Page:Victor Hugo - Notre-Dame de Paris (tr. Hapgood, 1888).djvu/524

248 laugh, and that there was no way of even annoying him, went off grumbling to execute his orders.

The king rose, approached the window, and suddenly opening it with extraordinary agitation,

"Oh! yes!" he exclaimed, clapping his hands, "yonder is a redness in the sky over the City. 'Tis the bailiff burning. It can be nothing else but that. Ah! my good people! here you are aiding me at last in tearing down the rights of lordship!"

Then turning towards the Flemings: "Come, look at this, gentlemen. Is it not a fire which gloweth yonder?"

The two men of Ghent drew near.

"A great fire," said Guillaume Rym.

"Oh!" exclaimed Coppenole, whose eyes suddenly flashed, "that reminds me of the burning of the house of the Seigneur d'Hymbercourt. There must be a goodly revolt yonder."

"You think so, Master Coppenole?" And Louis XI.'s glance was almost as joyous as that of the hosier. "Will it not be difficult to resist?"

"Cross of God! Sire! Your majesty will damage many companies of men of war thereon."

"Ah! I! 'tis different," returned the king. "If I willed."

The hosier replied hardily,—

"If this revolt be what I suppose, sire, you might will in vain."

"Gossip," said Louis XI., " with the two companies of my unattached troops and one discharge of a serpentine, short work is made of a populace of louts."

The hosier, in spite of the signs made to him by Guillaume Ryni, appeared determined to hold his own against the king.

"Sire, the Swiss were also louts. Monsieur the Duke of Burgundy was a great gentleman, and he turned up his nose at that rabble rout. At the battle of Grandson, sire, he cried: 'Men of the cannon! Fire on the villains!' and he swore by Saint-George. But Advoyer Scharnachtal hurled himself on the handsome duke with his battle-club and his people, and when the glittering Burgundian army came in contact with these peasants in bull hides, it flew in pieces like a pane of