XXXI
SUNDAY IN BRISTOL
It was far from Vaughan's humour to play the bully, and before he had even reached his bedroom, which looked to the back, he repented of his vehemence. Between that and the natural turmoil of his feelings he lay long waking; and twice, in a stillness which proclaimed that all was well, he heard the Bristol clocks tell the hour. After all, then, Brereton had been right! For himself, had the command been his, he would have adopted more strenuous measures. He would have tried to put fear into the mob before the riot reached its height. And had he done so, how dire might have been the consequences! How many homes might at this moment be mourning his action, how many innocent persons be suffering pain and misery!
Whereas Brereton, the strong, quiet man, resisting importunity, shunning haste, keeping his head where others wavered, had carried the city through its trouble, with scarce the loss of a single life. Truly he was one whom
Non civium ardor prava jubentium,
Non vultus instantis tyranni
Mente quatit solida!
Vaughan thought of him with a new respect, and of himself with a new humility. He was forced to acknowledge that even in that field of action which he had quitted, and to which he was now inclined to return, he was not likely to pick up a marshal's bâton.
He slept at length, and long and heavily, awaking towards ten o'clock with aching limbs and a cheek so sore that it brought all that had passed to instant recollection. He found his hot water at his door, and he dressed slowly and despondently, feeling the reaction and thinking of Mary, and of that sunny morning, six months back, when he had looked into Broad Street from a window of this very house, and dreamed of a modest bonnet and a sweet blushing face. An hour after that, he remembered, he had happened on the Honourable-oh, d- Flixton! All his troubles had started from that unlucky meeting with him.
He found his breakfast laid in the next room, the coffee and bacon in a Japan cat by the fire. He ate and drank in an atmosphere of gloomy retrospect. If he had never met Flixton! If he had not gone to that unlucky dinner at Chippinge! If he had spoken to her in Parliament Street! If-if-if! The bells of half a dozen churches were ringing, drumming his regrets into him; and he stood awhile irresolute, looking through the window. The inn-yard, which was all the prospect the window commanded, was empty; an old liver-and-white pointer, scratching itself in a corner, was the only living thing in it. But while he looked, wondering if the dog had been a good dog in its time, two men came running into the yard with every sign of haste and pressure. One, in a yellow jacket, flung himself against a stable door and vanished within, leaving the door open. The other pounced on a chaise, one of half a dozen ranged under a shed, and by main force dragged it into the open.
The men's actions impressed Vaughan with a vague uneasiness. He listened. Was it fancy, or did he catch the sound of a distant shot? And-there seemed to be an odd murmur in the air. He seized his hat, put on his caped coat-for a cold drizzle was falling-and went downstairs.
The hall was empty, but through the open doorway he could see a knot of people, standing outside, looking up the street. He made for the threshold, and asked the rearmost of the starers what it was.
"Eh, what is it?" the man answered volubly. "Oh, they're gone! It's true enough! And such a crowd as was never seen, I'm told-stoning them, and shouting 'Bloody Blues!' after them. They're gone right away to Keynsham, and glad to be there with whole bones!"
"But what is it?" Vaughan asked impatiently. "What has happened, my man? Who're gone?"
The man turned for the first time, and saw who it was. "You have not heard, sir?" he exclaimed.
"Not a word."
"Not that the people have risen? And most part pulled down the Mansion House? Ay, first thing this morning, sir! They say old Pinney, the Mayor, got out at the back just in time or he'd have been murdered! He's had to send the military away-anyways, the Blues who killed the lad last night on the Pithay."
"Impossible!" Vaughan exclaimed, turning red with anger. "You cannot have heard aright."
"It's as true as true!" the man replied, rubbing his hands in excitement. "As for me," he continued, "I was always for Reform! And this will teach the Lords a lesson! They'll know our mind now, and that Wetherell's a liar, begging your pardon, sir. And the old Corporation's not much better. A set of Tories mostly! If the Welsh Back drinks their cellars dry it won't hurt me, nor Bristol."
Vaughan was too sharply surprised to rebuke the man. Could the story be true! And if it were, what was Brereton doing? He could not have been so foolish as to halve his force in obedience to the people he was sent to check! But the murmur in the air was a fact, and past the end of the street men were running in anything but a Sunday fashion.
He went back to his room and pocketed his staff. Then he descended again and was on his way out, when a person belonging to the house stopped him.
