"But we will be revenged!" whispered Count Hojada, a near relative of Szekuly's. "The sovereign who, like Joseph, heaps obloquy upon a nobility, some of whom are his equals in descent, is lost! The emperor shall remember this hour, and rue it also!"
"Yes," said another, "he shall repent this day. We are all of one mind, are we not, friends?"
"Ay," muttered they, with gnashing teeth. "He shall pay dearly for this!"
CHAPTER CLXI.
THE COUNT IN THE PILLORY.
Crowds of people gathered around the street corners to read the large hand-bills posted there. The bills announced that Count Podstadsky-Liechtenstein had been condemned to three days of pillory, to public sweeping of the streets, and ten years' detention in the house of correction. Colonel von Szekuly to three days of pillory, and four years' detention.
The guilt of the Countess Baillou not having been fully established, she was pardoned by the emperor. But she was ordered to be present at Podstadsky's exposition in the pillory, and then to leave Vienna forever.
The people read these fearful tidings in dumb amazement and vague apprehension of evil to themselves. Never had they so completely realized the new order of things as at this moment. One of the privileged, whom they had hitherto beheld at a distance in splendid equipages, on elegant horses, in brilliant uniforms around the person of the emperor, one of these demi-gods was to be trailed in the dust like a criminal from the dregs of the populace. A count, in the gray smock of the felon, was to sweep the streets, which, perchance, his aristocratic foot had never trodden before. A proud Hungarian nobleman, a colonel of the guard, was to be exposed in the pillory for three days. These were terrible and startling events. Not a trace of exultation was upon the gloomy faces of the multitude: this abasement of two men of illustrious birth to an equality with boors, seemed an invasion of the conservative principles of society. It was an ugly dream—the people could not realize it. They must go to the spot where the sentence was to be executed, to see if indeed Olympus had been levelled to the earth. Hurried along by one common impulse, the silent multitude wound in a long stream through the streets, until they reached the market-place where the sentence was to be carried out. Neither idle curiosity nor malice had led the people thither; it was a pilgrimage to the new era which at last was dawning upon the world.
There, in the centre of the great open square, was the throne of infamy upon which an Austrian nobleman was about to bid adieu to name, honor, family, and the associations which had surrounded his boyhood, and to be thrust into the revolting companionship of robbers and murderers!
Not a smile was seen upon those appalled faces; men whispered to one another that the count was the only son of one of the proudest families in Hungary; and that the countess, his mother, had died of her son's shame. The eyes of the women filled with tears, and, for the sake of the martyred mother, they forgave the guilty son. The weeping of the women deepened the sympathies of the men; and they began to murmur against the heartless emperor, who degraded an illustrious subject, and sent a noble countess broken-hearted to the grave!