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"
We were only sixty a short time since. We are a hundred now."
All pressed round the new-comer. Jeanty Sarre offered him the command.
"No," said he, "I do not understand the tactics of barricade fighting. I
should be a bad chief, but I am a good soldier. Give me a gun."
They seated themselves on the paving-stones. They exchanged their
experiences of what had been done. Denis described to them the fighting
on the Faubourg Saint Martin. Jeanty Sarre told Denis of the fighting in
the Rue Saint Denis.
During all this time the generals were preparing a final assault,--what
the Marquis of Clermont-Tonnerre, in 1822, called the "Coup de Collier,"
and what, in 1789, the Prince of Lambese had called the "Coup de Bas."
Throughout all Paris there was now only this point which offered any
resistance. This knot of barricade, this labyrinth of streets, embattled
like a redoubt, was the last citadel of the People and of Right. The
generals invested it leisurely, step by step, and on all sides. They
concentrated their forces. They, the combatants of this fateful hour,
knew nothing of what was being done. Only from time to time they
interrupted their recital of events and they listened. From the right
and from the left, from the front, from the rear, from every side, at
the same time, an unmistakable murmur, growing every moment louder, and
more distinct, hoarse, piercing, fear-inspiring, reached them through
the darkness. It was the sound of the battalions marching and charging
at the trumpet-command in all the adjoining streets. They resumed their
gallant conversation, and then in another moment they stopped again and
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