Chapter 313 Thirteen A glimmer of hope

There is everything in the mixed mood of the moral sense of the defense of the barricade and the violent impulse, the courage of the spirit, the vitality of youth, the desire of honor, the passion of excitement, the ideal, the firm belief, and the tenacity of a gambler. , especially with intermittent glimmers of hope. During these intermittent intervals, suddenly a vague hope trembled, and at an unexpected moment, it passed the barricades of the Rue des Marchangs. "Listen," Enjolras, who had been on the alert all along, suddenly called out, "Paris seems to be waking up."

For an hour or two in the early morning of June 6th, the insurgents really grew in courage.The constant alarm bells in St. Miri revived some faint hopes.Barricades were also erected on Pear Tree and Gravelliers Streets.A young man at the gate of Saint-Martin alone shoots a cavalry company with a carbine.Without concealment he knelt down on the boulevard, put his gun on his shoulder, aimed and killed the squadron leader, and then turned his head and said: "There is one less, and he will not give us any more pain." ’” The young man was hacked to death with a saber.In Rue Saint-Denis a woman shoots the security police from behind a drawn venetian blind.You could see the venetian blinds quivering with each shot she fired.A fourteen-year-old boy was arrested on Takassonari Street with his pockets full of bullets.Several sentry posts were attacked.At the corner of the Rue Bertin-Poiret, the armored regiment led by General Cavaignac de Barrani was unexpectedly hit by a volley of guns; It was a bad omen for the army to throw down broken jars and household utensils.When someone reported this situation to Marshal Soult, the old captain of Napoleon couldn't help but fell into deep thought. He recalled a sentence Marshal Suchet said in Zaragoza: "When is the old lady on our head?" Pour in the urinal and we're screwed."

Just when the insurrection was thought to be contained, the reappearance of this common symptom, the resurgence of anger, these sparks flying on the pyre in the suburbs of Paris, as they were called, all this made the military governors panic.They were eager to put out the fledgling fire.The attack on the barricades of the Rue Maubuet, the Rue de la Machang, and Saint-Méry was postponed until they were extinguished, in order to concentrate their forces against them and wipe them out in one fell swoop.Some columns were sent out into the streets where there were disturbances, cleared the main streets, and then traced the side streets and alleys, sometimes stealthily, cautiously, sometimes at a faster pace.Troops broke down the doors that had been shot coldly, while cavalry dispersed the crowds that had assembled in the boulevards.Such repression will inevitably lead to riots and conflicts between the military and civilians.These were the sounds that Enjolras heard between the shelling and the volley.Besides, he saw the wounded being carried away on a stretcher across the street, and he said to Courfeyrac: "The wounded are not from our side."

Hope it didn't last long, the shimmer faded quickly.In less than half an hour, the gestational rebellion was shattered, like lightning without a thunder, and the insurgents felt a leaden coffin being placed on them, the stubborn and unyielding outcasts, by the indifferent people. The general movement that seemed to have taken shape at the time was aborted.The attention of the Minister of War and the tactics of the generals could now be directed to the three or four remaining barricades. The sun rises on the horizon. An insurgent confronts Enjolras: "We're all hungry here. Are we really going to die without eating anything?"

Enjolras kept his elbows on the parapet, gazed at the end of the street, and nodded.