"Mr. Vaughan," she said earnestly, "don't go, sir. You are known after last night and will come to harm. You will indeed, sir. And you can do no good. My father says that nothing can be done until to-morrow."
"I will take care of myself," he replied, lightly. But his eyes thanked her. He pushed his way through the gazers at the door, and set off towards Queen's Square.
At every door men and women were standing looking out. In the distance he could hear cheering, which waxed louder and more insistent as, prudently avoiding the narrower lanes, he passed down Clare Street to Broad Quay, from which there was an entrance to the northwest corner of the Square. Alongside the quay, which was fringed with warehouses and sheds, and from which the huge city crane towered up, lay a line of brigs and schooners; the masts of the more distant of these tapering to vanishing points in the mist which lay upon the water. At the moment, however, Vaughan had no eye for them. He saw them, but his thoughts were with the rioters, and in a twinkling he was within the Square, and seeing what was to be seen.
He judged that there were not more than fifteen hundred persons present. Of the whole about one-half belonged to the lowest class. These were gathered about the Mansion House, some drinking before it, others bearing up liquor from the cellars, while others again were tearing out the woodwork of the casements, or wantonly flinging the last remnants of furniture from the windows. The second moiety of the crowd, less reckless or of higher position, looked on as at a show; or now and again, at the bidding of some active rioter, raised a cheer for Reform, "The King and Reform! Reform!"
There was nothing dreadful, nothing awe-inspiring in the sight. Yet it was such a sight, for an English city on a Sunday morning, that Vaughan's gorge rose at it. A hundred resolute men might have put the mob to flight. And meantime, on every point of vantage, on Redcliffe Parade, eastward of the Square, on College Green, and Brandon Hill, to the westward of it, thousands stood looking in silence on the scene, and by their supineness encouraging the work of destruction.
He thought for a moment of pushing to the front and trying what a few reasonable words would effect. But as he advanced, his eye caught a gleam of colour, and in the corner of the Square, most remote from the disorder, he discovered a handful of dragoons, seated motionless in their saddles, watching the proceedings.
The folly of this struck him dumb. And he hurried, at a white heat, across the Square to remonstrate. He was about to speak to the sergeant in charge, when Flixton, with a civilian cloak masking his uniform, rode up to the men at a foot-pace. Vaughan turned to him instead.
"Good Heavens, man!" he cried, too hot to mince his words or remember at the moment what there was between him and Flixton, "What's Brereton doing? What has happened! It is not true that he has sent the Fourteenth away?"
Flixton looked down at him sulkily. "He's sent 'em to Keynsham," he said, shortly. "If he hadn't, the crowd would have been out of hand!"
"But what do you call them now?" Vaughan retorted, with angry sarcasm. "They are destroying a public building in broad daylight! Aren't they sufficiently out of hand?"
Flixton shrugged his shoulders, but did not answer. He was flushed and has manner was surly.
"And your squad here, looking on and doing nothing? They're worse than useless!" Vaughan continued. "They encourage the beggars! They'd be better in their quarters than here! Better at Keynsham," he added bitterly.
"So I've told him," Flixton answered, taking the last words literally. "He sent me to see how things are looking. And a d-d pleasant way this is of spending a wet Sunday!" On which, without more, having seen, apparently, what he came to see, he turned his horse to go out of the Square by the Broad Quay.
Vaughan walked a few paces beside the horse. "But, Flixton, press him," he said urgently; "press him, man, to act! To do something!"
"That's all very fine," the Honourable Bob answered churlishly, "but Brereton's in command. And you don't catch me interfering. I am not going to take the responsibility off his shoulders."
"But think what may happen to-night!" Vaughan urged. Already he saw that the throng was growing denser and its movements less random. Somewhere in the heart of it a man was speaking. "Think what may happen after dark, if they are as bad as this in daylight?"
Flixton looked askance at him. "Ten to one, only what happened last night," he answered. "You all croaked then; but Brereton was right."
Vaughan saw that he argued to no purpose. For Flixton, forward and positive in small things and on the surface, was discovered by the emergency; all that now remained of his usual self-assertion was a sense of injury. Vaughan inquired, instead, where he would find Brereton, and as by this time the crowd had clearly outgrown the control of a single man, he contented himself with walking round the Square, and learning, by mingling with the fringe, what manner of spirit moved it.
