habit of sleeping occasionally.  He had been at Neuilly again that day, blazing away at the enemy and taking a nip now and then with the comrades, to see if it would not relieve the terrible fatigue from which he was suffering.  Then, with a light head and heavy legs, he came and threw himself on the bed in his little chamber; it must have been through force of instinct, for he could never remember how he got there.  And it was not until the following morning, when the sun was high in the heavens, that he awoke, aroused by the ringing of the alarm bells, the blare of trumpets and beating of drums.  During the night the Versaillese, finding a gate undefended, had effected an unresisted entrance at the Point-du-Jour.

When he had thrown on his clothes and hastened down into the street, his musket slung across his shoulder by the strap, a band of frightened soldiers whom he fell in with at the mairie of the arrondissement related to him the occurrences of the night, in the midst of a confusion such that at first he had hard work to understand.  Fort d’Issy and the great battery at Montretout, seconded by Mont Valerien, for the last ten days had been battering the rampart at the Point-du-Jour, as a consequence of which the Saint-Cloud gate was no longer tenable and an assault had been ordered for the following morning, the 22d; but someone who chanced to pass that way at about five o’clock perceived that the gate was unprotected and immediately notified the guards in the trenches, who were not more than fifty yards away.  Two companies of the 37th regiment of regulars were the first to enter the city, and were quickly followed by the entire 4th corps under General Douay.  All night long the troops were pouring in in an uninterrupted stream.  At seven o’clock Verge’s division marched down to the bridge at Grenelle, crossed, and pushed on to the Trocadero.  At nine General Clinchamp was master of Passy and la Muette.  At three o’clock in the morning the 1st corps had pitched its tents in the Bois de Boulogne, while at about the same hour Bruat’s division was passing the Seine to seize the Sevres gate and facilitate the movement of the 2d Corps, General de Cissey’s, which occupied the district of Grenelle an hour later.  The Versailles army, therefore, on the morning of the 22d, was master of the Trocadero and the Chateau of la Muette on the right bank, and of Grenelle on the left; and great was the rage and consternation that prevailed among the Communists, who were already accusing one another of treason, frantic at the thought of their inevitable defeat.

When Maurice at last understood the condition of affairs his first thought was that the end had come, that all left him was to go forth and meet his death.  But the tocsin was pealing, drums were beating, women and children, even, were working on the barricades, the streets were alive with the stir and bustle of the battalions hurrying to assume the positions assigned them in the coming conflict.  By midday it was