"Well," he asked, "are we ready?"
"Yes! yes! yes!"
"Then forward, march! Beat drums!"
And the drums began to beat, and they all went down the rue de l'Odéon singing la Marseillaise. At the Bussy crossing, from some strategic manœuvre unknown to me, the troop divided itself into three. One part went towards the rue Sainte-Marguerite, another to the rue Dauphine and the third went straight on: I was among the latter. We had to approach the Louvre by the Pont des Arts, in order to take the bull by the horns. It was on coming out on the quay that I found the man with the rampart gun leant up against the wall, groaning, both his shoulder and his jaw dislocated.
Oh! I must not forget to say that at every street-corner I had seen stuck up on the walls bills announcing the nomination of the Provisional Government and the proclamation by MM. La Fayette, Gérard and de Choiseul calling the people to arms. What a singular effect it would have produced on those three gentlemen if they had been in my place and read what I read!
[CHAPTER IX]
Aspect of the Louvre—Fight on the Pont des Arts—The dead and wounded—A cannon ball for myself—Madame Guyet-Desfontaines—Return from the Babylone barracks—Charras's cockade—The taking of the Tuileries—A copy of Christine—Quadrille danced in the Tuileries court—The men who made the Revolution of 1830