associates. Every
week, among the chiefs, there would be a consultation, which was to be
held in a different place each time; and, the better to ensure secrecy
and discretion, the associates would only come in contact with their
respective lieutenants, these alone communicating with the chiefs of the
sections. It also occurred to Florent that it would be as well that the
companies should believe themselves charged with imaginary missions, as
a means of putting the police upon a wrong scent.

As for the employment of the insurrectionary forces, that would be all
simplicity. It would, of course, be necessary to wait till the companies
were quite complete, and then advantage would be taken of the first
public commotion. They would doubtless only have a certain number of
guns used for sporting purposes in their possession, so they would
commence by seizing the police stations and guard-houses, disarming the
soldiers of the line; resorting to violence as little as possible, and
inviting the men to make common cause with the people. Afterwards they
would march upon the Corps Legislatif, and thence to the Hotel de Ville.
This plan, to which Florent returned night after night, as though it
were some dramatic scenario which relieved his over-excited nervous
system, was as yet simply jotted down on scraps of paper, full of
erasures, which showed how the writer had felt his way, and revealed
each successive phase of his scientific yet puerile conception. When
Lisa had glanced through the notes, without understanding some of them,
she remained there trembling with fear; afraid to touch them further
lest they should explode in her hands like live shells.

A last memorandum frightened her more than any of the others. It was
a half sheet of paper on which Florent had sketched the distinguishing
insignia which the chiefs and the lieutenants were to wear. By the
side of these were rough drawings of the standards which the different
companies were to carry; and notes in pencil even described what colours
the banners should assume. The chiefs were to wear red scarves, and the
lieutenants red armlets.

To Lisa this seemed like an immediate realisation of the rising; she saw
all the men with their red badges marching past the pork shop, firing
bullets into her mirrors and marble, and carrying off sausages
and chitterlings from the window. The infamous projects of her
brother-in-law were surely directed against herself--against her own
h