“What is that noise, Mamma?” said Clara, looking out of the window and into the gossip’s glass. “Look at the people! What is the matter with them? What are they so pleased about?”
“My God!” shouted the Frau Consul, throwing down her letters and springing to the window. “Is it—? My God, it is the Revolution! It is the people!”
The truth was that the town had been the whole day in a state of unrest. In the morning the windows of Benthien the draper’s shop in Broad Street had been broken by stones—although God knew what the owner had to do with politics!
“Anton,” the Consul’s wife called with a trembling voice into the dining-room, where the servants were bustling about with the silver. “Anton! Go below! Shut the outside doors. Make everything fast. It is a mob.”
“Oh, Frau Consul,” said Anton. “Is it safe for me to do that? I am a servant. If they see my livery—”
“What wicked people,” Clothilde drawled without putting down her work. Just then the Consul crossed the entrance hall and came in through the glass door. He carried his coat over his arm and his hat in his hand.
“You are going out, Jean?” asked the Frau Consul in great excitement and trepidation.
“Yes, my dear, I must go to the meeting.”
“But the mob, Jean, the Revolution—”
“Oh, dear me, Betsy, it isn’t so serious as that! We are in God’s hand. They have gone past the house already. I’ll go down the back way.”