RUDIN
On a sultry afternoon on the 26th of July in 1848 in Paris, when the Revolution of the ateliers nationaux had already been almost suppressed, a line battalion was taking a barricade in one of the narrow alleys of the Faubourg St Antoine. A few gunshots had already broken it; its surviving defenders abandoned it, and were only thinking of their own safety, when suddenly on the very top of the barricade, on the frame of an overturned omnibus, appeared a tall man in an old overcoat, with a red sash, and a straw hat on his grey dishevelled hair. In one hand he held a red flag, in the other a blunt curved sabre, and as he scrambled up, he shouted something in a shrill strained voice, waving his flag and sabre. A Vincennes rifleman took aim at him—fired. The tall man dropped the flag—and like a sack he toppled over face downwards, as though he were falling at some one’s feet. The bullet had passed through his heart.
‘Tiens!’ said one of the escaping revolu-
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