The other seigneurs and prelates, who had run to the royal chamber, fled back distracted by the door that had admitted them. When the Regent, who, fainting with terror, had crouched back upon the bed with his face hidden in his hands, looked up again, he found himself alone with Marcel and not far from the prostrate corpses of his two councilors. Marcel's armed men had slowly departed through the gallery together with Caillet, while Jocelyn was engaged near a window in bandaging with his handkerchief the wound of the student. Finally, protruding under the drapery of the bed behind which he had held himself all the while motionless as a mouse, the feet were seen of the seigneur of Norville, who had lacked even the strength to flee. "Mercy, Master Marcel!" cried the Regent, trembling with fear and throwing himself at Marcel's feet with arms outstretched in supplication and his face in tears. "Do not kill me; have pity upon me, my good father! Mercy!" "We have no thought of killing you," Marcel answered, painfully touched by the suspicion; and stooping down to raise the Regent added: "May my name be accursed if such a crime ever entered my mind! Fear not, Sire! Rise! The people of Paris are good." "Oh, my good father! I beg your pardon on my knees for having ignored your wise counsels and listened to bad advisers." Breaking out into sobs, the young prince added, wringing his hands in despair: "Oh, good God! Alone and so young to be far away from my father, who is held a prisoner, is it any fault of mine if I placed confidence in the men around me?" The Regent's eyes fell upon the corpses of the two marshals. In heart-rending accents he proceeded: "There they are, the men who misled me! They loved me! They knew me since my cradle! But, like myself, they were blind in their error. Oh, good father! Reproach me not for weeping over the fate of these unfortunate men. It is my last adieu to them," and still on his knees, the Regent crouched lower, his face in his hands and continued sobbing--with rage, not repentance.