CHAPTER VIII
HE COMES UPON THE RED-HEADED ONE
Thus it was plotted; and in such wise Colonel Terence O'Rourke came to cast his fortunes with those of that man concerning whom the Parisian boulevards were soon again to be gossiping—the youth who called himself Leopold the First, Emperor of the Sahara.
Their conference lasted into a late hour of the next morning; the conspirators breakfasted together, gathering up the loose ends of their scheme and giving and receiving final suggestions and instructions.
It had been settled that O'Rourke was to be Commander-in-chief, with the title of Lieutenant-General, of the forces presently to be assembled on the west coast of the Sahara Desert.
Monsieur le Prince de Grandlieu was to be chief adviser to his majesty-to-be; when the government was finally organized he was to be Premier.
Monsieur Valliant, who, it appeared, was a member of the French bar, received the appointment of chief justice of the Empire—when it should exist and the administration of justice should become necessary. In the meantime, he was to remain in Paris, and, with the help of associates (whose salaries, be sure, were to come out of the pocket of le petit Lemercier), formulate a Code Leopoldan; a judicial system which was expected to combine all the good points of existing legal codes and to contain none of their defects.
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