saying smilingly to
the man, "You will not be listened to, fair sir." Charles had the spirit
of coolness and discretion; and "he thought," says his contemporary,
Christine de Pisan, "that if this fellow had been slain, the city which
had been so rebellious might probably have been excited thereby."
Charles, on being resettled in Paris, showed neither clemency nor
cruelty. He let the reaction against Stephen Marcel run its course, and
turned it to account without further exciting it or prolonging it beyond
measure. The property of some of the condemned was confiscated; some
attempts at a conspiracy for the purpose of avenging the provost of
trades-men were repressed with severity, and John Maillart and his family
were loaded with gifts and favors. On becoming king, Charles determined
himself to hold his son at the baptismal font; but Robert Lecocq, Bishop
of Laon, the most intimate of Marcel's accomplices, returned quietly to
his diocese; two of Marcel's brothers, William and John, owing their
protection, it is said, to certain youthful reminiscences on the prince's
part, were exempted from all prosecution; Marcels widow even recovered a
portion of his property; and as early as the 10th of August, 1358,
Charles published an amnesty, from which he excepted only "those who had
been in the secret council of the provost of tradesmen in respect of the
great treason;" and on the same day another amnesty quashed all
proceedings for deeds done during the Jacquery, "whether by nobles or
ignobles." Charles knew that in acts of rigor or of grace impartiality
conduces to the strength and the reputation of authority.

The death of Stephen Marcel and the ruin of his party were fatal to the
plots and ambitious hopes of the King of Navarre. At the first moment he
hastened to renew his alliance with the King of England, and to
recommence war in Normandy, Picardy, and Champagne against the regent of
France. But several of his local expeditions were unsuccessful; the
temperate and patient policy of the regent rallied round him the
populations aweary of war and anarchy; negotiations were opened between
the two princes; and their agents were laboriously discussing conditions
of peace when Charles of Navarre suddenly interfered in person, saying,
"I would fain talk over matters with the lord duke regent, my brother."
We know that his wife was Joan of France, the dauphin's sister. "Hereat
there was great joy," says the chronicler, "amon