Enjolras had been to make a reconnaissance. He had made his way out through Mondetour lane, gliding along close to the houses. The insurgents were full of hope. The manner in which they had repulsed the attack of the preceding night had caused them to almost disdain in advance the attack at dawn. They waited for it with a smile. They had no more doubt as to their success than as to their cause. Succour was, evidently, on the way to them. They divided the day which was at hand into three distinct phases. At six o'clock a regiment which had been laboured with would turn. At noon, the insurrection of all Paris. At sunset, revolution. They heard the alarm bell of Saint-Merry, which had not been silent for an instant since the night before: a proof that the other barricade, the great one, Jeanne's, still held out. All these hopes were exchanged in a sort of gay and formidable whisper which resembled the warlike hum of a hive of bees.
Enjolras reappeared. He returned from his sombre eagle flight into outer darkness. He listened for a moment to all this joy with folded arms, and one hand on his mouth. Then, fresh and rosy in the growing whiteness of the dawn, he said: The whole army of Paris is to strike. A third of the army is bearing down upon the barricades in which you now are. There is the National Guard in addition. In one hour you will be attacked. As for the populace, it was seething yesterday, today it is not stirring. There is nothing to expect; nothing to hope for. Neither from a faubourg nor from a regiment. You are abandoned.
These words fell upon the buzzing of the groups, and produced on them the effect caused on a swarm of bees by the first drops of a storm. A moment of indescribable silence ensued, in which death might have been heard flitting by. This moment was brief. A voice from the obscurest depths of the groups shouted to Enjolras: So be it. Let us raise the barricade to a height of twenty feet, and let us all remain in it. Citizens, let us offer the protests of corpses. Let us show that, if the people abandon the republicans, the republicans do not abandon the people. These words freed the thought of all from the painful cloud of individual anxieties. It was hailed with an enthusiastic acclamation. No one ever has known the name of the man who spoke thus. He was some unknown blouse-wearer, a stranger, a man forgotten, a passing hero, that great anonymous who, at a given moment, utters in a supreme fashion the decisive word, and who vanishes into the shadows after having represented for a minute, in a lightning flash, the people and God. Almost at the very same hour, on the barricade Saint-Merry, the insurgents were raising that clamor: What matters it whether they come to our assistance or not? Let us get ourselves killed here, to the very last man. The two barricades, though materially isolated, were in communication with each other.
