixture of light and shade the hollows and
reliefs of the carvings. The caprices of this white light gave a

sinister expression to both edifices; it seemed as if Nature herself
encouraged the superstitions that hung about the miser's dwelling. The

young man called to mind the many traditions which made Cornelius a
personage both curious and formidable. Though quite decided through

the violence of his love to enter that house, and stay there long
enough to accomplish his design, he hesitated to take the final step,

all the while aware that he should certainly take it. But where is the
man who, in a crisis of his life, does not willingly listen to

presentiments as he hangs above the precipice? A lover worthy of being
loved, the young man feared to die before he had been received for

love's sake by the countess.
This mentaldeliberation was so painfully interesting that he did not

feel the cold wind as it whistled round the corner of the building,
and chilled his legs. On entering that house, he must lay aside his

name, as already he had laid aside the handsome garments of nobility.
In case of mishap, he could not claim the privileges of his rank nor

the protection of his friends without bringing hopeless ruin on the
Comtesse de Saint-Vallier. If her husband suspected the nocturnal

visit of a lover, he was capable of roasting her alive in an iron
cage, or of killing her by degrees in the dungeons of a fortified

castle. Looking down at the shabby clothing in which he had disguised
himself, the young nobleman felt ashamed. His black leather belt, his

stout shoes, his ribbed socks, his linsey-woolsey breeches, and his
gray woollen doublet made him look like the clerk of some poverty-

stricken justice. To a noble of the fifteenth century it was like
death itself to play the part of a beggarly burgher, and renounce the

privileges of his rank. But--to climb the roof of the house where his
mistress wept; to descend the chimney, or creep along from gutter to

gutter to the window of her room; to risk his life to kneel beside her
on a silkencushion before a glowing fire, during the sleep of a

dangerous husband, whose snores would double their joy; to defy both
heaven and earth in snatching the boldest of all kisses; to say no

word that would not lead to death or at least to sanguinary combat if
overheard,--all these voluptuous images and romantic dangers decided

the young man. However slight might be the guerdon of his enterprise,
could he only kiss once more the hand of his lady, he still resolved

to venture all, impelled by the chivalrous and passionate spirit of
those days. He never supposed for a moment that the countess would

refuse him the soft happiness of love in the midst of such mortal
danger. The adventure was too perilous, too impossible not to be

attempted and carried out.
Suddenly all the bells in the town rang out the curfew,--a custom

fallen elsewhere into desuetude, but still observed in the provinces,
where venerable habits are abolished slowly. Though the lights were

not put out, the watchmen of each quarter stretched the chains across
the streets. Many doors were locked; the steps of a few belated

burghers, attended by their servants, armed to the teeth and bearing
lanterns, echoed in the distance. Soon the town, garroted as it were,

seemed to be asleep, and safe from robbers and evil-doers, except
through the roofs. In those days the roofs of houses were much

frequented after dark. The streets were so narrow in the provincial
towns, and even in Paris, that robbers could jump from the roofs on

one side to those on the other. This perilousoccupation was long the
amusement of King Charles IX. in his youth, if we may believe the

memoirs of his day.
Fearing to present himself too late to the old silversmith, the young

nobleman now went up to the door of the Malemaison intending to knock,
when, on looking at it, his attention was excited by a sort of vision,

which the writers of those days would have called "cornue,"--perhaps
with reference to horns and hoofs. He rubbed his eyes to clear his

sight, and a thousand diverse sentiments passed through his mind at
the spectacle before him. On each side of the door was a face framed

in a species of loophole. At first he took these two faces for
grotesque masks carved in stone, so angular, distorted, projecting,

motionless, discolored were they; but the cold air and the moonlight
presently enabled him to distinguish the faint white mist which living

breath sent from two purplish noses; then he saw in each hollow face,
beneath the shadow of the eyebrows, two eyes of porcelain blue casting

clear fire, like those of a wolf crouching in the brushwood as it
hears the baying of the hounds. The uneasy gleam of those eyes was

turned on him so fixedly that, after receiving it for fully a minute,
during which he examined the singular sight, he felt like a bird at

which a setter points; a feverishtumult rose in his soul, but he
quickly repressed it. The two faces, strained and suspicious, were

doubtless those of Cornelius and his sister.
The young man feigned to be looking about him to see where he was, and

whether this were the house named on a card which he drew from his
pocket and pretended to read in the moonlight; then he walked straight

to the door and struck three blows upon it, which echoed within the
house as if it were the entrance to a cave. A faint light crept

beneath the threshold, and an eye appeared at a small and very strong
iron grating.

"Who is there?"
"A friend, sent by Oosterlinck, of Brussels."

"What do you want?"
"To enter."

"Your name?"
"Philippe Goulenoire."

"Have you brought credentials?"
"Here they are."

"Pass them through the box."
"Where is it?"

"To your left."
Philippe Goulenoire put the letter through the slit of an iron box

above which was a loophole.