That spirit, though he heard some ugly threats against Wetherell and the Bishops and the Lords, was rather a reckless and mischievous than a bloodthirsty one. To obtain drink, to destroy this or that gaol, and by and by to destroy all gaols seemed to the crowd the first principles of Reform.
Presently a cry of "To the Bridewell! Come on! To the Bridewell!" was raised, and led by a dozen hobbledehoys, armed with iron bars plucked from the railings, a body of some hundreds trooped off, helter-skelter, in the direction of the prison of that name.
Vaughan saw that someone must be induced to act; and to him the following hours of that wet, dismal Sunday were a waking nightmare. He hurried hither and thither, from Guildhall to Council House, from Brereton's lodgings to the dragoons' quarters, striving to effect something and always failing; seeking some cohesion, some decision, some action, and finding none. Always there had just been a meeting, or was going to be a meeting, or would be a meeting by and by. The civil power would not act without the military; and the military did not think itself strong enough to act, but would act if the civil power would do something which the civil power had made up its mind not to do. And meantime the supineness of the mass of the citizens was marvellous. He seemed to be moving endlessly between lines of men who lounged at their doors, and joked, or waited for the crowd to pass that way. Nothing, it seemed to him, would rouse these men to a sense of the position. It would be a lesson to Wetherell, they said. It would be a lesson to the Peers. It would be a lesson to the Tories. The Bridewell was sacked and fired, the great gaol across the New Cut was firing, the Gloucester gaol in the north of the city was threatened. And still it did not occur to these householders, as they looked down the wet, misty streets, that presently it would be a lesson to them.
But at half-past three, with the dusk on that rainy day scarce an hour off, there was a meeting at the Guildhall. Still no cohesion, no action. On the other hand, much recrimination, many opinions. One was for casting all firearms into the float. Another for arming all, fit or unfit. One was for fetching the Fourteenth back, another for sending the Third to join them at Keynsham. One was for appeasing the people by parading a dummy figure of their own Recorder through the city and burning it on College Green. Another for relying on the Political Union. In vain Vaughan warned them that the mob would presently attack private property; in vain he offered, in a few spirited words, to lead the Special Constables to the rescue of the gaol. The meeting, small to begin and always divided, dwindled fast. The handful who were ready to follow him made the support of the military a condition. Everybody said, "To-morrow!" To-morrow the posse comitatus might be called out; to-morrow the yeomanry, summoned by the man in the yellow jacket, would be here! To-morrow the soldiers might act. And in fine-To-morrow!
There was over the door of the Council House of those days a statue of Justice, lacking the sword and the bandage. Vaughan, passing out in disgust from the meeting, pointed to it. "There is Bristol, gentlemen," he said bitterly. "Your authorities have dropped the sword, and until they regain it we are helpless. I have done my best." And, shrugging his shoulders, he started for Brereton's lodgings to try a last appeal.
He might well think it necessary. For a night which Bristol was long to remember was closing down upon the city. Though it was Sunday, the churches were empty; in few was a second service held. The streets, on the contrary, were full, in spite of the cold; full of noise and turmoil and disorder; of bands of men hastening up and down with reckless cries and flaring lights, at the bidding of leaders as unwitting. In Queen's Square the rioters were drinking themselves drunk as at a fair, while amid the falling rain, through which the last stormy gleams of daylight strove to pass, amid the thickening dusk, those who all day long had jested at their doors began to turn doubtful looks on one another. From three points the smoke of fired prisons rose to the clouds and floated in a dense pall over the city; and men whispered that a hundred, two hundred, five hundred criminals had been set free. On Clifton Downs, on Brandon Hill, on College Green, on Redcliffe the thousand gazers of the morning were doubled and redoubled. But they no longer wore the cynical faces of the morning. On the contrary there were some who, following with their eyes the network of waterways laden with inflammable shipping, which pierced the city in every direction-who, tracing these and the cutthroat alleys and lanes about them, predicted that the morning would find Bristol a heap of ruins. And not a few, taking fright at the last moment, precipitately removed their families to Clifton, and locked up their houses.
