Many days had elapsed since Master Isnard had been driven so unceremoniously from Maison-Forte des Anbiez.

The conduct of the baron toward the deputy of the marshal, the Duke of Vitry, had been generally approved by the nobility of the neighbourhood.

A very small number of gentlemen had submitted to the orders of the governor.

Master Isnard, established in a hostelry of La Ciotat, had despatched a messenger to Marseilles for the purpose of informing the marshal of the lively resistance he had encountered upon the subject of the census of arms.

The citizens generally ranged themselves on the side of the nobility and the clergy, who defended Proven?al rights and privileges.

The three estates—the holy clergy, the illustrious nobility, and the Proven?al republic and communities, as C?sar de Nostradamus names them in his history of Provence—sustained themselves against a common enemy, which is to say, against any governor who attacked their privileges, or, in the opinion of the Proven-?als, was unworthy of governing their country.

Nevertheless, transient divisions occurred between the nobility and the citizens when particular interests became involved.

Master Isnard had arrived in La Ciotat at a time when some feeling of resentment against Raimond V. was being manifested.

One of the consuls of the town, Master Talebard-Talebardon, sustained in the name of the citizens a lawsuit against the baron, upon the subject of certain fishing-nets, which he claimed the lord of Anbiez had laid without legal right in a bay outside his privilege, and thereby was injuring the interests of the town.

Although the inhabitants of La Ciotat had, on many occasions, found aid and support from the baron, although at the last descent of the pirates he had, at the head of his own household servants, fought valiantly, and almost saved the city, the gratitude of the citizens did not extend to an absolute submission to the will of Raimond V.

The consul Talebard-Talebardon, a personal enemy of the baron, always exaggerating the faults of this nobleman, had so envenomed the question, that great disaffection was already being manifested among the citizens.

Arriving at this time, Master Isnard excited these dissensions, fanned the fire, and spoke at length of his cruel reception at Maison-Forte. Although he was not of the country, he succeeded in making the outrage done him appear as a question between the nobility and the citizens.

The recorder induced the consuls to withdraw within the limits of their dignity, and, instead of continuing the amicable negotiations already initiated, to insist upon the baron’s appearance before the tribunal of overseers.

This malevolent disposition once gaining ground, the malcontents did not stop there. They forgot the real services that Raimond V. had rendered to the city, his generous hospitality, the good that he was doing in the neighbourhood, to remember that he was abusive, hotheaded, and always ready to lift his rod.

They exaggerated the havoc made by his dogs in the chase; they spoke of the brutal manner in which he had treated the citizens at the time of their complaint concerning the fishing-nets; in short, after the appearance of the recorder in La Ciotat, they began to speak of the Baron des Anbiez as a veritable feudal tyrant.

While the storm was gathering on that side, the most perfect tranquillity reigned in Maison-Forte.

Raimond V. drank and hunted in the finest style, going through his domains almost every day, with an unequalled activity; he visited his neighbours at their country-seats, in order to preserve, as he said, the sacred fire, or, rather, the general opposition to the Marshal of Vitry, demanding from each one his signature, appended to a supplication addressed to the king.

In this manifesto, or public declaration, the Proven?al nobility formally demanded the recall of the marshal, reminding Louis XIII. that his father, of glorious memory, the great Henri, had, under similar circumstances, recalled the Duke d’Epernon, in order to redress the just complaints of the country.

Finally, the nobility expressed, in this act, their respectful regrets not to be able to submit to the orders of the cardinal, in renouncing their right to arm their houses, inasmuch as their own safety required that they should always be in a state of defence.

Redoubling his activity, the baron regained, as he said, the legs and arms of twenty years, in this crusade against Marshal of Vitry.

Such was the moral aspect of Maison-Forte some days after the event of which we have spoken.

We have not forgotten the Bohemian, who, arriving in the train of the recorder, had, upon the baron’s invitation, scaled the balcony in so agile and surprising a manner.

To make use of a particular and modern expression, the vagabond Bohemian had become quite the fashion in the rustic and warlike habitation of Raimond V.

In the first place, he had mended numerous household utensils with remarkable skill.

Then Eclair, the favourite greyhound of the baron, put her paw out of joint, whereupon the Bohemian went up on the mountain and gathered certain herbs by the light of the moon, and carefully wrapped the sick member in them, and the next day Eclair was able to stretch her legs on the rosy heather of the baronial plains and valleys.

That was not all. Mistraon, the favourite horse of Raimond V., was wounded in the frush of his foot by a sharp stone; by means of a thin layer of iron deftly inserted in the slope of the shoe, the Bohemian made a sort of Turkish horseshoe, which ever after preserved the invalid foot of Mistraon from all injury.

The baron doted on the Bohemian. Dame Dulceline herself, notwithstanding her holy horror of this unbeliever, who, never having been baptised, could not bear the name of Christian, relented somewhat when the unbeliever gave her marvellous recipes for colouring pieces of glass, stuffing birds, and making excellent cordials.

The good Abbé Mascaro............