"Upon your arrival at Clermont you will receive further instructions from Marcel. To overpower the nobility, dethrone the Regent and chase the foreigners from our soil—that is the provost's programme. When the campaign shall be over, the hour of Jacques Bonhomme's enfranchisement will have come. Delivered from the tyranny of the seigneurs and the pillaging of the English, free, happy and at peace, the peasant will then be able to enjoy the fruits of his arduous labors and will be able to taste without molestation the sweet pleasures of the hearth.... Yes, you William Caillet, you Adam the Devil, you Mazurec, and so many others who have been wounded in your tenderest feelings, you will have been the last martyrs of the seigneurs and clergy, you will be the liberators of your kind."
"Jocelyn, whatever may now happen, vanquisher or vanquished, I can die in peace. My daughter is revenged!" said William Caillet. "I promise to lead more than ten thousand men to the walls of Clermont. The blood of the seigneurs and their priests who have outraged us, the conflagrations of their castles and churches, from which they issued to oppress us, will mark the route of the Jacques."
"Marcel recalls me to Paris; I shall return to him; but you will meet me at Clermont, where I shall convey to you further instructions." And pressing Mazurec to his heart: "Adieu, my brother, my poor brother! We shall soon meet again. William, I leave him with you. Watch over the unfortunate lad!"
"I love him as I did my daughter! She will be the topic of our conversation. And we shall fight like men who no longer care for life."
After this exchange of adieus, Jocelyn turned back to Paris with Rufin the Tankard-smasher on the crupper of his horse.
CHAPTER VII.
CLERMONT.
Charles the Wicked, King of Navarre, occupied at Clermont, in the province of Beauvoisis, the castle of the count of the place—a vast edifice one of whose towers dominated the square called the "Suburb." The first floor of the donjon, lighted by a long ogive window, formed a large circular hall. There, near a table, sat Charles the Wicked. It was early morning. The prince asked one of his equerries:
"Has the scaffold been erected?"
"Yes, Sire, you can see it from this window. It is just as you ordered it."
"What face do the bourgeois make?"