The Great Clock of the Palace

The play was not scheduled to begin until the great clock of the palace struck noon, quite late for a theatrical performance. Many of the people who had been shivering before the steps of the palace since dawn and some declared that it spent the whole night huddled in the great doorway. Discomfort, impatience, boredom, the freedom of a day of license, the quarrels constantly breaking out over a sharp elbow of hobnail and shoe, the fatigue of a long wait. All this gave a tone of bitterness to the clamor of the people as they stood squeezed together, jostled, trampled on and almost smothered. Some of these married demons had knocked the glass