e, I see a National Guard alone in the middle of the street,
nothing to screen him whatsoever; he loads his rifle and fires, loads
and fires again; again and again! Thirty-three times! Then the rifle
slips to the ground, and the man staggers and falls.

XCIII.

This morning, the 23rd, after a combat of three hours, the barricade of
the Place de Clichy has not yet yielded. Yet two battalions of National
Guards had, at the beginning of the fight, reversed their arms, and were
fraternising with the soldiers on the Place de la Maine, a hundred and
fifty yards from the scene of the fray. The cracking of the rifles, the
explosion of shells, and the sound of mitrailleuses filled the air. The
smell of powder was stifling. Dreadful cries arose from the poor wounded
wretches; and the whizzing projectiles from Montmartre rent the air
above in their fiery course. "Beneath us," said an inhabitant of
Batignolles who gave me these particulars, "beneath us the city lay like
a seething caldron."

The beating of drums and the sharp trumpet-calls mixed in this monstrous
din, and were every now and then lost in the tremendous noise of the
firing.

About half-past one the sounds grew quieter; the barricade was taken.
The insurgents were retreating to La Chapelle and Belleville in
disorder; the soldiers of the line rushed like a torrent into the Avenue
de Clichy, leaving a tricolour flag hoisted upon the dismantled
barricade.

Here and there, in the streets, the struggle had not ceased. In the Rue
Blanche a rifle-shot proceeded from a ground-floor; the man was taken
and executed outside his own door. The artillery was moving up the Rue
Chaptal towards Montmartre and La Chapelle. The day was very hot; pails
of water were thrown over the guns to quench their burning thirst. All
the young men who were found in the streets were provisionally put under
arrest, for they feared everyone, even children, and horrible vengeance
and thirst for blood had seized upon all. Suddenly an isolated shot
would be heard, followed a minute or two after by five or six others.
One knew reprisal had been done.

At about four o'clock in the afternoon, when the quarters of Belleville
and Clichy were pretty well cleared of troops, two insurgents were
walking, one behind the other, in the Rue Leonie. The one who walked
last lifted his rifle and fired carelessly in the direction of the
windows; the report sounded very loudly in the silent street, and a pan