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She appears almost colossal, and the twisted and inflated folds of her long dress increase her volume. In the background the straight line of black-clad, black-hatted, white-shirted musicians projects shadows against the wall, on which placards, guitars, and dirty finger-marks display themselves.
So the black-hatted giant with the silver staff strode into the wide shed, the puffy-cheeked band reading their music and feeling for foothold as they followed, and just yonder behind them, in the middle of the white way, untouched by all those fathers, unhailed by any brother of his own, came Hilary Kincaid with all the battery at his neat heels, its files tightly serried but its platoons in open order, each flashing its sabres to a "present" on nearing the General and back to a "carry" when he was passed, and then lengthening into column of files to enter the blessed shade of the station.
The girl knew of what society was each black-hatted man who twisted through the bareheaded throng; in that sea of tense faces she recognized many; she could find a familiar head almost anywhere in the mass and tell as much as an outsider might what hope was hovering over it.
Gaston, sitting at the wheel to guard his precious engine against some clumsiness of the black-hatted mountaineers, looked on with humorous astonishment at this turn of affairs. He was destined, it appeared, to be disappointed in his hope of cheer. That cognac was really very good if only one had had more of it.
As Roger entered Garman's grounds, he saw Garman, the Senator and a man in long black coat and broad-brimmed black hat in conference upon the verandah. At his appearance Garman, lolling in a lawn chair, chuckled lazily; the Senator became as cold and pompous as the statue he hoped some day would commemorate his services to the Republic, and the black-hatted stranger closed his eyes to mere slits.
When we reached our hotel again we found the élite of the town waiting in the bar-room for us. There was a huge jolly Greek priest, all big hat and velvet, the prefect, the schoolmaster, a linguist, and the little black-hatted man whom we had mistaken for a hotel tout. The priest was president of the Montenegrin Red Cross, the prefect was a former Prime Minister and a Voukotitch.
I think the nearer malefactor, with a goitre, and wearing a large black hat, is either an addition of the year 1709, or was done by the journeyman of the local sculptor who carved the greater number of the figures. The man stooping down to bind his rods can hardly be by the same hand as either of the two black-hatted malefactors, but it is impossible to speak with certainty.
All important men who are not Petroviches are Voukotitches; the first being members of the king's and the second of the queen's family. The little black-hatted man was secretary of the Red Cross, and was formally attached to us while there as cicerone.
The square was filled with little processions containing six or eight men each; first from the orderly-room to the hospital, in all kinds of civilian raiment: black, grey, brown, green, blue, drab anything but red; hatless, capless, black-hatted, cloth-capped, shabby, spruce, dirty, soiled, clean, pretty clean, white-faced, red-faced, unkempt, well-groomed, hungry, well-fed, thin, fat every class between clerks and tramps; every condition between prosperity and destitution.
It was a fine audacity of Browning in imagining the last desperate shriek of the wretched man, uttered as the black-hatted Brotherhood of Death descend the stairs singing their accursed psalm, to carry the climax of appeal to the powers of charity, "Christ, Maria, God," one degree farther, and make the murderer last of all cry upon his victim to be his saviour from the death which he dares to name by the name of his own crime, a name which that crime might seem to have sequestered from all other uses:
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