“Brothers, I claim a word!” and there was instant silence, every face turning attentively to his. He began to speak rapidly, with all his usual vehemence, and with even more than his usual plenitude of gesture. Almost at the beginning of his argument he bent his lean figure forward and beat rapidly upon the table with the palm of his hand, and then, suddenly recovering his full height, sent both arms backward. Brunow sat immediately on his right, and the back of the orator's hand caught him resoundingly upon the cheek; and at this unexpected incident the audience broke into a sudden shout of laughter, in which Brunow tried to join--with a curiously ill success, I thought. I could not understand the subject of discussion, for Ruffiano had immediately gone back to his native language, and there was something about Brunow's look which could hardly be accounted for by so trifling a misadventure as that which had just occurred. The instinct of the eye told him that I was looking at him, and he glanced at me and then suddenly averted his face. He made an effort to appear at ease, but his color came and went strangely, and both his hands trembled, though I saw that he was pressing them heavily upon the table with the intent to steady them. I thought he might possibly have been raging inwardly at me, and that in his unreasoning anger at me he might find my mere presence hateful to him; but I could not help thinking that his looks expressed fear or suspense rather than anger. When the laughter excited by the accident had died away, Ruffiano turned to him with a voice and gesture of apology; and having once laid his hand on Brunow's shoulder, continued to address him as if the argument he was offering, whatever it might be, concerned Brunow more intimately than any one else there present. He seemed, so far as I could judge, to carry the suffrages of the meeting with him, but I had quite resigned any feeble attempt I had made to follow the thread of his discourse, when I caught distinctly the words, “Beware of the women! I say it again and again and again: beware of the women! It is my last word, beware of the women!” Every word of this I understood quite clearly; and while I was wondering why the advice was given, Ruffiano dropped back with a grotesque suddenness into his seat, and shouted the words of warning a fourth time, striking both hands, palms downward, on the table.