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Should the king escape and head that army, it would give the invaders a vast accession of moral strength, and the insurgent people feared a dreadful vengeance. Consequently, there were great apprehensions entertained that the king might escape. The leaders of the populace were not yet prepared to plunge him into prison or to load him with chains. In fact, they had no definite plan before them.

"Kill the Italians! Murder the assassins! Down with the mercenaries," cried the populace, who hated the duke's guard. The barriers were broken down, and an interesting battle ensued. Surely the people got their full satisfaction of blood and excitement that day. The Italians drew their swords, but, being separated, they were at a disadvantage, though their assailants carried only staves.

"Quite untrue: the fact is there were no proper preparations; the town was taken by surprise, the magistrates lost their heads; the people were masters of the place; and when the police did act, they were met by a triumphant populace, who two hours before would have fled before them. They say they have burnt down above forty houses."

The enthusiastic shouts of the populace, the overflowing love of his mother and sister, and above all, the warm encomiums expressed by Nitetis, had excited a jealousy which his pride had never allowed hitherto. Nitetis had taken his fancy in a remarkable degree.

But all-pervading is the sympathy the poor feel for the poor. And when even the refuse of the populace once felt the sword of Warwick, some portion of the popular enthusiasm must have silently deserted him.

"When it became known that I had decided to return to England with my boy, native princes offered me fabulous sums to remain, and when they found that I could not be tempted to stay, the populace turned out in every town and village through which we passed on our way to the ship, and bowing multitudes followed us to the very last.

One does not form a particularly high idea of the brain which conceived this law; but, when the Manchu Tartars found that they were the lords of the empire, they began to be alarmed at their small numbers, which were trifling in comparison with the countless swarms of the Chinese; and they dreaded lest the influence which the higher officials would acquire in their districts might enable them to excite the populace against their foreign rulers.

This is what the lovers of culture may perhaps dare to augur for such a nation as ours. Therefore, however great the changes to be accomplished, and however dense the array of Barbarians, Philistines, and Populace, we will neither despair on the one hand, nor, on the other, threaten violent revolution and change.

The time for his biography was drawing near. His amazement at the ovations constantly given him, was naïve; for it seemed that Ivan was never to realize the extent of his reputation. But fanatical adulation, following in the streets, constant cranings of the neck from the populace every time he appeared in public, presently began to make him miserable.

Hence it was that they arranged for a series of most alarming false rumours to be circulated throughout the length and breadth of the Empire. Indeed, on the day following, I heard in a bank where I had business that all Moscow was involved in a great revolution, that the Moscow police were on strike, and that the troops had refused to fire upon the populace. Everyone stood aghast at the news.