ONCE AGAIN, AS IN 1830, IT WAS A THREE-DAY REVOLUTION. But the February weather, in contrast to the excessive heat of July, was cold and inclement; on Wednesday, the middle day, the rain fell in torrents. The soldiers were sent out to stand and shiver, the demoralized symbols of failing governmental power. The insurgents kept warm by moving—ripping up paving stones, building barricades; they thawed their hands over the braziers they set up in the streets to melt lead for bullets. “One heard only the hatchet blows and the noise of the tree branches breaking as they fell,” later recalled Marc Caussidiere; “sometimes, the sound of weapons clashing and detonations lost in the shadows; almost always, as a monotonous accompaniment, the sound of the tocsin.”