until
after having exhausted their ammunition. The last, he who had three
cartridges, did not leave until the soldiers were actually scaling the
summit of the barricade.

In the barricade of the Petit Carreau not a word was spoken; they
followed all the phases of this struggle, and they pressed each other's
hands.

Suddenly the noise ceased, the last musket-shot was fired. A moment
afterwards they saw the lighted candles being placed in all the windows
which looked on on the Mauconseil redoubt. The bayonets and the brass
ornaments on the shakos sparkled there. The barricade was taken.

The commander of the battalion, as is always the custom in similar
circumstances, had sent orders into the adjoining houses to light up all
the windows.

This was done at the Mauconseil redoubt.

Seeing that their hour had come, the sixty combatants of the barricade
of the Petit Carreau mounted their heap of paving-stones, and shouted
with one voice, in the midst of the darkness, this piercing cry, "Long
live the Republic!"

No one answered them.

They could only hear the battalion loading their guns.

This acted upon them as a species of signal for action. They were all
worn out with fatigue, having been on their feet since the preceding
day, carrying paving-stones or fighting, the greater part had neither
eaten nor slept.

Charpentier said to Jeanty Sarre,--

"We shall all be killed."

"Shall we really!" said Jeanty Sarre.

Jeanty Sarre ordered the door of the wine-shop to be closed, so that
their barricade, completely shrouded in darkness, would give them some
advantage over the barricade which was occupied by the soldiers and
lighted up.

In the meantime the 51st searched the streets, carried the wounded into
the ambulances, and took up their position in the double barricade of
the Rue Mauconseil. Half an hour thus elapsed.

Now, in order to clearly understand what is about to follow, the reader
must picture to himself in this silent street, in this darkness of the
night, at from sixty to eighty yards apart, within speaking distance,
these two redoubts facing each other, and able as in an Iliad to address
each other.

On one side the Army, on the other side the People, the darkness over
all.

The species of truce which always precedes decisive encounters drew to a
close. The preparations were completed on both sides. The soldiers could
be heard forming into order of battle, and the captains giving out their
com