Part 225 (1/2)

He was seated on the sill of the open window, wetting his back in the falling rain, and gazing at his two friends.

All at once, he heard a tumult behind him, hurried footsteps, cries of ”To arms!” He turned round and saw in the Rue Saint-Denis, at the end of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, Enjolras pa.s.sing, gun in hand, and Gavroche with his pistol, Feuilly with his sword, Courfeyrac with his sword, and Jean Prouvaire with his blunderbuss, Combeferre with his gun, Bah.o.r.el with his gun, and the whole armed and stormy rabble which was following them.

The Rue de la Chanvrerie was not more than a gunshot long. Bossuet improvised a speaking-trumpet from his two hands placed around his mouth, and shouted:--

”Courfeyrac! Courfeyrac! Hohee!”

Courfeyrac heard the shout, caught sight of Bossuet, and advanced a few paces into the Rue de la Chanvrerie, shouting: ”What do you want?” which crossed a ”Where are you going?”

”To make a barricade,” replied Courfeyrac.

”Well, here! This is a good place! Make it here!”

”That's true, Aigle,” said Courfeyrac.

And at a signal from Courfeyrac, the mob flung themselves into the Rue de la Chanvrerie.

CHAPTER III--NIGHT BEGINS TO DESCEND UPON GRANTAIRE

The spot was, in fact, admirably adapted, the entrance to the street widened out, the other extremity narrowed together into a pocket without exit. Corinthe created an obstacle, the Rue Mondetour was easily barricaded on the right and the left, no attack was possible except from the Rue Saint-Denis, that is to say, in front, and in full sight.

Bossuet had the comprehensive glance of a fasting Hannibal.

Terror had seized on the whole street at the irruption of the mob. There was not a pa.s.ser-by who did not get out of sight. In the s.p.a.ce of a flash of lightning, in the rear, to right and left, shops, stables, area-doors, windows, blinds, attic skylights, shutters of every description were closed, from the ground floor to the roof. A terrified old woman fixed a mattress in front of her window on two clothes-poles for drying linen, in order to deaden the effect of musketry. The wine-shop alone remained open; and that for a very good reason, that the mob had rushed into it.--”Ah my G.o.d! Ah my G.o.d!” sighed Mame Hucheloup.

Bossuet had gone down to meet Courfeyrac.

Joly, who had placed himself at the window, exclaimed:--

”Courfeyrac, you ought to have brought an umbrella. You will gatch gold.”

In the meantime, in the s.p.a.ce of a few minutes, twenty iron bars had been wrenched from the grated front of the wine-shop, ten fathoms of street had been unpaved; Gavroche and Bah.o.r.el had seized in its pa.s.sage, and overturned, the dray of a lime-dealer named Anceau; this dray contained three barrels of lime, which they placed beneath the piles of paving-stones: Enjolras raised the cellar trap, and all the widow Hucheloup's empty casks were used to flank the barrels of lime; Feuilly, with his fingers skilled in painting the delicate sticks of fans, had backed up the barrels and the dray with two ma.s.sive heaps of blocks of rough stone. Blocks which were improvised like the rest and procured no one knows where. The beams which served as props were torn from the neighboring house-fronts and laid on the casks. When Bossuet and Courfeyrac turned round, half the street was already barred with a rampart higher than a man. There is nothing like the hand of the populace for building everything that is built by demolis.h.i.+ng.

Matelote and Gibelotte had mingled with the workers. Gibelotte went and came loaded with rubbish. Her la.s.situde helped on the barricade. She served the barricade as she would have served wine, with a sleepy air.

An omnibus with two white horses pa.s.sed the end of the street.

Bossuet strode over the paving-stones, ran to it, stopped the driver, made the pa.s.sengers alight, offered his hand to ”the ladies,” dismissed the conductor, and returned, leading the vehicle and the horses by the bridle.

”Omnibuses,” said he, ”do not pa.s.s the Corinthe. Non licet omnibus adire Corinthum.”

An instant later, the horses were unharnessed and went off at their will, through the Rue Mondetour, and the omnibus lying on its side completed the bar across the street.

Mame Hucheloup, quite upset, had taken refuge in the first story.

Her eyes were vague, and stared without seeing anything, and she cried in a low tone. Her terrified shrieks did not dare to emerge from her throat.

”The end of the world has come,” she muttered.