d said:--

"Why not?"

"Because."

"Where are you going, then?"

"What business is that of yours?"

"Would you like to have me carry your coffer for you?"

"I am going to the barricades."

"Would you like to have me go with you?"

"If you like!" replied Courfeyrac. "The street is free, the pavements
belong to every one."

And he made his escape at a run to join his friends. When he had
rejoined them, he gave the coffer to one of them to carry. It was only
a quarter of an hour after this that he saw the young man, who had
actually followed them.

A mob does not go precisely where it intends. We have explained that
a gust of wind carries it away. They overshot Saint-Merry and found
themselves, without precisely knowing how, in the Rue Saint-Denis.

BOOK TWELFTH.--CORINTHE

CHAPTER I--HISTORY OF CORINTHE FROM ITS FOUNDATION

The Parisians who nowadays on entering on the Rue Rambuteau at the end
near the Halles, notice on their right, opposite the Rue Mondetour, a
basket-maker's shop having for its sign a basket in the form of Napoleon
the Great with this inscription:--

NAPOLEON IS MADE
WHOLLY OF WILLOW,

have no suspicion of the terrible scenes which this very spot witnessed
hardly thirty years ago.

It was there that lay the Rue de la Chanvrerie, which ancient deeds
spell Chanverrerie, and the celebrated public-house called Corinthe.

The reader will remember all that has been said about the barricade
effected at this point, and eclipsed, by the way, by the barricade
Saint-Merry. It was on this famous barricade of the Rue de la
Chanvrerie, now fallen into profound obscurity, that we are about to
shed a little light.

May we be permitted to recur, for the sake of clearness in the recital,
to the simple means which we have already employed in the case of
Waterloo. Persons who wish to picture to themselves in a tolerably exact
manner the constitution of the houses which stood at that epoch near the
Pointe Saint-Eustache, at the northeast angle of the Halles of Paris,
where to-day lies the embouchure of the Rue Rambuteau, have only to
imagine an N touching the Rue Saint-Denis with its summit and the Halles
with its base, and whose two vertical bars should form the Rue de la
Grande-Truanderie, and the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and whose transverse
bar should be formed by the Rue de la Petite-Truanderie. The old Rue
Mondetour cut the three strokes of the