Indeed. Wherever Combeferre and Joly were concerned, well, fire is likely to have especially dangerous results for men of science, who have spent the day in dissection or chemistry labs. Really, it seems that we were lucky, many times.

That said, our cafe very nearly was set on fire again, much later. Our barricade was built around it. We had a very good area to block off right there and such, and Marius did threaten to blow everything up when the National Guard drew close enough to demand our surrender.

A lit torch, near gunpowder...it would not have been a very good ending to it, really.