"General, if you want to know the exact number," said Garat, "ask the citizen who has just prevented those men from firing upon you. He can tell you."
Bonaparte glanced at the young man as if he now saw him for the first time.
"Citizen," said he with a slight bow, "will you be good enough to give me the information I desire?"
"I think, monsieur," said Morgan, taking care to address the Republican general in the manner used before the Revolution, "you asked the number of men opposed to you?"
"Yes," replied Bonaparte, fixing a penetrating eye upon his interlocutor.
"Before you, monsieur," resumed Morgan, "there are, visible or invisible, some thirty or thirty-two thousand men; ten thousand men in the direction of the Rue Saint-Roch; ten thousand between the Place des Filles de Saint-Thomas and the Barrière des Sergents. In the neighborhood of fifty-six thousand, as you see."
"Is that all?" asked Bonaparte.
"Do you not think that is enough to oppose to your five thousand?"
"You say you are sure of the number?" asked Bonaparte without replying to the other's question.