"Friends!" cried the seigneur of Charny, "the body of the knight of Conflans, a victim of the popular party, was exposed in the Student's Dale. Let now the body of Marcel be exposed in the same place.... Carry him on your shoulders."
"To-morrow the body shall be placed on a hurdle and dragged through the mud to the Louvre which our beloved Sire, the Regent, was forced to leave in sight of Marcel's threats. After that let the carcass of the felon be thrown into the river—unworthy sepulchre for a Christian," added John Maillart, and he said to himself, thinking of his wife: "Petronille will no longer reproach me with being under the provost; Petronille will no longer be eaten up with jealousy; Petronille will no longer hear that Marguerite is the wife of the 'King of Paris' ... and I shall have a title of nobility."
The orders of the Sire of Charny and Maillart were carried out. The corpse of the provost was picked out from among his dead friends. Four men carried on their shoulders the disfigured remains of the great citizen, and marching by the light of torches, the funeral cortége wended its way to the Student's Dale brandishing their arms and shouting:
| "Death to the partisans of the governors!" |
| "Death to the red and blue!" |
| "Montjoie, the King and Duke!" |
EPILOGUE.
The hatred of Etienne Marcel's enemies pursued him beyond the grave. His corpse, taken to the Student's Dale, remained there the whole day exposed to the insults and the jeers of the fickle and ingrate mass whose enfranchisement and happiness he had labored to attain. The day after his death his bloody and mutilated remains were thrown upon a hurdle, dragged towards the Seine and hurled into the river in front of the Louvre. Such was that great man's sepulchre.
The principal leaders of the popular party, to the number of sixty, among whom were Simon the Feather-dealer, Cousac and Pierre Caillart, were executed by orders of John Maillart and the Sire of Charny, now become joint dictators. These executions being over, the dictators delegated Simon Maillart, a brother of the councilman, the councilmen Dessessarts and John Pastorel, to appear before the Regent and notify the young prince that he could re-enter his good town of Paris, now submissive and penitent. The Regent answered the delegation: "That will be gladly done." Accompanied by a numerous cavalcade, the Regent left the bridge at Charenton and re-entered the Louvre where, in the language of the chronicler of the time, "he found John Maillart, whom he greatly esteemed and loved."
"As the Regent," the chronicler proceeds, "was crossing a certain street on his way to the Louvre, a workingman had the daring to call out aloud: 'By God, Sire, if my advice had been taken, you would not now be entering here. But nothing will be done for you.'"
These and some other instances showed, to the honor of humanity, that ingratitude, defection and the fickleness of the masses—the fruits of their ignorance and secular subjection—offered at least pleasing exceptions. The memory of Marcel remained alive and sacred in the hearts of many loyal to the popular cause. Despite the triumph of the court party, several conspiracies were started looking to the overthrow of the throne and intended to revenge upon the Regent the death of the venerated Etienne Marcel. The last of these conspiracies was organized by a rich Paris bourgeois, Martin Pisdoé. He mounted the scaffold and paid with his head for his religious devotion to the memory of Marcel.
Jocelyn the Champion had been left for dead near the gate of St. Antoine in the midst of a heap of corpses. Informed the same night by popular rumors of the assassination of the provost and his partisans, Rufin the Tankard-smasher and Alison the Huffy hastened to the place of the massacre in order to ascertain Jocelyn's fate. They found him covered with wounds, ready to expire, and carried him to a charitable person in the neighborhood where, thanks to their untiring care he was rescued from death. Protected by the obscurity of his name, he long remained hidden in that asylum where a surgeon, a friend of Rufin, visited him. Only slowly did he regain his strength.