The Exiles | Page 5

have any wish to see my house razed down, my
halbert given to another, and my wife standing in the pillory?"
Jacqueline and the dainty journeywoman turned pale.
"Just tell me what you are driving at," said the washerwoman sharply,
"and make a clean breast of it. For some days, my man, I have observed
that you have some maggot twisting in your poor brain. Come up, then,
and have it all out. You must be a pretty coward indeed if you fear any
harm when you have only to guard the common council and live under
the protection of the Chapter! Their Reverences the Canons would lay
the whole bishopric under an interdict if Jacqueline brought a
complaint of the smallest damage."
As she spoke, she went straight up to her husband and took him by the
arm.
"Come with me," she added, pulling him up and out on to the steps.
When they were down by the water in their little garden, Jacqueline
looked saucily in her husband's face.
"I would have you to know, you old gaby, that when my lady fair goes
out, a piece of gold comes into our savings-box."
"Oh, ho!" said the constable, who stood silent and meditative before his
wife. But he presently said, "Any way, we are done for.--What brings
the dame to our house?"
"She comes to see the well-favored young clerk who lives overhead,"

replied Jacqueline, looking up at the window that opened on to the vast
landscape of the Seine valley.
"The Devil's in it!" cried the man. "For a few base crowns you have
ruined me, Jacqueline. Is that an honest trade for a sergeant's decent
wife to ply? And, be she Countess or Baroness, the lady will not be
able to get us out of the trap in which we shall find ourselves caught
sooner or later. Shall we not have to square accounts with some
puissant and offended husband? for, by the Mass, she is fair to look
upon!"
"But she is a widow, I tell you, gray gander! How dare you accuse your
wife of foul play and folly? And the lady has never spoken a word to
yon gentle clerk, she is content to look on him and think of him. Poor
lad! he would be dead of starvation by now but for her, for she is as
good as a mother to him. And he, the sweet cherub! it is as easy to
cheat him as to rock a new-born babe. He believes his pence will last
for ever, and he has eaten them through twice over in the past six
months."
"Woman," said the sergeant, solemnly pointing to the Place de Greve,
"do you remember seeing, even from this spot, the fire in which they
burnt the Danish woman the other day?"
"What then?" said Jacqueline, in a fright.
"What then?" echoed Tirechair. "Why, the two men who lodge with us
smell of scorching. Neither

Chapter nor
Countess or Protector can serve them. Here is Easter come round; the
year is ending; we must turn our company out of doors, and that at once.
Do you think you can teach an old constable how to know a
gallows-bird? Our two lodgers were on terms with la Porette, that
heretic jade from Denmark or Norway, whose last cries you heard from
here. She was a brave witch; she never blenched at the stake, which
was proof enough of her compact with the Devil. I saw her as plain as I
see you; she preached to the throng, and declared she was in heaven
and could see God.
"And since that, I tell you, I have never slept quietly in my bed. My
lord, who lodges over us, is of a surety more of a wizard than a

Christian. On my word as an officer, I shiver when that old man passes
near me; he never sleeps of nights; if I wake, his voice is ringing like a
bourdon of bells, and I hear him muttering incantations in the language
of hell. Have you ever seen him eat an honest crust of bread or a
hearth-cake made by a good Catholic baker? His brown skin has been
scorched and tanned by hell-fires. Marry, and I tell you his eyes hold a
spell like that of serpents. Jacqueline, I will have none of those two
men under my roof. I see too much of the law not to know that it is well
to have nothing to do with it.--You must get rid of our two lodgers; the
elder because I suspect him; the youngster, because he is too pretty.
They neither of them seem to me to keep Christian company. The boy
is ever staring at the moon, the stars, and the clouds, like