The lady raised her trembling hands and her pale features to Heaven, her eyes slowly closed, and a smile of joy passed over her white face.
Outside resounded the threefold roll of the drums.
The General arose, hastened to the door, tied on his sword, and rushed towards the barracks.
The noise, the hubbub, was now quite close at hand, and he fell a-thinking how he could best, with fair words, persuade these turbulent citizens to go back to their homes and begin weaving linen and stitching boots again, though he longed all the time to storm forth amongst them and like a tempest scatter them in every direction.
CHAPTER XV.
OIL UPON THE WATERS.
The whole of the broad street was entirely covered with caps.
It was impossible to see anything but caps. Here and there a scythe or a pitchfork projected from the midst of the throng, but the larger portion of the mob was unarmed, unless slender canes, of which there were a great number, be accounted weapons.
Here and there in the midst of the surging crowd might be distinguished sundry honest citizens still in plain clothes indeed, but carrying along with them bayonetted muskets, thereby inspiring the rabble with peculiar valour, the common people always imagining in such cases that the national guard with its bayonets is quite equal to the military.