“I go from here only that my clerk may draw up an official statement
of the grievous outrage by which the baron, your master, has rendered
himself amenable,” cried the recorder, almost breathless, wiping the
sweat from his brow, which literally ran with water, in spite of the
cold weather. “Perhaps you are reserving some other bad treatment for
us, but the governor, and if necessary the cardinal himself, will avenge
me, and on my oath, there shall not remain one stone on another of this
accursed house--may Satan confound it--”
Raimond V., holding in his hand a long hunting-whip, descended into
the court, gave the ten francs to the halberdier who had so bravely
combatted the bull, and went up to the tree from which the recorder was
fulminating his threats.
“What is that you say, you scoundrel?” said the baron, cracking his
whip.
“I say,” shouted the recorder, “I say that the marshal will not
leave this offence unpunished, and that on my arrival in Marseilles, I
will tell him all, I--”
“Eh, Manjour!” cried the baron, with another crack of the whip, “I
hope you will tell him all. I have received you in this way that you may
tell him, indeed, that he may learn in what light I hold his orders,”
cried the old gentleman, unable to restrain his anger; “the Provençal
nobility has known how, in the last century, to drive from its province
the insolent Duke d’Epernon and his Gascons, as unworthy of governing
it, and shall we not drive away a Vitry, a wretched assassin, who acts
like an Italian bandit, who leaves our coasts without defence, who
obliges us to protect ourselves, and then comes to take away from us the
means of resisting the pirates! Get out of here, you rogue, and go to
draw up your scrawls elsewhere than in my house!”
“I will not get down!” cried the recorder.
“Do you want me to smoke you out of the tree like a badger in the
trunk of a willow?”
Believing Raimond V. capable of anything, Master Isnard slowly descended
the tree. His clerk, who had remained silent, imitated his example, and
reached the ground at the same time with his master.
“Stop!” said the baron, putting a few pieces of silver in the
scribe’s hand. “You can drink to the health of the king, our count.
All this is not your fault, clerk.” “I forbid you to accept one
coin!” cried the recorder. “You shall be obeyed, Master Isnard,”
said the scribe. “These are two silver crowns, and not one coin,”
and he pocketed the present.
“And I will add in my report, sir, that you tried to corrupt my
agents,” said the recorder.
“Out of here, out, out, you stinking beast!” cried the baron,
cracking his whip.
“You give people strange hospitality, Baron des Anbiez,” said the
recorder.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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