Page 1916 - les-miserables

torch, to replace it by the barrel of powder, to thrust the pile
of stones under the barrel, which was instantly staved in,
with a sort of horrible obedience,—all this had cost Marius
but the time necessary to stoop and rise again; and now all,
National Guards, Municipal Guards, officers, soldiers, hud-
dled at the other extremity of the barricade, gazed stupidly
at him, as he stood with his foot on the stones, his torch in
his hand, his haughty face illuminated by a fatal resolution,
drooping the flame of the torch towards that redoubtable
pile where they could make out the broken barrel of powder,
and giving vent to that startling cry:—
‘Be off with you, or I’ll blow up the barricade!’
Marius on that barricade after the octogenarian was the
vision of the young revolution after the apparition of the
old.
‘Blow up the barricade!’ said a sergeant, ‘and yourself
with it!’
Marius retorted: ‘And myself also.’
And he dropped the torch towards the barrel of powder.
But there was no longer any one on the barrier. The as-
sailants, abandoning their dead and wounded, flowed back
pell-mell and in disorder towards the extremity of the
street, and there were again lost in the night. It was a head-
long flight.
The barricade was free.

1916 Les Miserables