ad made for you in Ghent; I was
awaiting confirmation from Oosterlinck through that apprentice. What has
become of that young man?"

"Enough!" said the king; "this is only one more blunder you have
committed. I do not like persons to meddle in my affairs without my
knowledge. Enough! leave me; I wish to reflect upon all this."

Maitre Cornelius found the agility of youth to run downstairs to the
lower rooms where he was certain to find his sister.

"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 peddlers 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. The
old hag never could do anything at the right time."

He closed her eyes and laid her on the floor. Then the good and noble
feelings which lay at the bottom of his soul came back to him, and, half
forgetting his hidden treasure, he cried out mournfully:--

"Oh! my poor companion, have I lost you?--you who understood me so well!
Oh! you were my