The History of a Crime


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abandoned, and which had been built with barrels. The barrels, however,  
were empty, only one contained any paving-stones, and the barricade  
could not have been held for two minutes. As they left this barricade  
they were assailed by a sharp discharge of musketry. A company of  
infantry, hardly visible in the dusk, was close upon them.  
They fell back hastily; but one of them, who was a shoemaker of the  
Faubourg du Temple, was hit, and had remained on the pavement. They went  
back and brought him away. He had the thumb of the right hand smashed.  
"
Thank God!" said Jeanty Sarre, "they have not killed him." "No," said  
the poor man, "it is my bread which they have killed."  
And he added, "I can no longer work; who will maintain my children?"  
They went back, carrying the wounded man. One of them, a medical  
student, bound up his wound.  
The sentries, whom it was necessary to post in every direction, and who  
were chosen from the most trustworthy men, thinned and exhausted the  
little central land. There were scarcely thirty in the barricade itself.  
There, as in the Quarter of the Temple, all the streetlamps were  
extinguished; the gas-pipes cut; the windows closed and unlighted; no  
moon, not even stars. The night was profoundly dark.  
They could hear distant fusillades. The soldiers were firing from around  
Saint Eustache, and every three minutes sent a ball in their direction,  
as much as to say, "We are here." Nevertheless they did not expect an  
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