ed, meagre frame; the other, a stalwart man of about eight-and
twenty, dressed partly as an ouvrier, not in his Sunday clothes, rather
affecting the blouse,--not that he wore that antique garment, but that
he was in rough costume unbrushed and stained, with thick shoes and
coarse stockings, and a workman's cap. But of all who gathered round
the table at which M. Lebeau presided, he had the most distinguished
exterior,--a virile honest exterior, a massive open forehead,
intelligent eyes, a handsome clear-cut incisive profile, and solid jaw.
The expression of the face was stern, but not mean,--an expression which
might have become an ancient baron as well as a modern workman; in it
plenty of haughtiness and of will, and still more of self-esteem.

"Confreres," said Lebeau, rising, and every eye turned to him, "our
number for the present seance is complete. To business. Since we last
met, our cause has advanced with rapid and not with noiseless stride. I
need not tell you that Louis Bonaparte has virtually abnegated Les idees
Napoleoniennes,--a fatal mistake for him, a glorious advance for us. The
liberty of the press must very shortly be achieved, and with it personal
government must end. When the autocrat once is compelled to go by the
advice of his ministers, look for sudden changes. His ministers will be
but weathercocks, turned hither and thither according as the wind chops
at Paris; and Paris is the temple of the winds. The new revolution is
almost at hand. [Murmurs of applause.] It would move the laughter of the
Tuileries and its ministers, of the Bourse and of its gamblers, of every
dainty salon of this silken city of would-be philosophers and wits, if
they were told that here within this mouldering baraque, eight men, so
little blessed by fortune, so little known to fame as ourselves, met
to concert the fall of an empire. The Government would not deem us
important enough to notice our existence."

"I know not that," interrupted the Pole.

"Ah, pardon," resumed the orator; "I should have confined my remark
to the five of us who are French. I did injustice to the illustrious
antecedents of our foreign allies. I know that you, Thaddeus Loubisky,
that you, Leonardo Raselli, have been too eminent for hands hostile to
tyrants not to be marked with a black cross in the books of the police;
I know that you, Jan Vanderstegen, if hitherto unscarred by those wounds
in defence of freedom which despots and cowards would fain