Preparations — Les Misérables

The journals of the day which said that the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie reached to the level of the first floor were mistaken. The fact is, that it did not exceed an average height of six or seven feet. It was built so that the combatants could disappear behind it or dominate it, and even scale its crest by a quadruple row of paving-stones arranged as steps in the interior. On the outside, piles of paving-stones and casks bound by beams and planks, entangled in the wheels of Anceau's dray and of the overturned omnibus, had a bristling and inextricable aspect. An aperture large enough to allow a man to pass had been left between the houses and the end furthest from the wine-shop. The pole of the omnibus was placed upright, and a red flag, fastened to this pole, floated over the barricade.

The little Mondetour barricade, hidden behind the wine-shop, was not visible. The two together formed a redoubt. Enjolras and Courfeyrac had not thought fit to close the other fragment of Mondetour, which opened through the Rue des Precheurs an issue into the Halles. They wished to preserve a possible communication with the outside, and they did not much fear an attack through that difficult street. The interior, where the wine-shop formed a salient angle, presented an irregular square, closed on all sides. Twenty paces lay between the grand barrier and the lofty houses at the back, all inhabited, all closed from top to bottom. All this work was performed without any hindrance, in less than an hour, and without this handful of bold men seeing a single bear-skin cap or a single bayonet. The bourgeois who still ventured into the Rue Saint-Denis cast a glance at the Chanvrerie, caught sight of the barricade, and redoubled their pace.

The two barricades being finished, and the flag run up, a table was dragged out of the wine-shop. Courfeyrac mounted on it. Enjolras brought the square coffer, and Courfeyrac opened it. This coffer was filled with cartridges. When the mob saw them, a tremor ran through the bravest, and a momentary silence ensued. Courfeyrac distributed them with a smile. Each one received thirty. Many had powder, and set about making others with the bullets they had run. The barrel of powder stood on a table near the door, held in reserve. The alarm beat which ran through all Paris did not cease, but it had come to be nothing more than a monotonous noise to which they no longer paid any attention. They loaded the guns and carbines, all together, without haste, with solemn gravity. Enjolras stationed three sentinels outside: one in the Chanvrerie, one in the Rue des Precheurs, one at the corner of the Petite Truanderie. Then they waited, alone in those redoubtable streets through which no one passed any longer, surrounded by dumb houses that seemed dead, enveloped in the deepening twilight, isolated, armed, determined, and tranquil.