“The Brabant Column attends to them: it joins with it part of the Guards which has been bought over: four hundred Swiss, three hundred country friends, and so on. These will have taken possession of all the gates by help within. We rush in on the King, saying: ‘Sire, the St. Antoine ward is in insurrection; a carriage is ready—you must be off!’ if he consents, all right: if he resists, we hustle him out and drive him to St. Denis.”
“Capital!”
“There we find twenty thousand infantry, with all the country royalists, well armed, in great force, who conduct the King to Peronne.”
“Better and better. What do you do there?’
“The gathering there brings our whole array up to one hundred and fifty thousand men.”
“A very pretty figure,” commented the Chief of the Invisibles.
“With the mass we march on Paris, cutting off supplies above and below on the river. Famished Paris capitulates; the Assembly is kicked to pieces, and the King enjoys his own again on the throne of his fathers.”
“Amen!” sang Cagliostro. “My dear Beausire,” he went on, rising, “your conversation is most agreeable; but as they say of the greatest orators, when they have spoken all that is in them, nothing more is to be got. You are done?”
“Yes, my lord, for the moment.”
“Then, good-night: when you want another ten louis call for them at my home, at Bellevue.”