y with suppressed excitement, you might be sure
that another royal attempt was being made upon the liberty of these
touchy subjects. And indeed a most astonishing thing had happened. For
a horseman of the King had suddenly spurred hot-foot through the
town, and alighted at the shop of Maitre Jehan le Tellier, with the
stupefying request for the hand of his only daughter Alice in
marriage, by virtue of the King's command signed and sealed in his
pocket. The belfry-fountain was humming like a swarm of bees as all
the chambermaids and goodwives in the street rushed up to fill their
pitchers at the very moment when Le Tellier's housemaid happened to be
filling hers.

But the loudest in outcry of them all was a young merchant whose shop
happened to be opposite, and whose complaints against these outrages
on civic independence and unwarrantable extensions of the royal
prerogative would have warmed the heart of the most crabbed
constitutional lawyer. His appeals to the sacred charter of Normandy
were far louder than the rest, his invocations of the sanctity of the
paternal tie far shriller. "What right," he cried, "had this Louis XI.
to reward the ruffians of his Court with pretty girls and dowries when
his royal purse was empty? What had made him choose Rouen, of all
towns, for so unjustifiable a caprice?" As a matter of fact, it was
about the worst choice he could have made, and Madame Estiennotte
about the most unlikely mother he could have picked out for the
prosperity of his experiment. She began by putting off the horseman
until her husband should come back from market, and the moment his
back was turned, she flew down the street to the Hotel de Ville, with
half her neighbours at her heels, and laid the King's letter before
the Town Councillors. Many of them were at once appalled by the royal
seals and sign-manual. But fortunately, one, Roger Gouel, spoke up for
the ancient privileges of the charter, loudly proclaimed that the
business was not one of the public weal, but of private concern to
Dame Estiennotte alone, and avowed himself her champion. It was
perhaps lucky for Councillor Gouel that Tristan l'Hermite was out of
the way, but the citizens were soon ready with their plan.

Desile was bidden to Le Tellier's house, and met there, somewhat to
his embarrassment, the entire regiment of the worthy merchant's
relatives, including the girl's great uncle, Abbe Viote, one of the
Cathedral dignitaries, who eyed him with