nforcements, and heads began to fall with startling
rapidity on the scaffold in the Vieux Marche, for the town prisons
were choked with the rebels who had been arrested. To all demands for
pardon, the quieter sort of the inhabitants were ruthlessly told, "Go
to your own King, Jehan le Gras, and let him save you." But the worthy
draper had taken care to fly from Rouen as soon as he could get out of
his house, for he found the pains of royalty far outweighed its
privileges. At last when Easter Eve dawned on a most unhappy town,
news came that the young King with his uncles the Regents was waiting
at Pont de l'Arche and would only enter armed and by a breach, into
the town which had rebelled against him.

So they battered down the walls by the Porte Martainville, and the
wives and mothers and sisters of the men condemned to death in prison
helped the work, weeping at their task; and as they wrought, it was
sure some woman's heart that had the sweet imagination to deck the
town with joyous emblems, that so, by the mercy of God this young
monarch of only thirteen years might perchance be moved to compassion,
and bethink him of their former loyalty. So when the King came in, his
eyes lighted only upon banners, and tapestries, and evergreens; and
flowers fell upon him from the windows, and the leaves of the forest
strewed the roads beneath him, and from every corner came the cry of
"Noel, Noel, long live the King!" The welcome had at first been the
desperate cry of people in sore straits; but at the sight of the boy
himself, it turned into a genuine shout of admiration, for, says the
chronicle, "he was of sovereign beauty both in face and body, and full
of loving-kindness, and sweet charity, insomuch that all men who saw
him were in great joy and love of him."

But the Duke of Anjou would not allow the young King's feelings to be
moved; and it was the Duke who as they passed the belfry bade "Rouvel"
to be taken down, because he had rung out the signal for revolt. Yet
the cries of "Noel, Noel!" continued every step of the progress
through the town, until they gave way to a silence that had an even
greater effect upon the impressionable boy. For he was welcomed at the
great western gate of the Cathedral by the Archbishop Guillaume de
Lestrange, and by him was led before the sepulchre in which the heart
of Charles V. lay buried, bearing testimony for ever to his love for
Rouen. Then the King remembered how his father, each holy