over
throw the Empire? First, conspiracy; second, barricades. Nothing was
easier than to conspire. Every body conspired at the Seville. It is
the character of the French, who are born cunning, but are light
and talkative, to conspire in public places. As soon as one of our
compatriots joins a secret society his first care is to go to his
favorite restaurant and to confide, under a bond of the most absolute
secrecy, to his most intimate friend, what he has known for about five
minutes, the aim of the conspiracy, names of the actors, the day, hour,
and place of the rendezvous, the passwords and countersigns. A little
while after he has thus relieved himself, he is surprised that the
police interfere and spoil an enterprise that has been prepared with so
much mystery and discretion. It was in this way that the "beards" dealt
in dark deeds of conspiracy at the Cafe de Seville. At the hour for
absinthe and mazagran a certain number of Fiesques and Catilines were
grouped around each table. At one of the tables in the foreground five
old "beards," whitened by political crime, were planning an infernal
machine; and in the back of the room ten robust hands had sworn upon
the billiard-table to arm themselves for regicide; only, as with all
"beards," there were necessarily some false ones among them, that is
to say, spies. All the plots planned at the Seville had miserably
miscarried.

The art of building barricades was also--you never would suspect
it!--very ardently and conscientiously studied. This special branch
of the science of fortification reckoned more than one Vauban and
Gribeauval among its numbers. "Professor of barricading," was a title
honored at the Cafe de Seville, and one that they would willingly have
had engraved upon their visiting-cards. Observe that the instruction was
only theoretical; doubtless out of respect for the policemen, they could
not give entirely practical lessons to the future rioters who formed the
ground-work of the business. The master or doctor of civil war could not
go out with them, for instance, and practise in the Rue Drouot. But he
had one resource, one way of getting out of it; namely, dominoes.
No! you never would believe what a revolutionary appearance these
inoffensive mutton-bones took on under the seditious hands of the
habitues of the Cafe de Seville. These miniature pavements simulated
upon the marble table the subjugation of the most complicated of
barricades, with all sorts o