"This, then, is what is going on at the very gates of our town. The country people are pitilessly left to the mercy of the seigneurs! The women are violated, and the men put to death! We have been the accomplices of the executioners of so many victims; we have been so by our criminal indifference, and to-day we pay the penalty of our selfishness. We, the townspeople, believed we would be strong enough to overcome the seigneurs and the crown; we imagined we could compel them to reform the execrable abuses that oppress us. To-day we should admit that we have thought too highly of our own power. The Regent and his partisans violate their own sworn oaths, and shatter our hopes. Vainly have I, in the name of the States General, again and again requested an audience from the Regent to remind him of his sacred promises. The gates of Louvre remained shut in my face. The audacity of our enemies proceeds from the circumstance that our power ends outside of the gates of our towns. Let us join hands with the serfs of the country; let us cease separating our cause from theirs, and matters will take on a different aspect. We never shall obtain lasting and fruitful reforms without a close alliance with the country folks. If to-morrow at a given signal the serfs should rise in arms against their seigneurs, and the towns against the officers, then no human power would be able to overcome such a mass-uprising. The Regent, the seigneurs and their troops would be swept aside and annihilated by the storm. Then would the peoples of Gaul, resuming possession of their country's soil and re-entering upon their freedom, see before them a future of peace, of grandeur and of prosperity without end.... Do you desire to realize that future by joining hands with our brothers the peasants?"
"Aye! Aye! We will!" cried the councilmen.
"Aye! Aye! We will!" re-echoed from thousands of voices with boundless enthusiasm. "Let's join our brothers of the country. Let our device be theirs also—'To a happy issue,' for townsmen and peasants!"
"Come, poor martyr!" cried Marcel with tears in his eyes and embracing Caillet, who was not less moved than the provost. "I take heaven and the cries that escape from so many generous hearts, moved by the recital of the sufferings of your family, as witnesses to the indissoluble alliance concluded this day between all the children of our mother country! Let us stand united against our common enemy! Artisans, bourgeois and peasants—each for all, and all for each, and to a happy issue the good cause! War upon the castles!"
Sublime was the sensation, holy the enthusiasm of the crowd at the sight of the provost, dressed in his magisterial robe, closing in his arms the horny-handed serf dressed in rags.
Profoundly moved and even surprised by what he saw and heard, Caillet, despite his rugged nature, almost fainted. Tears streamed down his face. He leaned against the wall to avoid dropping to the floor, while Marcel cried out:
"Let all who desire to lead the good cause to a happy issue meet to-morrow morning arms in hand upon the square of St. Eloi church."
"Count upon us, Marcel," came from the crowd; "we shall all be there! We shall follow you with closed eyes! Long live Marcel! Long live the peasants! To a happy issue! To a happy issue! War on the castles, peace to the huts!" Amid these exclamations the crowd tumultuously evacuated the hall of the Cordeliers.
"Do you see, friends, how far this Marcel goes in his defiance of the people of Paris?" remarked the man of the furred cap to several townsmen near him as they were leaving the hall. "Did you hear him?"
"What did he say that was so bad? Come, now, my good man, you are losing your wits!"