with the policy of M. Bigourd
and the pious Agaric, they should carry on the design of reforming the
Republic. Others, wearied by their long constraint, had resolved to
proclaim the Dragon's crest and swore to conquer beneath that sign.

The latter urged the advantage of a clear situation and the
impossibility of making a pretence much longer, and in truth, the public
began to see whither the agitation was tending and that the Emiral's
partisans wanted to destroy the very foundations of the Republic.

A report was spread that the prince was to land at La Cirque and make
his entry into Alca on a green horse.

These rumours excited the fanatical monks, delighted the poor nobles,
satisfied the rich Jewish ladies, and put hope in the hearts of the
small traders. But very few of them were inclined to purchase these
benefits at the price of a social catastrophe and the overthrow of the
public credit; and there were fewer still who would have risked their
money, their peace, their liberty, or a single hour from their pleasures
in the business. On the other hand, the workmen held themselves ready,
as ever, to give a day's work to the Republic, and a strong resistance
was being formed in the suburbs.

"The people are with us," the pious Agaric used to say.

However, men, women, and children, when leaving their factories, used to
shout with one voice:

A bas Chatillon!
Hou! Hou! la calotte!

As for the government, it showed the weakness, indecision, flabbiness,
and heedlessness common to all governments, and from which none has ever
departed without falling into arbitrariness and violence. In three words
it knew nothing, wanted nothing, and would do nothing. Formose, shut in
his presidential palace, remained blind, dumb, deaf, huge, invisible,
wrapped up in his pride as in an eider-down.

Count Olive advised the Dracophils to make a last appeal for funds and
to attempt a great stroke while Alca was still in a ferment.

An executive committee, which he himself had chosen, decided to kidnap
the members of the Chamber of Deputies, and considered ways and means.

The affair was fixed for the twenty-eighth of July. On that day the sun
rose radiantly over the city. In front of the legislative palace women
passed to market with their baskets; hawkers cried their peaches, pears,
and grapes; cab horses with their noses in their bags munched their
hay. Nobody expected anything, not because the secret had been kept
bu