"At the time of the abolition of the commune of Laon and of so many other municipal republics that Louis the Lusty destroyed, my ancestor Fergan the Quarryman said to his son, who despaired of the future: 'Hope, my child, hope!... Have faith in the slow, painful but irresistible progress of the race.' He spoke truly! Thanks to your genius, I might have seen in this very century the municipal government of the old communes—free, benevolent and wise governments—applied no longer to one town only but to all Gaul. Be praised for having promoted such a step forward."
"That is my dream! Social unity and administrative uniformity. Political rights made commensurate with civic rights. The principles of authority transferred from the crown to the nation. The States General changed into a national assembly under the control of the people of the towns and the country, and the living forces of the nation; and the popular sovereignty attested by the overthrow of one dynasty and the transfer of the crown to another, until the day of the total suppression of the royalty, the last vestige of the Frankish conquest!... That was my dream! Time will change the dream into reality. May be I stepped in advance of my century.... Is that wrong?... That government of the future will have been practiced three years!... Our children will place all the stronger reliance in the prospect of their deliverance when, instructed by the past, they will know that their fathers actually held their deliverance in their own hands; that, having one day assumed their freedom, they bent and chased away the royal incumbent, and that, if they relapsed under the yoke, it was because on the eve of final triumph they yielded to discouragement; it was because, after having overcome formidable obstacles, they grew faint-hearted at the moment of reaching the ultimate goal. The lesson will be great and profitable to our children. Perchance the death of myself and my friends may render the lesson all the more striking! Our death will have been as fruitful as our life!... The scaffold will crown it!"
CHAPTER IV.
PLOTTERS UNCOVERED.
Wrapt in wonderment and admiration, Jocelyn was contemplating the noble figure of Etienne Marcel that now seemed transfigured in the brilliancy of the sentiments he had given utterance to, when a knock was heard at the door. Jocelyn opened and Denise said to him:
"Jocelyn, your friend Rufin wishes to speak to you without delay."
"Master Marcel," the champion observed, "it must be about the plot that Rufin thinks to have discovered."
"My child, tell Rufin to come in," said the provost to his niece.
Rufin entered immediately. He was deeply agitated: "Master Marcel," he said, "I believe the goddess Fortuna served me as well this time as she did the night I discovered the flight of the Regent"; and drawing a letter from his pocket he handed it over to Marcel, adding: "Be kind enough to post yourself thereon; if the message is to be judged by the messenger, it bodes nothing good."
Marcel took the letter, broke the seal, trembled when he recognized the hand that wrote it, and carefully read its contents, while Jocelyn, leading the student to the outer end of the cabinet, said to him in a low voice:
"How did you get the letter, friend Rufin?"