feudality. For some time past he had found no opportunity to "make
himself populace" and espouse the domestic interests of some man
"engarrie" (an old word still used in Tours, meaning engaged) in
litigious affairs, so that he shouldered the anxieties of Maitre
Cornelius eagerly, and also the secret sorrows of the Comtesse de
Saint-Vallier. Several times during dinner he said to his daughter:--

"Who, think you, could have robbed my silversmith? The robberies now
amount to over twelve hundred thousand crowns in eight years. Twelve
hundred thousand crowns, messieurs!" he continued, looking at the
seigneurs who were serving him. "Notre Dame! with a sum like that what
absolutions could be bought in Rome! And I might, Pasques-Dieu! bank
the Loire, or, better still, conquer Piedmont, a fine fortification
ready-made for this kingdom."

When dinner was over, Louis XI. took his daughter, his doctor, and the
grand provost, with an escort of soldiers, and rode to the hotel de
Poitiers in Tours, where he found, as he expected, the Comte de
Saint-Vallier awaiting his wife, perhaps to make away with her life.

"Monsieur," said the king, "I told you to start at once. Say farewell
to your wife now, and go to the frontier; you will be accompanied by
an escort of honor. As for your instructions and credentials, they
will be in Venice before you get there."

Louis then gave the order--not without adding certain secret
instructions--to a lieutenant of the Scottish guard to take a squad of
men and accompany the ambassador to Venice. Saint-Vallier departed in
haste, after giving his wife a cold kiss which he would fain have made
deadly. Louis XI. then crossed over to the Malemaison, eager to begin