saying: "You passed in front of the Fleming; ill-luck will happen to
you." Passing in front of the Fleming explained all sudden pains and
evils, involuntary sadness, ill-turns of fortune among the
Touraineans. Even at court most persons attributed to Cornelius that
fatal influence which Italian, Spanish, and Asiatic superstition has
called the "evil eye." Without the terrible power of Louis XI., which
was stretched like a mantle over that house, the populace, on the
slightest opportunity, would have demolished La Malemaison, that "evil
house" in the rue du Murier. And yet Cornelius had been the first to
plant mulberries in Tours, and the Touraineans at that time regarded
him as their good genius. Who shall reckon on popular favor!

A few seigneurs having met Maitre Cornelius on his journeys out of
France were surprised at his friendliness and good-humor. At Tours he
was gloomy and absorbed, yet always he returned there. Some
inexplicable power brought him back to his dismal house in the rue du
Murier. Like a snail, whose life is so firmly attached to its shell,
he admitted to the king that he was never at ease except under the
bolts and behind the vermiculated stones of his little bastille; yet
he knew very well that whenever Louis XI. died, the place would be the
most dangerous spot on earth for him.

"The devil is amusing himself at the expense of our crony, the
torconnier," said Louis XI. to his barber, a few days before the
festival of All-Saints. "He says he has been robbed again, but he
can't hang anybody this time unless he hangs himself. The old vagabond
came and asked me if, by chance, I had carried off a string of rubies
he wanted to sell me. 'Pasques-Dieu! I don't steal what I can take,' I
said to him."