CHAPTER III.

THE MAN OF THE FURRED CAP.

Many weeks had elapsed since the night when Jocelyn the Champion rode back to Paris from the little village of Nointel. A man wearing a woolen cap, clad in an old blouse of grey material, carrying a knapsack on his back and a heavy stick in his hand entered Paris by the gate of St. Denis. It was William Caillet, the father of Aveline-who-never-lied. The old peasant looked even somberer than when last seen at Nointel. His hollow and fiery eyes, his sunken cheeks, his bitter smile--all betokened a profound and concentrated sorrow. This, however, yielded presently to astonishment at the tumultuous aspect of the streets of Paris, where he now found himself for the first time in his life. The multitude of busy people wearing different costumes, the horses, carriages, litters that crossed in all directions, gave the rustic a feeling akin to vertigo, while his ears rung with the deafening cries incessantly uttered by the merchants and their apprentices, who, standing at the doors of their shops solicited customers. "Hot stoves! Hot baths!" cried the keepers of bathing houses; "Fresh and warm cakes!" cried the pastry venders; "Fresh wine, just arrived from Argenteuil and Suresne!" cried a tavern-keeper armed with a large pewter tumbler, and with looks and gestures inviting the topers to drink; "Whose coat needs mending?" asked the tailor; "The oven is warm, who wants to have his bread baked?" vociferated a baker; further off a royal edict was being proclaimed, announced by drum and trumpet; in among the crowd several monks, collectors for a brotherhood, held out their purses and cried: "Give for the ransom of the souls in purgatory!" while beggars, exhibiting their real or assumed deformities exclaimed: "Give to the poor, for the love of God!" Before venturing further into Paris, William Caillet sat down on a stone step placed near a door meaning both to rest himself and to accustom his eyes and ears to a noise that was so utterly new to him.

Presently a distant rumbling, proceeding from Mauconseil street, almost drowned the cross-fire of cries. At intervals the roll of drums and mournful clarion notes mingled with the approaching and rumbling din, and soon Caillet heard repeated from mouth to mouth in accents at once sorrowful and angry: "That's the funeral of the poor Perrin Mace." All the passers-by started, and a great number of merchants and apprentices left their shops in charge of the women behind the counters, and ran towards Mauconseil and Oysters-are-fried-here streets, where the funeral procession was to pass after traversing St. Denis street.

Struck by the eagerness of the Parisians to witness the funeral, which seemed to be a matter of public mourning, Caillet followed the crowd, whose confluence from several other streets soon became considerable. Accident threw him near a student of the University of Paris. The young man, about twenty years of age, was named Rufin the Tankard-smasher, a nickname that was borne out by the jovial and convivial mien of the strapping youngster. He had on his head a crazy felt hat that age had rendered yellow, and he wore a black coat no less patched up than his hose. He looked as threadbare as ever did a Paris student. Held back by his rustic timidity, Caillet did not venture to open a conversation with Rufin the Tankard-smasher, notwithstanding several remarks dropped by the crowd around him and by the student himself increased the rustic's curiosity in the young man.

"Poor Perrin Mace!" said a Parisian, "To have his hand cut off and then be hanged without trial! And all because it so pleased the Regent and his courtiers!"

"That's the way the court respects the famous ordinance of our Marcel!"

"Oh, this nobility!... It is the pest and ruination of the country!... It and its clergy!"

"The nobles!" cried Rufin the Tankard-smasher; "they are merely caparisoned and plumed parade horses; good to prance and not to carry or draw. The moment they are called to do work, they rear and kick!"

"And yet, master student," ventured a large sized man with a furred cap, "the noble knighthood deserves our respect."

"The knighthood!" cried Rufin, laughing contemptuously, "the knighthood is good only to figure in tourneys, attracted by the lure of profit. The horse and arms of the vanquished belong to the vanquisher. By Jupiter! Those doughty chaps seek to throw down their adversaries just as we students seek to knock down the nine-pins at a bowling game on the college grounds. But so soon as their skins are in danger in battle, where there is no profit to be fetched other than blows, that same nobility shamefully takes to flight, as happened at the battle of Poitiers, where it gave the signal for run-who-run-can to an army of forty thousand men pitted against only eight thousand English archers! By the bowels of the Pope! Your nobles are not men, they are hares!"

"Come, now, master student," laughingly put in another townsman; "let us not be too hard upon the nobility; did it not rid us of King John by leaving him a prisoner in the hands of the English?"

