defence of barricades," continued Louis Blanc.

"Regular troops have much to learn," added Rollin, with a significant
smile. "They will see the day--aye! and we all shall see it and rejoice
at its coming, despite all melancholy prognostications, when the people
of Paris will dictate abdication to the king of the barricades, from the
top of the barricades, the people's throne! Nor will that event tarry
long!"

"I doubt it not, I doubt it not, Ledru!" exclaimed Louis Blanc, rejoiced
that one of the youngest and least stable of their number appeared free
from the apprehensions of one of the most influential and seemingly most
reliable. "I accept the omen indicated by your enthusiasm. But I
accounted for the vacillation and distrust of our lamented friend,
Armand Carrel, by reverting to the fact that he relied entirely on
regular troops, military skill, scientific tactics and severe
subordination. Now, all of these belonged to our oppressors and none of
them to us; and, inasmuch as he could not perceive that enthusiasm,
passion for freedom, love of country and family, and the very wrath and
rage of desperation itself sometimes not only supply the place of
discipline, arms and the knowledge requisite to use them, but even
enable vast masses to break down and crush beneath their heel the
serried ranks of veteran troops, he could only despair at the prospects
apparently before him. Besides, Armand Carrel, like all military men,
was a man of action, not reflection--of execution, not contrivance--a
soldier, not a conspirator. At the head of ten thousand veteran troops,
he would have charged on thrice their number without discipline, with
the confident assurance of sweeping them from his path as the chaff of
the threshing floor is swept before the blast; but, with an
undisciplined mob, as he contemptuously called the masses, he would have
moved not a step. The larger the multitude, the less effective and the
more impossible to manage he would have deemed it. A revolution
accomplished by means of the three arms of the military
service--artillery, cavalry and infantry--horse, foot and dragoons, he
could readily conceive; but a revolution conducted to a successful issue
only by means of pikes, axes, muskets and barricades, never, to the hour
of his death, despite the victory of the Three Days, could Carrel
comprehend."

"Besides," said Flocon, "it must not be forgotten that Armand Carrel,
though a most devoted friend to Republic