Vaughan, as he walked through the dusk, had those waterways, those lanes, those alleys, the congested heart of the old city, in his mind. He doubted, even he, if the hour for action was not past. Nor was he surprised when Brereton met his appeal with a flat non possumus. He was more struck with the change which twenty-four hours had wrought in the man. He looked worn and haggard. The shadows under his eyes were deeper, the eyes shone with a more feverish light. His dress, too, was careless and disordered, and while he was not still for a moment, he repeated what he said over and over again as if to persuade himself of its truth.
Naturally Vaughan laid stress on the damage already done. "But, I tell you," Brereton replied angrily, "we are well clear for that! It's not a tithe of the harm which would have befallen if I had given way! I tell you, we're well clear for that. No, I've done, thank God, I've done the only thing it was possible to do. A little too much, and if I'd succeeded I'd have been hung-for they're all against me, they're all against me, above and below! And if I'd failed, a thousand lives would have paid the bill! And do you ever consider, man," he continued, striking the table, "what a massacre in this crowded place would be! Think of the shipyards, the dockyards, the quays! The water pits and the sunk alleys! How could I clear them with ninety swords? How could I clear them? Eh, with ninety swords? I tell you they never meant me to clear them."
"But why not clear the wider streets, sir?" Vaughan persisted, "and keep a grip on those?"
"No! I say, no!"
"Yet even now, if you were to move your full force to Queen's Square, sir, you might clear it. And driven from their headquarters, and taught that they are not going to have it all their own way, the more prudent would fall off and go home."
"I know," Brereton answered. "I know the argument. I know it. But who's to thank for the whole trouble? Your Blues, who went beyond their orders last night. The Fourteenth, sir! The Fourteenth! But I'll have no more of it. Flixton is of my opinion, too."
"Flixton is an ass!" Vaughan cried incautiously.
"And you think me one too!" Brereton retorted, with so strange a look that for the first time Vaughan was sure that his mind was tottering. "Well, think what you like! Think what you like! But I'll trouble you not to take that tone here."
XXXII
THE AFFRAY AT THE PALACE
A little before the hour at which Vaughan interviewed Brereton, Sir Robert Vermuyden, the arrival of whose travelling carriage at the White Lion about the middle of the afternoon had caused some excitement, walked back to the inn. He was followed by Thomas, the servant who had attended Mary to Bristol, and by another servant. As he passed through the streets the signs of the times were not lost upon him; far from it. But the pride of caste was strong upon him, and he hid his anxiety.
On the threshold of the inn he turned to the servants. "Are you sure," he asked for the fourth time, "that that was the house at which you left her?"
"Certain sure, Sir Robert," Thomas answered earnestly.
"And sure-but, ah!" the baronet broke off abruptly, his tone one of relief. "Here's Mr. Cooke! Go now, but be within call. Mr. Cooke," – he stepped, as he spoke, in front of that gentleman, who was about to enter the house-"well met!"
Cooke was hot with haste and ire, but at the unexpected sight of Sir Robert he stood still. "God bless my soul!" he cried. "You here, sir?"
"Yes. And you know Bristol well. You can help me."
"I wish I could help myself!" Cooke cried, forgetting himself in his excitement.
"My daughter is in Bristol."
"Indeed?" the angry merchant replied. "Then she could not be in a worse place. That is all I can say."
"I am inclined to agree with you."
"This is your Reform!"
Sir Robert stared. "Not my Reform, Mr. Cooke," he said in a tone of displeasure.
"I beg your pardon, Sir Robert," Cooke rejoined, speaking more coolly. "I beg your pardon. But what I have suffered to-day is beyond telling. By G-d, it's my opinion that there's only one man worthy of the name in Bristol! And that's your cousin, Vaughan!"
Sir Robert struck his stick on the pavement. "Mr. Vaughan?" he exclaimed. "He is here, then? I feared so!"
"Here? You feared? I tell you he's the only man to be called a man, who is here! If it had not been for him and the way he handled the constables last night we should have been burnt out then instead of to-night! I don't know that the gain's much, but for what it's worth we have him to thank!"
Sir Robert frowned. "I am surprised. He behaved well? Indeed!" he said.
"D-d well! D-d well! If there had been half a dozen like him, we'd be out of the wood!"
"Where is he staying?" Sir Robert asked after a moment's hesitation. "I've lost my daughter in the confusion, and I think it possible that he may know where she is."
"He is staying here at the Lion," Cooke answered. "But he's been up and down all day trying to put heart into poltroons." And he ran over the chief events of the last few hours.
