Ange Pitou by Alexandre Dumas part two

“Yes, yes!” they responded, with sublime self—abnegation.

“But the ditch?” observed Billot, inquiringly.

“It is only necessary that it should be filled up at one particular spot,” replied Gonchon, “and I have calculated that with the half of the bodies we have here we could fill it up completely; is it not so, friends?”

“Yes, yes!” repeated the crowd, with no less enthusiasm than before.

“Well, then, be it so!” said Billot, though completely overcome.

At that moment De Launay appeared upon the terrace, followed by Major De Losme and two or three officers.

“Begin!” cried Gonchon to the governor.

The latter turned his back without replying.

Gonchon, who would perhaps have endured a threat, could not endure disdain; he quickly raised his carbine to his shoulder, and a man in the governor’s suite fell to the ground.

A hundred shots, a thousand musket—shots, were fired at the same moment, as if they had only waited for this signal, and marbled with white the gray towers of the Bastille.

A silence of some seconds succeeded this discharge, as if the crowd itself had been alarmed at that which it had done.

Then a flash of fire, lost in a cloud of smoke, crowned the summit of a tower; a detonation resounded; cries of pain were heard issuing from the closely pressed crowd; the first cannon—shot had been fired from the Bastille; the first blood had been spilled. The battle had commenced.

What the crowd experienced, which just before had been so threatening, very much resembled terror. That Bastille, defending itself by this sole act, appeared in all its formidable impregnability. The people had doubtless hoped that in those days, when so many concessions had been made to them, the surrender of the Bastille would be accomplished without the effusion of blood.

The people were mistaken. The cannon—shot which had been fired upon them gave them the measure of the Titanic work which they had undertaken.

A volley of musketry, well directed, and coming from the platform of the Bastille, followed closely on the cannon shot.

Then all was again silent for a while, a silence which was interrupted only by a few cries, a few groans, a few wails uttered here and there.

A shuddering, anxious movement could then be perceived among the crowd; it was the people who were picking up their killed and wounded.

But the people thought not of flying, or if they did think of it, they were ashamed of the feeling when they considered their great numbers.

In fact, the Boulevards, the Rue St. Antoine, the Faubourg St. Antoine, formed but one vast human sea; every wave had a head, every head, two flashing eyes, a threatening mouth.

In an instant all the windows of the neighborhood were filled with sharpshooters, even those which were out of gunshot.

Whenever a Swiss soldier or an Invalide appeared upon the terraces or in one of the embrasures, a hundred muskets were at once aimed at him, and a shower of balls splintered the corners of the stones behind which the soldier was sheltered.

But they soon got tired of firing at insensible walls. It was against human flesh that their balls were directed. It was blood that they wished to see spout forth whereever the balls struck, and not dust.

Numerous opinions were emitted from amid the crowd.

A circle would then be formed around the speaker, and when the people thought the proposal was devoid of sense, they at once left him.

A blacksmith proposed to form a catapult upon the model of the ancient Roman machines, and with it to make a breach in the walls of the Bastille.

The firemen proposed to damp with their engines the priming of the cannon and extinguish the matches of the artillerymen, without reflecting that the most powerful of their engines could not throw water even to two—thirds the height of the walls of the Bastille.

A brewer who commanded the Faubourg St. Antoine, and whose name has since acquired a fatal celebrity, proposed to set fire to the fortress, by throwing into it a quantity of oil which had been seized the night before, and which they were to ignite with phosphorus.

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