The pavement was red for a long time at that spot. Among the dead there were four National Guardsmen of the suburbs. Enjolras had their uniforms laid aside.
Enjolras had advised two hours of sleep.
Advice from Enjolras was a command.
Still, only three or four took advantage of it.
Feuilly employed these two hours in engraving this inscription on the wall which faced the tavern:--
LONG LIVE THE PEOPLES!
These four words, hollowed out in the rough stone with a nail, could be still read on the wall in 1848.
The three women had profited by the respite of the night to vanish definitely; which allowed the insurgents to breathe more freely.
They had found means of taking refuge in some neighboring house.
The greater part of the wounded were able, and wished, to fight still. On a litter of mattresses and trusses of straw in the kitchen, which had been converted into an ambulance, there were five men gravely wounded, two of whom were municipal guardsmen.
The municipal guardsmen were attended to first.
In the tap-room there remained only Mabeuf under his black cloth and Javert bound to his post.
"This is the hall of the dead," said Enjolras.
In the interior of this hall, barely lighted by a candle at one end, the mortuary table being behind the post like a horizontal bar, a sort of vast, vague cross resulted from Javert erect and Mabeuf lying prone.