He punctuated the story with oaths and bitter complaints, and perhaps it was for this reason that Sir Robert, after he had heard the main facts, broke away. He went through the hall to the bar where the landlord, who knew him well, came forward and greeted him respectfully. But to Sir Robert's inquiry as to Mr. Vaughan's whereabouts he shook his head.
"I wish he was in the house, Sir Robert," he said in a low voice. "For he's a marked man in Bristol since last night. I was in the Square myself, and it was wonderful what spirit he put into his men. But the scum and the riffraff who are uppermost to-day say he handled them cruelly, and my daughter tried to persuade him from going out to-day. But he would go, sir."
Sir Robert reflected with a gloomy face. "Where are Mr. Flixton's quarters?" he asked at last. He might possibly learn something from him.
The man told him, and Sir Robert summoned his servants and went out. It was dark by this time, but a faint glare shone overhead and there was a murmur in the air, as if, in the gloom beneath, the heart of the city was palpitating, in dread of it knew not what. Sir Robert had not far to go. He had barely passed into College Green when he met Flixton under a lamp. And so it happened that two minutes later, Vaughan, on his way from Brereton's lodgings in Unity Street, came plump upon the two. He might have gone by in ignorance, but as he passed the taller man looked up, and Vaughan with a shock of surprise recognised Sir Robert Vermuyden.
Flixton caught sight of Vaughan at the same moment, and "Here's your man, Sir Robert," he cried with a little malice in his tone. "Here, Vaughan," he continued, "Here's Sir Robert Vermuyden! He's looking for you. He wants to know-"
Sir Robert stopped him. "I will speak for myself, Mr. Flixton, if you please," he said with the dignity which seldom deserted him. "Mr. Vaughan," he continued, with a piercing glance, "where is my daughter?"
Vaughan returned his look, frowning. Since the parting in Miss Sibson's parlour, the remembrance of which still set his blood in a flame, Sir Robert and he had not met. Now, in the wet gloom of College Green, under a rare gaslamp, with turmoil about them, and the murmur of fresh trouble drawing near through the streets, Sir Robert asked him for his daughter! He could have laughed. As it was, "I know nothing, sir, of your daughter," he replied, in a tone between contempt and anger.
"But," Sir Robert retorted, "you travelled with her, from London!"
"How do you know that I did?"
"The servants, sir, have told me that you did."
"Then they must also have told you," Vaughan rejoined keenly, "that I did not take the liberty of speaking to Miss Vermuyden. And that I left the coach at Chippenham. That being so, I can only refer you," he continued with a sneer, raising his hat and preparing to move on, "to Mr. Flixton, who went with her the rest of the way to Bristol."
He turned away. But he had not taken two paces before Sir Robert touched his shoulder, and with that habit of command which few questioned. "Wait, sir," he said, "Wait, if you please. You do not escape me so easily. You will attend to me one moment, if you please. Mr. Flixton accompanied Miss Vermuyden, as did her man and maid, to Miss Sibson's house. She gave that address to Lady Worcester, in whose care she was; and I sought her there this afternoon. But she is not there." Sir Robert continued, striving to read Vaughan's face. "The house is empty. So is the house on either side. I can make no one hear."
"And you come to me for news of her?" Vaughan asked in the tone he had used throughout. He was very sore.
"I do."
"You do not think that I am the last person of whom you should ask tidings of your daughter?"
"She came here," Sir Robert answered sternly, "to see Lady Sybil."
Vaughan stared. The answer seemed to be irrelevant. Then he understood. "Oh," he said, "I see. You are still under the impression that your wife and I are in a conspiracy to delude you? Your daughter also? You think that she is in the plot? And that she gave the schoolmistress's address to deceive you?"
"No!" Sir Robert cried. But, after all, that was what he did think. Had he not told himself, more than once, that she was her mother's daughter? Had he not told himself that it could not have been by chance that Vaughan and she met a second time on the coach? He knew that she had left London and gone to her mother in defiance of him. He knew that. And though she had entwined herself about his heart, though she had seemed to him all gentleness, goodness, truth-she was still her mother's daughter! Nevertheless, he said "No!" – and said it angrily.
"Then I do not know what you mean!" Vaughan retorted.
"I believe that you can tell me something, if you will."
