“I go from here only that my clerk may draw up an official statement of the grievous outrage by which the baron, your master, has rendered himself amenable,” cried the recorder, almost breathless, wiping the sweat from his brow, which literally ran with water, in spite of the cold weather. “Perhaps you are reserving some other bad treatment for us, but the governor, and if necessary the cardinal himself, will avenge me, and on my oath, there shall not remain one stone on another of this accursed house--may Satan confound it--”
Raimond V., holding in his hand a long hunting-whip, descended into the court, gave the ten francs to the halberdier who had so bravely combatted the bull, and went up to the tree from which the recorder was fulminating his threats.
“What is that you say, you scoundrel?” said the baron, cracking his whip.
“I say,” shouted the recorder, “I say that the marshal will not leave this offence unpunished, and that on my arrival in Marseilles, I will tell him all, I--”
“Eh, Manjour!” cried the baron, with another crack of the whip, “I hope you will tell him all. I have received you in this way that you may tell him, indeed, that he may learn in what light I hold his orders,” cried the old gentleman, unable to restrain his anger; “the Provençal nobility has known how, in the last century, to drive from its province the insolent Duke d’Epernon and his Gascons, as unworthy of governing it, and shall we not drive away a Vitry, a wretched assassin, who acts like an Italian bandit, who leaves our coasts without defence, who obliges us to protect ourselves, and then comes to take away from us the means of resisting the pirates! Get out of here, you rogue, and go to draw up your scrawls elsewhere than in my house!”
“I will not get down!” cried the recorder.
“Do you want me to smoke you out of the tree like a badger in the trunk of a willow?”
Believing Raimond V. capable of anything, Master Isnard slowly descended the tree. His clerk, who had remained silent, imitated his example, and reached the ground at the same time with his master.
“Stop!” said the baron, putting a few pieces of silver in the scribe’s hand. “You can drink to the health of the king, our count. All this is not your fault, clerk.” “I forbid you to accept one coin!” cried the recorder. “You shall be obeyed, Master Isnard,” said the scribe. “These are two silver crowns, and not one coin,” and he pocketed the present.