eleven o’clock
He despatched him with orders to the different posts guarding the ramparts . The national guards were to repair to the town-hall in small detachments , as secretly as possible . Roudier , that bourgeois who was quite out of his element in the provinces , and who would have spoilt the whole affair with his humanitarian preaching , was not even informed of it . Towards eleven o'clock , the court-yard of the town-hall was full of national guards . Then Rougon frightened them ; he told them that the Republicans still remaining in Plassans were about to attempt a desperate _ coup de main _ , and plumed himself on having been warned in time by his secret police . When he had pictured the bloody massacre which would overtake the town , should these wretches get the upper hand , he ordered his men to cease speaking , and extinguish all lights . He took a gun himself .