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"I supposed so," whispered the king, dropping his head. "To Paris!" cried the queen, raising her head. "It is impossible. You cannot be in earnest in being willing to go of your own accord down into the abyss of revolution, in order to be destroyed there! To Paris!" "To Paris!" was the thundering cry from below, as if the words of the queen had awakened a fearful, thousand-voiced echo. "To Paris!
All at once the cries on the square below were more violent and loud; musket-shots were heard; at the intervals between rose the thousand-voiced clamor, and at one time the thunder of a cannon. There was a rush of horses, and clash of arms, more musket-shots, and then the cry of the wounded. The king had withdrawn to hold a last consultation with his ministers and a few faithful friends.
What an array of figures beautiful, revolting, sly, fatuous, witty, brave, pusillanimous, mean, generous meets the eye as we recall one by one these famous stories; beautiful and amorous, but mercurial ladies with henna scented feet and black eyes often with a suspicion of kohl and more than a suspicion of Abu Murreh in them peeping cautiously through the close jalousies of some lattice; love sick princes overcoming all obstacles; executioners with blood-dripping scimitars; princesses of blinding beauty and pensive tenderness, who playfully knock out the "jaw-teeth" of their eunuchs while "the thousand-voiced bird in the coppice sings clear;" hideous genii, whether of the amiable or the vindictive sort, making their appearance in unexpected moments; pious beasts nay, the very hills praising Allah and glorifying his vice-gerent; gullible saints, gifted scoundrels; learned men with camel loads of dictionaries and classics, thieves with camel loads of plunder; warriors, zanies, necromancers, masculine women, feminine men, ghouls, lutists, negroes, court poets, wags the central figure being the gorgeous, but truculent, Haroun Al Rashid, who is generally accompanied by Ja'afer and Masrur, and sometimes by the abandoned but irresistible Abu Nowas.
And when she appeared upon the shore, when the carriages stopped and Princess Natalie rose from her seat, there arose from all the ships the thousand-voiced cheers of their crews. Russian flags waved from every spar, cannon thundered and drums rolled, and all shouted: "Hail to the imperial princess! Hail, Natalie, the daughter of Elizabeth!"
The answer lies around, written in all colors and motions, uttered in all tones of jubilee and wail, in thousand-figured, thousand-voiced, harmonious Nature: but where is the cunning eye and ear to whom that God-written Apocalypse will yield articulate meaning?
The noises of the city died away behind him, and he breathed the pure air that seemed to come straight to him out of space. All that a man cannot impart to others arose in him in these walks. In the daily struggle he often had a depressing feeling that the result depended upon pure chance. It was not easy to obtain a hearing through the thousand-voiced noise.
The people, overcome by this royal composure, broke into loud shouts of applause, and, during the continuance of these thousand-voiced bravos, the queen, with a proud smile upon her lips, stepped back from the balcony into the chamber. The dauphin flew to her with open arms and climbed up her knee.
Suddenly then, above and across the thousand-voiced small talk, came the trained notes of the voice of the President of the Local Government Board. "My friends, the whole story is a most transparent fraud. It's a shameful hoax. I tell you the thing is physically and morally impossible. It couldn't have been done in the time; and it is all a lie, anyhow.
Slowly and solemnly the procession moved onward; it had arrived at the Boulevards which separates the two streets of Montmartre. Suddenly a terrible, thousand-voiced cry of horror burst upon the air. The crown, which hung suspended over the funeral-car, had fallen down, touching the coffins with a dismal sound, and then broke into fragments on the glittering snow of the street.
Who is this Jesus Christ that I hear men swearing by? Who is he? Some destroyer, that they so treat his name? What foul thing hath he done, that our great cities speak his name in thousand-voiced jeer and contempt? Who is he? A Lamb, whose blood simmered in the fires of sacrifice, to save you. A Brother, who put down his crown of glory that you might take it up.
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