heart and ear to vile fellows corrupted by avarice.  This vice was a fruitful source of hurt, as well as blame, to himself, to say nothing of unhappiness to many.  The cupidity of this prince always caused him to incline towards those who promised him most.  All his own oaths, and those of the bishops and the grandees, were consequently violated.”  The charter sealed with the king’s seal was annulled; and on the part of the king and the bishop, an order was issued to all the magistrates of the commune to cease from their functions, to give up the seal and banner of the town, and to no longer ring the belfry chimes which rang out the opening and closing of their audiences.  But at this proclamation, so violent was the uproar in the town, that the king, who had hitherto lodged in a private hotel, thought it prudent to leave, and go to pass the night in the episcopal palace, which was surrounded by strong walls.  Not content with this precaution, and probably a little ashamed of what he had done, he left Laon the next morning at daybreak, with all his train, without waiting for the festival of Easter, for the celebration of which he had undertaken his journey.

All the day after his departure the shops of the tradespeople and the houses of the innkeepers were kept closed; no sort of article was offered for sale; everybody remained shut up at home.  But when there is wrath at the bottom of men’s souls, the silence and stupor of the first paroxysm are of short duration.  Next day a rumor spread that the bishop and the grandees were busy “in calculating the fortunes of all the citizens, in order to demand that, to supply the sum promised to the king, each should pay on account of the destruction of the commune as much as each had given for its establishment.”  In a fit of violent indignation the burghers assembled; and forty of them bound themselves by oath, for life or death, to kill the bishop and all those grandees who had labored for the ruin of the commune.  The archdeacon, Anselm, a good sort of man, of obscure birth, who heartily disapproved of the bishop’s perjury, went nevertheless and warned him, quite privately, and without betraying any one, of the danger that threatened him, urging him not to leave his house, and particularly not to accompany the procession on Easter-day.  “Pooh!” answered the bishop, “I die by the hands of such fellows!” Next day, nevertheless, he did not appear at matins, and did not set foot within the church; but when the hour for the procession came, fearing to be accused of cowardice, he issued forth at the head of his clergy, closely followed by his domestics and some knights with arms and armor under their clothes.  As the company filed past, one of the forty conspirators, thinking the moment favorable for striking the blow, rushed out suddenly from under an arch, with a shout of “Commune! commune!” A low murmur ran through the throng; but not a soul joined in the shout or the movement, and the ceremony carne to an