"We are to charge, sire?" came the breathless inquiry.
"No. These are my people; I wish to speak with them."
Traun-Nelidoff protested with a glance, but Karl's face was set like stone.
With slow steps the Captain of the Guard advanced to the palace gates. He laid his hand on the huge key, but it would not budge. He put the point of his sword into the iron ring and used it as a lever, and with a raucous clang the bolt shot back. There was no need to do more. In a twinkling the twin gates were hurled open by the dense pressure of the closely-packed mob, and in a few seconds the stately courtyard was a mass of revolutionaries.
The King and his late companions of the Rubensaal were separated from the Guard by the rush of incomers, but there was no attack made upon their person. For a moment even there was silence; perhaps the unexpectedness of the situation gave the rebels pause; perhaps the dignity of the royal presence shamed their violence. And, in that silence, Karl stepped forward as if to speak, but just at that moment there was a sudden cry of—
"Way there! way for the Queen Gloria!" and with a crack of a whip a sleigh drove through the open gates into the courtyard. The driver was George Trafford! In the body of the car sat the Princess Gloria, pale and softly weeping, but struggling bravely with her tears. On one side of her was Doctor Matti, and on the other Father Bernhardt. But there was something else in the sleigh, something that was neither man nor woman, and yet had the lineaments of a human being. The Iron Maiden had been taken from the captured Strafeburg, and was being borne in triumph to the home of its owner. Ever since the death of the late Archbishop,—and the spreading of the vile legend which ascribed his sudden demise to the embrace of the celebrated Eisenmädchen,—the thing had stood as the symbol of the cruelty and despotism of the twenty-second Karl. So when the tide of revolution had swept into the ancient prison-house, rude hands had plucked the maiden from her home, and set her on the sleigh with the leaders of their emancipation.
The sleigh pulled up before the King.
"I want to avoid bloodshed," began Trafford in English, but even as he spoke the mob re-found its old temper. Cries and curses ruined all prospect of a parley; desperate men and wild women pressed in on the royal party, and clutching hands were thrust even in the King's face. This was too much for General von Bilderbaum. His hand, which had been itching on his sword hilt, flashed the weapon from its sheath and struck down a sallow ruffian who had impinged too recklessly on the King's person. In an instant rough hands were laid on the stout old soldier, and the General's honourable career looked to be near its certain termination. But there was one near him as devoted to the General as the General was to his Sovereign. With the quickness of thought Frau von Bilderbaum hurled her ample person between her husband and his assailants. A plump hand was swung, there was a sounding smack of flesh meeting flesh, and a "night wolf" was lying prostrate and smarting in the snow. The sight of the Amazonian fury standing with dilated nostrils and fiery glance before her lord and master touched the humour of the crowd.
"Well struck, housewife!" shouted one; and for a moment a burst of laughter took the place of fierce cries and yells of derision. But while the incident was taking place, Trafford had descended from his box-seat and engaged in conversation with Saunders. The latter listened with a grave face, looked doubtful, and ultimately nodded. Then, as Trafford remounted to his seat, Saunders in turn whispered earnestly in the King's ear. And almost at once,—so quick are the moods of mobs,—the comic scene was forgotten and the lust of vengeance came uppermost again in the minds of the insurgents.
"Death to the tyrants!" shouted some. "Death to Karl! Away with oppressors of the people's liberty!"