The lower classes of citizens, all those who hoped that their trades and industries would profit by the approaching festivities at Königsberg, were highly incensed by this proceeding, which they considered calculated to offend the king. The higher classes, on the contrary, imagined that their gifted monarch would at once gladly accede to the legitimate desire of his people; no one was in a better position than he to understand the defects of the old system of representation. But neither those who dreaded an outburst of royal indignation nor those who expected a manifestation of royal liberal-mindedness proved to be right. Frederick William's vague answer was to the effect that the constitution of the Estates rested upon a national, historic foundation, that the king took a deep interest in the said institution, that he was firmly determined to pursue the path entered on by his predecessors, and that his faithful Estates might "place absolute confidence in his intentions" with regard to the institution of the Landtag (Parliament). Little of positive assurance as there was in this message, it was received with joy; it relieved one party from the dread of a stern rebuff, and encouraged the sanguine hopes of the other. The festival at Königsberg went off successfully, and was marked by general enthusiasm. Its most imposing incident occurred immediately after the deputies had repeated, word for word, the oath of allegiance read out to them. Hardly had the echo of the loud Amen pronounced by the four hundred voices died away, when the king was seen to rise from the throne, which stood upon an open balcony, come forward to the rails, raise his arm as if he were taking an oath, and begin to address the assembly. Every word of his speech was clearly audible. He promised to be a just judge, a faithful, painstaking, and merciful ruler, a Christian king like his ever-to-be-remembered father. The concluding sentence bears witness to his literary gift: "May God preserve our Prussian fatherland, for its own sake, for Germany's, and for the world's--our fatherland, which is made up of many parts, and yet is one whole, like that noble metal, a mixture of many others, but itself one metal, liable to no rust but the beautifying rust of centuries!" Astonishment that a King of Prussia should thus of his own free will give a promise to his people in return for theirs to him, combined with the impression produced by this ostensibly improvised address from such an animated and winning royal personage, to create a feeling of excited jubilation. Above on the balcony the queen burst into tears, down below the people wept, smiled through their tears, and pressed each other's hands. In the transport of the moment it was not observed that there was no definite political promise in the speech, nothing but liberal generalities and romantic phraseology.