There, as in the Quarter of the Temple, all the streetlamps were extinguished; the gas-pipes cut; the windows closed and unlighted; no moon, not even stars. The night was profoundly dark.
They could hear distant fusillades. The soldiers were firing from around Saint Eustache, and every three minutes sent a ball in their direction, as much as to say, "We are here." Nevertheless they did not expect an attack before the morning.
Dialogues like the following took place amongst them:—
"I wish I had a truss of straw," said Charpentier; "I have a notion that we shall sleep here to-night."
"Will you be able to get to sleep?" asked Jeanty Sarre.
"I? Certainly I shall go to sleep."
He did go to sleep, in fact, a few moments later.
In this gloomy network of narrow streets, intersected with barricades, and blockaded by soldiers, two wine-shops had remained open. They made more lint there, however, than they drank wine; the orders of the chiefs were only to drink reddened water.
The doorway of one of these wine-shops opened exactly between the two barricades of the Petit Cancan. In it was a clock by which they regulated the sentries' relief. In a back room they had locked up two suspicious-looking persons who had intermingled with the combatants. One of these men at the moment when he was arrested said, "I have come to fight for Henri V." They kept them under lock and key, and placed a sentry at the door.
An ambulance had been established in an adjoining room. There the wounded shoemaker was lying upon a mattress thrown upon the ground.