No news penetrated the locked door of Ulwing’s house.
In the cellar Mrs. Füger was making bandages, with depressing sighs. The little book-keeper sat on the top of a barrel and held his head sideways, as if listening. At every detonation he banged his heel against the barrel.
His son stared at him so rigidly that his short-sighted eyes became contracted by the effort. He yawned with fatigue. Now, old Füger’s feet struck the side of the barrel at longer and longer intervals. Only by this did his son notice that the firing became less frequent; by and by it stopped. Then once more the house shook. A last explosion rent the frightful silence in twain and broken glass was hurled with loud clatter from the windows.
“That was somewhere near!”
The builder could stand it no longer. He wanted to know what was happening. He rushed up the stairs. In the green room he tore the shutters deliberately open.
Opposite, the royal castle burned with a smoky flame and on the bastion, beside the small white flag of the Imperialists, a tri-colour was unruffled in the wind.
“Victory!” shouted Christopher Ulwing. His short ringing voice fell like a blow from a hammer through the whole house.
Anne began to laugh.
“Do you hear, Christopher, we have won!”
When in the brightness of May the flag was unfurled on the bastion of the castle and opened out like a bountiful hand, it scattered joy from its folds. Its colours were repeated in Pest and Buda. Tricolours answered from the houses, the windows, the attics, the roofs. Singing, the people rushed toward the chain-bridge which resounded with the irregular trampling of human feet. The tide swept Ulwing the builder with it. He went to his brother. So much to tell! So much to ask!