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CHAPTER I.
THE EXPLOSION.
October 30th carried the saturated air of the political tension over the capital.
The newspapers gave themselves up to criticism, polemics, and a quite strange avalanche of news, for whose confirmation no "official" stamp was valid enough. The reports of the shots still re-echoed which had fallen by the Kettenbrücke. This had happened in this way:—
The Governmental crisis, which in one event contained chronic, acute, and latent elements, found not the man who could have controlled it. The throne tottered, and the supposition is justified that clever councillors conjured up mirages before the eyes of the man on the throne, who, moreover, only possessed the bare uniform, without leadership or independence of thought. All things urged to the necessity of placing the truth of the further developments before the monarch's eyes. This must of necessity be attempted in the way of a popular demonstration. And as the demonstration—moving in an undeniably friendly temper—arrived at the Kettenbrücke to go on toward Ofen, so as to place the Insupportable in miniature before the eyes of the councillors of the absent Throne. Guards on horseback dashed up.
The front of the groups—for the demonstrators were not long a continuous mass—fell into wavering. The pressure from behind, however, carried
