iting any one. If you had a
gun, I should say nothing. But you have not. You must go away."

"I cannot," I answered him. "I am waiting for some one."

He wished to continue and to urge me. I pressed his hand.

"Let me do as I like," said I.

He understood that my duty was to remain, and no longer persisted.

There was a pause. He again began to bite his bread. The gurgling of the
dying man alone was audible. At that moment a sort of deep and hollow
booming reached us. The old woman started from her chair, muttering, "It
is the cannon!"

"No," said the little man, "it is the slamming of a street-door." Then
he resumed, "There now! I have finished my bread," and he dusted one
hand against the other, and went out.

In the meantime the explosions continued, and seemed to come nearer. A
noise sounded in the shop. It was the last-maker who was coming back. He
appeared on the threshold of the ambulance. He was pale.

"Here I am," said he, "I have come to fetch you. We must go home. Let us
be off at once."

I arose from the chair where I had seated myself. "What does this mean?
Will they not come?"

"No," he answered, "no one will come. All is at an end."

Then he hastily explained that he had gone through the whole of the
quarter in order to find a gun, that it was labor lost, that he had
spoken to "two or three," that we must abandon all hope of the
societies, _that they would not come down_, that what had been done
during the day had appalled every one, that the best men were terrified,
that the boulevards were "full of corpses," that the soldiers had
committed "horrors," that the barricade was about to be attacked, that
on his arrival he had heard the noise of footsteps in the direction of
the crossway, that it was the soldiers who were advancing, that we could
do nothing further there, that we must be off, that this house was
"stupidly chosen," that there was no outlet in the rear, that perhaps we
should already find it difficult to get out of the street, and that we
had only just time.

He told this all panting, briefly, jerkily, and interrupted at every
moment with this ejaculation, "And to think that they have no arms, and
to think that I have no gun!"

As he finished we heard from the barricade a shout of "Attention!" and
almost immediately a shot was fired.

A violent discharge replied to this shot.

Several balls struck the paling of the ambulance, but they were too
obliquely aimed, and none pierce