Page 1435 - les-miserables

inet-maker.
‘Why?’
‘There is going to be a shot to fire.’
Two ragged pedestrians exchanged these remarkable
replies, fraught with evident Jacquerie:—
‘Who governs us?’
‘M. Philippe.’
‘No, it is the bourgeoisie.’
The reader is mistaken if he thinks that we take the word
Jacquerie in a bad sense. The Jacques were the poor.
On another occasion two men were heard to say to each
other as they passed by: ‘We have a good plan of attack.’
Only the following was caught of a private conversation
between four men who were crouching in a ditch of the
circle of the Barriere du Trone:—
‘Everything possible will be done to prevent his walking
about Paris any more.’
Who was the he? Menacing obscurity.
‘The principal leaders,’ as they said in the faubourg, held
themselves apart. It was supposed that they met for con-
sultation in a wine-shop near the point Saint-Eustache. A
certain Aug—, chief of the Society aid for tailors, Rue Mon-
detour, had the reputation of serving as intermediary central
between the leaders and the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.
Nevertheless, there was always a great deal of mystery
about these leaders, and no certain fact can invalidate the
singular arrogance of this reply made later on by a man
accused before the Court of Peers:—
‘Who was your leader?’

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