Maurice, meantime, behind the barricade in the Rue du Bac, had succeeded in raising himself to his knees, and Jean's heart throbbed with a wild, tumultuous hope, for he believed he had pinned his friend to the earth.
"Oh, my little one, are you alive still? is that great happiness in store for me, brute that I am? Wait a moment, let me see."
He examined the wound with great tenderness by the light of the burning buildings. The bayonet had gone through the right arm near the shoulder, but a more serious part of the business was that it had afterward entered the body between two of the ribs and probably touched the lung. Still, the wounded man breathed without much apparent difficulty, but the right arm hung useless at his side.
"Poor old boy, don't grieve! We shall have time to say good-by to each other, and it is better thus, you see; I am glad to have done with it all. You have done enough for me to make up for this, for I should have died long ago in some ditch, even as I am dying now, had it not been for you."
But Jean, hearing him speak thus, again gave way to an outburst of violent grief.
"Hush, hush! Twice you saved me from the clutches of the Prussians. We were quits; it was my turn to devote my life, and instead of that I have slain you. Ah, tonnerre de Dieu! I must have been drunk not to recognize you; yes, drunk as a hog from glutting myself with blood."
Tears streamed from his eyes at the recollection of their last parting, down there, at Remilly, when they embraced, asking themselves if they should ever meet again, and how, under what circumstances of sorrow or of gladness. It was nothing, then, that they had passed toilsome days and sleepless nights together, with death staring them in the face? It was to bring them to this abominable thing, to this senseless, atrocious fratricide, that their hearts had been fused in the crucible of those weeks of suffering endured in common? No, no, it could not be; he turned in horror from the thought.
"Let's see what I can do, little one; I must save you."
The first thing to be done was to remove him to a place of safety, for the troops dispatched the wounded Communists wherever they found them. They were alone, fortunately; there was not a minute to lose. He first ripped the sleeve from wrist to shoulder with his knife, then took off the uniform coat. Some blood flowed; he made haste to bandage the arm securely with strips that he tore from the lining of the garment for the purpose. After that he staunched as well as he could the wound in the side and fastened the injured arm over it, He luckily had a bit of cord in his pocket, which he knotted tightly around the primitive dressing, thus assuring the immobility of the injured parts and preventing hemorrhage.
"Can you walk?"
"Yes, I think so."
But he did not dare to take him through the streets thus, in his shirt sleeves. Remembering to have seen a dead soldier lying in an adjacent street, he hurried off and presently came back with a capote and a kepi. He threw the greatcoat over his friend's shoulders and assisted him to slip his uninjured arm into the left sleeve. Then, when he had put the kepi on his head:
"There, now you are one of us-where are we to go?"
That was the question. His reviving hope and courage were suddenly damped by a horrible uncertainty. Where were they to look for a shelter that gave promise of security? the troops were searching the houses, were shooting every Communist they took with arms in his hands. And in addition to that, neither of them knew a soul in that portion of the city to whom they might apply for succor and refuge; not a place where they might hide their heads.
"The best thing to do would be to go home where I live," said Maurice. "The house is out of the way; no one will ever think of visiting it. But it is in the Rue des Orties, on the other side of the river."
Jean gave vent to a muttered oath in his irresolution and despair.
"Nom de Dieu! What are we to do?"
It was useless to think of attempting to pass the Pont Royal, which could not have been more brilliantly illuminated if the noonday sun had been shining on it. At every moment shots were heard coming from either bank of the river. Besides that, the blazing Tuileries lay directly in their path, and the Louvre, guarded and barricaded, would be an insurmountable obstacle.
"That ends it, then; there's no way open," said Jean, who had spent six months in Paris on his return from the Italian campaign.
An idea suddenly flashed across his brain. There had formerly been a place a little below the Pont Royal where small boats were kept for hire; if the boats were there still they would make the venture. The route was a long and dangerous one, but they had no choice, and, further, they must act with decision.
"See here, little one, we're going to clear out from here; the locality isn't healthy. I'll manufacture an excuse for my lieutenant; I'll tell him the communards took me prisoner and I got away."
Taking his unhurt arm he sustained him for the short distance they had to traverse along the Rue du Bac, where the tall houses on either hand were now ablaze from cellar to garret, like huge torches. The burning cinders fell on them in showers, the heat was so intense that the hair on their head and face was singed, and when they came out on the quai they stood for a moment dazed and blinded by the terrific light of the conflagrations, rearing their tall crests heavenward, on either side the Seine.
"One wouldn't need a candle to go to bed by here," grumbled Jean, with whose plans the illumination promised to interfere. And it was only when he had helped Maurice down the steps to the left and a little way down stream from the bridge that he felt somewhat easy in mind. There was a clump of tall trees standing on the bank of the stream, whose shadow gave them a measure of security. For near a quarter of an hour the dark forms moving to and fro on the opposite quai kept them in a fever of apprehension. There was firing, a scream was heard, succeeded by a loud splash, and the bosom of the river was disturbed. The bridge was evidently guarded.