A minute, that seemed an age, went by.  The troops had disappeared, hidden by an undulation of the ground; but over yonder, on the side of the Nores plain, the insurgents soon perceived the bayonets shooting up, one after another, like a field of steel-eared corn under the rising sun.  At that moment Silvere, who was glowing with feverish agitation, fancied he could see the gendarme whose blood had stained his hands.  He knew, from the accounts of his companions, that Rengade was not dead, that he had only lost an eye; and he clearly distinguished the unlucky man with his empty socket bleeding horribly.  The keen recollection of this gendarme, to whom he had not given a thought since his departure from Plassans, proved unbearable.  He was afraid that fear might get the better of him, and he tightened his hold on his carbine, while a mist gathered before his eyes.  He felt a longing to discharge his gun and fire at the phantom of that one-eyed man so as to drive it away.  Meantime the bayonets were still and ever slowly ascending.

When the heads of the soldiers appeared on a level with the esplanade, Silvere instinctively turned to Miette.  She stood there with flushed face, looking taller than ever amidst the folds of the red banner; she was indeed standing on tiptoes in order to see the troops, and nervous expectation made her nostrils quiver and her red lips part so as to show her white, eager, gleaming teeth.  Silvere smiled at her.  But he had scarcely turned his head when a fusillade burst out.  The soldiers, who could only be seen from their shoulders upwards, had just fired their first volley.  It seemed to Silvere as though a great gust of wind was passing over his head, while a shower of leaves, lopped off by the bullets, fell from the elms.  A sharp sound, like the snapping of a dead branch, made him look to his right.  Then, prone on the ground, he saw the big wood-cutter, he who was a head taller than the others.  There was a little black hole in the middle of his forehead.  And thereupon Silvere fired straight before him, without taking aim, reloaded and fired again like a madman or an unthinking wild beast, in haste only to kill.  He could not even distinguish the soldiers now; smoke, resembling strips of grey muslin, was floating under the elms.  The leaves still rained upon the insurgents, for the troops were firing too high.  Every now and then, athwart the fierce crackling of the fusillade, the young man heard a sigh or a low rattle, and a rush was made among the band as if to make room for some poor wretch clutching hold of his neighbours as he fell.  The firing lasted ten minutes.