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followed all the phases of this struggle, and they pressed each other's
hands.
Suddenly the noise ceased, the last musket-shot was fired. A moment
afterwards they saw the lighted candles being placed in all the windows
which looked on on the Mauconseil redoubt. The bayonets and the brass
ornaments on the shakos sparkled there. The barricade was taken.
The commander of the battalion, as is always the custom in similar
circumstances, had sent orders into the adjoining houses to light up all
the windows.
This was done at the Mauconseil redoubt.
Seeing that their hour had come, the sixty combatants of the barricade
of the Petit Carreau mounted their heap of paving-stones, and shouted
with one voice, in the midst of the darkness, this piercing cry, "Long
live the Republic!"
No one answered them.
They could only hear the battalion loading their guns.
This acted upon them as a species of signal for action. They were all
worn out with fatigue, having been on their feet since the preceding
day, carrying paving-stones or fighting, the greater part had neither
eaten nor slept.
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