Then, at the sight of him standing so, it seemed as if the crowd went mad—­as the Forgers of the Sword had seemed to go mad on the night in the cavern.  The tumult rose and rose, the crowd rocked, and leapt, and, in its frenzy of emotion, threatened to crush itself to death.  But for the lines of soldiers, there would have seemed no chance for any one to pass through it alive.

“I am the son of Stefan Loristan,” Marco said to himself, in order to hold himself steady.  “I am on my way to my father.”

Afterward, he was moving through the line of guarding soldiers to the entrance, where two great state-carriages stood; and there, outside, waited even a huger and more frenzied crowd than that left behind.  He saluted there again, and again, and again, on all sides.  It was what they had seen the Emperor do in Vienna.  He was not an Emperor, but he was the son of Stefan Loristan who had brought back the King.

“You must salute, too,” he said to The Rat, when they got into the state carriage.  “Perhaps my father has told them.  It seems as if they knew you.”

The Rat had been placed beside him on the carriage seat.  He was inwardly shuddering with a rapture of exultation which was almost anguish.  The people were looking at him—­shouting at him—­surely it seemed like it when he looked at the faces nearest in the crowd.  Perhaps Loristan—­

“Listen!” said Marco suddenly, as the carriage rolled on its way.  “They are shouting to us in Samavian, ‘The Bearers of the Sign!’ That is what they are saying now.  ‘The Bearers of the Sign.’”

They were being taken to the Palace.  That Baron Rastka and Count Vorversk had explained in the train.  His Majesty wished to receive them.  Stefan Loristan was there also.

The city had once been noble and majestic.  It was somewhat Oriental, as its uniforms and national costumes were.  There were domed and pillared structures of white stone and marble, there were great arches, and city gates, and churches.  But many of them were half in ruins through war, and neglect, and decay.  They passed the half-unroofed cathedral, standing in the sunshine in its great square, still in all its disaster one of the most beautiful structures in Europe.  In the exultant crowd were still to be seen haggard faces, men with bandaged limbs and heads or hobbling on sticks and crutches.  The richly colored native costumes were most of them worn to rags.  But their wearers had the faces of creatures plucked from despair to be lifted to heaven.

“Ivor!  Ivor!” they cried; “Ivor!  Ivor!” and sobbed with rapture.

The Palace was as wonderful in its way as the white cathedral.  The immensely wide steps of marble were guarded by soldiers.  The huge square in which it stood was filled with people whom the soldiers held in check.

“I am his son,” Marco said to himself, as he descended from the state carriage and began to walk up the steps which seemed so enormously wide that they appeared almost like a street.  Up he mounted, step by step, The Rat following him.  And as he turned from side to side, to salute those who made deep obeisance as he passed, he began to realize that he had seen their faces before.