Before any reply could be given a hubbub of voices cried:—
“Explain! Confess! Bind him to his oath!”
Whereat the King, stepping forward a pace or two, confronted his would-be doubters and detractors with a dauntless composure.
“Explain? Confess? Friends, I will do both! but for binding me to my oath, there is no need,—for it is too strong a compact of faith and friendship ever to be broken! Would you have me remind you of your Vow of Fealty pronounced so solemnly this evening? Did you not swear that ‘Whosoever among us this night shall draw the Red Cross Signal which destines him to take from life a life proved unworthy, shall be to us a sacred person, and an object of defence and continued protection’? As Pasquin Leroy, this vow applied to me,—as King, I ask no better or stronger pledge of loyalty!”
All eyes were fixed upon him as he spoke. For some moments there was a dead silence.
This silence was presently broken by a murmur of conflicting wonder, impatience and uncertainty,—deepening as it ran,—and then,—as the full situation became more and more apparent, coupled with the smiling and heroic calm of the monarch who had thus placed himself voluntarily in the hands of his sworn enemies, all their struggling passions were suddenly merged in one great wave of natural and human admiration for a brave man and a burst of impetuous cheering broke impulsively from every lip. Once started, the infection caught on like a fever,—and again and yet again the excited Revolutionists cheered ‘for the King!’—till they made the room echo.
The tumult was extraordinary. Lotys sat silent, with clasped hands, her eyes dilated with feverish watchfulness and excitement,—the tempest of emotion in her own poor tortured soul, being of such a character which no words, no tears, no exclamations could possibly relieve. The memory of her interview with the King in his own Palace flashed across her like a scene limned in fire. She had no power to think—she was simply stunned and overwhelmed,—and held only one idea in her mind, and that was to save him at all costs, even at the sacrifice of her own life. Thord, carried away from his very self by the force of such a ‘Revolution’ as he had never planned or anticipated, stood more in the attitude of one who was trying to think, rather than of one who was thinking.
“For the King!” cried Johan Zegota, suddenly giving vent to the feelings he had long kept in check,—feelings which had made him a greater admirer of the so-called “Pasquin Leroy” than of Thord himself;—“For our sworn comrade, the King!”
Again the cheers broke out, to be redoubled in intensity when Louis Valdor added his voice to the rest and exclaimed:
“For the first real King I have ever known!”