Page 1854 - les-miserables

for, on their way, they had effected a wholesale loan from an
armorer’s shop.
Nothing could be more bizarre and at the same time
more motley than this troop. One had a round-jacket, a
cavalry sabre, and two holster-pistols, another was in his
shirt-sleeves, with a round hat, and a powder-horn slung
at his side, a third wore a plastron of nine sheets of gray
paper and was armed with a saddler’s awl. There was one
who was shouting: ‘Let us exterminate them to the last man
and die at the point of our bayonet.’ This man had no bay-
onet. Another spread out over his coat the cross-belt and
cartridge-box of a National Guardsman, the cover of the
cartridge-box being ornamented with this inscription in
red worsted: Public Order. There were a great many guns
bearing the numbers of the legions, few hats, no cravats,
many bare arms, some pikes. Add to this, all ages, all sorts
of faces, small, pale young men, and bronzed longshoremen.
All were in haste; and as they helped each other, they dis-
cussed the possible chances. That they would receive succor
about three o’clock in the morning—that they were sure of
one regiment, that Paris would rise. Terrible sayings with
which was mingled a sort of cordial joviality. One would
have pronounced them brothers, but they did not know
each other’s names. Great perils have this fine character-
istic, that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers. A
fire had been lighted in the kitchen, and there they were en-
gaged in moulding into bullets, pewter mugs, spoons, forks,
and all the brass table-ware of the establishment. In the
midst of it all, they drank. Caps and buckshot were mixed

1854 Les Miserables