“We want to implore your excellency to give us peace. The poor people—”
“Peace with whom?” calmly asked the minister.
“Peace with France, your excellency—peace with General Bonaparte, who is said to be a magician, bewitching everybody, and capable of conquering all countries by a glance, by a motion of his hands, whenever he wishes to do so. If we do not make peace, he will conquer Austria too, come to Vienna, and proclaim himself emperor; whereupon he will dismiss our own wise and good ministers, and give us French masters. But we would like to keep our emperor and our excellent ministers, who take care of us so paternally. And that is the only reason why we have come here—just to implore your excellency to have mercy with the poor people and make peace, so that the emperor may return to Vienna, and bring his state treasury back to the capital. Yes, men, that is all we wanted, is it not? We just wanted to pray your excellency to give us peace!”
“Yes, your excellency,” shouted the men, “have mercy with us, and give us peace!”
“Well, for angels of peace, you have penetrated rather rudely into my house,” said the minister, sternly. “You got up a riot in order to obtain peace.”
“It was merely our anxiety that made us so hasty and impetuous,” said Mr. Wenzel, deprecatingly. “We ask your excellency’s pardon if we have frightened you.”
“Frightened me!” echoed Thugut, in a tone of unmeasured contempt. “As if you were the men to frighten ME! I knew that you would come, and I knew, too, who had bribed you to do it. Yes, yes, I know they have paid you well, Mr. Wenzel, to get up a riot—they have given you shining ducats for leading a mob into my house. But will their ducats be able to get you out of it again?”
Mr. Wenzel turned very pale; he uttered a shriek and staggered back a few paces.
“Your excellency knew—” he said.
“Yes, I knew,” continued Thugut, sternly, “that men who have no regard for the honor and dignity of their country—men who are stupid enough to believe that it would be better to submit voluntarily to the dominion of the French Republic, instead of resisting the demands of the regicides manfully and unyieldingly—that these men have hired you to open your big mouth, and howl about things which you do not understand, and which do not concern you at all.”