The streets and boulevards, with the exception of the invaded quarters, had been lighted as usual. At the entrance of the Faubourg Montmartre the light ceased abruptly, giving it the appearance of an enormous black hole. This obscurity was guarded by Federal sentinels, uttering every now and then their cry, "Passez au large!" Beyond this only a menacing silence. These shadows moving about in the night seemed to assume gigantic forms; one fancied oneself haunted by a sinister dream; the bravest were appalled. There were nights more noisy, more glaring, more grandiose, when the conflagrations and the cannonade enveloped Paris, but none of more lugubrious impress. A night of meditation this, the vigil of battle. We sought each other in the gloom, spoke low, giving and taking comfort. At the cross-roads we consulted each other in order to examine our positions, and then to work! Now for the spade and the pavements! Let the earth be heaped up where the shells may flatten themselves against it; let the mattresses thrown from the windows shelter the combatants. Henceforth there is to be no more rest; let the stones cemented with hate press against each other like the shoulders of men arrayed for the battlefield. The enemy has taken us by surprise, defenceless. May he to-morrow encounter a Saragossa or a Moscow! Every passer-by was requisitioned. "Come, citizen, lend a hand for the Republic!" At the Bastille and in the interior boulevards one met crowds of workers, some digging the earth, others carrying the paving-stones; children using spades and mattocks as big as themselves. The women encouraged the men; the delicate hand of the young girl raised the heavy pickaxe that fell with a sharp sound, emitting fiery sparks. It took an hour to seriously break through the soil. What matter! they will spend their night at it. On the Tuesday evening, at the intersection of the Square St. Jacques and the Boulevard Sebastopol, many _dames de la halle_ worked for a long time, filling earth sacks and wicker baskets.[183] And these were no longer the traditional redoubts two storeys high. Save four or five in the Rue St. Honore and the Rue de Rivoli, the barricades of May consisted of a few paving-stones hardly a man's height; behind these sometimes a cannon or a mitrailleuse; and in the midst, wedged in by two paving-stones, the red flag, the colour of vengeance. Behind these shreds of ramparts thirty men held regiments in check.