ve just learnt that the Archangel Michael has given large
orders in Heaven for thunderbolts and arrows. If you take my advice you
will procure fifty thousand more electrophores. I will take the order.
Good day, angels. Long live the celestial country!"

And Baron Everdingen flew by the flowery shores of Louveciennes in the
company of a pretty actress.

"Is it true that they are taking up arms at the demiurge's?" asked
Arcade.

"It may be," replied Zita, "that up there another Baron Everdingen is
inciting to arms."

The guardian angel of young Maurice remained pensive for some moments.
Then he murmured:

"Can it be that we are the sport of financiers?"

"Pooh!" said the beautiful archangel. "War is a business. It has always
been a business."

Then they discussed at length the means of executing their immense
enterprise. Rejecting disdainfully the anarchistic proceedings of Prince
Istar, they conceived a formidable and sudden invasion of the kingdom of
Heaven by their enthusiastic and well-drilled troops.

Now Barattan, the innkeeper of La Jonchere, who had let the
entertainment-hall to the rebellious angels, was in the employ of the
secret police. In the reports he furnished to the Prefecture he
denounced the members of this secret meeting as meditating an attack on
a certain person whom they described as obtuse and cruel, and whom they
called _Alaballotte_. The agent believed this to be a pseudonym denoting
either the President of the Republic or the Republic itself. The
conspirators had unanimously given voice to threats against
_Alaballotte_, and one of them, a very dangerous individual, well-known
in anarchist circles, who had already several convictions against him
on account of writings and speeches of a seditious nature, and who was
known as Prince Istar or the _Queroube_, had brandished a bomb of very
small calibre which seemed to contain a formidable machine. The other
conspirators were unknown to Barattan, notwithstanding the fact that he
frequented revolutionary circles. Many among them were very young men,
mere beardless youths. There were two who, it appeared, had spoken with
conspicuous vehemence; a certain Arcade, dwelling in the Rue St.
Jacques, and a woman of easy virtue called Zita, living at Montmartre,
both without visible means of subsistence.

The affair seemed sufficiently serious to the Prefect of Police to make
him think it necessary to confer without delay with the President of the
C