Again Marcel dickered with Charles the Bad who was always ready to dicker with anybody on the chance of something turning out for his own profit. He was encamped at Saint Denis. The regent’s army almost surrounded the city and was in communication with a friendly party inside of which Jean Maillard was the most prominent. Confident that he would be put to death if he were captured by the prince, Marcel arranged to open the city to Navarre on the night of July 31, 1358. Maillard was in charge of the Porte Saint Denis and when Marcel demanded the keys he refused to give them up. Then he leaped on his horse, took the banner of the city from the Hôtel de Ville and rode through street after street shouting “Montjoie Saint Denis,” the rallying cry of the monarch from early days. There was lively fighting among the citizens throughout the evening. Marcel had sent word to Charles the Bad that entrance might be made by the east gate, the Porte Saint Antoine. As he neared it, key in hand, about eleven o’clock that night, he was met by Maillard. “Étienne, Étienne,” cried Maillard, “what are you doing here at this hour?” “What business is it of yours, Jehan! I am here to act for the city whose government has been entrusted to me.” “That is not so,” cried Jehan with an oath. “You are not here at this hour for any good end; and I call your attention,” he said to the men with him, “to the keys of the gate that he is carrying for the purpose of betraying the city.” “Jehan, you lie!” “Traitor, ’tis you who lie!” A sharp fight arose between the two bands and Maillard himself killed Marcel. He explained his course the next day to the people, “and the greater part thanked God with folded hands for the grace He had done them.” When Charles the regent rode into Paris on the second day of August he passed a churchyard where the naked bodies of Marcel and two of his companions were exposed on the same spot where the provost had exposed the bodies of the two marshals. It is not possible to tell now--perhaps it was not possible to tell in his own day--how much of Marcel’s activity was due to a sincere desire to improve the economic and political condition of the burghers of Paris, and how much was the result of his own ambition. Perhaps he was ahead of his time; certainly he was mistaken in his methods. Whatever the judgment upon him it is undeniable that he was a man of extraordinary force and a “spellbinder” whose personality has won him admiration through the centuries. Beside the Hôtel de Ville his statue stands to-day, a stern figure looking south across the river, and mounted on a horse which has been proclaimed as the finest bronze steed in the world.