Standing at the head of the steps the clerk raised his hand, and at that signal the crowd, which but a moment before had been surging this way and that, became instantly immobile. The square was a sea of upturned faces, each gleaming with painful curiosity. Even the cuirassiers extended along the front wall of the Diet-house forgot for a moment their discipline, and bent sideways in the saddle, eager to hear the result. The stillness of death prevailed. Not a movement. Not a word. Not a breath.
"People of Czernova," said the clerk, speaking in a voice that penetrated to every portion of the square, "in a House of one hundred and nineteen members, thirty-nine have voted for the Secular Appropriation Bill, and eighty against it. The measure therefore stands rejected by a majority of forty-one."
These figures seemed to show that the voting had been conducted strictly on party lines. The Muscovite members of the Diet numbered thirty-eight, or, with the addition of the Duke of Bora, thirty-nine. The tale of the Poles was eighty-one; the vote of the absent Ravenna being deducted, the majority of forty-one was thus accounted for.
The publication of the figures was followed by a moment of bewildering silence. The Poles could not believe in such a victory, nor the Muscovites in such a defeat. Some among the crowd, supposing that the clerk had made an error in his statement, called upon him to read it again.
But now at the side of the clerk appeared the tall figure of Zabern, waving his helmet and greeting his adherents with a triumphant smile.
All doubt vanished. Exultant cries of "Slava! slava!" burst from Polish throats. The Muscovites replied by yells of execration. The two factions were intermingled; the triumph of the one evoked the fury of the other, and in a moment more the Zapolyska Square was transformed to pandemonium.
"Forward!" cried Dorislas, waving his sabre. "Clear the square."
And loud above the trampling and the din arose a carillon of bells from the cathedral of St. Stanislas, pealing forth a jubilation over the victory gained by the Latin Church.
Inside the House the excitement was equally great. Pole shook hands with Pole, for it was felt to be a splendid party triumph. The Muscovite members stared sullenly at each other, Lipski himself looking the very incarnation of malignity. More than a score of Polish deputies, after accepting splendid bribes, had betrayed him by voting with Zabern, and he was precluded from making their duplicity known by the fact that the procuration of a deputy's vote by bribery was an offence punishable by perpetual exclusion from the Diet.
Both parties streamed out into the corridors to discuss the event, leaving Brunowski and a dozen members in the chamber to pass the resolution: "That the military be withdrawn from the monasteries."