He imagined that the markets had been conscious of his arrival, and had seized hold of him that they might enervate him and poison him with their stenches.  Then, too, Lisa wanted to cast a spell over him, and for two or three days at a time he would avoid her, as though she were some dissolving agency which would destroy all his power of will should he approach too closely.  However, these paroxysms of puerile fear, these wild surgings of his rebellious brain, always ended in thrills of the gentlest tenderness, with yearnings to love and be loved, which he concealed with a boyish shame.

It was more especially in the evening that his mind became blurred by all his wild imaginings.  Depressed by his day’s work, but shunning sleep from a covert fear—­the fear of the annihilation it brought with it—­he would remain later than ever at Monsieur Lebigre’s, or at the Mehudins’; and on his return home he still refrained from going to bed, and sat up writing and preparing for the great insurrection.  By slow degrees he devised a complete system of organisation.  He divided Paris into twenty sections, one for each arrondissement.  Each section would have a chief, a sort of general, under whose orders there were to be twenty lieutenants commanding twenty companies of affiliated associates.  Every week, among the chiefs, there would be a consultation, which was to be held in a different place each time; and, the better to ensure secrecy and discretion, the associates would only come in contact with their respective lieutenants, these alone communicating with the chiefs of the sections.  It also occurred to Florent that it would be as well that the companies should believe themselves charged with imaginary missions, as a means of putting the police upon a wrong scent.

As for the employment of the insurrectionary forces, that would be all simplicity.  It would, of course, be necessary to wait till the companies were quite complete, and then advantage would be taken of the first public commotion.  They would doubtless only have a certain number of guns used for sporting purposes in their possession, so they would commence by seizing the police stations and guard-houses, disarming the soldiers of the line; resorting to violence as little as possible, and inviting the men to make common cause with the people.  Afterwards they would march upon the Corps Legislatif, and thence to the Hotel de Ville.  This plan, to which Florent returned night after night, as though it were some dramatic scenario which relieved his over-excited nervous system, was as yet simply jotted down on scraps of paper, full of erasures, which showed how the writer had felt his way, and revealed each successive phase of his scientific yet puerile conception.  When Lisa had glanced through the notes, without understanding some of them, she remained there trembling with fear; afraid to touch them further lest they should explode in her hands like live shells.

A last memorandum frightened her more than any of the others.  It was a half sheet of paper on which Florent had sketched the distinguishing insignia which the chiefs and the lieutenants were to wear.  By the side of these were rough drawings of the standards which the different companies were to carry; and notes in pencil even described what colours the banners should assume.  The chiefs were to wear red scarves, and the lieutenants red armlets.