Although long made acquainted by experience with the Regent's profound duplicity--a degree of duplicity almost incredible at so tender an age--Marcel was deceived by what seemed the sincerity of the young man's distressful accent. His touching prayer, his tears, the sorrow which he did not fear to express at the death of his two councilors--all combined to induce the belief that, frightened by the terrible reprisals that had taken place under his own eyes, the Regent was sincerely contrite at his errors, and that, convinced at last regarding his own interests, which commanded him to break with the evil past, he now really desired to march on the straight path. Marcel congratulated himself on the happy change, and said to Jocelyn in a low voice: "Order our people away from the gallery. Let them leave the palace and assemble under the large window of the Louvre. You and Rufin may stay with me. I shall take the Regent out of this chamber. The sight of the corpses is too painful to him." Jocelyn and the student executed the orders of Marcel. Crouching on the floor the Regent did not cease moaning and sobbing. The seigneur of Norville left his hiding place without being noticed by the prince, and approaching him on tip-toe whispered in his ear: "Sire, the most faithful of all your servitors is happy of having braved a thousand dangers and deaths sooner than to leave you alone with these bandits and rebels. Allow me, my noble and dear master, to help you to rise." The Regent obeyed mechanically, and noticing that Marcel, who was just giving his instructions to Jocelyn and Rufin, could neither see nor hear him, he whispered back to Norville: "Do not leave me. Watch for a moment when I can speak to you without being seen by anybody"; observing thereupon that Marcel was again approaching, while the champion and Rufin both left the room, he uttered a piteous moan, turned to the corpses of the two marshals and muttered in a smothered voice: "Adieu, oh, you who loved me and whose sad errors I shared. May God receive you in his Paradise!" "Come, Sire, come," said Marcel with kindness, leading the Regent to the gallery; "come, lean upon me!" The seigneur of Norville followed the prince from whom he did not take his eyes and said to the provost in an undertone: "Oh, Master Marcel! Be the protector, the tutor of my poor young master.... He always had a tender feeling for you!"