Others became
fascinated by the prospect of immediate personal safety for their women
and children. The majority caught at it as a drowning man catches at
a straw. Father Corbelan was unexpectedly offering them a refuge from
Pedrito Montero with his llaneros allied to Senores Fuentes and Gamacho
with their armed rabble.
All the latter part of the afternoon an animated discussion went on in
the big rooms of the Amarilla Club. Even those members posted at the
windows with rifles and carbines to guard the end of the street in
case of an offensive return of the populace shouted their opinions and
arguments over their shoulders. As dusk fell Don Juste Lopez, inviting
those caballeros who were of his way of thinking to follow him, withdrew
into the corredor, where at a little table in the light of two
candles he busied himself in composing an address, or rather a solemn
declaration to be presented to Pedrito Montero by a deputation of such
members of Assembly as had elected to remain in town. His idea was
to propitiate him in order to save the form at least of parliamentary
institutions.
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