The History of a Crime by Victor Hugo (android pdf ebook reader txt) 📖

On the same night, almost at the same moment, at a few paces distant, a villainous deed was being perpetrated.

After the taking of the barricade, where Pierre Tissié was killed, seventy or eighty combatants had retired in good order by the Rue Saint Sauveur. They had reached the Rue Montorgueil, and had rejoined each other at the junction of the Rue du Petit Carreau and the Rue du Cadran. At this point the street rises. At the corner of the Rue du Petit Carreau and the Rue de Cléry there was a deserted barricade, fairly high and well built. There had been fighting there during the morning. The soldiers had taken it, but had not demolished it. Why? As we have said, there were several riddles of this nature during this day.

The armed band which came from the Rue Saint Denis had halted there and had waited. These men were astonished at not being pursued. Had the soldiers feared to follow them into the little narrow streets, where each corner of the houses might conceal an ambuscade? Had a counter order been given? They hazarded various conjectures. Moreover they heard close by, evidently on the boulevard, a terrific noise of musketry, and a cannonade which resembled continuous thunder. Having no more ammunition, they were reduced to listen. If they had known what was taking place there, they would have understood why they were not pursued. The butchery of the boulevard was beginning. The generals employed in the massacre had suspended fighting for awhile.

The fugitives of the boulevard streamed in their direction, but when they perceived the barricade they turned back. Some, however, joined them indignant, and crying out for vengeance. One who lived in the neighborhood ran home and brought back a little tin barrel full of cartridges.

These were sufficient for an hour's fighting. They began to construct a barricade at the corner of the Rue du Cadran. In this manner the Rue du Petit Carreau, closed by two barricades, one towards the Rue de Cléry, the other at the corner of the Rue du Cadran, commanded the whole of the Rue Montorgueil. The space between these two barricades formed a perfect citadel. The second barricade was stronger than the first.

These men nearly all wore coats. Some of them rolled the paving-stones with gloves on.

Few workmen were amongst them, but those who were there were intelligent and energetic. These workmen were what might be termed the "pick of the crowd."

Jeanty Sarre had rejoined them; he at once became their leader.

Charpentier accompanied him, too brave to abandon the enterprise, but too much a dreamer to become a commander.

Two barricades, enclosing in the same manner some forty yards of the Rue Montorgueil, had just been constructed at the top of the Rue Mauconseil.

Three other barricades, extremely feebly constructed, again intersected the Rue Montorgueil in the space which separates the Rue Mauconseil from Saint Eustache.

Evening was closing in. The fusillade was ceasing upon the boulevard. A surprise was possible. They established a sentry-post at the corner of the Rue du Cadran, and sent a main-guard in the direction of the Rue Montmartre. Their scouts came in to report some items of information. A regiment seemed to be preparing to bivouac in the Place des Victoires.

Their position, to all appearance strong, was not so in reality. There were too few in number to defend at the same time the two barricades on the Rue de Cléry and the Rue Montorgueil, and the soldiers arriving in the rear hidden by the second barricade would have been upon them without being even noticed. This determined them to establish a post in the Rue de Cléry. They put themselves in communication with the barricades of the Rue du Cadran and with the two Mauconseil barricades. These two last barricades were only separated from them by a space of about 150 paces. They were about six feet high, fairly solid, but only guarded by six workmen who had built them.

Towards half-past four, in the twilight—the twilight begins early in December—Jeanty Sarre took four men with him and went out to reconnoitre. He thought also of raising an advanced barricade in one of the little neighboring streets. On the way they found one which had been abandoned, and which had been built with barrels. The barrels, however, were empty, only one contained any paving-stones, and the barricade could not have been held for two minutes. As they left this barricade they were assailed by a sharp discharge of musketry. A company of infantry, hardly visible in the dusk, was close upon them.

They fell back hastily; but one of them, who was a shoemaker of the Faubourg du Temple, was hit, and had remained on the pavement. They went back and brought him away. He had the thumb of the right hand smashed. "Thank God!" said Jeanty Sarre, "they have not killed him." "No," said the poor man, "it is my bread which they have killed."

