One circumstance ought to have caused him some glimmering of suspicion.

At the same time that the dauphin was sending to the deputies his letters of convocation, Marcel himself also sent to them, as if he possessed the right, either in his own name or in that of the thirty-six delegate-commissioners, of calling them together.

But a still more serious matter came to open the dauphin's eyes to the danger he had fallen into.

During the night between the 8th and 9th of November, 1357, immediately after the re-opening of the states, Charles the Bad, King of Navarre, was carried off by a surprise from the castle of Arleux in Cambresis, where he had been confined; and his liberators removed him first of all to Amiens and then to Paris itself, where the popular party gave him a triumphant reception.

Marcel and his sheriffs had decided upon and prepared, at a private council, this dramatic incident, so contrary to the promises they had but lately made to the dauphin.