THE MAN OF THE FURRED CAP.
Many weeks had elapsed since the night when Jocelyn the Champion rode
back to Paris from the little village of Nointel. A man wearing a woolen
cap, clad in an old blouse of grey material, carrying a knapsack on his
back and a heavy stick in his hand entered Paris by the gate of St.
Denis. It was William Caillet, the father of Aveline-who-never-lied. The
old peasant looked even somberer than when last seen at Nointel. His
hollow and fiery eyes, his sunken cheeks, his bitter smile--all
betokened a profound and concentrated sorrow. This, however, yielded
presently to astonishment at the tumultuous aspect of the streets of
Paris, where he now found himself for the first time in his life. The
multitude of busy people wearing different costumes, the horses,
carriages, litters that crossed in all directions, gave the rustic a
feeling akin to vertigo, while his ears rung with the deafening cries
incessantly uttered by the merchants and their apprentices, who,
standing at the doors of their shops solicited customers. "Hot stoves!
Hot baths!" cried the keepers of bathing houses; "Fresh and warm cakes!"
cried the pastry venders; "Fresh wine, just arrived from Argenteuil and
Suresne!" cried a tavern-keeper armed with a large pewter tumbler, and
with looks and gestures inviting the topers to drink; "Whose coat needs
mending?" asked the tailor; "The oven is warm, who wants to have his
bread baked?" vociferated a baker; further off a royal edict was being
proclaimed, announced by drum and trumpet; in among the crowd several
monks, collectors for a brotherhood, held out their purses and cried:
"Give for the ransom of the souls in purgatory!" while beggars,
exhibiting their real or assumed deformities exclaimed: "Give to the
poor, for the love of God!" Before venturing further into Paris, William
Caillet sat down on a stone step placed near a door meaning both to rest
himself and to accustom his eyes and ears to a noise that was so utterly
new to him.
Presently a distant rumbling, proceeding from Mauconseil street, almost
drowned the cross-fire of cries. At intervals the roll of drums and
mournful clarion notes mingled with the approaching and rumbling din,
and soon Caillet heard repeated from mouth to mouth in accents at once
sorrowful and angry: "That's the funeral of the poor Perrin Mace." All
the passers-by started, and a great number of merchants and apprentices
left their shops in charge of the women behind the counters, and ran
towards Mauconseil and Oysters-are-fried-here streets, where the funeral
procession was to pass after traversing St. Denis street.
Struck by the eagerness of the Parisians to witness the funeral, which
seemed to be a matter of public mourning, Caillet followed the crowd,
whose confluence from several other streets soon became considerable.
Accident threw him near a student of the University of Paris. The young
man, about twenty years of age, was named Rufin the Tankard-smasher, a
nickname that was borne out by the jovial and convivial mien of the
strapping youngster. He had on his head a crazy felt hat that age had
rendered yellow, and he wore a black coat no less patched up than his
hose. He looked as threadbare as ever did a Paris student. Held back by
his rustic timidity, Caillet did not venture to open a conversation with
Rufin the Tankard-smasher, notwithstanding several remarks dropped by
the crowd around him and by the student himself increased the rustic's
curiosity in the young man.
"Poor Perrin Mace!" said a Parisian, "To have his hand cut off and then
be hanged without trial! And all because it so pleased the Regent and
his courtiers!"
"That's the way the court respects the famous ordinance of our Marcel!"
"Oh, this nobility!... It is the pest and ruination of the country!...
It and its clergy!"
"The nobles!" cried Rufin the Tankard-smasher; "they are merely
caparisoned and plumed parade horses; good to prance and not to carry or
draw. The moment they are called to do work, they rear and kick!"
"And yet, master student," ventured a large sized man with a furred cap,
"the noble knighthood deserves our respect."
"The knighthood!" cried Rufin, laughing contemptuously, "the knighthood
is good only to figure in tourneys, attracted by the lure of profit. The
horse and arms of the vanquished belong to the vanquisher. By Jupiter!
Those doughty chaps seek to throw down their adversaries just as we
students seek to knock down the nine-pins at a bowling game on the
college grounds. But so soon as their skins are in danger in battle,
where there is no profit to be fetched other than blows, that same
nobility shamefully takes to flight, as happened at the battle of
Poitiers, where it gave the signal for run-who-run-can to an army of
forty thousand men pitted against only eight thousand English archers!
By the bowels of the Pope! Your nobles are not men, they are hares!"
