A great roar,—like that of hundreds of famished wild beasts,—answered this gesture; mingled with acclamations,—and when ‘The Song of Freedom’ again burst out from the singers on the stage, the whole mass of people joined in the chorus with a kind of melodious madness. Shouts of ‘Pequita! Pequita!’ rang out on all sides,—then ‘Valdor! Valdor!’—and then,—all suddenly,—a stentorian voice cried ‘Sergius Thord!’ At that word the house became a chaos. Men in the gallery, seized by some extraordinary impulse of doing they knew not what, and going they knew not whither, leaped over each other’s shoulders, and began to climb down by the pillars of the balconies to the stalls,—and a universal panic and rush ensued. Terrified women hurried from the stalls and boxes in spite of warning, and got mixed with the maddened crowd, a section of which, pouring out of the Opera-house came incontinently upon the King’s carriage in waiting,—and forthwith, without any reflection as to the why or the wherefore, smashed it to atoms! Then, singing again ‘The Song of Freedom,’—the people, pouring out from all the doors, formed into a huge battalion, and started on a march of devastation and plunder.
Sergius Thord, grasping the situation from the first, rushed out of the Opera-house in all haste, anxious to avert a catastrophe, but he was too late to stop the frenzied crowd,—nothing could, or would have stopped them at that particular moment. The fire had been too long smouldering in their souls; and Pequita, like a little spark of fury, had set it in a blaze. Through private ways and back streets, the King and Queen and their sons, escorted by the alarmed manager, escaped from the Opera unhurt,—and drove back unobserved to the Palace in a common fiacre—and a vast multitude, waiting to see them come out by the usual doors, and finding they did not come, vented their rage and disgust by tearing up and smashing everything within their reach. Then, remembering in good time, despite their excitement, that the manager of the Opera had done nothing to deserve injury to himself or his property, they paused in this work of destruction, and with the sudden caprice of children, gave out ringing cheers for him and for Pequita;—while their uncertainty as to what to do next was settled for them by Paul Zouche, who, mounting on one of the pedestals which supported the columns of the entrance to the Opera, where his wild head, glittering eyes and eager face looked scarcely human, cried out:
“Damnation to Carl Pérousse! Why do you idle here, my friends, when you might be busy! If you want Freedom, seek it from him who is to be your new Prime Minister!”
A prolonged yell of savage approval answered him,—and like an angry tide, the crowd swept on and on, gathering strength and force as it went, and pouring through the streets with fierce clamour of shouting, and clash of hastily collected weapons,—on and on to the great square, in the centre of which stood the statue of the late King, and where the house of Carl Pérousse occupied the most prominent position. And the moon, coming suddenly out of a cloud, stared whitely down upon the turbulent scene,—one too often witnessed in history, when, as Carlyle says, ‘a Nation of men is suddenly hurled beyond the limits. For Nature, as green as she looks, rests everywhere on dread foundations, and Pan, to whose music the Nymphs dance, has a cry in him that can drive all men distracted!’
In such distraction, and with such wild cry, the night of Pequita’s long-looked-for dance before the King swept stormily on towards day.
CHAPTER XXVIII. — “FATE GIVES—THE KING!”
News of this fresh and more violent disturbance among the people brought the soldiery out in hot haste, who galloped down to the scene of excitement, only to find the mounted police before them, headed by General Bernhoff, who careering to and fro, cool and composed, forbade, ‘in the name of the King!’ any attempt to drive the mob out of the square. Swaying uneasily round and round, the populace yelled and groaned, and cheered and hissed; not knowing exactly whereunto they were so wildly moved, but evidently waiting for a fresh ‘lead.’ The house of Carl Pérousse, with its handsome exterior and stately marble portico, offered itself as a tempting target to the more excitable roughs, and a stone sent crashing through one of the windows would have certainly been the signal for a general onslaught had not a man’s figure suddenly climbed the pedestal which supported the statue of the late King in the centre of the square, and lifted its living visible identity against the frowning cold stone image of the dead. A cry went up from thousands of throats—‘Sergius Thord!’—followed by an extraordinary clamour of passionate plaudits, as the excited people recognised the grand head and commanding aspect of their own particular Apostle of Liberty. He,—stretching out his hands with a gesture of mingled authority and entreaty,—pacified the raging sea of contradictory and conflicting voices as if by magic,—and the horrid clamour died down into a dull roar, which in its turn subsided into silence.
“Friends and brothers!” he cried; “Be calm! Be patient! What spirit possesses you to thus destroy the chances of your own peace! What is your aim? Justice? Ay—justice!—but how can you gain this by being yourselves unjust? Will you remedy Wrong by injuring Right? Nay—this must not be!—this cannot be, with you, whose passion for liberty is noble,—whose love for truth is fixed and resolute,—and who seek no more than is by human right your own! This sudden tempest, by which your souls are tossed, is like an angry gust upon the sea, which wrecks great vessels and drowns brave men;—be something more than the semblance of the capricious wind which destroys without having reason to know why it is bent on destruction! What are you here for? What would you do?”