"Hypocrites and eye-servants are you all," muttered he, as he slowly passed by them. "Give me your arm, Hacke, and lead me into the other room. I cannot look at these men any longer."
Count Hacke rushed forward, and, leaning on his arm, the king tottered into the adjoining room.
When the door closed behind them, the cavaliers seemed to awaken from their torpidity. They raised their heads, and looked at one another with a half-confused, half-angry gaze. They had been scolded like children, and felt that they were men. Their honor had received a sensitive wound, but their awe of the king kept them from demanding satisfaction.
When the count returned to order the gentlemen in the king's name to leave the palace, they did not have the courage to obey this command, but sent the count as their ambassador to the king to ask in the humblest manner for forgiveness and pardon, and to assure him that their behavior to the prince royal was but the consequence of involuntary thoughtlessness.
The count, after much trembling, left the room to deliver this message to the king; the cavaliers waited in anxious silence for his return. At length the door opened, and the count appeared.
"Well, what says the king? Has he forgiven us? Will he take us into his favor again? Is he convinced that we are his true, humble, and obedient servants?"
All these questions the count answered by a slight motion of the hand. It was a moment of anxious expectation; all were eagerly looking at the count, who was to pronounce for them the words of forgiveness or condemnation.
"Gentlemen," at length said the count, and his voice sounded to the trembling courtiers hollow and awful as that of an angel of death, "gentlemen, the king says if you do not leave here at once, he will easily find means to compel you to do so!"
This was a menace that gave strength to the trembling limbs of the courtiers. Silently, with sad, troubled looks, they hastened away, and not until the great portals of the palace had closed upon them did they feel safe from the fear of imprisonment, and the king's crutch.
The king had not yet subdued his anger. He thirsted for another victim. The servants wisely remained at a distance beyond the reach of the royal crutch; the king's ungovernable anger had even banished Count Hacke from the room.