As time went on the hum of conversation grew deafening. The patronizers of the gallery expressed their impatience by stamps, cries, and shouts, while exchanging with each other, over the heads of the occupants of the stalls, jokes and remarks which were coarse in the extreme. It was a good thing that there were no ladies present.
At last four gentlemen appeared on the stage—Don Rosendo Belinchon, Alvaro Peña, Don Feliciano Gomez, and Don Rudesindo Cepeda, proprietor of the finest cider distillery. The four men took off their hats as they assembled on the stage. Silence suddenly reigned. Some of the audience—the minority—also took off their hats; the majority, more veiled in darkness, and more inclined to discourtesy, so prevalent in the gallery, remained covered. Don Rosendo and his friends smiled shamefacedly at the audience, and, to overcome the oppressive feeling of nervousness and embarrassment, they began talking to the occupants of the front row of stalls who were within sight. Alvaro Peña, more courageous by dint of his military experience, advanced to the front of the stage, and, giving an exaggeratedly familiar tone to his remarks, and aimlessly smiling like a ballet girl, said:
"Señores, my coadjutors are as anxious as myself for all persons of note in the audience to come up here, so that they may assist us with their support, eh? and with their knowledge, eh?—in short, that they may second us in the enterprise about to be inaugurated." The harbor-master pronounced his r's very much like j's.
The modesty conveyed by this suggestion was received with a murmur of applause from the assembly.
"Is not Don Pedro Miranda here?" asked Peña, now at his ease, and resuming the despotic military air peculiar to him.
"Here he is—here!" cried several voices.
Don Pedro, however, remonstrated with those who pushed him toward the stage.
"But, señores, why? What is the object? There are other people."
But there was no help for it. He was gradually pushed to the stage, and as there were no steps by which to climb, Peña and Don Feliciano Gomez pulled him up by the hands on to the boards.
"Now, Don Rufo, come up."