Outside, the mob broke and fled up the Place du Carrousel, recoiling from the horrid vestibule, where suddenly there formed a bubble of red, that grew larger and trickled over the garden, widening and assuming mass and shape. At times across the red, like a diamond meeting the sun, there ran a brilliant flash. At every flash men stumbled in their flight and pitched forward. Pell-mell into the Rue St. Honoré they ran, routed, but full of anger and enthusiasm. At this moment the sections of the Marais swept in, gathered them up, and, burning with vengeance at the sight of their wounds, rushed on to the attack. Barabant, who had received a flesh-wound in the hand, had barely time to bind it up before he was swept again into the Carrousel. Then a vast hurrah burst from them, a shout of relief and of battle. From the quais the guerrilla band of the Marseillais were rolling forward, formidable, grim, and unleashed. Suddenly their ranks parted and two tongues of fire lashed out; in the solid bank of the Swiss two gaps appeared. A frenzy possessed the assaulting mass. It flung itself forward, without method, attacking only with its anger. The Swiss reëntered the vestibule, issuing forth from time to time to deliver a volley. Barabant, in the midst of the swirl, lost consciousness of his acts, swayed by sudden, unreasoning passion. He fired fast and faster, caught by the infection of his comrades, cursing, exhorting wildly, laughing; but his bullets, without objective, flattened themselves against the death-dealing walls. At times he saw, through the thick smoke, Javogues and his comrades dragging a cannon forward toward the barracks. At another moment there suddenly emerged out of the mêlée the figure of the two bouquetières. Amid the swirl of smoke, Nicole appeared to Barabant's excited senses as a goddess exhorting them to battle. Her hair had tumbled, rioting, her dress was torn open at the throat, her bare arms were stained with powder and red with the contact of the wounded; and yet, as she loaded a musket, or presented it to a volunteer, or showed him the flashing walls, she laughed one of those laughs sublime with the indifference to danger and the joy of heroism that inflame the souls of those who hear it, and transform the wavering with the frenzy of sacrifice. On the contrary, Louison, among all the confusion and the tumult, moved quietly, gathering the bullets from the fallen and returning them to her friend. Her face was calm, cold; her eyes sought everything and showed nothing; and though she moved incessantly on her quests, she was apart from all--a spectator. Barabant, unable to join them, was carried step by step toward the barracks. Once he slipped in a pool of blood and went down, his companion falling across him. He called to him to rise, but the man was dead. A woman of the halles freed him.