"Yes! yes!" came from a number of voices, still from the fringe of the crowd where the young artisans were massed together, "well spoken, Peter Balde! let us have revenge first!"
"Revenge! Revenge!" echoed from those same ranks.
Every word echoed from pillar to pillar in the great, bare, crowded church; and now it was from the altar rails that Mark van Rycke's voice rang out clear and firm:
"What revenge dost propose to take, Peter Balde?" he asked.
The other, thus directly challenged by the man whose influence was paramount in Ghent just now, looked round at his friends for approval. Seeing nothing but eager, flushed faces and eyes that glowed in response to his suggestion, the pride of leadership entered his soul. He was a fine, tall lad who yesterday had done prodigies of valour against the Spanish cavalry. Now he had been gesticulating with both arms above his head so that he was easily distinguishable in the crowd by those who had a clear view, and in order to emphasize his spokesmanship his friends hoisted him upon their shoulders and bearing him aloft they forged their way through the throng until they reached the centre of the main aisle. Here they paused, and Peter Balde could sweep the entire crowd with his enthusiastic glance.
"What I revenge would take?" he said boldly. "Nay! let me rather ask: what revenge must we take, citizens of Ghent? The tyrant even now has abused the most sacred laws of humanity which bid every man to respect the messengers of peace. He is disloyal and ignoble and false. Why should we be honourable and just? He neither appreciates our loyalty nor respects our valour--let us then act in the only way which he can understand. Citizens, we have two thousand prisoners in the cellars of our guildhouses---two thousand Walloons who under the banner of our common tyrant have fought against us ... their nearest kindred. I propose that we kill those two thousand prisoners and send their heads to the tyrant as a direct answer to this last outrage."
"Yes! yes! Well said!" came from every side, from the younger artisans and the apprentices, the hot-headed faction amongst all these brave men--brave themselves but writhing under the terrible humiliation which they had just endured and thirsting for anything that savoured of revenge.
"Yes! yes! the axe for them! send their heads to the tyrant! Well spoken, Peter Balde," they cried.
The others remained silent. Many even amongst the older men perhaps would have echoed the younger ones' call: cruelty breeds cruelty and oppression breeds callous thoughts of revenge. Individually there was hardly a man there who was capable of such an act of atrocious barbarism as the murder of a defenceless prisoner, but for years now these people had groaned under such abominable tyranny, had seen such acts of wanton outrage perpetrated against them and all those they held dear, that--collectively--their sense of rightful retribution had been warped and they had imbibed some of the lessons of reprisals from their execrable masters.
At the foot of the altar rails the group of leaders who stood as a phalanx around Mark van Rycke their chief, waited quietly whilst the wave of enthusiasm for Balde's proposal rose and swelled and mounted higher and higher until it seemed to pervade the whole of the sacred edifice, and then gradually subsided into more restrained if not less enthusiastic determination.