Towards the hour when workingmen repose, two men were seen to meet between the Barriere Picpus and the Barriere Charenton in a little lane between two walls, near a wine-shop, in front of which there was a "Jeu de Siam."[33] One drew a pistol from beneath his blouse and handed it to the other.
As he was handing it to him, he noticed that the perspiration of his chest had made the powder damp. He primed the pistol and added more powder to what was already in the pan.
Then the two men parted.
[33] A game of ninepins, in which one side of the ball is smaller than the other, so that it does not roll straight, but describes a curve on the ground.
A certain Gallais, afterwards killed in the Rue Beaubourg in the affair of April, boasted of having in his house seven hundred cartridges and twenty-four flints.
The government one day received a warning that arms and two hundred thousand cartridges had just been distributed in the faubourg. On the following week thirty thousand cartridges were distributed. The remarkable point about it was, that the police were not able to seize a single one.