” “Get back, or I’ll blow up the barricade!”
Marius on this barricade, after the octogenarian, was a vision of the young revolution after the specter of the old.
“Blow up the barricade!” said a sergeant, “and yourself, too!”
Marius answered, “And myself, too.”
And he brought down the torch toward the powder keg.
But there was no longer anybody on the wall. The assailants, leaving their dead and wounded, fled pell-mell and in disorder toward the far end of the street, and were once more lost in the night. It was a rout.
The barricade was cleared.”
