In the chaos of sentiments and passions which defend a barricade, there
is a little of everything; there is bravery, there is youth, honor,
enthusiasm, the ideal, conviction, the rage of the gambler, and, above
all, intermittences of hope.
One of these intermittences, one of these vague quivers of hope
suddenly traversed the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie at the
moment when it was least expected.
“Listen,” suddenly cried Enjolras, who was still on the watch, “it
seems to me that Paris is waking up.”
It is certain that, on the morning of the 6th of June, the insurrection
broke out afresh for an hour or two, to a certain extent. The obstinacy
of the alarm peal of Saint-Merry reanimated some fancies. Barricades
were begun in the Rue du Poirier and the Rue des Gravilliers. In front
of the Porte Saint-Martin, a young man, armed with a rifle, attacked
alone a squadron of cavalry. In plain sight, on the open boulevard, he
placed one knee on the ground, shouldered his weapon, fired, killed the
commander of the squadron, and turned away, saying: “There’s another
who will do us no more harm.”
He was put to the sword. In the Rue Saint-Denis, a woman fired on the
National Guard from behind a lowered blind. The slats of the blind
could be seen to tremble at every shot. A child fourteen years of age
was arrested in the Rue de la Cossonerie, with his pockets full of
cartridges. Many posts were attacked. At the entrance to the Rue
Bertin-Poirée, a very lively and utterly unexpected fusillade welcomed
a regiment of cuirrassiers, at whose head marched Marshal General
Cavaignac de Barague. In the Rue Planche-Mibray, they threw old pieces
of pottery and household utensils down on the soldiers from the roofs;
a bad sign; and when this matter was reported to Marshal Soult,
Napoleon’s old lieutenant grew thoughtful, as he recalled Suchet’s
saying at Saragossa: “We are lost when the old women empty their pots
de chambre on our heads.”
These general symptoms which presented themselves at the moment when it
was thought that the uprising had been rendered local, this fever of
wrath, these sparks which flew hither and thither above those deep
masses of combustibles which are called the faubourgs of Paris,—all
this, taken together, disturbed the military chiefs. They made haste to
stamp out these beginnings of conflagration.
They delayed the attack on the barricades Maubuée, de la Chanvrerie and
Saint-Merry until these sparks had been extinguished, in order that
they might have to deal with the barricades only and be able to finish
them at one blow. Columns were thrown into the streets where there was
fermentation, sweeping the large, sounding the small, right and left,
now slowly and cautiously, now at full charge. The troops broke in the
doors of houses whence shots had been fired; at the same time,
manœuvres by the cavalry dispersed the groups on the boulevards. This
repression was not effected without some commotion, and without that
tumultuous uproar peculiar to collisions between the army and the
people. This was what Enjolras had caught in the intervals of the
cannonade and the musketry. Moreover, he had seen wounded men passing
the end of the street in litters, and he said to Courfeyrac:—“Those
wounded do not come from us.”
Their hope did not last long; the gleam was quickly eclipsed. In less
than half an hour, what was in the air vanished, it was a flash of
lightning unaccompanied by thunder, and the insurgents felt that sort
of leaden cope, which the indifference of the people casts over
obstinate and deserted men, fall over them once more.
The general movement, which seemed to have assumed a vague outline, had
miscarried; and the attention of the minister of war and the strategy
of the generals could now be concentrated on the three or four
barricades which still remained standing.
The sun was mounting above the horizon.
An insurgent hailed Enjolras.
“We are hungry here. Are we really going to die like this, without
anything to eat?”
Enjolras, who was still leaning on his elbows at his embrasure, made an
affirmative sign with his head, but without taking his eyes from the
end of the street.