"Serves him right; what did he beat me for?"
The proud father smiled protectingly, and would have waved a blessing but his hands were tied behind his back.
The City Hall Square was crammed with people. They knew that this felon had robbed in the palace, and they had no pity for him. Hence, the Guards had their work cut out to keep them back when the cart stopped at the pillory foot.
Beausire looked on at the uproar and scuffling, as much as to say: "You shall see some fun in awhile; this is nothing to the joker I have up my sleeve!"
When he appeared on the pillory platform, there was general hooting; but at the supreme moment, when the executioner opened the culprit's shirt and pulled down the sleeve to bare the shoulder, and then stooped down to take the red-hot brand, that happened which always does—all was silent before the majesty of the law.
Beausire snatched at this lull, and gathering all his powers, he shouted in a full, ringing and sonorous voice:
"Long live the king! Hurrah for the Prussians! Down with the nation!"
However great a tumult the prisoner may have expected, the one this raised much exceeded it; the protest was not in shouts, but howls. The whole gathering uttered an immense roar and rushed on the pillory.
This time the guards were insufficient to protect their man. Their ranks were broken, the scaffold swarmed upon, the executioner thrown over, and the condemned one torn from the stand and flung into the surging mob.
He would have been flayed, dismembered, and torn to pieces but for one man, arrayed in his scarf as a town officer, who luckily saw it all from the City Hall steps.