d’Aci, one of the twenty-two royal officers denounced by the estates in the preceding year; and he was massacred in a pastry-cook’s shop.  Marcel, continuing his road, arrived at the palace, and ascended, followed by a band of armed men, to the apartments of the dauphin, “whom he requested very sharply,” says Froissart, “to restrain so many companies from roving about on all sides, damaging and plundering the country.  The duke replied that he would do so willingly if he had the wherewithal to do it, but that it was for him who received the dues belonging to the kingdom to discharge that duty.  I know not why or how,” adds Froissart, “but words were multiplied on the part of all, and became very high.”  “My lord duke,” suddenly said the provost, “do not alarm yourself; but we have somewhat to do here;” and turning towards his fellows in the caps, he said, “Dearly beloved, do that for the which ye are come.”  Immediately the Lord de Conflans, Marshal of Champagne, and Robert de Clermont, Marshal of Normandy, noble and valiant gentlemen, and both at the time unarmed, were massacred so close to the dauphin and his couch, that his robe was covered with their blood.  The dauphin shuddered; and the rest of his officers fled.  “Take no heed, lord duke,” said Marcel; “you have nought to fear.”  He handed to the dauphin his own red and blue cap, and himself put on the dauphin’s, which was of black stuff with golden fringe.  The corpses of the two marshals were dragged into the court-yard of the palace, where they remained until evening without any one’s daring to remove them; and Marcel with his fellows repaired to the mansion-house, and harangued from an open window the mob collected on the Place de Greve.  “What has been done is for the good and the profit of the kingdom,” said he; “the dead were false and wicked traitors.”  “We do own it, and will maintain it!” cried the people who were about him.

[Illustration:  The Murder of the Marshals——­345]

The house from which Marcel thus addressed the people was his own property, and was called the Pillar-house.  There he accommodated the town-council, which had formerly held its sittings in divers parlors.

For a month after this triple murder, committed with such official parade, Marcel reigned dictator in Paris.  He removed from the council of thirty-six deputies such members as he could not rely upon, and introduced his own confidants.  He cited the council, thus modified, to express approval of the blow just struck; and the deputies, “some from conviction and others from doubt (that is, fear), answered that they believed that for what had been done there had been good and just cause.”  The King of Navarre was recalled from Nantes to Paris, and the dauphin was obliged to assign to him, in the king’s name, “as a make-up for his losses,” ten thousand livres a year on landed property in Languedoc.  Such was the young prince’s condition that, almost every day, he was reduced to the necessity of dining