"Ah! Jeanne, my dearest soul, a hoard is hidden in this house; I have
put thirteen hundred thousand crowns and all the jewels somewhere. I,
I, I am the robber!"

Jeanne Hoogworst rose from her stool and stood erect as if the seat
she quitted were of red-hot iron. This shock was so violent for an old
maid accustomed for years to reduce herself by voluntary fasts, that
she trembled in every limb, and horrible pains were in her back. She
turned pale by degrees, and her face,--the changes in which were
difficult to decipher among its wrinkles,--became distorted while her
brother explained to her the malady of which he was the victim, and
the extraordinary situation in which he found himself.

"Louis XI. and I," he said in conclusion, "have just been lying to
each other like two pedlers of coconuts. You understand, my girl, that
if he follows me, he will get the secret of the hiding-place. The king
alone can watch my wanderings at night. I don't feel sure that his
conscience, near as he is to death, can resist thirteen hundred
thousand crowns. We MUST be beforehand with him; we must find the
hidden treasure and send it to Ghent, and you alone--"

Cornelius stopped suddenly, and seemed to be weighing the heart of the
sovereign who had had thoughts of parricide at twenty-two years of
age. When his judgment of Louis XI. was concluded, he rose abruptly
like a man in haste to escape a pressing danger. At this instant, his
sister, too feeble or too strong for such a crisis, fell stark; she
was dead. Maitre Cornelius seized her, and shook her violently, crying
out:

"You cannot die now. There is time enough later--Oh! it is all over.