"General! they would murder my father, they would destroy my house, my nation!"
"Who forsooth?" inquired the General with an expression of unutterable contempt. "These skulking loafers, eh? I will not presume to deny that they may, perhaps, intend to do what you say, such ideas may and do occur at times to some blockhead or other. But I do not believe that the time will ever come for the realisation of such projects. But if anybody should attempt to move in the matter, I solemnly assure you that at the very first outcry he will be a dead man!"
And he tapped his sword with proud self-consciousness.
At that moment an adjutant hastily entered the room and announced that there were suspicious gatherings of the people in the market-place and the streets of the town. They were exclaiming loudly against the gentry and the soldiers, and were goading one another on with incendiary speeches. It had been found necessary to bar the gates of the town hall against them, and the windows of an apothecary's shop had already been smashed. Apparently they meant to give most of their attention to the barracks and the town hall.
The General had no sooner hastened out of the corridor than he already heard in the adjacent streets, that vague hubbub whose chaotic voice sounds so terrifying in the ears of the faint-hearted, who know not whether it is an alarm of fire or a hue and cry after a murderer.
On the present occasion, however, there was both fire and murder in the sound—it was a riot.
In a distant part of the town some over-zealous guardians of public order had set ringing the alarm-bells, whose strident semi-tones rose above the low hideous murmur of the mob.
The General hastened into the courtyard. The soldiers were already standing there under arms.
There was scarcely more than two hundred men there, the rest were a long way off, forming part of the far-stretching military cordon.
This, however, was quite enough for Vértessy's purpose.