"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.
CHAPTER IV.
THE SERPENT UNDER THE GRASS.
Etienne Marcel's house was located near the church of St. Eustace in the quarter of the market. His shop, filled with rolls of cloth that were exposed on the shelves, communicated with a dining room. A staircase ran into this room, leading to the chambers on the floor above.
It being night and the shop closed, Marguerite, Marcel's wife, and Denise her niece, had gone upstairs into one of the chambers where they took up some sewing which they were busily at by the light of the lamp. Marguerite was about forty-five years. She must have been handsome in her younger days. Her face betokened kindness and was now pensive and grave. Denise was close to eighteen. Her cheerful face, habitually serene and candid, seemed this evening profoundly sad. The two women remained long in silence, each engaged in her work. By degrees, however, and without raising her head Denise's needle relaxes, and presently, dropping her hands upon her lap, the tears roll out of her eyes. Marguerite, no less pre-occupied than her niece, mechanically raises her eyes towards the young girl, and noticing her tears, says tenderly: