“It is half past eleven,” he exclaimed, “and the thing is to be done. But what is to be done, if those men whom we hold doubtful should take courage, and, in the moment of uproar take arms against us? We have made no preparations for this event. Now, this firing the train from my lodgings is but the work of a boy. It may be done by any body. It is more fitting that, with six or eight select men, well armed, I should be in reserve, ready to encounter resistance should there be any after the explosion.”
Villemain, a youth of twenty-two, a dark, sinister-looking person, slight and short, promptly volunteered to fire the train. His offer was at once accepted.
“It is half-past eleven, you say? I will go at once,” said Villemain.
“We will go with you,” cried La Roquette and Stephen Le Genevois in the same breath.
“No! no! not so!” said Le Genré. “You have each duties to perform. You must scatter yourselves as much as possible, so as to increase the alarm at the proper moment. There will be little danger, I grant you, with Laudonniere, and that imp of the devil, D’Erlach, out of the way; but it must be prepared for. Once show the rest that these are done for, and we shall do as we think proper.”
“What a fortunate thing for us is this game of chess. It disposes of the only persons we could not so easily have managed;” said Fourneaux. “Boxes them up, as one may say, so that they only need a mark upon them to be ready for shipment.”
“And yet, somehow, I could wish,” said Le Genevois, “that Marchand were not among them. I like that fellow. He is so bold, so blunt, and plays his game just as if it were his religion.”
“I could wish to save the painter, if any,” remarked La Roquette; “but at all events, we shall inherit his pictures.”
“Bah! let the devil take him and them together! Why bother about such stuff; what’s his pictures of the country to us, when the country itself is our own, to keep or to quit just as it pleases us? We are wasting time. Where’s Villemain?”