"Come, now, master student," laughingly put in another townsman; "let us
not be too hard upon the nobility; did it not rid us of King John by
leaving him a prisoner in the hands of the English?"
"Yes!" exclaimed another, "but we shall have to pay the royal ransom,
and in the meantime must submit to the government of the Regent, a
stripling of twenty years, who orders people to be hanged when they
demand the moneys owing to them by the royal treasury, and object when
we strike them, as did Perrin Mace."
"With the aid of heaven, our friend Marcel will soon put a stop to that
sort of thing."
"Marcel is the providence of Paris."
"Friends," resumed the man of the furred cap, smiling disdainfully,
"you seem to have nothing but the name of Marcel in your mouths.
Although Master Marcel is a provost and president of the town council,
yet he is not everything on earth. The other councilmen are his
superiors in trade. Take, for instance, John Maillart, there you have a
worthy townsman--"
"Who is it dare compare others with the great Marcel!" cried Rufin the
Tankard-smasher. "By Jupiter, whoever utters such foolishness quacks
like a goose!"
"Hm! Hm!" grumbled the man of the furred cap; "I said so!"
"Then it is you who quack like a goose!" promptly replied the
Tankard-smasher. "What! You dare maintain that Marcel is not the
foremost townsman! He, the friend of the people!"
"Aye, aye!" came from the crowd. "Marcel is our saviour. Without him
Paris would by this time have been taken and sacked by the English!"
"Marcel," resumed the Tankard-smasher with increasing enthusiasm, "he
who restored economy in our finances, order and security in the city! By
the bowels of the Pope! I know something about that! Only a fortnight
ago, towards midnight, I with my chum Nicolas the Thin-skinned were
beating at the door of a public house on Trace-Pute street. The woman of
the house refused us admission, pretending that the girls we were
looking for were not in. Thereat I and my friend came near breaking in
the door. At that a platoon of cross-bowmen, organized by Marcel to
maintain order in the streets, happens to go by, and they arrest and
lodge both of us at the Chatelet, despite our privileges as students of
the Paris University!... Now dare say that Marcel does not keep order in
town!"
"That may all be," answered the man of the furred cap; "but any other
councilman would have done as much; and Master John Maillart--"
"John Maillart!" exclaimed Rufin. "By the bowels of the Pope! Had he or
any other, the King himself, dared to encroach upon the franchises of
the University, the students, rising en masse, would have poured, arms
in hands, out of their quarter of St. Germain and there would have been
a battle in Paris. But what is allowed to Marcel, the idol of Paris, is
not allowed to any other."
"The student is right!" went up from the crowd. "Marcel is our idol
because he is just, because he protects the interests of the bourgeois
against the court people, of the weak against the strong. Long live
Etienne Marcel!"
"Without the activity of Marcel, his courage and his foresight, Paris
would have been burned down and deluged in blood by the English."
"Did not Marcel also keep our town from starvation, when he went himself
at the head of the militia as far as Corbeil to protect a cargo of grain
that the Navarrais meant to pillage?"
"I don't deny that," calmly observed the man of the furred cap with
envious insistence. "All I maintain is that, put in the place of Marcel,
Maillart would have done as well."
"Surely, provided the councilman had the genius of Marcel. If he had, he
surely would have done as well as Marcel!" rejoined the Tankard-smasher.
"If my sweetheart wore a beard, she would be the lover and somebody else
the sweetheart!"
This sally of the student was received with a universal laughter of
approval. The immense majority of the Parisians entertained for Marcel
as much attachment as admiration.
Wrapt in his somber silence, William Caillet had listened attentively to
the altercation, and he saw confirmed that which Jocelyn the Champion
had stated to him a short time ago at Nointel concerning the influence
of Marcel upon the Parisian people. By that time, the roll of drums, the
notes of the clarions and the din of a large multitude had drawn nearer.
The procession turned into Mauconseil in order to cross St. Denis
street. A company of the town's cross-bowmen, commanded by a captain,
marched at the head and opened the way, preceded by the drummers and
clarion blowers, who alternately struck up funeral bars. Behind the
cross-bowmen came the town's heralds, dressed in the town colors, half
red and half blue. From time to time the heralds recited solemnly the
following mournful psalmody:
"Pray for the soul of Perrin Mace, a bourgeois of Paris, unjustly
executed!
"John Baillet, the treasurer of the Regent, had borrowed in the
name of the King a sum of money from Perrin Mace.