"Yes!" exclaimed another, "but we shall have to pay the royal ransom, and in the meantime must submit to the government of the Regent, a stripling of twenty years, who orders people to be hanged when they demand the moneys owing to them by the royal treasury, and object when we strike them, as did Perrin Mace."

"With the aid of heaven, our friend Marcel will soon put a stop to that sort of thing."

"Marcel is the providence of Paris."

"Friends," resumed the man of the furred cap, smiling disdainfully, "you seem to have nothing but the name of Marcel in your mouths. Although Master Marcel is a provost and president of the town council, yet he is not everything on earth. The other councilmen are his superiors in trade. Take, for instance, John Maillart, there you have a worthy townsman--"

"Who is it dare compare others with the great Marcel!" cried Rufin the Tankard-smasher. "By Jupiter, whoever utters such foolishness quacks like a goose!"

"Hm! Hm!" grumbled the man of the furred cap; "I said so!"

"Then it is you who quack like a goose!" promptly replied the Tankard-smasher. "What! You dare maintain that Marcel is not the foremost townsman! He, the friend of the people!"

"Aye, aye!" came from the crowd. "Marcel is our saviour. Without him Paris would by this time have been taken and sacked by the English!"

"Marcel," resumed the Tankard-smasher with increasing enthusiasm, "he who restored economy in our finances, order and security in the city! By the bowels of the Pope! I know something about that! Only a fortnight ago, towards midnight, I with my chum Nicolas the Thin-skinned were beating at the door of a public house on Trace-Pute street. The woman of the house refused us admission, pretending that the girls we were looking for were not in. Thereat I and my friend came near breaking in the door. At that a platoon of cross-bowmen, organized by Marcel to maintain order in the streets, happens to go by, and they arrest and lodge both of us at the Chatelet, despite our privileges as students of the Paris University!... Now dare say that Marcel does not keep order in town!"

"That may all be," answered the man of the furred cap; "but any other councilman would have done as much; and Master John Maillart--"

"John Maillart!" exclaimed Rufin. "By the bowels of the Pope! Had he or any other, the King himself, dared to encroach upon the franchises of the University, the students, rising en masse, would have poured, arms in hands, out of their quarter of St. Germain and there would have been a battle in Paris. But what is allowed to Marcel, the idol of Paris, is not allowed to any other."

"The student is right!" went up from the crowd. "Marcel is our idol because he is just, because he protects the interests of the bourgeois against the court people, of the weak against the strong. Long live Etienne Marcel!"

"Without the activity of Marcel, his courage and his foresight, Paris would have been burned down and deluged in blood by the English."

"Did not Marcel also keep our town from starvation, when he went himself at the head of the militia as far as Corbeil to protect a cargo of grain that the Navarrais meant to pillage?"

"I don't deny that," calmly observed the man of the furred cap with envious insistence. "All I maintain is that, put in the place of Marcel, Maillart would have done as well."

"Surely, provided the councilman had the genius of Marcel. If he had, he surely would have done as well as Marcel!" rejoined the Tankard-smasher. "If my sweetheart wore a beard, she would be the lover and somebody else the sweetheart!"

This sally of the student was received with a universal laughter of approval. The immense majority of the Parisians entertained for Marcel as much attachment as admiration.

Wrapt in his somber silence, William Caillet had listened attentively to the altercation, and he saw confirmed that which Jocelyn the Champion had stated to him a short time ago at Nointel concerning the influence of Marcel upon the Parisian people. By that time, the roll of drums, the notes of the clarions and the din of a large multitude had drawn nearer. The procession turned into Mauconseil in order to cross St. Denis street. A company of the town's cross-bowmen, commanded by a captain, marched at the head and opened the way, preceded by the drummers and clarion blowers, who alternately struck up funeral bars. Behind the cross-bowmen came the town's heralds, dressed in the town colors, half red and half blue. From time to time the heralds recited solemnly the following mournful psalmody:

"Pray for the soul of Perrin Mace, a bourgeois of Paris, unjustly executed!

"John Baillet, the treasurer of the Regent, had borrowed in the name of the King a sum of money from Perrin Mace.

"Mace demanded his money in virtue of the new edict that orders the royal officers to pay for what they buy and return what they borrow for the King, under penalty of being brought to law by their creditors.

"John Baillet refused to pay, and furthermore insulted, threatened and struck Perrin Mace.

"In the exercise of his right of legitimate defence, granted him by the new edict, Perrin Mace returned blow for blow, killed John Baillet and betook himself to the church of St. Mery, a place of asylum, from where he demanded an inquest and trial.

