"Bravely spoken!" said Karl. "Wrap yourself well in furs, dear lady, and come with us. Bilderbaum can swear, and Meyer can sneer, but a beautiful woman can compel by surer means."
"If Frau Saunders goes, I will go too," said the wife of General Bilderbaum. "I will shake these drunken soldiers into a sense of discipline, or I am not the wife of the bravest soldier in your Majesty's army."
The party of six sallied forth into the night. The snow had ceased falling, and the haze of clouds had drifted southwards, leaving the black dome of night clean and clear and jewelled with the steely brilliance of the winter stars. Through the courtyard they strode, over the squeaking snow, past the sentinels in their black and yellow boxes with their charcoal braziers, past the great piers of the entrance with their fantastic caps of overhanging snow, and as they went the sounds of revelry assailed their ears with louder note.
"Dissipation is the better part of valour," was Meyer's sneering comment, as the refrain of riotous song floated on the thin air. "It is so easy to be brave when the red wine is well within range, and the ammunition of the bier-halle is inexhaustible."
In the road were groups of men, soldiers and civilians, with linked arms, reeling gait, and a gift for making the night hideous with tuneless song.
Within fifty yards of the palace a bonfire had been kindled, and round its ruddy flames a wild dance, a veritable carmagnole of drunken triumph, was in progress. Here the royal party stopped to watch, and in a few minutes they were recognised.
"Hail, Karl the Twenty-second of Grimland!" cried a big-bearded man in a military overcoat. "Long live our gallant King!"
"Three cheers for Karl!" cried another, a burly form well muffled in a gigantic green ulster. "Death to the revolutionaries!"
Karl saluted gravely.
"Your sentiments are admirable, sirs," he said. "It would be perhaps even nobler if you put them into practice."