For a moment there was silence, and then a babel of confused and incoherent cries went up from the terror-stricken lips of the legislative and executive boards. Metaxas, a consummate lawyer, was the first to run from the room; Koletres, unequalled in the knowledge of conveyancing, called lamentably on the Virgin and followed. At a stroke, on the scent of danger, the red-tape rule, and the grabbing greed which called itself patriotism, banished itself and fled. Ministers, senators, lawyers, and what not, ran incontinently to take refuge on the few Greek vessels which lay opposite Argos; the alarm spread like the east wind in March through the town, and women and children, some with bundles of their property snatched hastily up, rushed out in all directions to find safety, some with the blockading Greeks at Nauplia, some in the neighboring villages, others in the mountains. Many fugitives from towns on the coast which the Turks had sacked were in the place, and these, remembering the red horrors from which they had but lately escaped with bare life, left behind them the scanty remains of their property and, like rabbits remorselessly ferreted from one burrow to another, fled in the wildest confusion. Encamped in the square, crowding the poorer quarters, were hordes of camp-followers who had been drawn here by the prospect of the fall of Nauplia--wild men of the mountains, attended by great sheep-dogs, almost less savage than themselves. These being of able body and for the most part unencumbered by families or property, but very willing to become encumbered with the latter, spent a fruitful hour while the Turkish troops were still creeping from the entrance of the Dervenaki across the plain in plundering the houses of the wealthier citizens who had abandoned them, preferring to make sure their escape than to risk it for the sake of their goods. Among others, the secretary of state, Theodore Negris, a bibliophile, gave no thought to the small library of valuable books he had brought with him to Argos, supposing that the seat of government would be there, if not permanently, yet for a considerable time; and a Laconian camp-follower, entering his house after his flight, and unwilling to leave behind what might be of value, packed the most of the books in a sack and slung them over a stolen horse. But the horse fell lame, and the man wishing to push on to the hills, thought himself lucky to sell it, books, lameness, and all, for two dollars to a Greek officer who was in need of an animal to carry water for the troops at Lerna.