To him I addressed myself for information.... “Students, I suppose?”
“Yes, their leaders are students. The students and the artisans of the town are of the princess’s party. The army, the clergy, and the country folk are for the prince.” He had discerned from my accent that I was a foreigner: whence, doubtless, the fulness of his answer.
“It seems a harmless mob enough,” I suggested. “They make a lot of noise, to be sure; but that breaks no bones.”
“There’s just the point,” said he. “The princess’s friends fight only with their throats. Otherwise the present complication might never have arisen.”
Meanwhile the multitude continued to shout its loudest; and for Conrad, on the whole, the quarter-hour must have been a bad one.
Presently, however, the call of a bugle wound in the distance, and drew nearer and nearer, till the bugler in person appeared, gorgeous in uniform, mounted upon a white horse, advancing slowly up the Bischofsplatz, towards the crowd, trumpeting with all his might.
“What is the meaning of that?” I asked.
“A signal to disperse,” answered my companion. “He looks like a major-general, doesn’t he? But he’s only a trumpet-sergeant, and he’s followed at a hundred yards by a battalion of infantry. His trumpet-blast is by way of warning. Disperse! Or, if you tarry, beware the soldiery!”
“His warning does not seem to pass unheeded,” I remarked.
“Oh, they’re a chicken-hearted lot, these friends of the princess,” he assented contemptuously.