, saying that the whole house was at
his service. Logre also manifested great friendship for him, and even
constituted himself his lieutenant. He was constantly discussing affairs
with him, rendering an account of the steps he was supposed to take, and
furnishing the names of newly affiliated associates. Logre, indeed, had
now assumed the duties of organiser; on him rested the task of bringing
the various plotters together, forming the different sections, and
weaving each mesh of the gigantic net into which Paris was to fall at
a given signal. Florent meantime remained the leader, the soul of the
conspiracy.

However, much as the hunchback seemed to toil, he attained no
appreciable result. Although he had loudly asserted that in each
district of Paris he knew two or three groups of men as determined and
trustworthy as those who met at Monsieur Lebigre's, he had never yet
given any precise information about them, but had merely mentioned a
name here and there, and recounted stories of endless alleged secret
expeditions, and the wonderful enthusiasm that the people manifested
for the cause. He made a great point of the hand-grasps he had received.
So-and-so, whom he thou'd and thee'd, had squeezed his fingers and
declared he would join them. At the Gros Caillou a big, burly fellow,
who would make a magnificent sectional leader, had almost dislocated
his arm in his enthusiasm; while in the Rue Popincourt a whole group
of working men had embraced him. He declared that at a day's notice a
hundred thousand active supporters could be gathered together. Each time
that he made his appearance in the little room, wearing an exhausted
air, and dropping with apparent fatigue on the bench, he launched into
fresh variations of his usual reports, while Florent duly took notes of
what he said, and relied on him to realise his many promises. And soon
in Florent's pockets the plot assumed life. The notes were looked upon
as realities, as indisputable facts, upon which the entire plan of the
rising was constructed. All that now remained to be done was to wait
for a favourable opportunity, and Logre asserted with passionate
gesticulations that the whole thing would go on wheels.

Florent was at last perfectly happy. His feet no longer seemed to tread
the ground; he was borne aloft by his burning desire to pass sentence on
all the wickedness he had seen committed. He had all the credulity of a
little child, all the confidence of a hero. If