grand that all around him cried: "Off with your
hats!" At every step that he mounted, it was a frightful spectacle; his
white locks, his decrepit face, his lofty, bald, and wrinkled brow,
his amazed and open mouth, his aged arm upholding the red banner, rose
through the gloom and were enlarged in the bloody light of the torch,
and the bystanders thought that they beheld the spectre of '93 emerging
from the earth, with the flag of terror in his hand.

When he had reached the last step, when this trembling and terrible
phantom, erect on that pile of rubbish in the presence of twelve hundred
invisible guns, drew himself up in the face of death and as though
he were more powerful than it, the whole barricade assumed amid the
darkness, a supernatural and colossal form.

There ensued one of those silences which occur only in the presence of
prodigies. In the midst of this silence, the old man waved the red flag
and shouted:--

"Long live the Revolution! Long live the Republic! Fraternity! Equality!
and Death!"

Those in the barricade heard a low and rapid whisper, like the murmur
of a priest who is despatching a prayer in haste. It was probably the
commissary of police who was making the legal summons at the other end
of the street.

Then the same piercing voice which had shouted: "Who goes there?"
shouted:--

"Retire!"

M. Mabeuf, pale, haggard, his eyes lighted up with the mournful flame of
aberration, raised the flag above his head and repeated:--

"Long live the Republic!"

"Fire!" said the voice.

A second discharge, similar to the first, rained down upon the
barricade.

The old man fell on his knees, then rose again, dropped the flag
and fell backwards on the pavement, like a log, at full length, with
outstretched arms.

Rivulets of blood flowed beneath him. His aged head, pale and sad,
seemed to be gazing at the sky.

One of those emotions which are superior to man, which make him forget
even to defend himself, seized upon the insurgents, and they approached
the body with respectful awe.

"What men these regicides were!" said Enjolras.

Courfeyrac bent down to Enjolras' ear:--

"This is for yourself alone, I do not wish to dampen the enthusiasm. But
this man was anything rather than a regicide. I knew him. His name was
Father Mabeuf. I do not know what was the matter with him to-day. But he
was a brave blockhead. Just look at his head."

"The head of a blockhead and the heart of a Brutus," repli