Louis XI.’s silversmith resembled that monarch.  He had even acquired the same gestures, as often happens where persons dwell together in a sort of intimacy.  The thick eyebrows of the Fleming almost covered his eyes; but by raising them a little he could flash out a lucid, penetrating, powerful glance, the glance of men habituated to silence, and to whom the phenomenon of the concentration of inward forces has become familiar.  His thin lips, vertically wrinkled, gave him an air of indescribable craftiness.  The lower part of his face bore a vague resemblance to the muzzle of a fox, but his lofty, projecting forehead, with many lines, showed great and splendid qualities and a nobility of soul, the springs of which had been lowered by experience until the cruel teachings of life had driven it back into the farthest recesses of this most singular human being.  He was certainly not an ordinary miser; and his passion covered, no doubt, extreme enjoyments and secret conceptions.

“What is the present rate of Venetian sequins?” he said abruptly to his future apprentice.

“Three-quarters at Brussels; one in Ghent.”

“What is the freight on the Scheldt?”

“Three sous parisis.”

“Any news at Ghent?”

“The brother of Lieven d’Herde is ruined.”

“Ah!”

After giving vent to that exclamation, the old man covered his knee with the skirt of his dalmatian, a species of robe made of black velvet, open in front, with large sleeves and no collar, the sumptuous material being defaced and shiny.  These remains of a magnificent costume, formerly worn by him as president of the tribunal of the Parchons, functions which had won him the enmity of the Duke of Burgundy, was now a mere rag.

Philippe was not cold; he perspired in his harness, dreading further questions.  Until then the brief information obtained that morning from a Jew whose life he had formerly saved, had sufficed him, thanks to his good memory and the perfect knowledge the Jew possessed of the manners and habits of Maitre Cornelius.  But the young man who, in the first flush of his enterprise, had feared nothing was beginning to perceive the difficulties it presented.  The solemn gravity of the terrible Fleming reacted upon him.  He felt himself under lock and key, and remembered how the grand provost Tristan and his rope were at the orders of Maitre Cornelius.

“Have you supped?” asked the silversmith, in a tone which signified, “You are not to sup.”

The old maid trembled in spite of her brother’s tone; she looked at the new inmate as if to gauge the capacity of the stomach she might have to fill, and said with a specious smile:—­

“You have not stolen your name; your hair and moustache are as black as the devil’s tail.”

“I have supped,” he said.

“Well then,” replied the miser, “you can come back and see me to-morrow.  I have done without an apprentice for some years.  Besides, I wish to sleep upon the matter.”