The troops were still strong enough, however, to make the fight even; and after the first moment of surprise, their discipline told. They formed in lines facing up and down the street, and settled down with grim resolve for the deadly work before them.
Then came a loud cry of “A barricade! A barricade!”
In little more than a minute a couple of heavy waggons were trundled out from a side street, and turned over close to where we three were waiting. Out from the houses were fetched a heterogeneous collection of furniture—bedsteads, mattresses, couches, chests of drawers, shop counters, chairs, tables, anything and everything that lay to hand was seized and brought out. Some were even hurled from windows above. And behind the impromptu rampart armed men crouched mad with long pent passion, and eager to wreak vengeance upon their enemies.
Meanwhile Ladislas had viewed the scene with fast mounting distress and agitation. The deliberateness of these last preparations for the fight seemed to appal him. The sight of this harvest of violence sprung from the seeds of his own revolutionary theorizing wrung his heart. Dreaming of victory by peaceful means, the horror of this bloodshed and carnage goaded him to despair. His suffering was acute.
Heedless of his own safety he rushed hither and thither among those who were leading the mob, dissuading them from violence and urging them to abandon their resistance.
Half a dozen times when he had dashed out to press his plea of non-resistance, I had had almost to drag him back into safety.
The lull that came when the barricade was forming gave him a fresh opportunity. In vain I told him that nothing could stay the fight now that the smouldering wrath of years of wrong had flamed into the mad fury of the moment, and when the wild passions of both sides had been roused.
Volna joined her voice to mine and urged him.
But in his frenzy of emotional remorse, he paid no heed to us. “Don’t you see that all this horror is the result of what I in my blindness have been doing?” he cried. “The thought of it is torment and the sight of it hell. Would you have me skulk here to save my skin when an effort now may stop further bloodshed?”
With that he rushed out.