Enjolras had gone out to reconnoitre, and had left by the Mondétour
Lane, keeping in the shadow of the houses. The insurgents, we must
state, were full of hope: the way in which they had repulsed the night
attack almost made them disdain beforehand the attack at daybreak.
They waited for it and smiled at it, and no more doubted of their
success than of their cause; moreover, help was evidently going to
reach them, and they reckoned on it. With that facility of triumphant
prophecy which is a part of the strength of the French fighter, they
divided into three certain phases the opening day,--at six in the
morning a regiment, which had been worked upon, would turn; at mid-day
insurrection all over Paris; at sunset the revolution. The tocsin of
St. Merry, which had not ceased once since the previous evening, could
be heard, and this was a proof that the other barricade, the great
one, Jeanne's, still held out. All these hopes were interchanged by
the groups with a species of gay and formidable buzzing which resemble
the war-hum of a swarm of bees. Enjolras reappeared returning from his
gloomy walk in the external darkness. He listened for a moment to all
this joy with his arms folded, and then said, fresh and rosy in the
growing light of dawn,--
"The whole army of Paris is out, and one third of that army is
preparing to attack the barricade behind which you now are. There is,
too, the National Guard. I distinguished the shakos of the fifth line
regiment and the colors of the sixth legion. You will be attacked in
an hour; as for the people, they were in a state of ferment yesterday,
but this morning do not stir. There is nothing to wait for, nothing to
hope; no more a faubourg than a regiment You are abandoned."
These words fell on the buzzing groups, and produced the same effect
as the first drops of a storm do on a swarm. All remained dumb, and
there was a moment of inexpressible silence, in which death might have
been heard flying past This moment was short, and a voice shouted to
Enjolras from the thickest of the crowd,--
"Be it so. Let us raise the barricade to a height of twenty feet, and
all fall upon it. Citizens, let us offer the protest of corpses, and
show that if the people abandon the republicans, the republicans do not
abandon the people."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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