"How? Sometimes," the King continued irritably, "I think the men are shod, and the asses come to my Council Table!"
This was a stroke of wit on a level with the Constable's discernment; he laughed loudly. "Nevertheless," he said, "Matignon's right, sire. That man's master is for a good deal in this. If he had kept order his neighbour's house would not be on fire."
For the first time M. des Ageaux ventured a word from the lower end of the table. "Vlaye!" he muttered.
The Constable leaned forward to see who spoke. "Ay, you've hit on it, my lad, whoever you are. Vlaye it is!" And he looked at Matignon, who nodded his adhesion.
Henry frowned. "I am coming to the matter of Vlaye," he said.
"It is all one, sire," Matignon replied, his eyes half shut. He wheezed a little in his speech.
The Constable explained. He leant forward and prodded the table with a short, stout finger--not overclean according to the ideas of a later time. "Angoumois is there," he said. "See, your Majesty. And Poitou is here"--with a second prod an inch from the first. "And the Limousin is here! And Périgord is there! And see, your Majesty, where their skirts all meet in this corner--or as good as meet--is Vlaye! Name of God, a strong place, that!" He turned for assent to old Matignon, who nodded silently.
"Has been over heavy handed, your Majesty. And the clowns, beginning to find the thing beyond a joke, began by hanging three poor devils of toll gatherers, and the thing started. And what is on everybody's frontier is nobody's business."
"Except mine," the King muttered drily. "And Vlaye is Epernon's man?"
"That is it, sire," the Constable answered. "Epernon put him in the castle six years back for standing by him when the Angoulême people rose on him. But the man is no Vlaye, you understand. M. de Vlaye was in that business and died of his wounds. He had no near heirs, and the man whom Epernon put in took the lordship as well as the castle, the name and all belonging to it. They call him the Captain of Vlaye in those parts."
"Oh, I could give you twenty cases!" the Constable continued, shrugging his shoulders. "What do you expect, sire, in such times as these?"
"Ventre St. Gris!" Henry swore. "And not content with what he has got, he robs the poor?"