Several times during this speech an angry murmur went up from the military section of the senate, but Nicholas more than once rose to his feet and quieted them with an uplifted hand. He himself listened attentively with a smile on his face, and when Germanos alluded to his honesty he laughed aloud. For ever since Mitsos had told him the story of his own part in the war, unsuspected by all, and only divulged when necessity drove--of his silent, boyish heroism, his uncalculating elimination of self--Nicholas had been privy to a secret shame at his own deeds, or rather his own words. To withstand the primates in so far as they injured the cause was well; but was it seemly to brawl, to throw ineffectual words about, to waste, as he called it, "good anger on an unprofitable thing"? What fruit had his angry gibes and sneers borne? Were the primates wagging their unamiable tongues less zealously? Were they not even speaking bitter truth when they said that nefarious traffic was going on between the captains of the army and the besieged? If the evil was to be checked, it must be checked another way, and not by sprinkling the scandal-mongers with insults. For a long time he had contemplated taking a certain step, and now that opportunity offered itself so fitly he took it with as light a heart as that which a tired man bears homeward. At the same time the openness of the accusation prompted an equal openness. Germanos should be answered once for all with his own frankness, and then for the highest trump card to take the honor-laden trick. So Nicholas, still smiling courteously, asked permission from the prince, and in dead silence made his reply, speaking very quietly.