And he added, "I can no longer work; who will maintain my children?"

They went back, carrying the wounded man. One of them, a medical student, bound up his wound.

The sentries, whom it was necessary to post in every direction, and who were chosen from the most trustworthy men, thinned and exhausted the little central land. There were scarcely thirty in the barricade itself.

There, as in the Quarter of the Temple, all the streetlamps were extinguished; the gas-pipes cut; the windows closed and unlighted; no moon, not even stars. The night was profoundly dark.

They could hear distant fusillades. The soldiers were firing from around Saint Eustache, and every three minutes sent a ball in their direction, as much as to say, "We are here." Nevertheless they did not expect an attack before the morning.

Dialogues like the following took place amongst them:—

"I wish I had a truss of straw," said Charpentier; "I have a notion that we shall sleep here to-night."

"Will you be able to get to sleep?" asked Jeanty Sarre.

"I? Certainly I shall go to sleep."

He did go to sleep, in fact, a few moments later.

In this gloomy network of narrow streets, intersected with barricades, and blockaded by soldiers, two wine-shops had remained open. They made more lint there, however, than they drank wine; the orders of the chiefs were only to drink reddened water.

The doorway of one of these wine-shops opened exactly between the two barricades of the Petit Cancan. In it was a clock by which they regulated the sentries' relief. In a back room they had locked up two suspicious-looking persons who had intermingled with the combatants. One of these men at the moment when he was arrested said, "I have come to fight for Henri V." They kept them under lock and key, and placed a sentry at the door.

An ambulance had been established in an adjoining room. There the wounded shoemaker was lying upon a mattress thrown upon the ground.

They had established, in case of need, another ambulance in the Rue du Cadran. An opening had been effected at the corner of the barricade on this side, so that the wounded could be easily carried away.

Towards half-past nine in the evening a man came up to the barricade.

Jeanty Sarre recognized him.

"Good day, Denis," said he.

"Call me, Gaston," said the man.

"Why?"

"Because—"

"Are you your brother?"

"Yes, I am my brother. For to-day."

"Very well. Good-day, Gaston."

They heartily shook hands.

It was Denis Dussoubs.

He was pale, calm, and bleeding; he had already been fighting during the morning. At the barricade of the Faubourg Saint Martin a ball had grazed his breast, but had been turned off by some money in his pocket, and had only broken the skin. He had had the rare good fortune of being scratched by a ball. It was like the first touch from the claws of death. He wore a cap, his hat having been left behind in the barricade where he had fought: and he had replaced his bullet-pierced overcoat, which was made of Belleisle cloth, by a pea-jacket bought at a slop-shop.

How had he reached the barricade of the Petit Carreau? He could not say. He had walked straight before him. He had glided from street to street. Chance takes the predestined by the hand, and leads them straight to their goal through the thick darkness.

At the moment when he entered the barricade they cried out to him, "Who goes there?" He answered, "The Republic!"

They saw Jeanty Sarre shake him by the hand. They asked Jeanty Sarre,—

"Who is he?"

Jeanty Sarre answered,—

"It is some one."

And he added,—

"We were only sixty a short time since. We are a hundred now."

All pressed round the new-comer. Jeanty Sarre offered him the command.

"No," said he, "I do not understand the tactics of barricade fighting. I should be a bad chief, but I am a good soldier. Give me a gun."

They seated themselves on the paving-stones. They exchanged their experiences of what had been done. Denis described to them the fighting on the Faubourg Saint Martin. Jeanty Sarre told Denis of the fighting in the Rue Saint Denis.

During all this time the generals were preparing a final assault,—what the Marquis of Clermont-Tonnerre, in 1822, called the "Coup de Collier," and what, in 1789, the Prince of Lambese had called the "Coup de Bas." Throughout all Paris there was now only this point which offered any resistance. This knot of barricade, this labyrinth of streets, embattled like a redoubt, was the last citadel of the People and of Right. The generals invested it leisurely, step by step, and on all sides. They concentrated their forces. They, the combatants of this fateful hour, knew