"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