ery morning in one of the
state carriages, under pretense of going to the Halles for her day's
marketing, carrying off with her great bundles of linen, clocks, and
even articles of furniture, the fruit of their thieveries. And Maurice,
as he watched him running away with his men, carrying a bucket of
petroleum on his arm, experienced a sickening sensation of doubt and
felt his faith beginning to waver. How could the terrible work they were
engaged in be good, when men like that were the workmen?

Hours passed, and still he fought on, but with a bitter feeling of
distress, with no other wish than that he might die. If he had erred,
let him at least atone for his error with his blood! The barricade
across the Rue de Lille, near its intersection with the Rue du Bac, was
a formidable one, composed of bags and casks filled with earth and faced
by a deep ditch. He and a scant dozen of other federates were its
only defenders, resting in a semi-recumbent position on the ground,
infallibly causing every soldier who exposed himself to bite the dust.
He lay there, without even changing his position, until nightfall, using
up his cartridges in silence, in the dogged sullenness of his despair.
The dense clouds of smoke from the Palace of the Legion of Honor were
billowing upward in denser masses, the flames undistinguishable as yet
in the dying daylight, and he watched the fantastic, changing forms they
took as the wind whirled them downward to the street. Another fire had
broken out in an hotel not far away. And all at once a comrade came
running up to tell him that the enemy, not daring to advance along the
street, were making a way for themselves through the houses and gardens,
breaking down the walls with picks. The end was close at hand; they
might come out in the rear of the barricade at any moment. A shot
having been fired from an upper window of a house on the corner, he saw
Chouteau and his gang, with their petroleum and their lighted torch,
rush with frantic speed to the buildings on either side and climb the
stairs, and half an hour later, in the increasing darkness, the entire
square was in flames, while he, still prone on the ground behind his
shelter, availed himself of the vivid light to pick off any venturesome
soldier who stepped from his protecting doorway into the narrow street.

How long did Maurice keep on firing? He could not tell; he had lost
all consciousness of time and place. It might be nine o'clock, or te