At that moment an adjutant hastily entered the room and announced that there were suspicious gatherings of the people in the market-place and the streets of the town. They were exclaiming loudly against the gentry and the soldiers, and were goading one another on with incendiary speeches. It had been found necessary to bar the gates of the town hall against them, and the windows of an apothecary's shop had already been smashed. Apparently they meant to give most of their attention to the barracks and the town hall. The General had no sooner hastened out of the corridor than he already heard in the adjacent streets, that vague hubbub whose chaotic voice sounds so terrifying in the ears of the faint-hearted, who know not whether it is an alarm of fire or a hue and cry after a murderer. On the present occasion, however, there was both fire and murder in the sound--it was a riot. In a distant part of the town some over-zealous guardians of public order had set ringing the alarm-bells, whose strident semi-tones rose above the low hideous murmur of the mob. The General hastened into the courtyard. The soldiers were already standing there under arms. There was scarcely more than two hundred men there, the rest were a long way off, forming part of the far-stretching military cordon. This, however, was quite enough for Vértessy's purpose. What had he to fear? It was impossible to conceive that the honest scythe and saddle makers of the town, the peaceful citizens who had only to do with planes and awls and shuttles, would dare to attack him forcibly and compel him to retire before them. Swiftly, but with the utmost _sang froid_, he made his preparations. Half a battalion took up a position outside the gate guarding every approach, the rest remained within the courtyard. The rifles of the soldiers outside the gate remained unloaded. At three rolls of a drum the remaining column also marched out into the street. A single word of command would suffice for subsequent tactics. It was also considered necessary to close the gates of the neighbouring house, and two sentries were posted outside it with loaded muskets. All this was done in the most perfect order, there was no hurry, no bustle. In that house opposite dwelt the General's wife; one could reach it from the barracks across a garden. Vértessy had just completed his preparations when Cornelia's maid came hastening up to him and whispered something in his ear. For a moment a smile of delight flashed across the General's face, which immediately afterwards, however, formed into still darker folds than before. Hastily transferring the command to his first lieutenant, he hastened to his dwelling, promising to be back in a moment. It must indeed have been a matter of importance to have constrained Vértessy to quit the post becoming a soldier at such a moment. He hastened as fast as he could go to his wife's bedchamber.