"They are butchering our brothers! Vengeance! To the barricades! To arms!"
And thousands of voices, trembling with indignation and rage, repeated:
"Vengeance! To the barricades! To arms!"
Whereupon thousands of arms, some equipped with weapons, others not, rose up toward the somber and threatening sky as if to take it to witness of the vengeful pledges.
In the meantime the exasperated mob that the funeral procession recruited in its passage went steadily on increasing. It passed as a bloody vision before the linendraper and his son. So painful was the first impression of both that they could not utter a word. Their eyes swam in tears at learning that the butchery of inoffensive and unarmed people had taken place upon the Boulevard of the Capuchins.
Hardly had the cart of corpses disappeared when Lebrenn seized one of the iron bars, used to fasten the shop window from within, brandished it over his head, and cried out to the indignant mass of people who were trooping by:
"Friends! Royalty throws us the gage of battle by butchering our brothers! Let the blood of the victims fall upon the head of that accursed royalty! To the barricades! Long live the Republic!"
Immediately the merchant and his son tore up the first paving stones. The man's words and example produced a magic effect. From a thousand throats the answer came back:
"To arms! To the barricades! Long live the Republic!"
The next moment the people had invaded the neighboring houses, everywhere demanding arms, and levers and crowbars to tear up the pavement. Soon as the first row of cobblestones was removed, those who had neither iron bars, nor sticks, pulled up the pavement with their bare hands and nails.