A simultaneous discharge from the attic and the first floor laid low three of the Bavarians, who had come forward hugging the walls. The remainder of the body fell back and posted themselves under cover wherever the street offered facilities, and the siege of the house began; the bullets pelted on the front like rattling hail. For nearly ten minutes the fusillade continued without cessation, damaging the stucco, but not doing much mischief otherwise, until one of the men whom the lieutenant had taken with him to the garret was so imprudent as to show himself at a window, when a bullet struck him square in the forehead, killing him instantly. It was plain that whoever exposed himself would do so at peril of his life. “Doggone it! there’s one gone!” growled the lieutenant. “Be careful, will you; there’s not enough of us that we can afford to let ourselves be killed for the fun of it!” He had taken a musket and was firing away like the rest of them from behind the protection of a shutter, at the same time watching and encouraging his men. It was Laurent, the gardener’s helper, however, who more than all the others excited his wonder and admiration. Kneeling on the floor, with his chassepot peering out of the narrow aperture of a loophole, he never fired until absolutely certain of his aim; he even told in advance where he intended hitting his living target. “That little officer in blue that you see down there, in the heart.—That other fellow, the tall, lean one, between the eyes.—I don’t like the looks of that fat man with the red beard; I think I’ll let him have it in the stomach.” And each time his man went down as if struck by lightning, hit in the very spot he had mentioned, and he continued to fire at intervals, coolly, without haste, there being no necessity for hurrying himself, as he remarked, since it would require too long a time to kill them all in that way. “Oh! if I had but my eyes!” Weiss impatiently exclaimed. He had broken his spectacles a while before, to his great sorrow. He had his double eye-glass still, but the perspiration was rolling down his face in such streams that it was impossible to keep it on his nose. His usual calm collectedness was entirely lost in his over-mastering passion; and thus, between his defective vision and his agitated nerves, many of his shots were wasted. “Don’t hurry so, it is only throwing away powder,” said Laurent. “Do you see that man who has lost his helmet, over yonder by the grocer’s shop? Well, now draw a bead on him,—carefully, don’t hurry. That’s first-rate! you have broken his paw for him and made him dance a jig in his own blood.” Weiss, rather pale in the face, gave a look at the result of his marksmanship. “Put him out of his misery,” he said. “What, waste a cartridge! Not, much. Better save it for another of ’em.”