n,
perhaps. He continued to load and fire; his condition of hopelessness
and gloom was pitiable; death seemed to him long in coming. The
detestable work he was engaged in gave him now a sensation of nausea,
as the fumes of the wine he has drunk rise and nauseate the drunkard. An
intense heat began to beat on him from the houses that were burning on
every side--an air that scorched and asphyxiated. The carrefour, with
the barricades that closed it in, was become an intrenched camp, guarded
by the roaring flames that rose on every side and sent down showers
of sparks. Those were the orders, were they not? to fire the adjacent
houses before they abandoned the barricades, arrest the progress of
the troops by an impassable sea of flame, burn Paris in the face of the
enemy advancing to take possession of it. And presently he became aware
that the houses in the Rue du Bac were not the only ones that were
devoted to destruction; looking behind him he beheld the whole sky
suffused with a bright, ruddy glow; he heard an ominous roar in the
distance, as if all Paris were bursting into conflagration. Chouteau was
no longer to be seen; he had long since fled to save his skin from the
bullets. His comrades, too, even those most zealous in the cause, had
one by one stolen away, affrighted at the approaching prospect of being
outflanked. At last he was left alone, stretched at length between
two sand bags, his every faculty bent on defending the front of the
barricade, when the soldiers, who had made their way through the gardens
in the middle of the block, emerged from a house in the Rue du Bac and
pounced on him from the rear.

For two whole days, in the fevered excitement of the supreme conflict,
Maurice had not once thought of Jean, nor had Jean, since he entered
Paris with his regiment, which had been assigned to Bruat's division,
for a single moment remembered Maurice. The day before his duties had
kept him in the neighborhood of the Champ de Mars and the Esplanade
of the Invalides, and on this day he had remained in the Place du
Palais-Bourbon until nearly noon, when the troops were sent forward
to clean out the barricades of the quartier, as far as the Rue des
Saints-Peres. A feeling of deep exasperation against the rioters had
gradually taken possession of him, usually so calm and self-contained,
as it had of all his comrades, whose ardent wish it was to be allowed
to go home and rest after so many months of fatigue. But of al