An alarm, as if the world were sinking, was now raised in Munster. The
bells rung, the drums beat, and the armed masses ran together, filling
the air with their wild shouts. Alf and Hanslein mounted the wall over
the gate and looked down upon the city, in the streets of which torches
were every where blazing. From the market before St. Lambert's church
the light of an immense fire arose to the heavens, and the sounds of a
horrible shouting and screaming as from many thousands came thence over
the city.
'This is a dreadful night,' said Alf, leaning sadly upon his sword.
'If I should say,' observed Hanslein, 'that the appearance of the city
was particularly pleasing to me, I should tell a falsehood. Were it not
for my unlucky affair with the serjeant, I would have gone to the
episcopalian camp with the field officer, in God's name.'
Finally, a certain degree of order seemed to prevail in the chaos about
the market place, although like every thing there, it was of a horrible
nature. To a short, ferocious yell of the populace succeeded a profound
and terrible pause--then cracked a volley of musketry, and then again
another pause--and so alternately screams, pauses and reports of
fire-arms, until Hanslein had counted twenty volleys.
'What can that musketry mean?' asked Alf in an undertone, with some
misgivings as to the nature of the proceedings.
'Master Johannes may just now be undertaking to sift his flock,' said
Hanslein.
'Must it then be,' exclaimed Alf with bitter grief, 'that by every
revolution, although intended to promote the welfare of the whole
people, men must be placed at the head who have no hearts in their
bodies, and who rule by destroying the lives of their brethren!'
'It appears so, answered Hanslein; 'Whoever is placed at the head by
popular commotions, must himself be a bold demagogue who has no
property, character or conscience to lose. To leap over every obstacle
and ward off every danger by the destruction of a dozen or two of his
fellow men, is nothing at all to him. People like you, my brother,
would make right good leaders, for which nothing is really requisite
but vigor, honesty and sound sense; but honest people draw back from
such opportunities from a want of self confidence, and thereby give the
devils free scope to do evil, which is very wrong!'
Alf, reminded by this conversation of Tuiskoshirer's rejected crown,
and of old Fabricius's prophecy, at last sorrowfully exclaimed, 'in an
unhappy hour came I home, to my native city!' and proceeded to join the
guard.