“And the executioner Tristan was your godfather.”
“And the quack doctor a chancellor! Put that to my account and praise me, ingrate! for having protected you from the nobles, and for only having regard to merit.”
Just then a man appeared in the doorway with his cap in his hand.
“Who is there?” cried the King. “Is it a murderer?”
“No, it is only the gardener,” the man answered.
“Ha! ha! gardener!--your cow has calved, hasn’t she?”
“I possess no cow, sire, nor have I ever had one.”
The King was beside himself, and flew at Coctier’s throat.
“You have lied to me, scoundrel; it is not medicine you were preparing, but poison.”
The gardener disappeared. “If I wished to do what I should,” said Coctier, “I would treat you like Charles the Bold did when you cheated him.”
“What did he do? What do people say that he did?”
“People say that he beat you with a stick.”
The King was ashamed, went to bed again, and hid his face in the pillow. The Doctor considered this a favourable moment for preferring a long-denied request.
“Will you now liberate the Milanese?” he asked.
“But he cannot sit any more in his iron cage!”
“Don’t you know that when one has to die, one good deed atones for a thousand crimes?”
“All have lied to you, liar. And your four thousand victims whom you have had executed....”
“They were not victims; they were criminals.”
“Those four thousand slaughtered will witness it the judgment seat against you.”
“Lengthen my life; then I will reform myself.”
“Then go to perdition--and quickly. Your pulse is so feeble that your hours are numbered.”
The King jumped up, fell on his knees before the physician, and prayed, “Lengthen my life.”
“No! I should like to abbreviate it, were you not the anointed of the Lord. You ought to have rat-poison.”
“Mercy! I confess that I have acted from bad motives; that I have only thought of myself; that I have never loved the people, but used them in order to put down the nobles; I grant that I made agreements and treaties with the deliberate purpose of breaking them; that I ... Yes, I am a poor sinful man, and my name will be forgotten; all that I have done will be obliterated....”
A stranger now appeared in the open door. It was a young man in the garb of the Minorites.