The History of a Crime: The Testimony of an Eye-WitnessHugo, Victor
History
The History of a Crime: The Testimony of an Eye-Witness
Hugo, Victor
France -- History -- 1789-1900
"Jeanty Sarre is the chief of a complete group of barricades. He
presented his first lieutenant to me, Charpentier, a man of thirty-six,
lettered and scientific. Charpentier busies himself with experiments
with the object of substituting gas for coal and wood in the firing of
china, and he asks permission to read a tragedy to me 'one of these
days.' I said to him, 'We shall make one.'
"Jeanty Sarre is grumbling at Charpentier; the ammunition is failing.
Jeanty Sarre, having at his house in the Rue Saint Honoré a pound of
fowling-powder and twenty army cartridges, sent Charpentier to get them.
Charpentier went there, and brought back the fowling-powder and the
cartridges, but distributed them to the combatants on the barricades
whom he met on the way. 'They were as though famished,' said he.
Charpentier had never in his life touched a fire-arm. Jeanty Sarre
showed him how to load a gun.
"They take their meals at a wine-seller's at the corner, and they warm
themselves there. It is very cold. The wine-seller says, 'Those who are
hungry, go and eat.' A combatant asked him, 'Who pays?' 'Death,' was the
answer. And in truth some hours afterwards he had received seventeen
bayonet thrusts.
"They have not broken the gas-pipes--always for the sake of not doing
unnecessary damage. They confine themselves to requisitioning the
gasmen's keys, and the lamplighters' winches in order to open the pipes.
In this manner they control the lighting or extinguishing.
"This group of barricades is strong, and will play an important part. I
had hoped at one moment that they would attack it while I was there. The
bugle had approached, and then had gone away again. Jeanty Sarre tells
me 'it will be for this evening.'
"His intention is to extinguish the gas in the Rue du Petit-Carreau and
all the adjoining streets, and to leave only one jet lighted in the Rue
du Cadran. He has placed sentinels as far as the corner of the Rue Saint
Denis; at that point there is an open side, without barricades, but
little accessible to the troops, on account of the narrowness of the
streets, which they can only enter one by one. Thence little danger
exists, an advantage of narrow streets; the troops are worth nothing
unless massed together. The soldier does not like isolated action; in
war the feeling of elbow to elbow constitutes half the bravery. Jeanty
Sarre has a reactionary uncle with whom he is not on good terms, and who
lives close by at No. 1, Rue du Petit-Carreau.--'What a fright we shall
give him presently!' said Jeanty Sarre to me, laughing. This morning
Jeanty Sarre has inspected the Montorgueil barricade. There was only one
man on it, who was drunk, and who put the barrel of his gun against his
breast, saying, 'No thoroughfare.' Jeanty Sarre disarmed him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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