In the meantime the exasperated mob that the funeral procession recruited in its passage went steadily on increasing. It passed as a bloody vision before the linendraper and his son. So painful was the first impression of both that they could not utter a word. Their eyes swam in tears at learning that the butchery of inoffensive and unarmed people had taken place upon the Boulevard of the Capuchins. Hardly had the cart of corpses disappeared when Lebrenn seized one of the iron bars, used to fasten the shop window from within, brandished it over his head, and cried out to the indignant mass of people who were trooping by: "Friends! Royalty throws us the gage of battle by butchering our brothers! Let the blood of the victims fall upon the head of that accursed royalty! To the barricades! Long live the Republic!" Immediately the merchant and his son tore up the first paving stones. The man's words and example produced a magic effect. From a thousand throats the answer came back: "To arms! To the barricades! Long live the Republic!" The next moment the people had invaded the neighboring houses, everywhere demanding arms, and levers and crowbars to tear up the pavement. Soon as the first row of cobblestones was removed, those who had neither iron bars, nor sticks, pulled up the pavement with their bare hands and nails. Monsieur Lebrenn and his son were hard at work raising the barricade a few paces above their door when they were joined by George Duchene, the young carpenter, who arrived in the company of a score of armed men, the members of a demi-section of the secret society with which they, together with the linendraper, were affiliated. Among these new recruits were the barrowman and the two truckmen who had brought the arms and munitions to the shop in the course of the afternoon. Dupont, who had driven the truck, was a mechanic; of the other two, one was a man of letters, the other an eminent scientist. George Duchene approached Lebrenn as the latter, having stopped working on the barricade for a moment, stood at the door of his shop distributing arms and ammunition among the men of his own quarter upon whom he felt sure he could rely, while Gildas, the previous poltroonery of whom had been transformed into heroism from the instant the sinister cart of corpses passed before him, emerged from the cellar with several baskets of wine, which he poured out to the men at work at the barricade, to steel them to their task. Clad in his blouse, George carried a carbine in his hand and a bunch of cartridges tied up in a handkerchief hanging from his belt. He said to the merchant: