rt of her bosom;
and when Florent gently removed the poor creature to free his legs,
two streamlets of blood oozed from her wounds on to his hands. Then he
sprang up with a sudden bound, and rushed madly away, hatless and with
his hands still wet with blood. Until evening he wandered about the
streets, with his head swimming, ever seeing the young woman lying
across his legs with her pale face, her blue staring eyes, her distorted
lips, and her expression of astonishment at thus meeting death so
suddenly. He was a shy, timid fellow. Albeit thirty years old he had
never dared to stare women in the face; and now, for the rest of his
life, he was to have that one fixed in his heart and memory. He felt as
though he had lost some loved one of his own.

[*] 1851. Two days after the Coup d'Etat.--Translator.

In the evening, without knowing how he had got there, still dazed and
horrified as he was by the terrible scenes of the afternoon, he had
found himself at a wine shop in the Rue Montorgueil, where several men
were drinking and talking of throwing up barricades. He went away with
them, helped them to tear up a few paving-stones, and seated himself on
the barricade, weary with his long wandering through the streets, and
reflecting that he would fight when the soldiers came up. However, he
had not even a knife with him, and was still bareheaded. Towards eleven
o'clock he dozed off, and in his sleep could see the two holes in the
dead woman's white chemisette glaring at him like eyes reddened by tears
and blood. When he awoke he found himself in the grasp of four police
officers, who were pummelling him with their fists. The men who had
built the barricade had fled. The police officers treated him with still
greater violence, and indeed almost strangled him when they noticed that
his hands were stained with blood. It was the blood of the young woman.

Florent raised his eyes to the luminous dial of Saint Eustache with his
mind so full of these recollections that he did not notice the position
of the pointers. It was, however, nearly four o'clock. The markets were
as yet wrapped in sleep. Madame Francois was still talking to old Madame
Chantemesse, both standing and arguing about the price of turnips, and
Florent now called to mind how narrowly he had escaped being shot over
yonder by the wall of Saint Eustache. A detachment of gendarmes had just
blown out the brains of five unhappy fellows caught at a barricade in
the Rue G