"The Duke of Normandy, now Regent, immediately sent one of his courtiers, the marshal of Normandy, to the church of St. Mery, accompanied with an escort of soldiers and the executioner.

"The marshal of Normandy dragged Perrin Mace from the church, and without trial Mace's right hand was cut off and he was immediately hanged.

"Pray for the soul of Perrin Mace, a bourgeois of Paris, unjustly executed."

Regularly after these sentences, that were alternately recited by the heralds in a solemn voice, the muffled roll of drums and plaintive clarion notes resounded, but they hardly served to hush the imprecations from the crowd, indignant at the Regent and his court. Behind the heralds followed priests with their crucifixes and banners, and then, draped in a long black cloth embroidered in silver, came the coffin of the executed bourgeois, carried by twelve notables, clad in their long robes and wearing the two-colored hats of red and blue, such as were worn by almost all the partisans of the popular cause. The collars of their gowns were held by silver brooches, likewise enameled in red and blue, and bearing the inscription "To a happy issue," a device or rallying cry given by Marcel. Behind the coffin marched the councilmen of Paris with Etienne Marcel at their head. The obscure bourgeois, who had stepped out of his draper's shop to become one of the most illustrious citizens of Gaul, was then in the full maturity of his age. Of middle height and robust, Etienne Marcel somewhat stooped from his fatigues, seeing that his prodigious activity of a man of both thought and action left him no repose. His open, manly and characterful face bore at the chin a thick tuft of brown beard, leaving his cheeks and lips clean shaven. The feverish agitation of the man and the incessant cares of public affairs had furrowed his forehead and left their marks on his features without, however, in any way affecting the august serenity that an irreproachable conscience imparts to the physiognomy of an honorable man. There was nothing benigner or more affectionate than his smile when under the influence of the tender sentiments so familiar to his heart. There was nothing more imposing than his bearing, or more threatening than his looks when, as powerful an orator as he was a great citizen, Etienne Marcel thundered with the indignation of an honest and brave soul against the acts of cowardice and treason and the crimes of the feudal nobility and the despotic crown. The provost wore the red and blue head-gear together with the emblazoned brooch that distinguished the other councilmen. Among these, John Maillart often during the procession gave his arm to Marcel, who, fatigued by the long march through the streets of Paris, cordially accepted the support of one of his oldest friends. Since youth Marcel had lived in close intimacy with Maillart, but the latter, ever keeping concealed the enviousness that the glory of Marcel inspired him with, could not now wholly repress a bitter smile at the enthusiastic acclaim that saluted Marcel along the route.

A woman clad in long mourning robes and whose presence seemed out of place at such a ceremony marched beside Maillart. It was his wife, Petronille, still young and passing handsome, but of atrabilious and harsh mien. Each time that the heralds finished the mournful psalmody and before they began it anew, Petronille Maillart would break out into sobs and moans, and raising and wringing her arms in despair cried out: "Unhappy Perrin Mace! Vengeance upon his ashes! Vengeance!" The plaintive outcries and the contortions of Madam Maillart seemed, however, to excite more surprise than interest with the crowd.

"By Jupiter!" cried Rufin the Tankard-smasher, "what brings that bellowing woman to this funeral? What makes her demean herself like that, as if she were possessed? She is neither the widow nor any relative of Perrin Mace."

"For that reason her presence is all the more admirable," observed the man of the furred cap addressing the crowd. "Behold her, friends! Do you see how her despair testifies the extent to which she, as well as her husband, share in the terrible fate of poor Perrin Mace?... You are witnesses, friends, that Dame Petronille is the only councilman's wife who assists at the ceremony!"

"That's true!" said several voices. "Poor, dear woman! She must feel sadly distracted."

"Yes, indeed. And surely that is not the case with the wife of Marcel, our first magistrate. She and the others remain calmly at home, without at all concerning themselves about this public sorrow," put in the man of the furred cap. "Fail not to take notice!"

"By the bowels of the Pope!" cried the Tankard-smasher. "Marcel's wife acts like a sensible body. She is right not to come out and exhibit herself and utter shrieks fit to deafen Beelzebub just when the drums are silent.... The affliction of that bellowing woman looks to me like a sheet of music, marked on time. That woman is playing a comedy."

"You vainly try to pass the matter off as a joke, master student," rejoined the man of the furred cap. "It will, nevertheless, be noted that the wife of Maillart assisted at the funeral of Perrin Mace, and that the wife of Marcel did not. Hm! Hm! My friends, that gives room for many suspicions; or, rather, it confirms certain rumors."

