الفصل الفصل 282 · PREPARATIONS

The journals of the day which said that that _nearly impregnable

structure_, of the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, as they call

it, reached to the level of the first floor, were mistaken. The fact

is, that it did not exceed an average height of six or seven feet. It

was built in such a manner that the combatants could, at their will,

either disappear behind it or dominate the barrier and even scale its

crest by means of a quadruple row of paving-stones placed on top of

each other and arranged as steps in the interior. On the outside, the

front of the barricade, composed of piles of paving-stones and casks

bound together by beams and planks, which were entangled in the wheels

of Anceau’s dray and of the overturned omnibus, had a bristling and

inextricable aspect.

An aperture large enough to allow a man to pass through had been made

between the wall of the houses and the extremity of the barricade which

was furthest from the wine-shop, so that an exit was possible at this

point. The pole of the omnibus was placed upright and held up with

ropes, and a red flag, fastened to this pole, floated over the

barricade.

The little Mondétour barricade, hidden behind the wine-shop building,

was not visible. The two barricades united formed a veritable redoubt.

Enjolras and Courfeyrac had not thought fit to barricade the other

fragment of the Rue Mondétour which opens through the Rue des Prêcheurs

an issue into the Halles, wishing, no doubt, to preserve a possible

communication with the outside, and not entertaining much fear of an

attack through the dangerous and difficult street of the Rue des

Prêcheurs.

With the exception of this issue which was left free, and which

constituted what Folard in his strategical style would have termed a

branch and taking into account, also, the narrow cutting arranged on

the Rue de la Chanvrerie, the interior of the barricade, where the

wine-shop formed a salient angle, presented an irregular square, closed

on all sides. There existed an interval of twenty paces between the

grand barrier and the lofty houses which formed the background of the

street, so that one might say that the barricade rested on these

houses, all inhabited, but closed from top to bottom.

All this work was performed without any hindrance, in less than an

hour, and without this handful of bold men seeing a single bear-skin

cap or a single bayonet make their appearance. The very bourgeois who

still ventured at this hour of riot to enter the Rue Saint-Denis cast a

glance at the Rue de la Chanvrerie, caught sight of the barricade, and

redoubled their pace.

The two barricades being finished, and the flag run up, a table was

dragged out of the wine-shop; and Courfeyrac mounted on the table.

Enjolras brought the square coffer, and Courfeyrac opened it. This

coffer was filled with cartridges. When the mob saw the cartridges, a

tremor ran through the bravest, and a momentary silence ensued.

Courfeyrac distributed them with a smile.

Each one received thirty cartridges. Many had powder, and set about

making others with the bullets which they had run. As for the barrel of

powder, it stood on a table on one side, near the door, and was held in

reserve.

The alarm beat which ran through all Paris, did not cease, but it had

finally come to be nothing more than a monotonous noise to which they

no longer paid any attention. This noise retreated at times, and again

drew near, with melancholy undulations.

They loaded the guns and carbines, all together, without haste, with

solemn gravity. Enjolras went and stationed three sentinels outside the

barricades, one in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, the second in the Rue des

Prêcheurs, the third at the corner of the Rue de la Petite Truanderie.

Then, the barricades having been built, the posts assigned, the guns

loaded, the sentinels stationed, they waited, alone in those

redoubtable streets through which no one passed any longer, surrounded

by those dumb houses which seemed dead and in which no human movement

palpitated, enveloped in the deepening shades of twilight which was

drawing on, in the midst of that silence through which something could

be felt advancing, and which had about it something tragic and

terrifying, isolated, armed, determined, and tranquil.