Sixteen years count in the subterranean education of insurrection, and June, 1848, knew a great deal more about it than June, 1832. The barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie was only an outline, and an embryo compared to the two colossal barricades just sketched, but it was formidable for that epoch. The insurgents under the eye of Enjolras, for Marius no longer looked after anything, had made good use of the night. The barricade had been not only repaired, but augmented. They had raised it two feet. Bars of iron planted in the pavement resembled lances in rest. The redoubt had been cleverly made over, into a wall on the inside and a thicket on the outside. The staircase of paving-stones had been reconstructed. The tap-room was disencumbered, the kitchen appropriated for the ambulance, the powder gathered, bullets run, cartridges manufactured, lint scraped, the fallen weapons re-distributed, the corpses removed. They laid the dead in a heap in the Mondetour lane, of which they were still the masters. The pavement was red for a long time at that spot. Among the dead there were four National Guardsmen of the suburbs. Enjolras had their uniforms laid aside.
Enjolras had advised two hours of sleep. Advice from Enjolras was a command. Still, only three or four took advantage of it. Feuilly employed these two hours in engraving this inscription on the wall which faced the tavern: LONG LIVE THE PEOPLES. These four words, hollowed out in the rough stone with a nail, could be still read on the wall in 1848. The three women had profited by the respite of the night to vanish, which allowed the insurgents to breathe more freely. The greater part of the wounded were able, and wished, to fight still. On a litter of mattresses in the kitchen there were five men gravely wounded, two of them municipal guardsmen. The municipal guardsmen were attended to first. In the tap-room there remained only Mabeuf under his black cloth and Javert bound to his post. This is the hall of the dead, said Enjolras. Barely lighted by a candle, a sort of vast, vague cross resulted from Javert erect and Mabeuf lying prone. The pole of the omnibus, although snapped off, was still sufficiently upright to admit of their fastening the flag to it. Enjolras, who always did what he said, attached to this staff the bullet-ridden and bloody coat of the old man. No repast had been possible. There was neither bread nor meat. At a given moment, every barricade inevitably becomes the raft of the Meduse. They were obliged to resign themselves to hunger. As they could no longer eat, Enjolras forbade them to drink. He interdicted wine and portioned out the brandy. They had found in the cellar fifteen full bottles. Enjolras placed his veto on them, and, in order that no one might touch them, he had them placed under the table on which Mabeuf was lying. About two o'clock in the morning they reckoned up their strength. There were still thirty-seven of them.
The day began to dawn. The torch, which had been replaced in its cavity in the pavement, had just been extinguished. The interior of the barricade resembled, athwart the vague twilight horror, the deck of a disabled ship. The combatants moved about there like black forms. Birds flew about in the sky with cries of joy. The lofty house which formed the back of the barricade, being turned to the East, had upon its roof a rosy reflection. The morning breeze ruffled the grey hair on the head of the dead man at the third-story window. I am delighted that the torch has been extinguished, said Courfeyrac. That torch flickering in the wind annoyed me. The light of torches resembles the wisdom of cowards: it gives a bad light because it trembles. Dawn awakens minds as it does the birds. All began to talk. Joly, perceiving a cat prowling on a gutter, extracted philosophy from it. Combeferre, surrounded by students and artisans, was speaking of the dead, of Jean Prouvaire, of Bahorel, of Mabeuf, and even of Cabuc, and of Enjolras's sad severity. Even in a murder for liberation, if there be such a thing, the remorse for having struck a man surpasses the joy of having served the human race. A moment later, by a transition brought about through Jean Prouvaire's verses, the talk had wound to Caesar and Brutus. Bossuet, who towered above the interlocutors from the summit of a heap of paving-stones, rifle in hand, was asking who would grant him to pronounce the verses of Homer like a Greek.
