Page 1440 - les-miserables

primed the pistol and added more powder to what was al-
ready in the pan. Then the two men parted.
[33] A game of ninepins, in which one side of the ball is
smaller than the other, so that it does not roll straight, but
describes a curve on the ground.
A certain Gallais, afterwards killed in the Rue Beau-
bourg in the affair of April, boasted of having in his house
seven hundred cartridges and twenty-four flints.
The government one day received a warning that arms
and two hundred thousand cartridges had just been distrib-
uted in the faubourg. On the following week thirty thousand
cartridges were distributed. The remarkable point about it
was, that the police were not able to seize a single one.
An intercepted letter read: ‘The day is not far distant
when, within four hours by the clock, eighty thousand pa-
triots will be under arms.’
All this fermentation was public, one might almost say
tranquil. The approaching insurrection was preparing its
storm calmly in the face of the government. No singular-
ity was lacking to this still subterranean crisis, which was
already perceptible. The bourgeois talked peaceably to the
working-classes of what was in preparation. They said:
‘How is the rising coming along?’ in the same tone in which
they would have said: ‘How is your wife?’
A furniture-dealer, of the Rue Moreau, inquired: ‘Well,
when are you going to make the attack?’
Another shop-keeper said:—
‘The attack will be made soon.’
‘I know it. A month ago, there were fifteen thousand of

1440 Les Miserables