"Mace demanded his money in virtue of the new edict that orders the
royal officers to pay for what they buy and return what they borrow
for the King, under penalty of being brought to law by their
creditors.
"John Baillet refused to pay, and furthermore insulted, threatened
and struck Perrin Mace.
"In the exercise of his right of legitimate defence, granted him by
the new edict, Perrin Mace returned blow for blow, killed John
Baillet and betook himself to the church of St. Mery, a place of
asylum, from where he demanded an inquest and trial.
"The Duke of Normandy, now Regent, immediately sent one of his
courtiers, the marshal of Normandy, to the church of St. Mery,
accompanied with an escort of soldiers and the executioner.
"The marshal of Normandy dragged Perrin Mace from the church, and
without trial Mace's right hand was cut off and he was immediately
hanged.
"Pray for the soul of Perrin Mace, a bourgeois of Paris, unjustly
executed."
Regularly after these sentences, that were alternately recited by the
heralds in a solemn voice, the muffled roll of drums and plaintive
clarion notes resounded, but they hardly served to hush the imprecations
from the crowd, indignant at the Regent and his court. Behind the
heralds followed priests with their crucifixes and banners, and then,
draped in a long black cloth embroidered in silver, came the coffin of
the executed bourgeois, carried by twelve notables, clad in their long
robes and wearing the two-colored hats of red and blue, such as were
worn by almost all the partisans of the popular cause. The collars of
their gowns were held by silver brooches, likewise enameled in red and
blue, and bearing the inscription "To a happy issue," a device or
rallying cry given by Marcel. Behind the coffin marched the councilmen
of Paris with Etienne Marcel at their head. The obscure bourgeois, who
had stepped out of his draper's shop to become one of the most
illustrious citizens of Gaul, was then in the full maturity of his age.
Of middle height and robust, Etienne Marcel somewhat stooped from his
fatigues, seeing that his prodigious activity of a man of both thought
and action left him no repose. His open, manly and characterful face
bore at the chin a thick tuft of brown beard, leaving his cheeks and
lips clean shaven. The feverish agitation of the man and the incessant
cares of public affairs had furrowed his forehead and left their marks
on his features without, however, in any way affecting the august
serenity that an irreproachable conscience imparts to the physiognomy of
an honorable man. There was nothing benigner or more affectionate than
his smile when under the influence of the tender sentiments so familiar
to his heart. There was nothing more imposing than his bearing, or more
threatening than his looks when, as powerful an orator as he was a great
citizen, Etienne Marcel thundered with the indignation of an honest and
brave soul against the acts of cowardice and treason and the crimes of
the feudal nobility and the despotic crown. The provost wore the red and
blue head-gear together with the emblazoned brooch that distinguished
the other councilmen. Among these, John Maillart often during the
procession gave his arm to Marcel, who, fatigued by the long march
through the streets of Paris, cordially accepted the support of one of
his oldest friends. Since youth Marcel had lived in close intimacy with
Maillart, but the latter, ever keeping concealed the enviousness that
the glory of Marcel inspired him with, could not now wholly repress a
bitter smile at the enthusiastic acclaim that saluted Marcel along the
route.
A woman clad in long mourning robes and whose presence seemed out of
place at such a ceremony marched beside Maillart. It was his wife,
Petronille, still young and passing handsome, but of atrabilious and
harsh mien. Each time that the heralds finished the mournful psalmody
and before they began it anew, Petronille Maillart would break out into
sobs and moans, and raising and wringing her arms in despair cried out:
"Unhappy Perrin Mace! Vengeance upon his ashes! Vengeance!" The
plaintive outcries and the contortions of Madam Maillart seemed,
however, to excite more surprise than interest with the crowd.
"By Jupiter!" cried Rufin the Tankard-smasher, "what brings that
bellowing woman to this funeral? What makes her demean herself like
that, as if she were possessed? She is neither the widow nor any
relative of Perrin Mace."
"For that reason her presence is all the more admirable," observed the
man of the furred cap addressing the crowd. "Behold her, friends! Do you
see how her despair testifies the extent to which she, as well as her
husband, share in the terrible fate of poor Perrin Mace?... You are
witnesses, friends, that Dame Petronille is the only councilman's wife
who assists at the ceremony!"
"That's true!" said several voices. "Poor, dear woman! She must feel
sadly distracted."
