The Barrel of Powder — Les Misérables

Marius, still concealed in the turn of the Rue Mondetour, had witnessed, shuddering and irresolute, the first phase of the combat. But he had not long been able to resist that mysterious and sovereign vertigo which may be designated as the call of the abyss. In the presence of the death of the old warden, of Bahorel killed, of Courfeyrac shouting Follow me, of that child threatened, of his friends to succour or to avenge, all hesitation had vanished. He had flung himself into the conflict, his two pistols in hand. With his first shot he had saved Gavroche, and with the second delivered Courfeyrac. The assailants had climbed the entrenchment. Municipal guards, soldiers of the line, and National Guards from the suburbs reared themselves to more than half the height of their bodies. They already covered more than two-thirds of the barrier, but they did not leap into the enclosure. They gazed into the dark barricade as one would gaze into a lion's den. Marius had no longer any weapons. He had flung away his discharged pistols. But he had caught sight of the barrel of powder in the tap-room, near the door.

As he turned half round, a soldier took aim at him. A hand was laid on the muzzle of the gun and obstructed it. This was done by some one who had darted forward, the young workman in velvet trousers. The shot sped, traversed the hand and possibly also the workman, since he fell, but the ball did not strike Marius. He hardly noticed it. In moments like this, the things which one sees vacillate, and one pauses for nothing. The insurgents, surprised but not terrified, had rallied. Enjolras had shouted: Wait! Don't fire at random! The most determined, with Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Jean Prouvaire, and Combeferre, placed themselves with their backs against the houses at the rear, unsheltered, facing the ranks who crowned the barricade. They were so close that they could talk together without raising their voices. An officer in a gorget extended his sword: Lay down your arms! Fire! replied Enjolras. The two discharges took place at the same moment, and all disappeared in smoke. When the smoke cleared away, the combatants on both sides could be seen to be thinned out, but still in the same positions, reloading in silence.

All at once a thundering voice was heard: Be off with you, or I'll blow up the barricade! Marius had entered the tap-room, seized the barrel of powder, glided along in the smoke as far as the cage of paving-stones where the torch was fixed, torn the torch away, replaced it by the barrel, and thrust the pile of stones under it, so that the barrel was instantly staved in. Now he stood with his foot on the stones, his torch in his hand, his haughty face illuminated by a fatal resolution, drooping the flame towards that redoubtable pile. Marius on that barricade after the octogenarian was the vision of the young revolution after the apparition of the old. Blow up the barricade, said a sergeant, and yourself with it! Marius retorted: And myself also. And he dropped the torch towards the barrel of powder. But there was no longer any one on the barrier. The assailants, abandoning their dead and wounded, flowed back pell-mell towards the extremity of the street, and were again lost in the night. It was a headlong flight. The barricade was free.