I
never knew what became of them-but their shrieks still haunt my dreams....
The yard now became a pandemonium. The more ruffianly part of the mob--and
alas! there were but too many of them--hurled the furniture out of the
windows, or ran off with anything that they could carry. In vain I
expostulated, threatened; I was answered by laughter, curses, frantic
dances, and brandished plunder. Then I first found out how large a portion
of rascality shelters itself under the wing of every crowd; and at the
moment, I almost excused the rich for overlooking the real sufferers, in
indignation at the rascals. But even the really starving majority, whose
faces proclaimed the grim fact of their misery, seemed gone mad for the
moment. The old crust of sullen, dogged patience had broken up, and their
whole souls had exploded into reckless fury and brutal revenge--and yet
there was no hint of violence against the red fat woman, who, surrounded
with her blubbering children, stood screaming and cursing at the
first-floor window, getting redder and fatter at every scream. The worst
personality she heard was a roar of laughter, in which, such is poor
humanity, I could not but join, as her little starved drab of a
maid-of-all-work ran out of the door, with a bundle of stolen finery under
her arm, and high above the roaring of the flames, and the shouts of the
rioters, rose her mistress's yell.
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