Page 2105 - les-miserables

beside Enjolras.
‘Finish both of us at one blow,’ said he.
And turning gently to Enjolras, he said to him:
‘Do you permit it?’
Enjolras pressed his hand with a smile.
This smile was not ended when the report resounded.
Enjolras, pierced by eight bullets, remained leaning
against the wall, as though the balls had nailed him there.
Only, his head was bowed.
Grantaire fell at his feet, as though struck by a thunder-
bolt.
A few moments later, the soldiers dislodged the last re-
maining insurgents, who had taken refuge at the top of the
house. They fired into the attic through a wooden lattice.
They fought under the very roof. They flung bodies, some of
them still alive, out through the windows. Two light-infan-
trymen, who tried to lift the shattered omnibus, were slain
by two shots fired from the attic. A man in a blouse was
flung down from it, with a bayonet wound in the abdomen,
and breathed his last on the ground. A soldier and an insur-
gent slipped together on the sloping slates of the roof, and,
as they would not release each other, they fell, clasped in a
ferocious embrace. A similar conflict went on in the cellar.
Shouts, shots, a fierce trampling. Then silence. The barri-
cade was captured.
The soldiers began to search the houses round about, and
to pursue the fugitives.

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