, who placed it in the hands of his grand provost. A trial
was promptly had and promptly ended. The inhabitants of Tours blamed
Tristan l'Hermite secretly for unseemly haste. Guilty or not guilty,
the young Touraineans were looked upon as victims, and Cornelius as an
executioner. The two families thus thrown into mourning were much
respected; their complaints obtained a hearing, and little by little
it came to be believed that all the victims whom the king's
silversmith had sent to the scaffold were innocent. Some persons
declared that the cruel miser imitated the king, and sought to put
terror and gibbets between himself and his fellow-men; others said
that he had never been robbed at all,--that these melancholy
executions were the result of cool calculations, and that their real
object was to relieve him of all fear for his treasure.
The first effect of these rumors was to isolate Maitre Cornelius. The
Touraineans treated him like a leper, called him the "tortionnaire,"
and named his house Malemaison. If the Fleming had found strangers to
the town bold enough to enter it, the inhabitants would have warned
them against doing so.
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