"Some heads will be demanded!" answered Marcel with Spartan simplicity. "Yes, the Regent will demand my own head first of all and also the heads of the governors, the principal leaders in the rebellion.... Very well! We shall deliver our heads to the Regent.... My friends and I are in accord upon that.... This conversation elucidates, as I expected of it, the facts that are to be considered, and confirms me in my resolution. At one in the morning I shall proceed to the gate of St. Antoine, where I shall expect to meet Charles the Wicked. If he fails to come, I shall take horse and ride to the Regent's camp at Charenton. I shall offer him my life; if that does not suffice him, I shall offer him the lives of my friends: they have authorized me to dispose of their heads. In exchange, I shall demand of the prince the observances of the reforms sworn to in 1357. I shall demand a good deal so as to obtain something.... These reforms will smooth the day for the advent of our plan of government, based upon the federation of the provinces and the permanence of the sovereign national assemblies that will at first delegate the appearance of a crown to a phantom king, and later, by wholly suppressing the idol, suppress royalty itself. The government of free Gaul, free and confederated, will then be again what it was at the time of the invasion of Cæsar, as we learn from history and as one of your family's legends confirms." "At the time of the abolition of the commune of Laon and of so many other municipal republics that Louis the Lusty destroyed, my ancestor Fergan the Quarryman said to his son, who despaired of the future: 'Hope, my child, hope!... Have faith in the slow, painful but irresistible progress of the race.' He spoke truly! Thanks to your genius, I might have seen in this very century the municipal government of the old communes--free, benevolent and wise governments--applied no longer to one town only but to all Gaul. Be praised for having promoted such a step forward."