A man’s voice, firm and sonorous, suddenly issued out of the darkness, and shouted to us, “Who goes there?”

“Ah, there they are!” said the last-maker, and he uttered a peculiar whistle.

“Come on,” resumed the voice.

It was another barricade.  This one, a little higher than the first, and separated from it by a distance of about a hundred paces, was, as far as could be seen, constructed of barrels filled with paving-stones.  On the top could be seen the wheels of a truck entangled between the barrels; planks and beams were intermingled.  A passage had been contrived still narrower than the gangway of the other barricade.

“Citizens,” said the last-maker, as he went into the barricade, “how many of you are there here?”

The voice which had shouted, “Who goes there?” answered,—­

“There are two of us.”

“Is that all?”

“That is all.”

They were in truth two,—­two men who alone during that night, in that solitary street, behind that heap of paving-stones, awaited the onslaught of a regiment.

Both wore blouses; they were two workmen; with a few cartridges in their pockets, and a musket upon each of their shoulders.

“So then,” resumed the last-maker, in an impatient tone, “our friends have not yet come!”

“Well, then,” I said to him, “let us wait for them.”

The last-maker spoke for a short time in a low tone, and probably told my name to one of the two defenders of the barricade, who came up to me and saluted me.  “Citizen Representative,” said he, “it will be very warm here shortly.”

“In the meantime,” answered I laughingly, “it is cold.”

It was very cold, in truth.  The street which was completely unpaved behind the barricade, was nothing better than a sewer, ankle deep in water.

“I say that it will be warm,” resumed the workman, “and that you would do well to go farther off.”

The last-maker put his hand on his shoulder:  “Comrade, it is necessary that we should remain here.  The meeting-place is close by, in the ambulance.”

“All the same,” resumed the other workman, who was very short, and who stood up on a paving-stone; “the Citizen Representative would do well to go farther off.”

“I can very well be where you are,” said I to him.

The street was quite dark, nothing could be seen of the sky.  Inside the barricade on the left, on the side where the passage was, could be seen a high paling of badly joined planks, through which shone in places a feeble light.  Above the paling rose out, lost in the darkness, a house of six or seven storys; the ground floor, which was being repaired, and which was under-pinned, being closed in by these planks.  A ray of light issuing from between the planks fell on the opposite wall, and lighted up an old torn placard, on which could be read, “Asnieres.  Water tournaments.  Grand ball.”