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.
"From such men what may we not hope!" exclaimed Louis Blanc. "But it is near morning; let us proceed."
"I stop here," quietly said Albert.
"What! Pass the night here?" exclaimed his companion.
"The night is nearly passed now," replied Albert, with a smile. "I will sleep a few hours with my men of the barricades, and be ready to help them defend their work in the morning."
"You are devoted to the cause, Albert," said Louis Blanc, warmly grasping his hand.
"Oh! no more than yourself," was the reply. "We are all devoted to it, but each in his own way. You are an author, I am a workman. It is a light thing for me to pass a night with only the sky for a canopy. It is a light thing for you to pass a night in your study. A change of positions would possibly kill us both!"
The friends grasped each other warmly by the hand and parted, the author going to his study and the workman to his barricade.