The wagon was left standing in the street, and Isoult saw all that happened. King Jack had joined the crowd; but Merlin remained in the wagon, holding his emblem of justice. The mob broke down the gates of the Savoy, slew the porters, and threw their bodies out into the street. A torrent of fury poured through into the courtyard till the great palace was as crowded as a beehive, and the uproar within never ceased. Men began to straggle out, carrying in their arms all manner of rich gear, plate, and jewels, and beautiful hangings, tapestries, furniture, armour, glass cups, mazer bowls, salts, clothes, dorsers, chalices, gold candlesticks, caskets, and mosaics. Everything was hurled down in the street beside the wagon where Merlin sat, until there was a pyramid of tangled magnificence lying in the roadway. When they had emptied the palace Merlin stood at his full height and waved long arms. “Destroy, destroy, let nothing be left!” They fell upon the pile, crushing the jewels to powder with hammers, battering the cups into shapeless lumps, hacking the gold and silver dishes to pieces, tearing the silks, embroideries, and tapestries to ribbons. A hundred armourers might have been at work in the street, by the clangour of axes and hammers. The air was full of dust and of silken shreds floating iridescent in the sunlight. A red stream came trickling out of the gateway into the street, for the mob had rolled all the wine barrels into the courtyard and staved them in, letting muscadel and pyment and hypocrasse gush over the stones. Merlin looked at Isoult with his ironical eyes. “We trample pride into the dust, but we do not steal it. See now, what a watch-fire they are kindling.” Blue ribbons of smoke were uncurling themselves from the windows, and in a few minutes it began to rise in black masses from the turrets and the great lantern of the hall. The mob had set the palace on fire, after hacking the wainscoting to pieces, and piling it up to make a blaze. The river of wine still ran through the gateway, soaking into the mass of gorgeous rubbish that had been trampled like litter in a cow-yard. As the windows reddened, the last of the mob came pouring out, sweating, shouting, exultant. Soon the heat became so great, and the smoke so thick, that Merlin’s wagon had to be dragged away, and the greater part of the multitude followed it back into the city.