In the days that followed, Jenő Baradlay found it quite a matter of course that he should be at the Plankenhorsts' at all hours, uninvited and unannounced, amid a throng of students, democrats, popular orators, all wearing muddy boots, long swords, and pendent feathers in their caps. He also found nothing strange in the fact that Alfonsine frequently received him in her morning wrapper and with her hair uncurled, that she embraced him warmly on each occasion, and that she took no pains to conceal her endearments either from strangers or from friends. It was a time when everything was permitted. As the two turned aside one evening in their walk, to join a throng of eager listeners who were being addressed by one impassioned speaker after another, Jenő was startled at seeing his brother Ödön mount the platform as one of the orators of the occasion. He, too, it appeared, was on the side of the people; he was one of the parliamentary speakers who were making their voices heard in favour of popular rights and legislative reform. His speech swept all before it; no one could listen to his words without feeling his heart stirred and his pulse quickened. Alfonsine waved her handkerchief in her enthusiasm, but her companion was suddenly seized with a mysterious fear and dread. What premonition was it that seemed to whisper in his ear the true significance of that elevated platform on which his brother stood? When the two had returned from their stroll, weary with walking the streets, and Jenő had been dismissed with a good-night kiss, Alfonsine, at last alone with her mother, threw her hat with its tricoloured ribbons into a corner and sank exhausted upon a sofa. "Oh," she cried, "how tired I am of this horrid world!" CHAPTER XIII. THE REVERSE OF THE MEDAL. After a troubled night's rest Jenő rose and, telling his servant that he should not return until late in the evening, betook himself to the Plankenhorst residence, thinking thus to avoid all possibility of meeting his brother Ödön, who, he feared, might try to persuade him to return home to their mother. "Welcome, comrade!" cried Fritz Goldner, chairman of the standing committee, as Jenő entered the drawing-room; "we were just speaking of you. Do you know that our cause is in great danger?" Jenő had known that from the beginning.