"Va, citoyen," said one fugitive, an officer-popularly elected, because he was the loudest brawler in the club of the Salle Favre,—we have seen him before—Charles, the brother of Armand Monnier;—"men can't fight when they despise their generals. It is our generals who are poltroons and fools both."
"Carry my answer to the ghosts of cowards," cried De Mauldon, and shot the man dead.
His followers, startled and cowed by the deed, and the voice and the look of the death-giver, halted. The officers, who had at first yielded to the panic of their men, took fresh courage, and finally led the bulk of the troop back to their, post "enlevis a la baionette," to use the phrase of a candid historian of that day.
Day, on the whole, not inglorious to France. It was the first, if it was the last, really important success of the besieged. They remained masters of the ground, the Prussians leaving to them the wounded and the dead.
That night what crowds thronged from Paris to the top of the Montmartre heights, from the observatory on which the celebrated inventor Bazin had lighted up, with some magical electric machine, all the plain of Gennevilliers from Mont Valerien to the Fort de la Briche! The splendour of the blaze wrapped the great city;—distinctly above the roofs of the houses soared the Dome des Invalides, the spires of Notre Dame, the giant turrets of the Tuileries;—and died away on resting on the infames scapulos Acroceraunia, the "thunder crags" of the heights occupied by the invading army.
Lemercier, De Breze, and the elder Rameau—who, despite his peaceful habits and grey hairs, insisted on joining in the aid of la patrie— were among the National Guards attached to the Fort de la Briche and the neighbouring eminence, and they met in conversation.
"What a victory we have had!" said the old Rameau.
"Rather mortifying to your son, M. Rameau," said LeMercier.
"Mortifying to my son, sir!—the victory of his countrymen. What do you mean?"
"I had the honour to hear M. Gustave the other night at the club de la
Vengeance."