on which he
was. Insurrection and repression do not fight with equal weapons.
Insurrection, which is speedily exhausted, has only a certain number
of shots to fire and a certain number of combatants to expend. An empty
cartridge-box, a man killed, cannot be replaced. As repression has the
army, it does not count its men, and, as it has Vincennes, it does not
count its shots. Repression has as many regiments as the barricade has
men, and as many arsenals as the barricade has cartridge-boxes. Thus
they are struggles of one against a hundred, which always end in
crushing the barricade; unless the revolution, uprising suddenly,
flings into the balance its flaming archangel's sword. This does happen
sometimes. Then everything rises, the pavements begin to seethe, popular
redoubts abound. Paris quivers supremely, the quid divinum is given
forth, a 10th of August is in the air, a 29th of July is in the air, a
wonderful light appears, the yawning maw of force draws back, and the
army, that lion, sees before it, erect and tranquil, that prophet,
France.

CHAPTER XIII--PASSING GLEAMS

In the chaos of sentiments and passions which defend a barricade, there
is a little of everything; there is bravery, there is youth, honor,
enthusiasm, the ideal, conviction, the rage of the gambler, and, above
all, intermittences of hope.

One of these intermittences, one of these vague quivers of hope suddenly
traversed the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie at the moment when
it was least expected.

"Listen," suddenly cried Enjolras, who was still on the watch, "it seems
to me that Paris is waking up."

It is certain that, on the morning of the 6th of June, the insurrection
broke out afresh for an hour or two, to a certain extent. The obstinacy
of the alarm peal of Saint-Merry reanimated some fancies. Barricades
were begun in the Rue du Poirier and the Rue des Gravilliers. In front
of the Porte Saint-Martin, a young man, armed with a rifle, attacked
alone a squadron of cavalry. In plain sight, on the open boulevard, he
placed one knee on the ground, shouldered his weapon, fired, killed the
commander of the squadron, and turned away, saying: "There's another who
will do us no more harm."

He was put to the sword. In the Rue Saint-Denis, a woman fired on the
National Guard from behind a lowered blind. The slats of the blind could
be seen to tremble at every shot. A child fourteen years of age
was arrested in the Rue de la Cossoneri