"Come! it is time to begin!"
At the same moment, the two policemen pounced upon them at full gallop. Two reports and flashes of firing came simultaneously from Étienne and Gauja. Both had aimed at the same man and he fell pierced by both bullets. They rushed to the gendarme stretched on the ground. He was dying. The other policeman turned back. The riderless horse went its own way and disappeared down the rue du Bac. They took his sabre, pistol and powder-box from him and carried him to la Charité. When it was seen that a wounded policeman was being brought into the hospital and they learnt that he had been wounded because he charged at the people, the patients were for finishing him off.
The spirit of revolution had actually penetrated into the hospitals!
Meanwhile, I had put on my jacket, picked up my gun, game-bag and powder-horn, stuffed my pockets with shot and I gone downstairs. Arago and Gauja had both disappeared. I was known in the district and people collected round me.
"What must be done?" they inquired.
"Put up barricades!" I replied.
"Where?"
"One at each end of the rue de l'Université; the other across the rue du Bac."
They brought me a crowbar and I set to the task by beginning to unpave the street. Everybody clamoured for arms.
While this was going on drums were beating in the Tuileries garden. Three soldiers of the Garde Royale appeared at the ii top of the rue du Bac, from the direction of the rue Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin.