"This spot will be noted in the future history of France," said Louis Blanc. "Do you know the exact facts of the case, M. Albert? There are so many rumors that we can with difficulty get near the truth."
"I was not present when the 14th delivered their fire," was the reply, "but I learned from M. de Courtais, who hastened to the spot, that the colonel of the regiment, now in prison, asserts that, at the moment of the arrival of the crowd, a ball from a musket which accidentally went off, broke the leg of his horse, and he, thinking this the signal for an attack, at once gave orders to fire. Another story is that one of our young blouses blew out an officer's brains with a pistol."
"Many of the troops must have fired in the air," said Louis Blanc, looking around him, "for there were two hundred of them in line, I understand, and their discharge was delivered across the whole breadth of the Boulevard swarming with people."
"It was unfortunate for M. Guizot," rejoined M. Albert, with a sardonic smile, "that his hôtel should have witnessed such a scene."
"But fortunate for the cause, nevertheless," replied Louis Blanc. "This last movement is called the movement of the journalists, I understand."
"If suspicions are always as correct," said M. Albert, "there will be fewer false ones, I fancy."
Louis Blanc made no reply, and the friends walked on up the Boulevard, reconnoitering every spot.
At the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre they were stopped by a barricade, which was rapidly rising under the united and vigorous exertions of several hundred men. Steadily, sternly and silently, all that night they toiled, and when the barricade was completed the tri-color flag was planted on its summit, and a citizen-soldier stood beside its staff to defend it. On the other side of the Boulevard, in the Rue Montmartre, rose another barricade entirely finished.
"These men are resolved," said Louis Blanc.
"Desperate, rather," replied Albert. "They have counted the cost and prepared to go on with the attempt they have begun at all hazards. It is better to fight than starve, they think."
"But do you observe how few of them are armed?" asked Louis Blanc.
"We have provided for that deficiency. You will see arms enough for all to-morrow," replied Albert. "Barricades first, arms afterwards!"
And, indeed, while he was yet speaking, a tumbrel loaded with arms of every description drove silently up, and each man supplied himself with a weapon that suited his fancy. In some instances the taste exhibited was ludicrous in the extreme; there were swords without scabbards and bayonets without guns--a towering helmet on the head of one man, and broad white leather cross-belts on the shoulders of another--daggers and knives, sabres and pikes mingled in grotesque confusion. But each individual was armed with something, and, to crown all, a small piece of ordnance, borne on the shoulders of four stout men, who staggered beneath its weight, was now brought up and placed in battery.