Page 1796 - les-miserables

Saint-Martin, the third from the Greve, the fourth from the
Halles; that perhaps, also, the troops would evacuate Par-
is and withdraw to the Champ-de-Mars; that no one knew
what would happen, but that this time, it certainly was se-
rious.
People busied themselves over Marshal Soult’s hesita-
tions. Why did not he attack at once? It is certain that he
was profoundly absorbed. The old lion seemed to scent an
unknown monster in that gloom.
Evening came, the theatres did not open; the patrols cir-
culated with an air of irritation; passers-by were searched;
suspicious persons were arrested. By nine o’clock, more than
eight hundred persons had been arrested, the Prefecture of
Police was encumbered with them, so was the Conciergerie,
so was La Force.
At the Conciergerie in particular, the long vault which
is called the Rue de Paris was littered with trusses of straw
upon which lay a heap of prisoners, whom the man of Ly-
ons, Lagrange, harangued valiantly. All that straw rustled
by all these men, produced the sound of a heavy shower.
Elsewhere prisoners slept in the open air in the meadows,
piled on top of each other.
Anxiety reigned everywhere, and a certain tremor which
was not habitual with Paris.
People barricaded themselves in their houses; wives and
mothers were uneasy; nothing was to be heard but this: ‘Ah!
my God! He has not come home!’ There was hardly even the
distant rumble of a vehicle to be heard.
People listened on their thresholds, to the rumors, the

1796 Les Miserables