barriers which had been placed before the gates of the city to prevent anybody from entering without permission, were cut down with battle-axes; the very gates were torn from their hinges; they were thrown down upon the king’s highway, and the procession went over them, as if to trample under foot the fierce pride of the Parisians.  When he was once in the city, and was leaving Notre Dame, the king sent abroad throughout all the streets an order forbidding any one, under the most severe penalties, from insulting or causing the least harm to the burgesses in any way whatsoever; and the constable had two plunderers strung up to the windows of the houses in which they had committed their thefts.  But fundamental order having been thus upheld, reprisals began to be taken for the outbreaks of the Parisians, municipal magistrates or populace, burgesses or artisans, rich or poor, in the course of the two preceding years;—­arrests, imprisonments, fines, confiscations, executions, severities of all kinds fell upon the most conspicuous and the most formidable of those who had headed or favored popular movements.  The most solemn and most iniquitous of these punishments was that which befell the advocate-general, John Desmarets.  “For nearly a whole year,” says the monk of St. Denis, “he had served as mediator between the king and the Parisians; he had often restrained the fury and stopped the excesses of the populace, by preventing them from giving rein to their cruelty.  He was always warning the factious that to provoke the wrath of the king and the princes was to expose themselves to almost certain death.  But, yielding to the prayers of this rebellious and turbulent mob, he, instead of leaving Paris as the rest of his profession had done, had remained there, and throwing himself boldly amidst the storms of civil discord, he had advised the assumption of arms and the defence of the city, which he knew was very displeasing to the king and the grandees.”  When he was taken to execution, “he was put on a car higher than the rest, that he might be better seen by everybody.”  Nothing shook for a moment the firmness of this old man of seventy years.  “Where are they who judged me?” he said:  “let them come and set forth the reasons for my death.  Judge me, O God, and separate my cause from that of the evil-doers.”  On his arrival at the market-place, some of the spectators called out to him, “Ask the king’s mercy, Master John, that he may pardon your offences.”  He turned round, saying, “I served well and loyally his great-grandfather King Philip, his grandfather King John, and his father King Charles; none of those kings ever had anything to reproach me with, and this one would not reproach me any the more if he were of a grown man’s age and experience.  I don’t suppose that he is a whit to blame for such a sentence, and I have no cause to cry him mercy.  To God alone must I cry for mercy, and I pray Him to forgive my sins.”  Public respect accompanied the old and courageous magistrate beyond the scaffold; his corpse was taken up by his friends, and at a later period honorably buried in the church of St. Catherine.