An explosion of furious yells, born of the indignation aroused by Weroeff's letter, interrupted him at this point. A butcher of herculean stature, with red hair and beard, blood-shot eyes, and livid with rage, rushed forward, and jumping upon the cart from which the goldsmith was speaking, cried out in a stentorian voice that rang above the din: "The letter tells the truth! My sister lived in Swamerdam. Her two children were burnt to death in her house. She herself was violated--and then murdered by the royal soldiers!" The infuriate man then drew a long knife from his belt, and brandishing it, cried: "Massacre and death! In default of the King of France himself, I shall cut the throats of his good friends in Holland!" "Death to the De Witts!" "Death to the accomplices of Louis XIV!" echoed the mob, whose exasperation rose to fever heat. "Death to the traitors!" "Upon them the blood that has flowed!" Silence being restored by degrees, the goldsmith proceeded to read: "Yesterday, when, upon the departure of the enemy, we returned to our burgs, and removed the ashes of our homes, we found everywhere charred bodies of men, women and children, the women often holding the lifeless and partially burnt corpses of their infants in their own charred stumps. Acts of unheard-of ferocity were committed in cold blood by the soldiery of Louis XIV. A blind and crippled old woman, the object of our people's compassion, was killed before the eyes of her four children, and then thrown, together with them, into the flames. A number of little children were found horribly mutilated. The soldiers took a cruel delight in cutting off their limbs; others would throw them up in the air and receive them on the points of their bayonets!" "Little children! Poor little children! Massacre and death! These atrocities must be revenged!" cried the butcher, whose voice broke the first silence caused by the stupor and consternation produced by Weroeff's reading. The butcher's cries were immediately followed by a volley of imprecations that it is impossible to reproduce. "Death and extermination!" "Listen!" said Weroeff. "There is worse yet: "Girls were violated before the eyes of their mothers, wives before the eyes of their husbands. The only act of charity on the part of the soldiers was to spare the victims of their brutalities the shame of surviving their dishonor--they drowned them in the canal, or murdered them on the spot--"