He despatched him with orders to the different posts guarding the ramparts.

The national guards were to repair to the town-hall in small detachments, as secretly as possible.

Roudier, that bourgeois who was quite out of his element in the provinces, and who would have spoilt the whole affair with his humanitarian preaching, was not even informed of it.

Towards eleven o'clock, the court-yard of the town-hall was full of national guards.

Then Rougon frightened them; he told them that the Republicans still remaining in Plassans were about to attempt a desperate _coup de main_, and plumed himself on having been warned in time by his secret police.