The popular feeling was not all on one side, though the “black horseman” was decidedly the favourite. There was an instinct on the part of the spectators that he was the people’s friend, and, in those tyrannous times, the phrase had an important signification.
But the crowd was composed of various elements; and there was more than a minority who, despite the daily evidence of royal outrages and wrongs, still tenaciously clung to that, the meanest sentiment that can find home in the human heart—loyalty. I mean loyalty to a throne.
In the captain of cuirassiers they saw the representative of that thing they had been accustomed to worship and obey—that mysterious entity, which they had been taught to believe was as necessary to their existence as the bread which they ate, or the beer they drank—a thing ludicrously styled “heaven-descended”—deriving its authority from God himself—a king!
Notwithstanding the insult he had put upon them, there were numbers present ready to shout—
“Huzza for the cuirassier captain!”
Notwithstanding his championship of their cause, there were numbers upon the ground ready to vociferate—
“Down with the black horseman!”
All exhibitions of this sort, however, had now ceased; and, in the midst of a profound silence, the mounted champions, having ridden clear of the crowd, advanced towards each other with glances reciprocally expressive of death and determination.