These men nearly all wore coats.  Some of them rolled the paving-stones with gloves on.

Few workmen were amongst them, but those who were there were intelligent and energetic.  These workmen were what might be termed the “pick of the crowd.”

Jeanty Sarre had rejoined them; he at once became their leader.

Charpentier accompanied him, too brave to abandon the enterprise, but too much a dreamer to become a commander.

Two barricades, enclosing in the same manner some forty yards of the Rue Montorgueil, had just been constructed at the top of the Rue Mauconseil.

Three other barricades, extremely feebly constructed, again intersected the Rue Montorgueil in the space which separates the Rue Mauconseil from Saint Eustache.

Evening was closing in.  The fusillade was ceasing upon the boulevard.  A surprise was possible.  They established a sentry-post at the corner of the Rue du Cadran, and sent a main-guard in the direction of the Rue Montmartre.  Their scouts came in to report some items of information.  A regiment seemed to be preparing to bivouac in the Place des Victoires.

Their position, to all appearance strong, was not so in reality.  There were too few in number to defend at the same time the two barricades on the Rue de Clery and the Rue Montorgueil, and the soldiers arriving in the rear hidden by the second barricade would have been upon them without being even noticed.  This determined them to establish a post in the Rue de Clery.  They put themselves in communication with the barricades of the Rue du Cadran and with the two Mauconseil barricades.  These two last barricades were only separated from them by a space of about 150 paces.  They were about six feet high, fairly solid, but only guarded by six workmen who had built them.

Towards half-past four, in the twilight—­the twilight begins early in December—­Jeanty Sarre took four men with him and went out to reconnoitre.  He thought also of raising an advanced barricade in one of the little neighboring streets.  On the way they found one which had been abandoned, and which had been built with barrels.  The barrels, however, were empty, only one contained any paving-stones, and the barricade could not have been held for two minutes.  As they left this barricade they were assailed by a sharp discharge of musketry.  A company of infantry, hardly visible in the dusk, was close upon them.

They fell back hastily; but one of them, who was a shoemaker of the Faubourg du Temple, was hit, and had remained on the pavement.  They went back and brought him away.  He had the thumb of the right hand smashed.  “Thank God!” said Jeanty Sarre, “they have not killed him.”  “No,” said the poor man, “it is my bread which they have killed.”

And he added, “I can no longer work; who will maintain my children?”

They went back, carrying the wounded man.  One of them, a medical student, bound up his wound.