d phantoms standing erect. The hours were
colossal and seemed hours of eternity. One has lived in death. Shadows
have passed by. What were they?

One has beheld hands on which there was blood; there was a deafening
horror; there was also a frightful silence; there were open mouths which
shouted, and other open mouths which held their peace; one was in the
midst of smoke, of night, perhaps. One fancied that one had touched the
sinister ooze of unknown depths; one stares at something red on one's
finger nails. One no longer remembers anything.

Let us return to the Rue de la Chanvrerie.

All at once, between two discharges, the distant sound of a clock
striking the hour became audible.

"It is midday," said Combeferre.

The twelve strokes had not finished striking when Enjolras sprang to his
feet, and from the summit of the barricade hurled this thundering shout:

"Carry stones up into the houses; line the windowsills and the
roofs with them. Half the men to their guns, the other half to the
paving-stones. There is not a minute to be lost."

A squad of sappers and miners, axe on shoulder, had just made their
appearance in battle array at the end of the street.

This could only be the head of a column; and of what column? The
attacking column, evidently; the sappers charged with the demolition of
the barricade must always precede the soldiers who are to scale it.

They were, evidently, on the brink of that moment which M.
Clermont-Tonnerre, in 1822, called "the tug of war."

Enjolras' order was executed with the correct haste which is peculiar
to ships and barricades, the only two scenes of combat where escape
is impossible. In less than a minute, two thirds of the stones which
Enjolras had had piled up at the door of Corinthe had been carried up to
the first floor and the attic, and before a second minute had elapsed,
these stones, artistically set one upon the other, walled up the
sash-window on the first floor and the windows in the roof to half their
height. A few loop-holes carefully planned by Feuilly, the principal
architect, allowed of the passage of the gun-barrels. This armament of
the windows could be effected all the more easily since the firing of
grape-shot had ceased. The two cannons were now discharging ball
against the centre of the barrier in order to make a hole there, and, if
possible, a breach for the assault.

When the stones destined to the final defence were in place, Enjolras
had the b