"Ah, there, Lucien," said Fouché with his withered leer, "if your brother orders the troops to march, how will you, as president of the Fire Hundred, whom you betray with such neatness and despatch, keep those prattlers from screeching like jays when they are dissolved?"
"I shall head off the storm, never fear," laughed Lucien.
"And now, dear colleagues," interrupted Regnier, "let us make haste. The day is nearly gone, and we have not a moment to lose. Let us go on. Who will undertake to prepare the letters of notification?"
"I," volunteered Lahary, their host. "I shall see the inspectors of the hall, who are ours. They are all ready to sell themselves."
"My dear Lucien, you will make it your duty to signify to the General the result of our deliberations?" asked Regnier.
"I am going at once to my brother's, on Victory Street," answered the young man.
"Who," Regnier continued, "will post the inspectors of the hall to have the guards doubled to-morrow?"
"I; and I shall reinforce the posts with spies," replied Cornet.
"My other colleagues and I," Regnier went on, "shall partition among us the task of visiting our friends at once, at their homes, and informing them of the motive of to-morrow's special session."
"We ought above all to caution them to keep the strictest secrecy about the affair," counseled Boulay, from the Meurthe district. "Otherwise it will get noised about, and to-morrow we will see the republican minority march into the Council with their bothersome questions."