Rudin by Garnett, Constance, 1861-1946, Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich, 1818-1883

But outside a wind had risen, and was howling with ill-omened moans, and wrathfully shaking the rattling window-panes. The long autumn night came on. Well for the man on such a night who sits under the shelter of home, who has a warm corner in safety. . . . And the Lord help all homeless wanderers!

On a sultry afternoon on the 26th of July in 1848 in Paris, when the Revolution of the _ateliers nationaux_ had already been almost suppressed, a line battalion was taking a barricade in one of the narrow alleys of the Faubourg St Antoine. A few gunshots had already broken it; its surviving defenders abandoned it, and were only thinking of their own safety, when suddenly on the very top of the barricade, on the frame of an overturned omnibus, appeared a tall man in an old overcoat, with a red sash, and a straw hat on his grey dishevelled hair. In one hand he held a red flag, in the other a blunt curved sabre, and as he scrambled up, he shouted something in a shrill strained voice, waving his flag and sabre. A Vincennes tirailleur took aim at him--fired. The tall man dropped the flag--and like a sack he toppled over face downwards, as though he were falling at some one's feet. The bullet had passed through his heart.

'_Tiens_!' said one of the escaping revolutionists to another, '_on vient de tuer le Polonais_!

'_Bigre_!' answered the other, and both ran into the cellar of a house, the shutters of which were all closed, and its wall streaked with traces of powder and shot.

This 'Polonais' was Dmitri Rudin.

THE END,