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filled the Passage. When it cleared away, Jeanty Sarre saw Charpentier
stretched on the stones, with his face to the ground. He had been shot
through the heart. Their other companion lay a few paces from him,
mortally wounded.
The soldiers did not scale the grated gateway, but they posted a
sentinel before it. Jeanty Sarre heard them going away by the Rue
Montmartre. They would doubtless come back.
No means of flight. He felt all the doors round his prison successively.
One of them at length opened. This appeared to him like a miracle.
Whoever could have forgotten to shut the door? Providence, doubtless. He
hid himself behind it, and remained there for more than an hour,
standing motionless, scarcely breathing. He no longer heard any sound;
he ventured out. The sentinel was no longer there. The detachment had
rejoined the battalion.
One of his old friends, a man to whom he had rendered services such as
are not forgotten, lived in this very Passage du Saumon. Jeanty Sarre
looked for the number, woke the porter, told him the name of his friend,
was admitted, went up the stairs, and knocked at the door. The door was
opened, his friend appeared in his nightshirt, with a candle in his
hand.
He recognized Jeanty Sarre, and cried out, "You here! What a state you
are in! Where hove you come from? From what riot? from what madness? And
then you come to compromise us all here? To have us murdered? To have us
shot? Now then, what do you want with me?"
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