Vaughan looked at him. "I have nothing to tell you," he said.
"You mean, sir, that you will tell me nothing!"
"That, if you like."
For nearly half a century the old man had found few to oppose him; and now by good luck he had not time to reply. A man running out of the darkness in the direction of Unity Street-the open space was full of moving groups, of alarms and confusion-caught sight of Vaughan's face, checked himself and addressed him.
"Mr. Vaughan!" he said. "They are coming! They are making for the Palace! The Bishop must be got away, if he's not gone! I am fetching the Colonel! The Mayor is following with all he can get together. If you will give warning at the Palace, there will be time for his lordship to escape."
"Right!" Vaughan cried, glad to leave his company. And he started without the loss of a moment. Even so, he had not gone twenty paces down the Green before the head of the mob entered it from St. Augustine's, and passed, with hoarse shouts, along the south side, towards the ancient Archway which led to the Lower Green. It was a question whether he or they reached the Archway first; but he won the race by a score of yards.
The view from the Lower Green, which embraced the burning gaol, as well as all Queen's Square and the Floating Basin that islanded it, had drawn together a number of gazers. These impeded Vaughan's progress, but he got through them at last, and as the mob burst into the Lower Green he entered the paved passage leading to the Precincts, hurried along it, turned the dark elbow near the inner end, and halted before the high gates which shut off the Cloisters. The Palace door was in the innermost or southeast corner of the Cloisters.
It was very dark at the end of the passage; and fortunately! For the gates were fast closed, and before he could, groping, find the knocker, the rabble had entered the passage behind him and cut off his retreat. The high wall which rose on either side made escape impossible. Nor was this all. As he awoke to the trap in which he had placed himself, a voice at his elbow muttered, "My God, we shall be murdered!" And he learned that Sir Robert had followed him.
He had no time to remonstrate, nor thought of remonstrance. "Stand flat against the wall!" he muttered, his fingers closing upon the staff in his pocket. "It is our only chance!"
He had basely spoken before the leaders of the mob swept round the elbow. They had one light, a flare borne above them, which shone on their tarpaulins and white smocks, and on the huge ship-hammers they carried. There was a single moment of great peril, and instinctively Vaughan stepped before the older man. He could not have made a happier movement, for it seemed-to the crowd who caught a glimpse of the two and took them for some of their own party-as if he advanced against the gates along with their leaders.
The peril indeed, or the worst of it, was over the moment they fell into the ranks. "Hammers to the front!" was the cry. And Sir Robert and Vaughan were thrust back into the second line, that those who wielded the hammers might have room. Vaughan tipped his hat over his face, and the villains who pressed upon the two and jostled them, and whose cries of "Burn him out! Burn the old devil out!" were dictated by greed rather than by hate, were too full of the work in hand to regard their neighbours closely. In three or four minutes-long minutes they seemed to the two inclosed in that unsavoury company-the bars gave way, the gates were thrown open, and Vaughan and Sir Robert, hardly keeping their feet in the rush, were borne into the Cloisters.
The rabble, with cries of triumph, raced across the dark court to the Palace door and began to use their hammers on that. Vaughan hoped that the Bishop had had warning-as a fact he had escaped some hours earlier. At any rate he and his companion could do no more, and under cover of the darkness they retreated to the porch of a smaller house which opened on the Cloisters. Here they were safe for the time; and, his heart opened and his tongue loosed by the danger through which they had passed, he turned to his companion and remonstrated with him.
"Sir Robert," he said, "this is no place for a man of your years."
"England will soon be no place for any man of my years," the Baronet answered bitterly. "I would your leaders, sir, were here to see their work! I would Lord Grey were here to see how well his friends carry out his hints!"
"I doubt if he would be more pleased than you or I!" Vaughan answered. "In the meantime-"
"The soldiers! Have a care!" The alarm came from the gate by which they had entered, and Vaughan broke off, with an exclamation of joy. "We have them now!" he said. "And red-handed! Brereton has only to close the passage, and he must take them all!"
But the rioters took that view also, and the alarm. And they streamed out panic-stricken. When the soldiers rode in, Brereton at their head, not more than twenty or thirty remained in the Precincts. And on that followed the most remarkable of all the scenes that disgraced Bristol that night; the scene which beyond others convinced many of the complicity of the troops, if not of the Government, in the outrage.