of it.  “Some of the constable’s people.”  He himself came up on his big charger, with satisfaction and courtesy in his mien.  Some little time was required for opening the gate; a long ladder was let down; and Marshal Isle-Adam was the first to mount, and planted on the wall the standard of France.  The fastenings of the drawbridge were burst, and when it was let down, the constable made his entry on horseback, riding calmly down St. Jacques Street, in the midst of a joyous and comforted crowd.  “My good friends,” he said to them, “the good King Charles, and I on his behalf, do thank you a hundred thousand times for yielding up to him so quietly the chief city of his kingdom.  If there be amongst you any, of whatsoever condition he may be, who hath offended against my lord ’the king, all is forgiven, in the case both of the absent and the present.”

[Illustration:  The Constable Made his Entry on Horseback——­150]

Then he caused it to be proclaimed by sound of trumpet throughout the streets that none of his people should be so bold, on pain of hanging, as to take up quarters in the house of any burgher against his will, or to use any reproach whatever, or do the least displeasure to any.  At sight of the public joy, the English had retired to the Bastille, where the constable was disposed to besiege them.  “My lord,” said the burghers to him, “they will surrender; do not reject their offer; it is so far a fine thing enough to have thus recovered Paris; often, on the contrary, many constables and many marshals have been driven out of it.  Take contentedly what God hath granted you.”  The burghers’ prediction was not unverified.  The English sallied out of the Bastille by the gate which opened on the fields, and went and took boat in the rear of the Louvre.  Next day abundance of provisions arrived in Paris; and the gates were opened to the country folks.  The populace freely manifested their joy at being rid of the English.  “It was plain to see,” was the saving, “that they were not in France to remain; not one of them had been seen to sow a field with corn or build a house; they destroyed their quarters without a thought of repairing them; they had not restored, peradventure, a single fireplace.  There was only their regent, the Duke of Bedford, who was fond of building and making the poor people work; he would have liked peace; but the nature of those English is to be always at war with their neighbors, and accordingly they all made a bad end; thank God there have already died in France more than seventy thousand of them.”

Up to the taking of Paris by the constable the Duke of Burgundy had kept himself in reserve, and had maintained a tacit neutrality towards England; he had merely been making, without noisy demonstration, preparations for an enterprise in which he, as Count of Flanders, was very much interested.  The success of Richemont inspired him with a hope, and perhaps with a jealous desire, of showing his power and his patriotism as