"Sire, you are called Charles the Wicked. I hold the name fits you. But you are active, subtle, venturesome; you command numerous armed bands; your partisans are powerful; your wealth considerable. You are a force, that, at a given moment, may be useful. For that reason I caused your release from prison where your father-in-law kept you locked up."
"So that I, Charles, King of Navarre, am to be merely an instrument in the hands of Marcel, the cloth merchant."
"Sire, you have your views; I have mine, and I shall express them to you. The Regent, hypocritic and stubborn, mocks at his oaths. He signed and promulgated the reform ordinances; he embraced me in tears, calling me his good father; he swore by God and all the saints that he desired the welfare of the people and that he would loyally adhere to the great measures decreed by the national assembly. The Regent has broken all his promises. His ruse, his well calculated indolence, his ill will, the increasing audacity of the court and the nobility, who rule supreme in their domains, either hamper or prevent the execution of the new edicts. The Regent is secretly inciting the jealousy of a large number of communal cities against Paris, that, as they put it, 'is seeking to govern Gaul'. The nobility in its deliberate inaction, and sheltered by its fortified castles, allows the English to extend their depredations to the very gates of Paris. The royal false money continues to ruin commerce and to destroy credit. Finally, only two days ago, the Regent's favorite caused a bourgeois of Paris to be mutilated and executed under our very eyes, thereby proclaiming the contempt of the court for the laws enacted by the States General. The plan of the court is simple: to tire out the country by disasters: to render impossible the good results that were justly expected from the national assembly, a popular government where the King is no longer master but servant: finally, the court expects that one of these days it can tell the people, whose sufferings will have become intolerable by these machinations: 'Ye people, behold the fruit of your rebellion. In lieu of having remained submissive, as in the past, to the sovereign authority of your kings, you have wished to reign, yourselves, by sending your deputies to the States General; you now pay the penalty of your audacity. May this rough lesson prove to you once more that princes are born to command and the people to obey. And now, pay your taxes and resume your secular yoke with humble repentance'!"
"So help me God! You could not have been better instructed upon the projects of my brother-in-law and his councilors if you had attended their secret meetings! And if they triumph, would you despair?"
"Despair?—For the present, Sire; but I would remain full of hope in the future. The conquest of freedom is as assured as it is slow, laborious and painful.... I do not even now despair of the present. I propose to make a last attempt with the Regent."
"And if you fail, will you come to me?"
"Between two evils, Sire, one is forced to choose the lesser."
"In short, you believe you will find in me what the Regent lacks?"
"You have an immense advantage over him. You wish to become King of the French, while the Regent is that by birth."
"Do you forget my royalty of Navarre?"