were municipal guardsmen. The municipal guardsmen were
attended to first.
In the tap-room there remained only Mabeuf under his black cloth and
Javert bound to his post.
"This is the hall of the dead," said Enjolras.
In the interior of this hall, barely lighted by a candle at one end, the
mortuary table being behind the post like a horizontal bar, a sort of
vast, vague cross resulted from Javert erect and Mabeuf lying prone.
The pole of the omnibus, although snapped off by the fusillade, was
still sufficiently upright to admit of their fastening the flag to it.
Enjolras, who possessed that quality of a leader, of always doing what
he said, attached to this staff the bullet-ridden and bloody coat of the
old man's.
No repast had been possible. There was neither bread nor meat. The fifty
men in the barricade had speedily exhausted the scanty provisions of
the wine-shop during the sixteen hours which they had passed there. At a
given moment, every barricade inevitably becomes the raft of la Meduse.
They were obliged to resign themselves to hunger. They had then reached
the first hours of that Spartan day of the 6th of June when, in the
barricade Saint-Merry, Jeanne, surrounded by the insurgents who demanded
bread, replied to all combatants crying: "Something to eat!" with: "Why?
It is three o'clock; at four we shall be dead."
As they could no longer eat, Enjolras forbade them to drink. He
interdicted wine, and portioned out the brandy.
They had found in the cellar fifteen full bottles hermetically sealed.
Enjolras and Combeferre examined them. Combeferre when he came up again
said:--"It's the old stock of Father Hucheloup, who began business as
a grocer."--"It must be real wine," observed Bossuet. "It's lucky that
Grantaire is asleep. If he were on foot, there would be a good deal of
difficulty in saving those bottles."--Enjolras, in spite of all murmurs,
placed his veto on the fifteen bottles, and, in order that no one might
touch them, he had them placed under the table on which Father Mabeuf
was lying.
About two o'clock in the morning, they reckoned up their strength. There
were still thirty-seven of them.
The day began to dawn. The torch, which had been replaced in its
cavity in the pavement, had just been extinguished. The interior of the
barricade, that species of tiny courtyard appropriated from the street,
was bathed in shadows, and resembled, athwart the vague, twilight
horror, the deck of a d
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