The room was a large, low one, and looked larger through an atmosphere blue with smoke and the fumes of absinthe. The Vicomte--a little man, as I have said--slipped in unperceived. I was less fortunate, being of a higher stature. I saw that my advent did not pass unobserved on the platform, where a party of patriots sat in a row, like the Christy Minstrels, showing the soles of their boots to all whom it might concern. In this case a working cobbler would have been deeply interested, as in a vast field of labour. The Vicomte slipped a few yards away from me, and the shoulders of his fellow-countrymen obscured him. I could find no such retreat, for your true Socialist never has much to recommend him to the notice of society, being usually a poor, mean man to look at, who seeks to add a cubit to his stature by encouraging the growth of his hair. One such stood on the platform, mouthing the bloodthirsty periods of his creed. He caught sight of me. "Ah!" he cried, "here is a new disciple. And a hardy one! _Un grand gaillard_, my brethren, who can strike a solid blow for liberty, equality and fraternity. Say, brother, you are with us; is it not so?" "If you open the casements, not otherwise," I answered. The French crowd is ever ready for blood or laughter. I have seen the Republic completely set in the background by a cat looking in a window and giving voice to the one word assigned to it by nature. Some laughed now, and the orator deemed it wise to leave me in peace. I took advantage of my obscurity to look around me, and was duly edified by what I saw. The Paris _vaurien_ is worth less than any man on earth, and these were choice specimens from the gutter. We were wasting our time in such a galley, and as I thus reflected a note was slipped into my hand. "Follow me, but not at once." I read and hid the paper in my pocket. Without staring about me too much, I watched the Vicomte make his way towards a door half hidden by a dirty curtain--another to that by which we had entered. Thither I followed him after a decent interval--no one molesting me. One of the patriots on the platform seemed to watch me with understanding, and when I reached the curtained doorway, my glance meeting his, he dismissed me with his eyelids. I found myself in a dark passage, and with his gentle laugh the Vicomte took my arm. "All that out there," he whispered, "is a mere blind. It is in the inner room that they act. Out there they merely talk. Come with me. Gently--there are two steps--my dear Howard. These are the men--he paused with his fingers on the handle of a door--who will rule France when the Emperor is dead or deposed."