A great shout eddied up to answer him. Fulviac’s voice pierced it like a trumpet cry. "Liberty, liberty, and the people!" Sound can intoxicate as well as wine. The thunder of war, the bray of clarions, can fire even the heart of the coward. The mob swirled about the altar of black marble, vociferous and eager. Torches rocked to and fro in the cavern; shadows leapt grotesquely gigantic over the rough groinings of the roof. Yet Fulviac had further and fiercer fuel for the fire. At a sign from him, the circle of armed men parted; two peasants stumbled forward bearing a cripple in their arms. They carried him up the steps and set him upon the altar before all the people, supporting him as he stared round upon the sea of faces. He was a shrivelled being, yellow, black of eye, cadaverous. He looked like a man who had wallowed for years among toads in a pit, and had become as one of them. His voice was cracked and querulous, as he brandished a claw of a hand and screamed at the crowd. "Look at me, mates and brothers. Five years ago I was a tall man and lusty. I forbade the Lord of Margradel my wife. They racked and branded me, tossed me into a stinking pit. I am young, young. I shall never walk again." A woman rushed from the crowd, grey-haired, fat, and bloated. She climbed the altar steps, and stretched out her hands in a kind of frenzy towards the people. "Look at me, men of Gilderoy. Last spring I had a daughter, a clean wench as ever danced. Seek her from John of Brissac and his devils. Ha, good words these for a mother. Men of Gilderoy, remember your children." Fulviac’s pageant gathered grimly before the mob. A blind man tottered up and pointed to his sightless eyes. A girl held up an infant, and told shrilly of its father’s murder. One fellow displayed a tongueless mouth; another, a face distorted by the iron; a third had lost nose and ears; a fourth showed arms shrivelled and contracted by fire. It was a sinister appeal, strong yet piteous. The tyranny of the age showed in the bodies of these wronged and mutilated beings. They had been mere carrion tossed under the iron heel of power. The granite car of ruthless opulence and passion had crushed them under its reddened wheels. At a gesture from Fulviac, the priest upon the steps threw back his cowl and stood forward in the torchlight. His face was the face of a zealot, fanatical, sanguine, lined with an energy that was prophetic of power. His eyes smouldered under their straight black brows. His hands, white and bony, quivered as he stretched them out towards the people. They knew him on the instant; their clamour told as much. Often had the shadow of that thin figure fallen athwart the parched highways of stricken cities. Often had those hands tended death, those lips smitten awe into the souls of the drunkard and the harlot. "Prosper, Prosper the Preacher!"