“Adieu, my crony,” said Louis XI. at last in a curt voice, pushing up his cap.

“May God and the Virgin keep you in their good graces!” replied the silversmith humbly, conducting the king to the door of the house.

After so long a friendship, the two men found a barrier raised between them by suspicion and gold; though they had always been like one man on the two points of gold and suspicion.  But they knew each other so well, they had so completely the habit, one may say, of each other, that the king could divine, from the tone in which Cornelius uttered the words, “As you please, sire,” the repugnance that his visits would henceforth cause to the silversmith, just as the latter recognized a declaration of war in the “Adieu, my crony,” of the king.

Thus Louis XI. and his torconnier parted much in doubt as to the conduct they ought in future to hold to each other.  The monarch possessed the secret of the Fleming; but on the other hand, the latter could, by his connections, bring about one of the finest acquisitions that any king of France had ever made; namely, that of the domains of the house of Burgundy, which the sovereigns of Europe were then coveting.  The marriage of the celebrated Marguerite depended on the people of Ghent and the Flemings who surrounded her.  The gold and the influence of Cornelius could powerfully support the negotiations now begun by Desquerdes, the general to whom Louis XI. had given the command of the army encamped on the frontiers of Belgium.  These two master-foxes were, therefore, like two duellists, whose arms are paralyzed by chance.

So, whether it were that from that day the king’s health failed and went from bad to worse, or that Cornelius did assist in bringing into France Marguerite of Burgundy—­who arrived at Ambroise in July, 1438, to marry the Dauphin to whom she was betrothed in the chapel of the castle—­certain it is that the king took no steps in the matter of the hidden treasure; he levied no tribute from his silversmith, and the pair remained in the cautious condition of an armed friendship.  Happily for Cornelius a rumor was spread about Tours that his sister was the actual robber, and that she had been secretly put to death by Tristan.  Otherwise, if the true history had been known, the whole town would have risen as one man to destroy the Malemaison before the king could have taken measures to protect it.

But, although these historical conjectures have some foundation so far as the inaction of Louis XI. is concerned, it is not so as regards Cornelius Hoogworst.  There was no inaction there.  The silversmith spent the first days which succeeded that fatal night in ceaseless occupation.  Like carnivorous animals confined in cages, he went and came, smelling for gold in every corner of his house; he studied the cracks and crevices, he sounded the walls, he besought the trees of the garden, the foundations of the house, the roofs of the turrets, the earth and the heavens,