"Friends," resumed the man of the furred cap, smiling disdainfully, "you seem to have nothing but the name of Marcel in your mouths. Although Master Marcel is a provost and president of the town council, yet he is not everything on earth. The other councilmen are his superiors in trade. Take, for instance, John Maillart, there you have a worthy townsman--" "Who is it dare compare others with the great Marcel!" cried Rufin the Tankard-smasher. "By Jupiter, whoever utters such foolishness quacks like a goose!" "Hm! Hm!" grumbled the man of the furred cap; "I said so!" "Then it is you who quack like a goose!" promptly replied the Tankard-smasher. "What! You dare maintain that Marcel is not the foremost townsman! He, the friend of the people!" "Aye, aye!" came from the crowd. "Marcel is our saviour. Without him Paris would by this time have been taken and sacked by the English!" "Marcel," resumed the Tankard-smasher with increasing enthusiasm, "he who restored economy in our finances, order and security in the city! By the bowels of the Pope! I know something about that! Only a fortnight ago, towards midnight, I with my chum Nicolas the Thin-skinned were beating at the door of a public house on Trace-Pute street. The woman of the house refused us admission, pretending that the girls we were looking for were not in. Thereat I and my friend came near breaking in the door. At that a platoon of cross-bowmen, organized by Marcel to maintain order in the streets, happens to go by, and they arrest and lodge both of us at the Chatelet, despite our privileges as students of the Paris University!... Now dare say that Marcel does not keep order in town!" "That may all be," answered the man of the furred cap; "but any other councilman would have done as much; and Master John Maillart--" "John Maillart!" exclaimed Rufin. "By the bowels of the Pope! Had he or any other, the King himself, dared to encroach upon the franchises of the University, the students, rising en masse, would have poured, arms in hands, out of their quarter of St. Germain and there would have been a battle in Paris. But what is allowed to Marcel, the idol of Paris, is not allowed to any other." "The student is right!" went up from the crowd. "Marcel is our idol because he is just, because he protects the interests of the bourgeois against the court people, of the weak against the strong. Long live Etienne Marcel!" "Without the activity of Marcel, his courage and his foresight, Paris would have been burned down and deluged in blood by the English." "Did not Marcel also keep our town from starvation, when he went himself at the head of the militia as far as Corbeil to protect a cargo of grain that the Navarrais meant to pillage?" "I don't deny that," calmly observed the man of the furred cap with envious insistence. "All I maintain is that, put in the place of Marcel, Maillart would have done as well."