Now the doors of the church are opened wide, quite wide; at the end of the vista, between the pillars, the tiny lights glitter on the altar; a procession files out slowly: a mitred bishop, priests, acolytes, singing and carrying banners and swinging clouds of smoke from their censers; behind the upraised crucifix, the relics of St. Therezia, in their antique shrine of medieval gold and crystal and precious stones, round or roughly cut; it is borne under a canopy and in the shimmering gleam of candles it glitters and sparkles like a sacred jewel, like a constellation, across that sombre square, through that black night of disaster; flicker the giant emeralds, glitters the precious chased gold and before the Most Holy the crowded populace draws back on either side and falls upon its knees. This is the fifth time to-day that the procession goes its round, that the reliquary is borne on high, to exorcize the calamity. It passes the statue, the princes kneel down; the Latin of the chant, the gleam of the relics in their shrine, the cloud of the incense pass over them with the blessing of the bishop....
The procession has brought stillness to the square, but a murmur now approaches as from afar.... The crowd seems to surge as though in one wave, nobody is now kneeling; the very procession is broken up and confused. Through the throng rushes the report: the dyke has given way!...
They do not yet believe it; but suddenly from above the fort of St. Ladislas, which spreads its ramparts about the castle, a shot thunders out and vibrates over the black city and shakes through the black sky as though its rebound were breaking against the lowering clouds. A second shot thunders after it, as with giant cymbals of catastrophe, a third ... the whole town knows that the Zanthos has broken the dyke.
The whole square is in confused motion, like a swarm of ants; troops of tardy fugitives still come thronging in, poor ones now and indigent, who had not been able to fly earlier, who had been still hoping; through the crush Prince Dutri, panting, cursing, on horseback, terror in his eyes, strives to reach the statue; the distant murmur as of a sea comes nearer and nearer. Men scatter along the streets, on foot or in boats; the disordered procession, with the glitter of its reliquary, seeming to reel on the billows of a human sea, scatters towards the church.
"Is not even the square safe?" asks Othomar.
He can hardly speak, his chest seems cramped as it were with iron, his eyes fill with tears, an immense despair of impotence and pity suffuses his soul.
The mayor shakes his head:
"The square lies lower than the suburbs, highness; you cannot remain here. For God's sake go back to the Episcopal in a boat!..."
But the princes insist on remaining, though the murmur grows louder and louder.
"Go into the church in that case, highnesses: that is the only safe place left," the mayor beseeches. "I beg you, for God's sake!"