Denise, the niece of Etienne Marcel and betrothed to Jocelyn the Champion, has retired to a large apartment over the cloth shop of the provost and is busy sewing by a lamp. Uneasiness is depicted on the sweet face of the young maid. From time to time she stays her needle and listens towards the window through which the confused talk and hurrying steps of large numbers of people on the street penetrate into the room. Gradually the noise on the street subsided and silence reigned again. These evidences of the excitement that agitated Paris greatly alarmed Denise.
"My God!" she exclaimed. "The tumult augments. My aunt Marguerite has not yet returned. Where can she have gone to? Why did she borrow the cloak of Agnes our servant? Why the disguise? Why did she conceal her head under a cowl? Can she have gone to the town-hall, where my uncle and Jocelyn have been since morning?" At the thought of the champion, Denise blushed, sighed and proceeded: "Oh, should there be any danger, Jocelyn will watch over my uncle Marcel as he would have done over his own father.... But the prolonged absence of my aunt causes me mortal anxiety.... May God guard her...."
Agnes the Bigot, the old domestic of the house, entered the room precipitately, and said to Denise whom she had known since her birth: "For the last hour I have noticed three men of sinister looks on our street. They never stray far from our door. I watched them through the lattices. Off and on they consult in a low voice and then separate again. One of them has now planted himself on the left, the second to the right of the door, and the third opposite.... They must have been sent to spy upon the people who enter and leave the house."
"Such spyings seem to me ominous; I shall notify my aunt as soon as she returns."
"I think this is she," answered the servant. "I heard the shop door open and close; that must be madam."
Indeed Marguerite Marcel soon entered the room. She threw far from her a cowled cloak that she had on, and said to Agnes: "Leave us."
The provost's wife threw herself into a chair; she was exhausted with fatigue and emotion. Her dejection, the pallor of her visage and the visible palpitation of her bosom redoubled the fears of Denise who was about to interrogate her aunt, when the latter, making an effort over herself suppressed her agitation and said to Denise collectively:
"Courage, my child; courage!"
"Oh, heaven!... Aunt ... have we any new misfortune to deplore? What has happened now?"
"No ... not at present; but to-morrow; perhaps this very evening." Marguerite stopped short for a moment, and then proceeded with still greater calmness and decision: "I paid a tribute to weakness; I now feel strong again; I am now prepared for the worst.... I shall at least know by resignation how to rise to the height of the man whose name I bear! Oh, never was an honorable man more unworthily misunderstood, or attacked in more cowardly fashion!"