Page 2095 - les-miserables

CHAPTER XXII

FOOT TO FOOT

When there were no longer any of the leaders left alive,
except Enjolras and Marius at the two extremities of the
barricade, the centre, which had so long sustained Courfey-
rac, Joly, Bossuet, Feuilly and Combeferre, gave way. The
cannon, though it had not effected a practicable breach, had
made a rather large hollow in the middle of the redoubt;
there, the summit of the wall had disappeared before the
balls, and had crumbled away; and the rubbish which had
fallen, now inside, now outside, had, as it accumulated,
formed two piles in the nature of slopes on the two sides of
the barrier, one on the inside, the other on the outside. The
exterior slope presented an inclined plane to the attack.
A final assault was there attempted, and this assault
succeeded. The mass bristling with bayonets and hurled
forward at a run, came up with irresistible force, and the
serried front of battle of the attacking column made its ap-
pearance through the smoke on the crest of the battlements.
This time, it was decisive. The group of insurgents who were
defending the centre retreated in confusion.
Then the gloomy love of life awoke once more in some of

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