Those arrested were taken at once into safe keeping, where they met many of their friends in other walks of life, who had been apprehended at their homes or places of business. The city Municipality, indeed, found its numbers almost complete in this new place of meeting. The whole scheme could not, naturally, be carried out with the same celerity and certainty as these preliminary steps, and in the streets of Lutetia there were a number of spasmodic attempts to erect barricades. But Prince Timoleon and his supporters were not men to be trifled with; troops had been posted at strategic points throughout the whole city, and there were cannon ready wherever they were likely to be needed. In these circumstances the barricade-builders found it well to carry back into the houses the bedding and furniture they had requisitioned, to restore the overturned cabs to their normal position, and even to lay down again the torn-up paving-stones. In the more respectable portions of the city no opposition was offered to the new rule. The better class of people were so sick of their late government, so weary of a long succession of mediocrities diversified by knaves, that they were ready to welcome any change that promised stability and some measure of relief from corruption, and above all, they hailed the advent of a man--a commanding personality who would not only command but be obeyed. The priests headed processions of their flocks to take the oath of allegiance to the new government, and--surest sign of the strength that lay behind the movement--the credit of the country rose higher than before, and the Dictator had no difficulty in obtaining money. In all the larger provincial towns a similar change of affairs had taken place, and each town saw that the district round it followed its example. The rural inhabitants submitted to the altered conditions quite philosophically. They had always been of the opinion that they lived in the worst possible world for honest people, so that it was clear they could not become worse off. There was some fear lest the sacred names which had been handed down from the days of the first revolution should be lost to sight, and an absolutist empire, supported, as it was now currently believed this new enterprise had been throughout, on one side by the Jews and on the other by the Jesuits, be set up. But the Dictator was too wise for this. The proclamation which he issued on the night of his triumph, dated from the Presidential palace (which the former occupant had quitted in haste and without much reluctance), was a model in its way. After a short sketch of Roman history, appropriate to the occasion, Prince Timoleon called the nation to witness that he had been welcomed as the saviour of society by the whole people, and established at the head of the government with scarcely the shedding of a drop of blood. There was the inevitable reference to the deeds, sacrifices, and triumphs of