It had penetrated into his quiet cabinet, she stood behind him, she screamed in his ear, “Gabriel Nietzel!  Rebecca!”

Perfectly unmanned, the count leaned back in his easychair, the sweat standing in great drops upon his brow.  He no longer even remembered that he had come there to read his son’s important letter!  His soul was shattered in its inmost depths.  Gabriel Nietzel was there again!  A murder had been committed in his house—­at his table!  Committed, too, by his own servant, his favorite, his friend!  He durst not pardon him; he must punish the murderer according to the law.  He must pronounce sentence of death on him, who had slain his fellow-man!  He foresaw this in the future!  He saw himself as judge, the viceregent of God and justice, opposite the pale criminal, his servant, his friend, upon whom he pronounced sentence!

He!  Would his lips dare to utter a sentence of death?  Dared the murderer condemn?

“Gabriel Nietzel!  Gabriel Nietzel!  Rebecca!  Rebecca!” screamed the voice behind his chair.  But hark! what noise is that?  What means that confused jumble of groans and yells and shouts—­that howling as of fierce and sweeping winds, that roar as of the mighty deep?  What is that so like the rolling of thunder?  Are those wolflike howls the voices of men?  Is that the tramp of human feet?  Before his windows it surges and dashes, howls and roars!

With difficulty Schwarzenberg rises from his chair, and, creeping to the window, conceals himself behind the hangings and cautiously looks out upon the street.  A dense throng of soldiers surges beneath his windows; the whole street, the whole square is packed with them.  Angry faces, the voices of furious men, hundreds upon hundreds of uplifted fists and portentous growls!

“He shall pay us our money!  He wants to cheat us out of our pay!  He wants to put us upon summer allowance and pocket the rest of the money!  It is said this is done by the Elector’s command.  But it is a lie, an abominable lie!  Schwarzenberg lets nobody command him.  He is master here.  He wants us to starve that his own riches may be increased.  We will not suffer it!  He shall pay us for it!  Hurrah!  Storm the house!”

“A mutiny!” muttered Count Schwarzenberg.  “They were to have rebelled, and so they do.  But they rebel against me!  I flung down the sword, and its point is turned against myself.  So the spirits of hell grant what they have promised us—­what we have purchased at the price of our souls!  They give the reward, but even while they are paying it out to us it becomes a curse and ruins us!”

How they storm and rage and roar without!  How they beat and hammer against the locked doors!  Count Schwarzenberg stands behind the window and hears them!  He hears other voices, too—­Goldacker, Kracht, and Rochow endeavoring to calm them, exhorting them to be patient.

Futile efforts!  Ever louder grow the knocking and thundering against the house.  Stones are hurled against the walls, the window shutters rattle and are shivered to pieces, the doors creak and give way.