How had he reached the barricade of the Petit Carreau?  He could not say.  He had walked straight before him.  He had glided from street to street.  Chance takes the predestined by the hand, and leads them straight to their goal through the thick darkness.

At the moment when he entered the barricade they cried out to him, “Who goes there?” He answered, “The Republic!”

They saw Jeanty Sarre shake him by the hand.  They asked Jeanty Sarre,—­

“Who is he?”

Jeanty Sarre answered,—­

“It is some one.”

And he added,—­

“We were only sixty a short time since.  We are a hundred now.”

All pressed round the new-comer.  Jeanty Sarre offered him the command.

“No,” said he, “I do not understand the tactics of barricade fighting.  I should be a bad chief, but I am a good soldier.  Give me a gun.”

They seated themselves on the paving-stones.  They exchanged their experiences of what had been done.  Denis described to them the fighting on the Faubourg Saint Martin.  Jeanty Sarre told Denis of the fighting in the Rue Saint Denis.

During all this time the generals were preparing a final assault,—­what the Marquis of Clermont-Tonnerre, in 1822, called the “Coup de Collier,” and what, in 1789, the Prince of Lambese had called the “Coup de Bas.”  Throughout all Paris there was now only this point which offered any resistance.  This knot of barricade, this labyrinth of streets, embattled like a redoubt, was the last citadel of the People and of Right.  The generals invested it leisurely, step by step, and on all sides.  They concentrated their forces.  They, the combatants of this fateful hour, knew nothing of what was being done.  Only from time to time they interrupted their recital of events and they listened.  From the right and from the left, from the front, from the rear, from every side, at the same time, an unmistakable murmur, growing every moment louder, and more distinct, hoarse, piercing, fear-inspiring, reached them through the darkness.  It was the sound of the battalions marching and charging at the trumpet-command in all the adjoining streets.  They resumed their gallant conversation, and then in another moment they stopped again and listened to that species of ill-omened chant, chanted by Death, which was approaching.

Nevertheless some still thought that they would not be attacked till the next morning.  Night combats are rare in street-warfare.  They are more “risky” than all the other conflicts.  Few generals venture upon them.  But amongst the old hands of the barricade, from certain never-failing signs, they believed that an assault was imminent.