Suddenly the noise ceased, the last musket-shot was fired. A moment afterwards they saw the lighted candles being placed in all the windows which looked on on the Mauconseil redoubt. The bayonets and the brass ornaments on the shakos sparkled there. The barricade was taken.
The commander of the battalion, as is always the custom in similar circumstances, had sent orders into the adjoining houses to light up all the windows.
This was done at the Mauconseil redoubt.
Seeing that their hour had come, the sixty combatants of the barricade of the Petit Carreau mounted their heap of paving-stones, and shouted with one voice, in the midst of the darkness, this piercing cry, "Long live the Republic!"
No one answered them.
They could only hear the battalion loading their guns.
This acted upon them as a species of signal for action. They were all worn out with fatigue, having been on their feet since the preceding day, carrying paving-stones or fighting, the greater part had neither eaten nor slept.
Charpentier said to Jeanty Sarre,—
"We shall all be killed."
"Shall we really!" said Jeanty Sarre.