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Updated: May 23, 2025
"We of the Republic distrust each other so completely." The old gentleman looked from one to the other with a soothing smile. "The brave Lerac," he said, "is a man of business." Citizen Morot ignored this observation. "And," he said, turning to Lerac, "you have them stored in a safe place? There is absolutely no doubt of that?" "Absolutely none." "Good." "They are under my own eye." "Very good.
"It is," acquiesced Morot fervently. How he hated this man! "And you stayed to the last?" inquired Lerac. He was rather white about the lips for a brave man. "Till the last," echoed Morot, taking up some letters addressed to him which lay on the table. "And the street was quite clear before they broke through the barrier?" "Quite the People did not wait."
The old gentleman laughed a pleasant, cooing laugh. He invariably encouraged humour, this genial philanthropist. "At last Friday's meeting," Lerac said shortly, "we enrolled forty new members. We now number four hundred and two in our arrondissement alone." "Good," muttered the Citizen Morot, without enthusiasm. "And four hundred hardy companions they are."
He was not sanguine, and a French pessimist is the worst thing of the kind that is to be found. When the door had closed behind the departing Lerac, the old priest seemed to throw off suddenly quite a number of years. His voice, when next he spoke, was less senile, his movements were brisker. He was, in a word, less harmless. Mr.
Tell me, are you quite sure of this scum this Lerac?" "As sure as one can be of anything that comes from the streets. He is an excitable, bumptious, quarrelsome man; but he has a certain influence with those beneath him, although it seems hard to realise that there are such." "Ha! you are right!
"Four hundred and two," he muttered as he wrote, "up to Friday night, in the arrondissement of the citizen the good citizen Antoine Lerac." The butcher looked up with a doubtful expression upon his coarse face. His great brutal lips twitched, and he was on the point of speaking when the Citizen Morot's velvety eyes met his gaze with a quiet smile in which arrogance and innocence were mingled.
He was just the sort of man to indulge in irony for his own satisfaction. He unfolded the paper, raised his eyebrows, and read. "Ah!" he said, "a receipt for five hundred rifles with bayonets and shoulder-straps complete. 'Received of the Citizen Morot five hundred rifles with bayonets and shoulder-straps complete. Antoine Lerac."
The Citizen Morot lingered a moment and remarked that it was a warm evening. He never seemed to be in a hurry. Then he passed on into the little room behind the shop. There he found Lerac, the foreman of the slaughter-house. The butcher was pale with excitement.
Like Lerac, he stopped short, apparently lost in the contemplation of the vast possibilities presented to his mental vision by the mere thought of such a combination. "Well!" exclaimed the butcher energetically, "I must move on. I have meetings. I merely wished to hear from you that all was right that no one was caught."
"Four hundred strong men," broke in the old gentleman rather hastily. "Ah, but that is already a power." "It is," opined Lerac sententiously, "the strong man who is the power. Riches are nothing; birth is nothing. This is the day of force. Force is everything." "Everything," acquiesced Morot fervently. He was consulting a small note-book, wherein he jotted down some figures.
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