A confused shouting answered him, in which cries of ‘Pérousse!’ and ‘The King!’ were most prominent.
Sergius Thord looked round upon the seething mass below him, with a strange sense of power and of triumph. He—even he—who could claim to be no more than a poor Thinker, speaker and writer,—had won these thousands to his command!—he had them here, willing to obey his lightest word,—ready to follow his signal wheresoever it might take them! His eyes glowed,—and the light of a great and earnest inspiration illumined his strong features.
“You call for Carl Pérousse!” he said; “Yonder he dwells!—in the regal house he has built for himself out of the sweating work of the poor!” A fierce yell from the populace and an attempt at a rush, was again stopped by the speaker’s uplifted hand; “Wait, friends—wait! Think for a moment of the result of action, before you act! Suppose you pulled down that palace of fraud; suppose your strong hands righteously rent it asunder;—suppose you set fire to its walls,—suppose you dragged out the robber from his cave and slew him here, before sunrise—what then? You would make of him a martyr!—and the hypocritical liars of the present policy, who are involved with him in his financial schemes,—would chant his praises in every newspaper, and laud his virtues in every sermon! Nay, we should probably hear of a special ‘Memorial Service’ being held in our great Cathedral to sanctify the corpse of the vilest stock-jobbing rascal that ever cheated the gallows! Be wiser than that, my friends! Do not soil your hands either with the body of Carl Pérousse or his ill-gotten dwelling. What we want for him is Disgrace, not Death! Death is far too easy! An innocent child may die; do not give to a false-hearted knave the simple exit common to the brave and true! Disgrace!—disgrace! Shame, confusion, and the curse of the country,—let these be your vengeance on the man who seeks to clutch the reins of government!—the man who would drive the people like whipped horses to their ruin!”
Another roar answered him, but this time it was mingled with murmurs of dissatisfaction. Thord caught these up, and at once responded to them.
“I hear you, O People! I hear the clamour of your hearts and souls, which is almost too strong to find expression in speech! You cannot wait, you would tell me! You would have Pérousse dragged out here,—you would tear him to pieces among you, if you could, and carry the fragments of him to the King, to prove what a people can do with a villain proposed to them as their Prime Minister!” Loud and ferocious shouts answered these words, and he went on; “I know—I understand!—and I sympathise! But even as I know you, you know me! Believe me now, therefore, and hear my promise! I swear to you before you all”—and here he extended both arms with a solemn and impressive gesture—“that this month shall not be ended before the dishonesty of Carl Pérousse is publicly and flagrantly known at every street corner,—in every town and province of the land!—and before the most high God, I take my oath to you, the People,—that he shall never be the governing head of the country!”
A hurricane of applause answered him—a tempest of shouting that seemed to surge and sway through the air and down to the earth again like the beating of a powerful wind.
“Give me your trust, O People!” he cried, carried beyond himself with the excitement and fervour of the scene—“Give me yourselves!”
Another roar replied to this adjuration. He stood triumphant;—the people pressing up around him,—some weeping—some kneeling at his feet—some climbing to kiss his hand. A few angry voices in the distance cried out—‘The King!’—and he turned at once on the word.
“Who needs the King?” he demanded; “Who calls for him? What is he to us? What has he ever been? Look back on his career!—see him as Heir-Apparent to the Throne, wasting his time with dishonest associates,—dealing with speculators and turf gamblers—involving himself in debt—and pandering to vile women, who still hold him in their grasp, and who in their turn rule the country by their caprice, and drain the Royal coffers by their licentious extravagance! Now look on him as the King,—a tool in the hands of financiers—a speculator among speculators—steeped to the very eyes in the love of money, and despising all men who do not bear the open blazon of wealth upon them,—what has he done for the people? Nothing! What will he ever do for the People? Nothing! Flattered by self-seekers—stuffed with eulogy by a paid Press—his name made a byword and a mockery by the very women with whom he consorts, what should we do with him in Our work! Let him alone!—let him be! Let him eat and drink as suits his nature—and die of the poison his own vices breed in his blood!—we want naught of him, or his heirs! When the time ripens to its full fruition, we, the People, can do without a Throne!”
At this, thousands of hats and handkerchiefs were tossed in the air,—thousands of voices cheered to the very echo, and to relieve their feelings still more completely the vast crowd once more took up ‘The Song of Freedom’ and began singing it in unison steadily and grandly, with all that resistless force and passion which springs from deep-seated emotion in the soul. And while they were singing, Thord, glancing rapidly about him, saw Johan Zegota close at hand, and to his still greater satisfaction, Pasquin Leroy; and beckoning them both to his side whispered his brief orders, which were at once comprehended. The day was breaking; and in the purple east a line of crimson showed where the sun would presently rise. A few minutes’ quick organisation worked by Leroy and Zegota, and some few other of their comrades sufficed to break up the mob into three sections, and in perfect order they stood blocked for a moment, like the three wings of a great army. Then once more Thord addressed them: