he
said. The blood was drumming in his ears, but his eye was clear and
steady, and he noted with curious detachment the comic agony of the fat
porter's face, and the strain and swell of the equerry's muscles as he
dragged back the ponderous bolts.

The doors swung open, and the Duke emerged. Below him, still with that
unimpaired distinctness of vision which seemed a part of his heightened
vitality, he saw a great gesticulating mass of people. They packed the
square so closely that their own numbers held them immovable, save for
their swaying arms and heads; and those whom the square could not
contain had climbed to porticoes, balconies and cornices, and massed
themselves in the neck of the adjoining streets. The handful of
light-horse who had escorted the Duke's carriage formed a single line at
the foot of the steps, so that the approach to the porch was still
clear; but it was plain that the crowd, with its next movement, would
break through this slender barrier and hem in the Duke.

At Odo's appearance the shouting had ceased and every eye was turned on
him. He stood there, a brilliant target, in his laced coat of
peach-coloured velvet, his breast covered with orders, a hand on his
jewelled sword-hilt. For a moment sovereign and subjects measured each
other; and in that moment Odo drank his deepest draught of life. He was
not thinking now of the constitution or its opponents. His present
business was to get down the steps and into the carriage, returning to
the palace as openly as he had come. He was conscious of neither pity
nor hatred for the throng in his path. For the moment he regarded them
merely as a natural force, to be fought against like storm or flood. His
clearest sensation was one of relief at having at last some material
obstacle to spend his strength against, instead of the impalpable powers
which had so long beset him. He felt, too, a boyish satisfaction at his
own steadiness of pulse and eye, at the absence of that fatal inertia
which he had come to dread. So clear was his mental horizon that it
embraced not only the present crisis, but a dozen incidents leading up
to it. He remembered that Trescorre had urged him to take a larger
escort, and that he had refused on the ground that any military display
might imply a doubt of his people. He was glad now that he had done so.
He would have hated to slink to his carriage behind a barrier of drawn
swords. He wanted no help to see him through this business.