The police all over France obeyed his orders only too well--"_Surveillez tout le monde, excepté moi!_" To a great degree it was necessary, for French society, high and low, was honeycombed with Royalist plots, some of them hardly worthy of a cause which called itself religious as well as royal. Leaders like Cadoudal and Frotté were long dead; some of their successors in conspiracy were heroes rather of scandal than of loyalty, and many a tragic legend lingers in French society concerning the men and women of those days. To a great extent, the old families of La Vendée, the La Rochejacqueleins at their head, refrained from mixing themselves up in the smaller plots against the Empire in which hundreds of Chouans, noble and peasant, men and women, were constantly involved during these years with probable loss of life and liberty. It was not till later that the general feeling became intensified so that Napoleon had to weaken his army, in the Waterloo campaign, by sending some thousands of men against a new insurrection in the West, under Louis de la Rochejaquelein, a second La Vendée war, only stopped by the final return of the Bourbons. Monsieur Joseph's gay little room looked like anything but a haunt of conspirators; but his friends were earnestly discussing with him the possibility of raising the country, arming the peasants, marching on the chief town of the department, capturing the Prefect, as well as the General in command of the division, and holding them as hostages while the insurrection went on spreading through Anjou and the neighbouring provinces. The most eager, the most original of the plotters was the Baron d'Ombré, a dark, square young man with frowning brows. He turned quite fiercely on a milder-looking person, a Monsieur de Bourmont, a distant cousin of the well-known leader of that name, who doubted whether the peasants would rise as readily as César d'Ombré expected. "I tell you," he said, "they hate, they detest the Empire. Look at their desolate homes, their deserted fields! I tell you, the women of France alone, if they had a leader, would drive the usurper out of the country." "There is your mission, then, dear César," said the Vicomte des Barres, a delicate, sarcastic-looking man of middle age. "March on Paris with your phalanx of Amazons." "César is right, nevertheless, gentlemen," growled the Comte d'Ombré, the young man's father, the oldest of the party. "It is energy, it is courage, that our cause wants. And I go farther than my son goes. Take the Prefect and the General by all means--excellent idea--" "If you can catch them--" murmured Monsieur des Barres, and was frowned upon furiously by César d'Ombré. The Comte was rather deaf. "What? What?" he asked sharply, being aware of the interruption. "Nothing, monsieur, nothing!" cried their host, with one spring from the fireplace to the old man's chair--"and what would you do, monsieur, with the Prefect and the General? I am dying of curiosity."