ar trap, and all the widow
Hucheloup's empty casks were used to flank the barrels of lime; Feuilly,
with his fingers skilled in painting the delicate sticks of fans, had
backed up the barrels and the dray with two massive heaps of blocks of
rough stone. Blocks which were improvised like the rest and procured
no one knows where. The beams which served as props were torn from
the neighboring house-fronts and laid on the casks. When Bossuet and
Courfeyrac turned round, half the street was already barred with
a rampart higher than a man. There is nothing like the hand of the
populace for building everything that is built by demolishing.

Matelote and Gibelotte had mingled with the workers. Gibelotte went and
came loaded with rubbish. Her lassitude helped on the barricade. She
served the barricade as she would have served wine, with a sleepy air.

An omnibus with two white horses passed the end of the street.

Bossuet strode over the paving-stones, ran to it, stopped the driver,
made the passengers alight, offered his hand to "the ladies," dismissed
the conductor, and returned, leading the vehicle and the horses by the
bridle.

"Omnibuses," said he, "do not pass the Corinthe. Non licet omnibus adire
Corinthum."

An instant later, the horses were unharnessed and went off at their
will, through the Rue Mondetour, and the omnibus lying on its side
completed the bar across the street.

Mame Hucheloup, quite upset, had taken refuge in the first story.

Her eyes were vague, and stared without seeing anything, and she cried
in a low tone. Her terrified shrieks did not dare to emerge from her
throat.

"The end of the world has come," she muttered.

Joly deposited a kiss on Mame Hucheloup's fat, red, wrinkled neck, and
said to Grantaire: "My dear fellow, I have always regarded a woman's
neck as an infinitely delicate thing."

But Grantaire attained to the highest regions of dithryamb. Matelote
had mounted to the first floor once more, Grantaire seized her round her
waist, and gave vent to long bursts of laughter at the window.

"Matelote is homely!" he cried: "Matelote is of a dream of ugliness!
Matelote is a chimaera. This is the secret of her birth: a Gothic
Pygmalion, who was making gargoyles for cathedrals, fell in love with
one of them, the most horrible, one fine morning. He besought Love to
give it life, and this produced Matelote. Look at her, citizens! She has
chromate-of-lead-colored hair, like Titian's mistres