A dreadful day, whose frightful roar resounds ever in the ears of him who was present! Its remembrance pursues him, an unescaped nightmare, through his whole life. He who did not see these horrors, who did not hear the noise of that shouting, knows not with what expression the depths of the horrible may be uttered to human feeling. Do not tell me that you have seen the crater of a volcano in the most violent eruption; or a great tempest in the open ocean when the ship, tossed to heaven on a mountain of waterfalls, descends next to a giddy depth—do not tell me you have seen these things, for they are nothing at all like the volcanoes and tempests of man when his passions urge him to out-rival the disorders in Nature.
It was difficult to hold us back, and not being able to do much where we were, we descended to the street without noticing the officers who tried to hold us back. The combat had an irresistible attraction for us, and called us as the deep calls unto a man who looks down upon it from a cliff. I have never considered myself heroic; but it is certain that in those moments I did not fear death, nor did the sight of catastrophes terrify me. It is true that heroism, as a thing of the moment, and the direct child of inspiration, does not belong exclusively to the brave. That is the reason it is often found in women and cowards.
I will not go into the details of those struggles in the Calle de Pabostre. They were much like those which I have described before. If they differed in any respect, it was in their excess of constancy, and energy raised to a height where the human ended and the divine began. Within the houses, scenes passed like those I have described elsewhere, but with greater carnage, because victory was believed more certain. The advantage the men of the Empire gained in one place they lost in another. The battles, begun in the attics, descended step by step to the cellars, and were finished there with clubbed muskets, with the advantage always on the side of our peasants. The tones of command with which one or another directed the movements within these labyrinths resounded from room to