"Yes, indeed. And surely that is not the case with the wife of Marcel,
our first magistrate. She and the others remain calmly at home, without
at all concerning themselves about this public sorrow," put in the man
of the furred cap. "Fail not to take notice!"
"By the bowels of the Pope!" cried the Tankard-smasher. "Marcel's wife
acts like a sensible body. She is right not to come out and exhibit
herself and utter shrieks fit to deafen Beelzebub just when the drums
are silent.... The affliction of that bellowing woman looks to me like a
sheet of music, marked on time. That woman is playing a comedy."
"You vainly try to pass the matter off as a joke, master student,"
rejoined the man of the furred cap. "It will, nevertheless, be noted
that the wife of Maillart assisted at the funeral of Perrin Mace, and
that the wife of Marcel did not. Hm! Hm! My friends, that gives room for
many suspicions; or, rather, it confirms certain rumors."
"What suspicions?" asked Rufin; "What rumors? Explain yourself."
But without answering the student the man of the furred cap was lost in
the crowd, while continuing to whisper to those that he came in contact
with. During this slight incident, the funeral procession had continued
to file by. Notable townsmen, carrying funeral torches, marched behind
the councilmen; they were followed by the trade guilds, each headed by
its banner; finally the rear was brought up by a long line of people of
all conditions uttering imprecations against the Regent and his court,
and acclaiming Marcel with ever increasing enthusiasm. Marcel, the crowd
declared, would know how to avenge the fresh and sanguinary court
iniquity.
From mouth to mouth the announcement was carried that, after the
ceremony, Marcel would address the people in the large hall of the
Convent of the Cordeliers. William Caillet silently assisted at this
scene which seemed to impress him deeply. After a few moments'
reflections he overcame his rustic timidity and drew Rufin the
Tankard-smasher aside by the arm just as the latter was about to walk
away. The student turned around, and yielding to the joviality of his
nature as well as purposing to haze the rustic after the time-honored
practice of the University of Paris, said to him banteringly: "I wager,
dear rustic, that you overheard me speaking of one of my sweethearts!
Hein! I see through you, my sylvan swain! You would like to admire the
town beauties. By the bowels of the Pope! You shall have your pick--"
Hurt by the student's banter, William Caillet answered him gruffly: "I
am a stranger in Paris; I come from a great distance--"
"Oh! You would like to enter the University, would you?" Rufin
interrupted him with redoubled hilarity. "You are somewhat too bearded
for a bachelor; but that does not matter; what faculty would you choose?
theology or medicine? arts, letters or canonical law?"
"Oh, these townsmen!" exclaimed the old peasant with pungent bitterness.
"They are no better than the people of the castles. Go, Jacques
Bonhomme, you have enemies everywhere and nowhere a friend."
Saying this, Caillet started to walk away. But touched by the sad accent
of the peasant, Rufin held him back: "Friend, if I have hurt your
feelings, excuse me. We townsmen are not the enemies of Jacques Bonhomme
for the reason that our enemies are common to us both."
Ever suspicious, Caillet remained silent and sought to discover from the
face of the student whether his words did not conceal a trap or implied
some fresh ridicule. Rufin surmised the apprehensions of the serf,
examined him once more attentively, and now struck by the lines of
sorrow on his face, said to him: "May I die like a dog if I am not
speaking sincerely to you. Friend, you seem to have suffered much; you
are a stranger; I am at your disposal! I do not offer you my purse
because it is empty; but I offer you half of the pallet on which I sleep
in a student's room with a chum from my province, and a part of our
meager pittance."
Now convinced by the frankness of the townsman, the peasant answered: "I
have no time to stay in Paris; I only wish to speak with Jocelyn the
Champion and Marcel; could you help me to that?"
"You know Jocelyn the Champion?" Rufin asked with deep interest, while a
cloud of sadness darkened his countenance.
"Did any misfortune befall him?"
"He left here to assist at a tourney in Beauvoisis some time ago, and
the poor fellow never returned.... His aged and infirm father died of
grief at the disappearance of his son. Brave Jocelyn! I entered the
University the year before he left it. He was the best and most
courageous lad in the world.... He must have been killed at the tourney,
or assassinated on his return to Paris. Highwaymen infest the roads."
"No; he was not killed at the tourney of Nointel. The night after the
passage of arms I saw him take his horse to return to Paris."
"Are you from Beauvoisis?"
"Yes," answered Caillet; and he added with a sigh: "Well, that young
man is dead! Great pity! There are few like him who love Jacques
Bonhomme." After a moment's silence the peasant resumed: "How can I
manage to meet Marcel?"
