“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.

“I go to the Rue Pagevin.  There at the corner of the Place des Victoires there is a well-constructed barricade.  In the adjoining barricade in the Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau, the troops this morning made no prisoners.  The soldiers had killed every one.  There are corpses as far as the Place des Victoires.  The Pagevin barricade held its own.  There are fifty men there, well armed.  I enter.  ‘Is all going on well?’ ‘Yes.’  ‘Courage.’  I press all these brave hands; they make a report to me.  They had seen a Municipal Guard smash in the head of a dying man with the butt end of his musket.  A pretty young girl, wishing to go home, took refuge in the barricade.  There, terrified, she remained for an hour.  When all danger was over, the chef of the barricade caused her to be reconducted home by the eldest of his men.

“As I was about to leave the barricade Pagevin, they brought me a prisoner, a police spy, they said.

“He expected to be shot.  I had him set at liberty.”

Bancel was in this barricade of the Rue Pagevin.  We shook hands.

He asked me,—­

“Shall we conquer?”

“Yes,” I answered.

We then could hardly entertain a doubt.

De Flotte and Bancel wished to accompany me, fearing that I should be arrested by the regiment guarding the Bank.

The weather was misty and cold, almost dark.  This obscurity concealed and helped us.  The fog was on our side.

As we reached the corner of the Rue de la Vrilliere, a group on horseback passed by.

It consisted of a few others, preceded by a man who seemed a soldier, but who was not in uniform.  He wore a cloak with a hood.