and that soon.

Le Blondin had organised a great and extraordinary conspiracy. We don't
know how far it went, how many hundreds or thousands it embraced; but
strange were the stories told about the plot amongst us privates: for
the news was spread from garrison to garrison, and talked of by the
army, in spite of all the Government efforts to hush it up--hush it
up, indeed! I have been of the people myself; I have seen the Irish
rebellion, and I know what is the free-masonry of the poor.

He made himself the head of the plot. There were no writings nor papers.
No single one of the conspirators communicated with any other than
the Frenchman; but personally he gave his orders to them all. He had
arranged matters for a general rising of the garrison, at twelve o'clock
on a certain day: the guard-houses in the town were to be seized, the
sentinels cut down, and--who knows the rest? Some of our people used
to say that the conspiracy was spread through all Silesia, and that Le
Blondin was to be made a general in the Austrian service.

At twelve o'clock, and opposite the guard-house by the Bohmer-Thor of
Neiss, some thirty men were lounging about in their undress, and the
Frenchman stood near the sentinel of the guard-house, sharpening a wood
hatchet on a stone. At the stroke of twelve, he got up, split open the
sentinel's head with a blow of his axe, and the thirty men, rushing into
the guard-house, took possession of the arms there, and marched at once
to the gate. The sentry there tried to drop the bar, but the Frenchman
rushed up to him, and, with another blow of the axe, cut off his right
hand, with which he held the chain. Seeing the men rushing out armed,
the guard without the gate drew up across the road to prevent their
passage; but the Frenchman's thirty gave them a volley, charged them
with the bayonet, and brought down several, and the rest flying, the
thirty rushed on. The frontier is only a league from Neiss, and they
made rapidly towards it.

But the alarm was given in the town, and what saved it was that the
clock by which the Frenchman went was a quarter of an hour faster than
any of the clocks in the town. The generale was beat, the troops
called to arms, and thus the men who were to have attacked the other
guard-houses, were obliged to fall into the ranks, and their project
was defeated. This, however, likewise rendered the discovery of the
conspirators impossible, for no man could betray his comrade, nor,