This daring man was pale.

“Go no further,” said he; “all is at an end.”

“What do you mean, all at an end?”

“Yes, they must have anticipated the time appointed; the barricade is taken:  I have just come from it.  It is a few steps from here straight before us.”

And he added,—­

“Baudin is killed.”

The smoke rolled away from the end of the street.

“Look,” said Alexander Rey to me.

I saw, a hundred steps before us, at the junction of the Rue de Cotte and the Rue Ste. Marguerite, a low barricade which the soldiers were pulling down.  A corpse was being borne away.

It was Baudin.

CHAPTER III.

THE ST. ANTOINE BARRICADE

This is what had happened.

During that same night, and as early as four o’clock in the morning, De Flotte was in the Faubourg St. Antoine.  He was anxious, in case any movement took place before daylight, that a Representative of the People should be present, and he was one of those who, when the glorious insurrection of Right should burst forth, wished to unearth the paving-stones for the first barricade.

But nothing was stirring.  De Flotte, alone in the midst of this deserted and sleeping Faubourg, wandered from street to street throughout the night.

Day breaks late in December.  Before the first streaks of dawn De Flotte was at the rendezvous opposite the Lenoir Market.

This spot was only weakly guarded.  The only troops in the neighborhood were the post itself of the Lenoir Market, and another post at a short distance which occupied the guard-house at the corner of the Faubourg and the Rue de Montreuil, close to the old Tree of Liberty planted in 1793 by Santerre.  Neither of these posts were commanded by officers.

De Flotte reconnoitred the position.  He walked some time up and down the pavement, and then seeing no one coming as yet, and fearing to excite attention, he went away, and returned to the side-streets of the Faubourg.

For his part Aubry (du Nord) got up at five o’clock.  Having gone home in the middle of the night, on his return from the Rue Popincourt, he had only taken three hours’ rest.  His porter told him that some suspicious persons had inquired for him during the evening of the 2d, and that they had been to the house opposite, No. 12 of the same street, Rue Racine, to arrest Huguenin.  This determined Aubry to leave his house before daylight.

He walked to the Faubourg St. Antoine.  As he reached the place of rendezvous he met Cournet and the others from the Rue Popincourt.  They were almost immediately joined by Malardier.

It was dawn.  The Faubourg was solitary.  They walked along wrapt in thought and speaking in a low voice.  Suddenly an impetuous and singular procession passed them.

They looked round.  It was a detachment of Lancers which surrounded something which in the dim light they recognized to be a police-van.  The vehicle rolled noiselessly along the macadamized road.