Courfeyrac

He does not see the bullet that will end his revolution, and his life. That is the way of these things; one fights on a barricade with the dream of life that is to come, even while the certain spectre of death hovers along the street, waiting to pounce. Courfeyrac pays it no heed; he holds the centre of the barricade as he held the centre of three friends; smiling, laughing at the inevitable, with a heart that will never yield. The interior of the barricade is so strewn with torn cartridges that one would have said that there had been a snowstorm; he pays it no heed, for there is no time. Blood trickles from a wound in the shoulder, and another along his side; he fights on, trying to make each of his final few rounds count. But they swarm, these Guardsmen, using their advantage of numbers to dispel the disadvantage of their position and all he can do is choose the nearest to aim at.

But in the end, the whirlwind of the sepulchre comes to rest for him. No, he does not see the bullet. The cannon balls took the hat off his head, but it is a rifle round that takes the life from his heart. A thud in the chest that spins his body, a last view of what their efforts have brought (a street of blood, and the white of cartridges; Bossuet killed; Feuilly killed; Combeferre with bayonets stretching towards him as though time has slowed to the pace of change)…

…and he falls, with no more thought of life than it now cares to think of him.