him to wear a hat that bore the colours of the people, blue and red.
After a tremendous slaughter, Marcel and his principal friends were
themselves dispatched by the partisans of the Dauphin. During all these
convulsions in the interior of Paris, it was surrounded on one side by
the troops of the King of Navarre, whilst the forces of the Dauphin were
hovering under the walls, the different parties skirmishing with each
other, and all living upon the pillage and contributions levied on the
inhabitants of the adjacent country.

Meantime famine thinned the population of Paris, cut off from any means
of receiving provisions from without; but on account of the wall
constructed by Marcel, Edward III of England found it impossible to make
any progress in the siege, and having exhausted the country for some
leagues of extent, was obliged to retreat for want of food to maintain
his army. The scarcity of money was such in Paris at that period, that
they were compelled to have a circulation of leather coin, with a little
nail of gold or silver stuck in the middle; yet when John returned from
his captivity in England, the streets were hung with carpets wherever he
had to pass, and a cloth of gold borne over his head, the fountains
poured forth wine, and the city made him a present of a silver buffet
weighing a thousand marcs. At this period schools existed in Paris
sanctioned by the government, when the pay for each scholar was so
contemptible that they must have been for the use of the middle
classes, whose means were very confined; they were called _Petites
Écoles_ (Little Schools), and paid a certain sum for having the
privilege to teach; the number in the reign of John was sixty-three, of
which forty-one were under masters, and twenty-two under mistresses. In
some of the streets of Paris it was the custom to have two large doors
or gates, which were closed at night, and the names of several streets
still bear evidence of that practice, as the _Rue des deux Portes_; the