The contrast between the elation of the inhabitants when my
grandfather entered the Fives' Court, and their universal
consternation and despair when he quitted it, was terrible. The
crowd that had a few minutes before so smilingly and hopefully
entered their homes, now fled from them in terror. Again the
streets were thronged by the unhappy people, who began to believe
themselves the sport of some powerful and malevolent demon. Whole
families, parents, children, and servants, rushed together into
the streets, making their way to the south to escape the missiles
that pursued them. Some bore pieces of furniture snatched up in
haste, and apparently seized because they came first to hand; some
took the chairs they had been sitting on; one man my grandfather
noticed bearing away with difficulty the leaf of a mahogany table,
leaving behind the legs which should have supported it; and a woman
had a crying child in one hand, and in the other a gridiron, still
reeking with the fat of some meat she had been cooking. Rubbish
from the houses began to strew the streets; and here and there
a ragged breach in a wall rent by the cannon afforded a strange
incongruous glimpse of the room inside, with its mirrors, tables,
and drapery, just as the inhabitants left them. Armed soldiers
were hastening to their different points of assembly, summoned by
bugles that resounded shrilly amid the din, and thrusting their way
unceremoniously through the impeding masses of fugitives.
The house of the Jew Lazaro was one of the first that was seriously
injured. The blank wall of the great warehouse before mentioned,
that faced the street, had, either from age or bad masonry, long
before exhibited several cracks. A large segment, bounded by
two of these cracks, had been knocked away by a shot, and the
superincumbent mass falling in consequence, the great store, and all
its hoarded treasures, appeared through the chasm.
The Jew's instincts had, at first, led him to save himself by
flight. But, on returning timorously to look after his property, the
sight of the ruined wall, and the unprotected hoards on which he had
so securely reckoned as the source of wealth, obliterated in his
mind, for the time, all sense of personal danger. Seeing a party of
soldiers issuing from a wine-house near, he eagerly besought them to
assist him in removing his property to a place of safety, promising
to reward them largely for their risk and trouble.
One of the soldiers thus appealed to was Mr Bags.
"Ho, ho!" said Mr Bags; "here's a chance--here's a pleasure,
comrades. We can help Mr Lazaro, who is always so good to us--this
here Jewish gentleman, that gives such liberal prices for our
things. Certainly--we'll remove 'em all, and not charge him nothing.
Oh--oh--ah!" And, to give point to his irony, Mr Bags distorted his
face hideously, and winked upon his friends.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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