e, with his pockets full of
cartridges. Many posts were attacked. At the entrance to the Rue
Bertin-Poiree, a very lively and utterly unexpected fusillade welcomed
a regiment of cuirrassiers, at whose head marched Marshal General
Cavaignac de Barague. In the Rue Planche-Mibray, they threw old pieces
of pottery and household utensils down on the soldiers from the roofs; a
bad sign; and when this matter was reported to Marshal Soult, Napoleon's
old lieutenant grew thoughtful, as he recalled Suchet's saying at
Saragossa: "We are lost when the old women empty their pots de chambre
on our heads."

These general symptoms which presented themselves at the moment when
it was thought that the uprising had been rendered local, this fever
of wrath, these sparks which flew hither and thither above those deep
masses of combustibles which are called the faubourgs of Paris,--all
this, taken together, disturbed the military chiefs. They made haste to
stamp out these beginnings of conflagration.

They delayed the attack on the barricades Maubuee, de la Chanvrerie and
Saint-Merry until these sparks had been extinguished, in order that they
might have to deal with the barricades only and be able to finish
them at one blow. Columns were thrown into the streets where there was
fermentation, sweeping the large, sounding the small, right and left,
now slowly and cautiously, now at full charge. The troops broke in
the doors of houses whence shots had been fired; at the same time,
manoeuvres by the cavalry dispersed the groups on the boulevards. This
repression was not effected without some commotion, and without that
tumultuous uproar peculiar to collisions between the army and the
people. This was what Enjolras had caught in the intervals of the
cannonade and the musketry. Moreover, he had seen wounded men passing
the end of the street in litters, and he said to Courfeyrac:--"Those
wounded do not come from us."

Their hope did not last long; the gleam was quickly eclipsed. In less
than half an hour, what was in the air vanished, it was a flash of
lightning unaccompanied by thunder, and the insurgents felt that sort of
leaden cope, which the indifference of the people casts over obstinate
and deserted men, fall over them once more.

The general movement, which seemed to have assumed a vague outline, had
miscarried; and the attention of the minister of war and the strategy of
the generals could now be concentrated on the three or four barri