"What suspicions?" asked Rufin; "What rumors? Explain yourself."

But without answering the student the man of the furred cap was lost in the crowd, while continuing to whisper to those that he came in contact with. During this slight incident, the funeral procession had continued to file by. Notable townsmen, carrying funeral torches, marched behind the councilmen; they were followed by the trade guilds, each headed by its banner; finally the rear was brought up by a long line of people of all conditions uttering imprecations against the Regent and his court, and acclaiming Marcel with ever increasing enthusiasm. Marcel, the crowd declared, would know how to avenge the fresh and sanguinary court iniquity.

From mouth to mouth the announcement was carried that, after the ceremony, Marcel would address the people in the large hall of the Convent of the Cordeliers. William Caillet silently assisted at this scene which seemed to impress him deeply. After a few moments' reflections he overcame his rustic timidity and drew Rufin the Tankard-smasher aside by the arm just as the latter was about to walk away. The student turned around, and yielding to the joviality of his nature as well as purposing to haze the rustic after the time-honored practice of the University of Paris, said to him banteringly: "I wager, dear rustic, that you overheard me speaking of one of my sweethearts! Hein! I see through you, my sylvan swain! You would like to admire the town beauties. By the bowels of the Pope! You shall have your pick--"

Hurt by the student's banter, William Caillet answered him gruffly: "I am a stranger in Paris; I come from a great distance--"

"Oh! You would like to enter the University, would you?" Rufin interrupted him with redoubled hilarity. "You are somewhat too bearded for a bachelor; but that does not matter; what faculty would you choose? theology or medicine? arts, letters or canonical law?"

"Oh, these townsmen!" exclaimed the old peasant with pungent bitterness. "They are no better than the people of the castles. Go, Jacques Bonhomme, you have enemies everywhere and nowhere a friend."

Saying this, Caillet started to walk away. But touched by the sad accent of the peasant, Rufin held him back: "Friend, if I have hurt your feelings, excuse me. We townsmen are not the enemies of Jacques Bonhomme for the reason that our enemies are common to us both."

Ever suspicious, Caillet remained silent and sought to discover from the face of the student whether his words did not conceal a trap or implied some fresh ridicule. Rufin surmised the apprehensions of the serf, examined him once more attentively, and now struck by the lines of sorrow on his face, said to him: "May I die like a dog if I am not speaking sincerely to you. Friend, you seem to have suffered much; you are a stranger; I am at your disposal! I do not offer you my purse because it is empty; but I offer you half of the pallet on which I sleep in a student's room with a chum from my province, and a part of our meager pittance."

Now convinced by the frankness of the townsman, the peasant answered: "I have no time to stay in Paris; I only wish to speak with Jocelyn the Champion and Marcel; could you help me to that?"

"You know Jocelyn the Champion?" Rufin asked with deep interest, while a cloud of sadness darkened his countenance.

"Did any misfortune befall him?"

"He left here to assist at a tourney in Beauvoisis some time ago, and the poor fellow never returned.... His aged and infirm father died of grief at the disappearance of his son. Brave Jocelyn! I entered the University the year before he left it. He was the best and most courageous lad in the world.... He must have been killed at the tourney, or assassinated on his return to Paris. Highwaymen infest the roads."

"No; he was not killed at the tourney of Nointel. The night after the passage of arms I saw him take his horse to return to Paris."

"Are you from Beauvoisis?"

"Yes," answered Caillet; and he added with a sigh: "Well, that young man is dead! Great pity! There are few like him who love Jacques Bonhomme." After a moment's silence the peasant resumed: "How can I manage to meet Marcel?"

"By following me to the convent of the Cordeliers where he is to address the people after the funeral of Perrin Mace. Come with me."

"Go ahead," said Caillet; "I shall follow you."

"Come, we shall go out by the Coquiller gate; that's the shortest route."

The old peasant walked in silence by the side of Rufin who sought to draw from him some words on the subject of his trip. But the serf remained impenetrable. Going out by the gate of St. Denis and following the streets of the suburbs, that were much less crowded than those of the city, Caillet and his guide had just left Traversine to enter Montmartre street when they heard the distant funeral chant of priests interspersed from time to time with plaintive clarion notes. The peasant noticed with surprise that as the chant drew nearer the residents along the streets closed and bolted their doors.

