There was a loud hum of conversation, broken at intervals by cheers and the choruses of patriotic songs. Suddenly the clock in the tower of the building chimed the hour. At the same instant, from a doorway on the right of the platform, Savrola entered, followed by Godoy, Moret, Renos, and several other prominent leaders of the movement. He made his way along the row of chairs, until he reached that on the right of the table, sat down and looked quietly about him. There was a storm of discordant shouting, no two men seeming to hold the same opinion. At one moment it sounded as if all were cheering; at another hoots and groans obtained the supremacy. The meeting in fact was about equally divided. The extreme sections of the Reform' Party, regarding Savrola's attendance at the ball as an action of the grossest treachery, howled with fury at him; the more moderate cheered him as the safest man to cling to in times of civil disturbance. The delegates and regular officials, who occupied the chairs on the platform, were silent and sullen, like men who await an explanation without belief in its sufficiency. At length the shouting ceased. Godoy, who was in the chair, rose and made a short speech, in which he studiously avoided any contentious allusion to Savrola, confining himself only to the progress of the movement. He spoke well and clearly, but nobody wanted to hear him, and all were relieved when he concluded by calling upon "our leader," Savrola, to address the meeting. Savrola, who had been talking unconcernedly with one of the delegates on his right, turned round quickly towards the audience, and rose. As he did so, a man in a blue suit, one of a little group similarly clad, shouted out, "Traitor and toady!" Hundreds of voices took up the cry; there was an outburst of hooting and groaning; others cheered half-heartedly. It was an unpromising reception. Moret looked around him in blank despair. In spite of the heat and the pressure, Lucile could not take her eyes off Savrola. She could see that he was quivering with suppressed excitement. His composure had merely been assumed; crowds stirred his blood, and when he rose he could wear his mask no longer. He looked almost terrible, as he waited there, facing the outburst with defiance written in every line of his pale, earnest face and resolute figure. Then he began to speak, but his words could not at first be distinguished through the persistent shouts of the man in blue and his friends. At length, after five minutes of intense disorder, the curiosity of the audience triumphed over all other emotions, and they generally sank into silence, to hear what their leader had to say.