"Endure a little longer yet.

The end, my friends, is well in sight at last." They carried him out of the square and up the Rue Royale to an old house, one of the few old houses surviving in that city that had risen from its ashes, where in an upper chamber lighted by diamond-shaped panes of yellow glass the Literary Chamber usually held its meetings.
Thither in his wake the members of that chamber came hurrying, summoned by the messages that Le Chapelier had issued during their progress.
Behind closed doors a flushed and excited group of some fifty men, the majority of whom were young, ardent, and afire with the illusion of liberty, hailed Andre-Louis as the strayed sheep who had returned to the fold, and smothered him in congratulations and thanks.
Then they settled down to deliberate upon immediate measures, whilst the doors below were kept by a guard of honour that had improvised itself from the masses.

And very necessary was this.

For no sooner had the Chamber assembled than the house was assailed by the gendarmerie of M.
de Lesdiguieres, dispatched in haste to arrest the firebrand who was inciting the people of Rennes to sedition.

The force consisted of fifty men.