Ten minutes later he entered the tobacco-shop in the Rue St. Gingolphe. Mr. Jacquetot was at his post, behind the counter near the window, with the little tin box containing postage-stamps in front of him upon his desk. He was always there--like the poor. He laid aside the _Petit Journal_ and wished the new-comer a courteous, though breathless, good evening. The salutation was returned gravely and pleasantly. The Citizen Morot lingered a moment and remarked that it was a warm evening. He never seemed to be in a hurry. Then he passed on into the little room behind the shop. There he found Lerac, the foreman of the slaughter-house. The butcher was pale with excitement. His rough clothing was dishevelled; his stringy black hair stood up uncouthly in the centre of his head, while over his temples it was plastered down with perspiration and suet pleasingly mingled. “Well?” he exclaimed, with triumphant interrogation. “Good,” said Morot. “Very good. It marches, my friend. It marches already.” “Ah! But you are right. The People see you--it is a power!” “It is,” acquiesced Morot fervently. How he hated this man! “And you stayed to the last?” inquired Lerac. He was rather white about the lips for a brave man. “Till the last,” echoed Morot, taking up some letters addressed to him which lay on the table. “And the street was quite clear before they broke through the barrier?” “Quite--the People did not wait.” He seemed to resign himself to conversation, for he put the letters into his pocket and sat down. “Had you,” he inquired, “any difficulty in getting them away?” “Oh no,” somewhat loftily and quite unsuspicious of irony. “The passages were narrow, of course; but we had allowed for that in our organisation. Organisation and the People, see you--” “Yes,” replied Morot. “Organisation and the People.” Like Lerac, he stopped short, apparently lost in the contemplation of the vast possibilities presented to his mental vision by the mere thought of such a combination. “Well!” exclaimed the butcher energetically, “I must move on. I have meetings. I merely wished to hear from you that all was right--that no one was caught.” He was bubbling over with excitement and the sense of his own huge importance. The Citizen Morot raised his secretive eyes. “Good-night,” he said, with an insolence far too fine for the butcher's comprehension. “Well--good-night. We may congratulate ourselves, I think, Citizen!” “I congratulate you,” said Morot. “Good-night.” “Good-night.” It is probable that, had Lerac looked back, there would have been murder done in the small room behind the tobacco-shop. But the contemptuous smile soon vanished from the face of the Citizen Morot. No smile lingered there long. It was not built upon smiling lines at all. Then he took up his letters. There were only two of them: one bearing the postmark of a small town in Morbihan, the other hailing from England.