the exception of this issue which was left free, and which
constituted what Folard in his strategical style would have termed a
branch and taking into account, also, the narrow cutting arranged on the
Rue de la Chanvrerie, the interior of the barricade, where the wine-shop
formed a salient angle, presented an irregular square, closed on all
sides. There existed an interval of twenty paces between the grand
barrier and the lofty houses which formed the background of the street,
so that one might say that the barricade rested on these houses, all
inhabited, but closed from top to bottom.

All this work was performed without any hindrance, in less than an hour,
and without this handful of bold men seeing a single bear-skin cap or
a single bayonet make their appearance. The very bourgeois who still
ventured at this hour of riot to enter the Rue Saint-Denis cast a
glance at the Rue de la Chanvrerie, caught sight of the barricade, and
redoubled their pace.

The two barricades being finished, and the flag run up, a table was
dragged out of the wine-shop; and Courfeyrac mounted on the table.
Enjolras brought the square coffer, and Courfeyrac opened it. This
coffer was filled with cartridges. When the mob saw the cartridges, a
tremor ran through the bravest, and a momentary silence ensued.

Courfeyrac distributed them with a smile.

Each one received thirty cartridges. Many had powder, and set about
making others with the bullets which they had run. As for the barrel of
powder, it stood on a table on one side, near the door, and was held in
reserve.

The alarm beat which ran through all Paris, did not cease, but it had
finally come to be nothing more than a monotonous noise to which they no
longer paid any attention. This noise retreated at times, and again drew
near, with melancholy undulations.

They loaded the guns and carbines, all together, without haste, with
solemn gravity. Enjolras went and stationed three sentinels outside the
barricades, one in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, the second in the Rue des
Precheurs, the third at the corner of the Rue de la Petite Truanderie.

Then, the barricades having been built, the posts assigned, the guns
loaded, the sentinels stationed, they waited, alone in those redoubtable
streets through which no one passed any longer, surrounded by those
dumb houses which seemed dead and in which no human movement palpitated,
enveloped in the deepening shades of twilight which was drawing on,