Father Bribri, seeing the young woman wounded, dropped his musket, ran to her, and raised her up. He was looking around for some safe place to lay her down when he noticed Madam Lebrenn and her daughter at the door of the shop. They had just descended from the floor above, and were busy, with the help of Gildas and Jeanike, making preparations to receive the wounded.
Gildas was beginning to accustom himself to the firing. He aided father Bribri to transport Pradeline into the rear room, where Madam Lebrenn and her daughter immediately turned their attention to her.
The ragpicker was stepping out of the shop when there came, rolling down to his feet, a frail body clad in tattered trousers and a ragged jacket, all clotted with blood.
"Oh, my poor Flameche!" cried the old man, trying to pick up the boy. "Are you wounded? It may not be dangerous—courage!"
"I am done for, father Bribri," answered the boy in a fast ebbing voice. "It is a pity—I shall not—go—angling for the red fishes in—the—pond—of—"
A big tear rolled down upon the scrubby beard of the ragpicker.
"Poor little devil! he was not a bad boy," father Bribri soliloquized with a sigh. "He dies as he lived—on the Paris pavement!"
Such was the short funeral oration pronounced over Flameche's body.
At the moment that the poor boy died, George's grandfather, unable any longer to restrain himself, decided, despite his feebleness, to join the fray. He hurried down to the street, and ran to the barricade. From his window, his ammunition, moveables and fixtures, being exhausted, he had had leisure to follow the vicissitudes of the conflict. He saw the little fellow fall; looked for him among the dead and the wounded; he called to him in heartrending accents.