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.

Maitre Cornelius had brought with him from Ghent two Flemish valets,
an old woman, and a young apprentice; the latter, a youth with a
gentle, pleasing face, served him as secretary, cashier, factotum, and