"Forward! March!" called Winter.
They had now all become sober. We followed the lantern to the French gate. Behind us, in the street of the Capuchins, a dog howled incessantly. Now and then Winter stopped, and we all listened; nothing was stirring, and nothing was to be heard but the dog and the cries: "Sentries, attention!" The city was as still as death.
We ought to have gone into the guard-house, for there was nothing to be seen; but the lantern went on toward the gate, swinging above the gutter. That Winter had taken too much brandy!
"We are of no use in this street," said Cheyreux; "we can't keep the balls from passing."
But Winter kept calling out: "Are you coming?" And we had to obey.
In front of Genodet's stables, where the old barns of the gendarmerie begin, a lane turned to the left toward the hospital. This was full of manure and heaps of dirt—a drain in fact. Well, this rascal of a Winter turned into it, and as we could not see our feet without the lantern, we had to follow him. We went groping, under the roofs of the sheds, along the crazy old walls. It seemed as if we should never get out of this gutter; but at last we came out near the hospital in the midst of the great piles of manure, which were heaped against the grating of the sewer.
It seemed a little lighter, and we saw the roof of the French gate, and the line of fortifications black against the sky; and almost immediately I perceived the figure of a man gliding among the trees at the top of the rampart. It was a soldier stooping so that his hands almost touched the ground. They did not fire on this side; the distant flashes passed over the roofs, and did not lighten the streets below.
I caught Winter's arm, and pointed out to him this man; he instantly hid his lantern under his blouse. The soldier whose back was toward us, stood up, and looked round, apparently listening. This lasted for two or three minutes; then he passed over the rampart at the corner of the bastion, and we heard something scrape the wall of the rampart.
Winter immediately began to run, crying out: "A deserter! To the postern!"
We had heard before this of deserters slipping down into the trenches by means of their bayonets. We all ran. The sentry called out: "Who goes there?"