peace or guarantees for his own security in case of extreme danger.  The King of Navarre lent a ready ear to these overtures; he had no scruple about negotiating with this or that individual, this or that party, flattering himself that he would make one or the other useful for his own purposes.  Marcel had no difficulty in discovering that the real design of the King of Navarre was to set aside the house of Valois and the Plantagenets together, and to become King of France himself, as a descendant, in his own person, of St. Louis, though one degree more remote.  An understanding was renewed between the two, such as it is possible to have between two personal interests fundamentally different, but capable of being for the moment mutually helpful.  Marcel, under pretext of defence against the besiegers, admitted into Paris a pretty large number of English in the pay of the King of Navarre.  Before long, quarrels arose between the Parisians and these unpopular foreigners; on the 21st of July, 1358, during one of these quarrels, twenty-four English were massacred by the people; and four hundred others, it is said, were in danger of undergoing the same fate, when Marcel came up and succeeded in saving their lives by having them imprisoned in the Louvre.  The quarrel grew hotter and spread farther.  The people of Paris went and attacked other mercenaries of the King of Navarre, chiefly English, who were occupying St. Denis and St. Cloud.  The Parisians were beaten; and the King of Navarre withdrew to St. Denis.  On the 27th of July, Marcel boldly resolved to set at liberty and send over to him the four hundred English imprisoned in the Louvre.  He had them let out, accordingly, and himself escorted them as far as the gate St. Honore, in the midst of a throng that made no movement for all its irritation.  Some of Marcel’s satellites who formed the escort cried out as they went, “Has anybody aught to say against the setting of these prisoners at liberty?” The Parisians remembered their late reverse, and not a voice was raised.  “Strongly moved as the people of Paris were in their hearts against the provost of tradesmen,” says a contemporary chronicle, there was not a man who durst commence a riot.”

Marcel’s position became day by day more critical.  The dauphin, encamped with his army around Paris, was keeping up secret but very active communications with it; and a party, numerous and already growing in popularity, was being formed there in his favor.  Men of note, who were lately Marcel’s comrades, were now pronouncing against him; and John Maillart, one of the four chosen captains of the municipal forces, was the most vigilant.  Marcel, at his wit’s end, made an offer to the King of Navarre to deliver Paris up to him on the night between the 31st of July and the 1st of August.  All was ready for carrying out this design.  During the day of the 31st of July, Marcel would have changed the keepers of the St. Denis gate, but Maillart opposed him, rushed to