And when the House rose on that astonishing afternoon, they knew they were no longer a House,—they knew the Government was entirely overthrown, and that there would be a new Ministry and a General Election. They had to realise also, that their ‘Bills’ for imposing fresh taxes on the people were mere waste paper,—and they heard likewise with redoubled amazement that the King had decided to resign half his revenues for the space of five years, to assist the deficit in the National Exchequer.
At the conclusion of the whole unprecedented scene, they saw the King received, as it were, into the arms of a frenzied crowd, numbering many tens of thousands, which spread round all the Government buildings, and poured itself in thick streams through every street and thoroughfare, and they had to accept the fact that their ‘majority’ was reduced to a minority so infinitesimal, amid the greater wave of popular resolve, that it was not worth counting.
Carl Pérousse, leaving the House by a private door of egress, shamed, disgraced and crestfallen as he was, dared not trust the very sight of himself to such an overwhelming multitude, and managed by lucky chance to escape unobserved. He was assisted in this manoeuvre by General Bernhoff. The Chief of the Police perceived him slinking cautiously along the side-wall of an alley where the crowd had not penetrated, and helped him into a passing cab that he might be driven rapidly and safely to his home.
“You will no doubt excuse me”—said the General with a slight smile—“for not having acted more rigorously in the matter of the suspected ‘Pasquin Leroy’! I am afraid I should never have summed up sufficient impudence to ask the King to sign a warrant against himself!”
Pérousse muttered an inarticulate oath by way of reply. He realised fully that the game for him was lost. His speech of defence, so carefully prepared had been useless, for he could not have uttered it in the face of the damnatory evidence against him pronounced by the King, and verified by his own public actions. Yet his audacity had not, in the main, deserted him. He knew that, owing to his proved defalcations and fraudulent use of the public money, his own property would be confiscated to the Crown,—but he had always kept himself well prepared for emergencies, and had invested in foreign securities under various assumed names. Turning his attention to America, he felt pretty sure he could do something there,—but so far as his own country was concerned, he submitted to the inevitable, feeling that his day was done.
“The Jew is always triumphant!” he said, as he opened Jost’s newspaper next morning, and read a full account of the proceedings in the House, described with all the ‘colour’ and gush of Jost’s most melodramatic reporter. “There is no doubt a ‘leader’ on my ‘unhappy position’ as a fallen, but once trusted Minister!”
He was right; there was! A gravely-reproachful, sternly-commiserating ‘leader,’ wherein the apparently impeccable and highly conscientious writer ‘deplored’ the laxity of those who supported M. Carl Pérousse in his ‘regrettable’ scheme of self-aggrandisement.
“The rascal!” ejaculated Pérousse, as he read. “If I ever get a fresh start in the United States or South Africa, I’ll put him on a gridiron, and roast him to slow music!”
Meanwhile the whole country went mad over the King. No man was ever so idolised; no man was ever made the centre of more hero-worship. In all the excitement of a General Election, the wave of loyalty rose to its extremest height, and no candidate that was not ready to follow the lines of reform laid down by the monarch, had a ghost of a chance of being returned as a deputy. With the abolition of the tax on bread, the popular jubilation increased; bonfires were lit on every hill,—rockets flared up star-like from every rocky point upon the coast, and the Nation gave itself entirely up to joy.
All the long dormant sentiment of the multitude was roused to a fever-heat by the story of Prince Humphry’s marriage, and he too, next to his father, became a veritable hero of romance in the eyes of the people, for whom Love, and all pertaining to love-matters form the most interesting part of life. Following his announcement in the House, the King issued a ‘manifesto,’ setting forth the facts of his son’s union with ‘One Gloria Ronsard, of The Islands,’ and requesting the vote of the people for, or against, the Prince as Heir-Apparent to the Throne.