The History of a Crime Part 60

And he added, "I can no longer work; who will maintain my children?"

They went back, carrying the wounded man. One of them, a medical student, bound up his wound.

The sentries, whom it was necessary to post in every direction, and who were chosen from the most trustworthy men, thinned and exhausted the little central land. There were scarcely thirty in the barricade itself.

There, as in the Quarter of the Temple, all the streetlamps were extinguished; the gas-pipes cut; the windows closed and unlighted; no moon, not even stars. The night was profoundly dark.

They could hear distant fusillades. The soldiers were firing from around Saint Eustache, and every three minutes sent a ball in their direction, as much as to say, "We are here." Nevertheless they did not expect an attack before the morning.

Dialogues like the following took place amongst them:--

"I wish I had a truss of straw," said Charpentier; "I have a notion that we shall sleep here to-night."

"Will you be able to get to sleep?" asked Jeanty Sarre.

"I? Certainly I shall go to sleep."

He did go to sleep, in fact, a few moments later.

In this gloomy network of narrow streets, intersected with barricades, and blockaded by soldiers, two wine-shops had remained open. They made more lint there, however, than they drank wine; the orders of the chiefs were only to drink reddened water.

The doorway of one of these wine-shops opened exactly between the two barricades of the Pet.i.t Cancan. In it was a clock by which they regulated the sentries' relief. In a back room they had locked up two suspicious-looking persons who had intermingled with the combatants. One of these men at the moment when he was arrested said, "I have come to fight for Henri V." They kept them under lock and key, and placed a sentry at the door.

An ambulance had been established in an adjoining room. There the wounded shoemaker was lying upon a mattress thrown upon the ground.

They had established, in case of need, another ambulance in the Rue du Cadran. An opening had been effected at the corner of the barricade on this side, so that the wounded could be easily carried away.

Towards half-past nine in the evening a man came up to the barricade.

Jeanty Sarre recognized him.

"Good day, Denis," said he.

"Call me, Gaston," said the man.

"Why?"

"Because--"

"Are you your brother?"

"Yes, I am my brother. For to-day."

"Very well. Good-day, Gaston."

They heartily shook hands.

It was Denis Dus...o...b...

He was pale, calm, and bleeding; he had already been fighting during the morning. At the barricade of the Faubourg Saint Martin a ball had grazed his breast, but had been turned off by some money in his pocket, and had only broken the skin. He had had the rare good fortune of being scratched by a ball. It was like the first touch from the claws of death. He wore a cap, his hat having been left behind in the barricade where he had fought: and he had replaced his bullet-pierced overcoat, which was made of Belleisle cloth, by a pea-jacket bought at a slop-shop.

How had he reached the barricade of the Pet.i.t Carreau? He could not say.

He had walked straight before him. He had glided from street to street.

Chance takes the predestined by the hand, and leads them straight to their goal through the thick darkness.

At the moment when he entered the barricade they cried out to him, "Who goes there?" He answered, "The Republic!"

They saw Jeanty Sarre shake him by the hand. They asked Jeanty Sarre,--

"Who is he?"

Jeanty Sarre answered,--

"It is some one."

And he added,--

"We were only sixty a short time since. We are a hundred now."

All pressed round the new-comer. Jeanty Sarre offered him the command.

"No," said he, "I do not understand the tactics of barricade fighting. I should be a bad chief, but I am a good soldier. Give me a gun."

They seated themselves on the paving-stones. They exchanged their experiences of what had been done. Denis described to them the fighting on the Faubourg Saint Martin. Jeanty Sarre told Denis of the fighting in the Rue Saint Denis.

During all this time the generals were preparing a final a.s.sault,--what the Marquis of Clermont-Tonnerre, in 1822, called the "Coup de Collier,"

and what, in 1789, the Prince of Lambese had called the "Coup de Bas."

Throughout all Paris there was now only this point which offered any resistance. This knot of barricade, this labyrinth of streets, embattled like a redoubt, was the last citadel of the People and of Right. The generals invested it leisurely, step by step, and on all sides. They concentrated their forces. They, the combatants of this fateful hour, knew nothing of what was being done. Only from time to time they interrupted their recital of events and they listened. From the right and from the left, from the front, from the rear, from every side, at the same time, an unmistakable murmur, growing every moment louder, and more distinct, hoa.r.s.e, piercing, fear-inspiring, reached them through the darkness. It was the sound of the battalions marching and charging at the trumpet-command in all the adjoining streets. They resumed their gallant conversation, and then in another moment they stopped again and listened to that species of ill-omened chant, chanted by Death, which was approaching.

Nevertheless some still thought that they would not be attacked till the next morning. Night combats are rare in street-warfare. They are more "risky" than all the other conflicts. Few generals venture upon them.

But amongst the old hands of the barricade, from certain never-failing signs, they believed that an a.s.sault was imminent.

In fact, at half-past ten at night, and not at eight o'clock as General Magnan has said in the despicable doc.u.ment which he calls his report--a special movement was heard in the direction of the markets. This was the marching of the troops. Colonel de Lourmel had determined to make the attack. The 51st of the Line, posted at Saint Eustache, entered the Rue Montorgueil. The 2d battalion formed the advanced guard. The Grenadiers and the Light Infantry, hurled forward at the double, quickly carried the three little barricades which were on the other side of the vacant s.p.a.ce of the Rue Mauconseil, and the feebly defended barricades of the adjoining streets. It was at that very moment that the barricade near which I was happened to be carried.

From the barricade of the Pet.i.t Carreau they heard the night-strife draw near through the darkness, with a fitful noise, strange and appalling.

First a great tumult, then volleys, then silence, and then all began again. The flashing of the fusillades suddenly delineated in the darkness the outlines of the houses, which appeared as though they themselves were affrighted.

The decisive moment drew near.

The outpost had fallen back upon the barricades. The advanced posts of the Rue de Clery and the Rue du Cadran had come back. They called over the roll. Not one of those of the morning was missing.

They were, as we have said, about sixty combatants, and not a hundred, as the Magnan report has stated.

From the upper extremity of the street where they were stationed it was difficult to ascertain what was happening. They did not exactly know how many barricades they were in the Rue Montorgueil between them and Saint Eustache, whence the troops were coming. They only knew that their nearest point of resistance was the double Mauconseil barricade, and that, when all was at an end there, it would be their turn.

Denis had posted himself on the inner side of the barricade in such a manner that half his body was above the top, and from there he watched.

The glimmer which came from the doorway of the wine-shop rendered his gestures visible.