“What is it? What has happened?” everyone was crying.
“The spoilt child of Europe has abdicated in a pet,” said the Pannonian Consul-General confidently, but the snarl of hatred which rose from the deputies made him turn aside with a rather unsuccessful laugh.
“A messenger! a messenger!” came the cry from the square. In the strain of the moment, no one thought of the telephone. All stood gazing with white faces towards the man who was forcing his way through the crowd.
“Holy Peter! it is Terminoff!” cried the Professor, and as the surging throng washed up Dr Afanasi Terminoff, hatless and with torn coat, at the foot of the steps, he ran down to meet him. “Doctor, why have you left your patient?”
“Because he needed me no more!” shouted the doctor furiously. “His Highness is dead!”
“Dead! dead!” the word was echoed by a thousand throats, and the people in the square tore their clothes and cast dust upon their heads. Dr Terminoff was still facing the Professor.
“How did you dare send that message?” he cried. “You knew on how slender a thread his life hung. Here have we kept him alive from day to day, in the hope that this morning’s ceremony would set his mind at rest, and give him opportunity to recover, and you destroy all the result of our care in a moment!”
“Don’t blame me,” said the Professor, pale with anger. “All-Holy Mother of God! the fault was not mine.” His eagle-glance round called the deputies and the crowd to witness as well as the Panagia, and in one moment the air was rent with shrieks of “Down with Europe!” The life of a foreign Consul in the Balkans is not at any time a very peaceable one, but it is probable that the assembled diplomatists had never been in quite such imminent danger before. Mr Wildsmith leaned over the parapet by which he was standing.
“Colonel Wylie, we shall hold you responsible,” he said. There was a stir of hoofs as the troopers under the wall moved forward a pace or two, pressing back the crowd from the immediate neighbourhood of the Consuls, but they were still in most unpleasant proximity to the deputies, whose full-dress array allowed of a considerable exhibition of weapons. Hands were on daggers and revolver-butts, when Professor Panagiotis spoke again, this time from the top of the steps.
“Free citizens of Emathia, our Prince is dead. The descendant of the Emperors, the hero who led us in battle, the statesman who has made Emathia what she is, is lost to us. Shall his work be destroyed? Is Europe to snatch away from us the liberties we wrested from Roum at the cost of untold suffering and bloodshed? You say she shall not. I take you at your word. Let us proceed at once to the election of another Prince, who shall carry on the work our lost hero had begun. Is there any doubt whom we should choose? Is not the friend, the comrade of Romanos with us, who submitted to waive his own claims and labour for the good of Emathia, to whom he whom we have lost desired to entrust the safety of the nation? Theophanis for Prince!”