The sun did not shine forth. This five days' cannonade had drawn on the rainfall that usually accompanies great battles. The fusillade had lost its sharp, quick voice, but rolled on in muffled tones. The men, harassed, wet to the skin, hardly distinguished through the misty veil the point whence the attack came. The shells of a Versaillese battery established at the Orleans Railway station disturbed the entrance of the Faubourg St. Antoine. At seven o'clock the presence of soldiers at the top of the faubourg was announced. The Federals hurried thither with their cannon. If they do not hold out, the Bastille will be turned. They did hold out. The Rue d'Aligre and the Avenue Lacuee vied with each other in devotion. Intrenched in the houses, the Federals fell, but neither yielded nor retreated; and, thanks to their self-sacrifice, the Bastille for six hours still disputed its shattered barricades and ruined houses. Each stone had its legend in this estuary of the Revolution. Here encased in the wall is a bullet launched in 1789 against the fortress. Leaning against the same wall the sons of the combatants of June fought for the same pavement as their fathers. Here the conservatives of 1848 gave vent to their rage; but what was their fury compared with that of 1871? The house at the corner of the Rue de la Roquette, the angle of the Rue de Charenton, disappeared like the scenery of a theatre, and amidst these ruins, under these burning beams, some men fired their cannon, twenty times raised up the red flag, as often overthrown by the Versaillese balls. Powerless as it well knew to triumph over an entire army, the old glorious place will at least succumb honourably. How many were there at mid-day? Hundreds, since at night hundreds of corpses lay around the chief barricade. In the Rue Crozatier they were dead; they were dead too in the Rue d'Aligre, killed in the struggle or after the combat. And how they died! In the Rue Crozatier an artillerist of the army, gone over to the people on the 18th March, was surrounded. "We are going to shoot you," cried the soldiers. He, shrugging his shoulders, answered, "We can only die once!" Farther on an old man was struggling; the officer by a refinement of cruelty wanted to shoot him upon a heap of filth. "I fought bravely," said the old man; "I have the right not to die in the mire."