"Qui vive?" cried the sentinel.
"Friends!" the commander of the column hastened to reply.
"Are you Republicans?"
"Yes, and we have come to help you."
"Vive la République!" the defenders of the barricade shouted in chorus.
A friend of mine, called Rossignol, could not resist the pleasure of being the first to shake hands with his co-religionists; he leapt over the barricade, and went towards the National Guards shouting, "You are welcome!" But at the same instant a cry went forth from the ranks of the National Guard—
"Ah! brigands! We have got you at last."
"Fire, friends!" cried Rossignol, "they are Philippists." And a discharge was fired from inside the barricade, killing five men of the National Guard.
It was the counterpart of: "A moi d'Auvergne! c'est l'ennemi." Only, more luckily than the Chevalier d'Assas, Rossignol re-entered the barricade safe and sound through a hailstorm of bullets.[2]
After a terrible struggle, and after returning to the charge three times, the National Guard was repulsed, and old men who had left off making their bullet casts, children who had stopped making wads to take up arms, laid their guns down and resumed their task. A lad of twelve had been wounded in the head by the first discharge; Jeanne could not make him leave the barricade, either in his capacity as leader or as a friend.