"By the bowels of the Pope!" exclaimed the student. "Accident is serving us well. You have seen honors paid to the remains of Perrin Mace by the officials and the people; you will now see the honors paid to John Baillet, the cause of the iniquity that Paris is feeling indignant about. Yes, Baillet's remains are honored by the Regent and his court. Come quick; the procession is probably going to the convent of the Augustian monks." Hastening his steps and followed by the peasant, the student reached the corner of Montmartre and Quoque-Heron streets, opposite which stood the convent, whose doors opened to receive the coffin. "Look," said the student turning to Caillet. "How significant is not the contrast presented by these two funerals. At Perrin Mace's a large concourse of people were present, serious and moved with just indignation; at John Baillet's nobody assists but the Regent, the princes, his brothers, the courtiers and the officers of the royal household--not one representative of the people! The townsmen leave a deep void around this royal demonstration which is indulged in as a sort of challenge to the popular one. Tell me, friend, does not the very aspect of the two processions appeal to the eye. At the funeral of Perrin Mace we saw a great mass composed of bourgeois and artisans plainly or even poorly dressed; at the funeral of John Baillet we see only a handful of courtiers and officers brilliantly attired in gold and silk and velvet, and decked in magnificent uniforms."

William Caillet listened to the student, seeking to bore through him with his eyes, and shaking his head answered pensively: "Jocelyn did not deceive me," and after a pause he proceeded: "But what are the Parisians still waiting for? We are ready, and have long been!"

"What do you mean?" asked Rufin.

Immediately relapsing into his former close-mouthedness, the peasant made no answer. The procession just turned into the street. The coffin of John Baillet, heavily inlaid with gold and preceded by royal heralds and sergeants-at-arms was borne by twelve menials of the Regent in costly livery. The young prince and his brothers, accompanied by the seigneurs of the court, alone followed the coffin. Charles, the Duke of Normandy and now Regent of the French, as the eldest son of King John, at the time an English prisoner, had, like his brothers and the French nobility, fled ignominiously from the battlefield of Poitiers. The young man who now governed Gaul was barely twenty years of age. He was of frail physique and pale complexion. His sickly face concealed under a kind and timid mien a large fund of obstinacy, of perfidy, of wile and of wickedness--odious vices usually rare in youths, except of royal lineage. Magnificently dressed in gold-embroidered green velvet, a black head-gear ornamented with a chain and brooch of costly stones on his head, the mean-spirited and languishing Regent marched slowly leaning on a cane. At a short distance behind him advanced his brothers, and then came the seigneurs of the court, among them the marshal of Normandy, who, ordered by the young prince, had superintended the mutilation and subsequent execution of Perrin Mace. The marshal, who was the Sire of Conflans, one of the Regent's favorites, superb and arrogant, cast upon the few and straggling spectators disdainful and threatening looks, and exchanged a few words with the Sire of Charny, a courtier no less loved by the prince than he was detested by the people. Suddenly Rufin the Tankard-smasher felt his arm rudely seized by the vigorous hand of Caillet, who with distended and flaming eyes, and his breast heaving with pain, gasped out:

"Look!... There they are!... There are the two! The Sire of Nointel and that other, the knight of Chaumontel!... Oh, do you see them both with their scarlet hats, down there with the tall man in an ermine cloak?" cried out Caillet despite himself.

"Yes, yes; I see the two seigneurs," answered the student, astonished at the emotion manifested by the peasant. "But what makes you tremble so?"

"Down in the country they are thought dead or prisoners of the English," exclaimed Caillet. "Fortunately it is not so.... There they are ... there they are ... I have seen them with my own eyes!" and contracting his lips with a frightful smile the serf added raising his two fists to heaven: "Oh, Mazurec!... Oh, my daughter!... Here I see the two men at last!... They will return home for the marriage of the handsome Gloriande.... We've got them!... We've got them!"

"The looks of this man make me shiver," thought the student to himself, gazing at the peasant with stupor, and he proceeded aloud: "Who are those two seigneurs that you are speaking of?"

Without heeding Rufin, Caillet proceeded to say: "Oh, now more than ever am I anxious to see Marcel without delay. I must speak with the provost!"

"In that case," the student said to him, "come and rest at my lodging. In the evening we shall wait upon the provost at the convent of the Cordeliers. He is to address the people there this evening. But, once more, what is the reason of your excitement at the sight of those two seigneurs in the Regent's suite?"

The peasant cast a suspicious side-glance at the student, remained silent and his face assumed a somberer hue.

"By the bowels of the Pope!" thought Rufin the Tankard-smasher, "I have run up against an odd customer; he alternates between dumbness and riddles. He saddens even me who am not given to melancholy! He positively frightens even me who am no poltroon!"

And accompanied by William Caillet, the student wended his steps towards the quarter of the University.