of the
revolution--what? The revolution. It--that barricade, chance, hazard,
disorder, terror, misunderstanding, the unknown--had facing it the
Constituent Assembly, the sovereignty of the people, universal suffrage,
the nation, the republic; and it was the Carmagnole bidding defiance to
the Marseillaise.

Immense but heroic defiance, for the old faubourg is a hero.

The faubourg and its redoubt lent each other assistance. The faubourg
shouldered the redoubt, the redoubt took its stand under cover of the
faubourg. The vast barricade spread out like a cliff against which
the strategy of the African generals dashed itself. Its caverns, its
excrescences, its warts, its gibbosities, grimaced, so to speak, and
grinned beneath the smoke. The mitraille vanished in shapelessness; the
bombs plunged into it; bullets only succeeded in making holes in it;
what was the use of cannonading chaos? and the regiments, accustomed to
the fiercest visions of war, gazed with uneasy eyes on that species of
redoubt, a wild beast in its boar-like bristling and a mountain by its
enormous size.

A quarter of a league away, from the corner of the Rue du Temple which
debouches on the boulevard near the Chateaud'Eau, if one thrust one's
head bodily beyond the point formed by the front of the Dallemagne shop,
one perceived in the distance, beyond the canal, in the street which
mounts the slopes of Belleville at the culminating point of the rise, a
strange wall reaching to the second story of the house fronts, a sort
of hyphen between the houses on the right and the houses on the left, as
though the street had folded back on itself its loftiest wall in order
to close itself abruptly. This wall was built of paving-stones. It was
straight, correct, cold, perpendicular, levelled with the square, laid
out by rule and line. Cement was lacking, of course, but, as in the case
of certain Roman walls, without interfering with its rigid architecture.
The entablature was mathematically parallel with the base. From distance
to distance, one could distinguish on the gray surface, almost invisible
loopholes which resembled black threads. These loopholes were separated
from each other by equal spaces. The street was deserted as far as the
eye could reach. All windows and doors were closed. In the background
rose this barrier, which made a blind thoroughfare of the street, a
motionless and tranquil wall; no one was visible, nothing was audible;
not a cry, not a so