"By following me to the convent of the Cordeliers where he is to address
the people after the funeral of Perrin Mace. Come with me."
"Go ahead," said Caillet; "I shall follow you."
"Come, we shall go out by the Coquiller gate; that's the shortest
route."
The old peasant walked in silence by the side of Rufin who sought to
draw from him some words on the subject of his trip. But the serf
remained impenetrable. Going out by the gate of St. Denis and following
the streets of the suburbs, that were much less crowded than those of
the city, Caillet and his guide had just left Traversine to enter
Montmartre street when they heard the distant funeral chant of priests
interspersed from time to time with plaintive clarion notes. The peasant
noticed with surprise that as the chant drew nearer the residents along
the streets closed and bolted their doors.
"By the bowels of the Pope!" exclaimed the student. "Accident is serving
us well. You have seen honors paid to the remains of Perrin Mace by the
officials and the people; you will now see the honors paid to John
Baillet, the cause of the iniquity that Paris is feeling indignant
about. Yes, Baillet's remains are honored by the Regent and his court.
Come quick; the procession is probably going to the convent of the
Augustian monks." Hastening his steps and followed by the peasant, the
student reached the corner of Montmartre and Quoque-Heron streets,
opposite which stood the convent, whose doors opened to receive the
coffin. "Look," said the student turning to Caillet. "How significant is
not the contrast presented by these two funerals. At Perrin Mace's a
large concourse of people were present, serious and moved with just
indignation; at John Baillet's nobody assists but the Regent, the
princes, his brothers, the courtiers and the officers of the royal
household--not one representative of the people! The townsmen leave a
deep void around this royal demonstration which is indulged in as a sort
of challenge to the popular one. Tell me, friend, does not the very
aspect of the two processions appeal to the eye. At the funeral of
Perrin Mace we saw a great mass composed of bourgeois and artisans
plainly or even poorly dressed; at the funeral of John Baillet we see
only a handful of courtiers and officers brilliantly attired in gold and
silk and velvet, and decked in magnificent uniforms."
William Caillet listened to the student, seeking to bore through him
with his eyes, and shaking his head answered pensively: "Jocelyn did not
deceive me," and after a pause he proceeded: "But what are the Parisians
still waiting for? We are ready, and have long been!"
"What do you mean?" asked Rufin.
Immediately relapsing into his former close-mouthedness, the peasant
made no answer. The procession just turned into the street. The coffin
of John Baillet, heavily inlaid with gold and preceded by royal heralds
and sergeants-at-arms was borne by twelve menials of the Regent in
costly livery. The young prince and his brothers, accompanied by the
seigneurs of the court, alone followed the coffin. Charles, the Duke of
Normandy and now Regent of the French, as the eldest son of King John,
at the time an English prisoner, had, like his brothers and the French
nobility, fled ignominiously from the battlefield of Poitiers. The young
man who now governed Gaul was barely twenty years of age. He was of
frail physique and pale complexion. His sickly face concealed under a
kind and timid mien a large fund of obstinacy, of perfidy, of wile and
of wickedness--odious vices usually rare in youths, except of royal
lineage. Magnificently dressed in gold-embroidered green velvet, a black
head-gear ornamented with a chain and brooch of costly stones on his
head, the mean-spirited and languishing Regent marched slowly leaning on
a cane. At a short distance behind him advanced his brothers, and then
came the seigneurs of the court, among them the marshal of Normandy,
who, ordered by the young prince, had superintended the mutilation and
subsequent execution of Perrin Mace. The marshal, who was the Sire of
Conflans, one of the Regent's favorites, superb and arrogant, cast upon
the few and straggling spectators disdainful and threatening looks, and
exchanged a few words with the Sire of Charny, a courtier no less loved
by the prince than he was detested by the people. Suddenly Rufin the
Tankard-smasher felt his arm rudely seized by the vigorous hand of
Caillet, who with distended and flaming eyes, and his breast heaving
with pain, gasped out:
"Look!... There they are!... There are the two! The Sire of Nointel and
that other, the knight of Chaumontel!... Oh, do you see them both with
their scarlet hats, down there with the tall man in an ermine cloak?"
cried out Caillet despite himself.
"Yes, yes; I see the two seigneurs," answered the student, astonished at
the emotion manifested by the peasant. "But what makes you tremble so?"
"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.