CORINTH.
[CHAPTER I.]
HISTORY OF CORINTH FROM ITS FOUNDATION.
The Parisians, who at the present day on entering the Rue Rambuteau from the side of the Halles notice on their right, opposite the Rue Mondétour, a basket-maker's shop having for sign a basket in the shape of Napoleon the Great, with this inscription:
NAPOLÉON EST FAIT
TOUT EN OSIER,
do not suspect the terrible scenes which this very site saw hardly thirty years ago. Here were the Rue de la Chanvrerie, which old title-deeds write Chanverrerie, and the celebrated wine-shop called Corinth. Our readers well remember all that has been said about the barricade erected at this spot, and eclipsed by the way by the St. Merry barricade. It is on this famous barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, which has now fallen into deep night, that we are going to throw a little light.
For the clearness of our narrative, we may be permitted to have recourse to the simple mode which we employed for Waterloo. Those persons who wish to represent to themselves in a tolerably exact manner the mass of houses which at that day stood near Sainte Eustache at the northeast corner of the Halles de Paris, at the spot where the opening of the Rue Rambuteau now is, need only imagine an N whose two vertical strokes are the Rue de la Grande Truanderie and the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and of which the Rue de la Petite Truanderie would be the cross-stroke. The old Rue Mondétour intersected the three strokes with the most tortuous angles, so that the Dædalian entanglement of these four streets was sufficient to make, upon a space of one hundred square yards, between the Halles and the Rue St. Denis on one side, between the Rue du Cygne and the Rue des Prêcheurs, on the other side, seven islets of houses, strangely cut, of different heights, standing sideways, and as if accidentally, and scarce separated by narrow cracks, like the blocks of stone in a dock. We say narrow cracks, and cannot give a fairer idea of these obscure, narrow, angular lanes, bordered by tenements eight stories in height. These houses were so decrepit that in the Rues de la Chanvrerie and La Petite Truanderie, the frontages were supported by beams running across from one house to the other. The street was narrow and the gutter wide; the passer-by walked on a constantly damp pavement, passing shops like cellars, heavy posts shod with iron, enormous piles of filth, and gates armed with extraordinarily old palings. The Rue Rambuteau has devastated all this. The name of Mondétour exactly describes the windings of all this lay-stall. A little farther on it was found even better expressed by the Rue Pirouette, which threw itself into the Rue Mondétour. The wayfarer who turned out of the Rue St. Denis into the Rue de la Chanvrerie saw it gradually contract before him, as if he had entered an elongated funnel. At the end of the street, which was very short, he found the passage barred on the side of the Halles by a tall row of houses, and he might have fancied himself in a blind alley had he not perceived on his right and left two black cuts through which he could escape. It was the Rue Mondétour, which joined on one side the Rue des Prêcheurs, on the other the Rue du Cygne. At the end of this sort of blind alley, at the corner of the right-hand cutting, a house lower than the rest, forming a species of cape in the street, might be noticed. It is in this house, only two stories high, that an illustrious cabaret had been installed for more than three hundred years. This inn produced a joyous noise at the very spot which old Théophile indicated in the two lines:
"Là branle le squelette horrible
D'un pauvre amant qui se pendit."
The spot was good, and the landlords succeeded each other from father to son. In the time of Mathurin Régnier, this cabaret was called the Pot-aux-Roses, and as rebuses were fashionable, it had for a sign a poteau (post) painted in rose-color. In the last century, worthy Natoire, one of the fantastic masters disdained at the present day by the stiff school, having got tipsy several times in this inn at the same table where Régnier had got drunk, painted, out of gratitude, a bunch of currants on the pink post. The landlord, in his delight, changed his sign, and had the words gilded under the bunch, Au raisin de Corinthe,—hence the name of Corinth. Nothing is more natural to drunkards than ellipses, for they are the zigzags of language. Corinth had gradually dethroned the rose-pot, and the last landlord of the dynasty, Father Hucheloup, not being acquainted with the tradition, had the post painted blue.
A ground-floor room in which was the bar, a first-floor room in which was a billiard-table, a spiral wooden staircase piercing the ceiling, wine on the tables, smoke on the walls, and candles by daylight,—such was the inn. A staircase with a trap in the ground-floor room led to the cellar, and the apartments of the Hucheloups, on the second floor, were reached by a staircase more like a ladder, and through a door hidden in the wall of the large first-floor room. Under the roof were two garrets, the nests of the maid-servants, and the kitchen shared the ground-floor with the bar. Father Hucheloup might have been born a chemist, but was really a cook, and customers not only drank but ate in his wine-shop. Hucheloup had invented an excellent dish, which could be eaten only at his establishment; it was stuffed carp, which he called carpes au gras. This was eaten by the light of a tallow candle, or a lamp of the Louis XVI. style, on tables on which oil-cloth was nailed in lieu of a table-cloth. People came from a long distance; and Hucheloup one fine morning had thought it advisable to inform passers-by of his "speciality:" he dipped a brush in a pot of blacking, and as he had an orthography of his own, he improvised on his wall the following remarkable inscription:—
CARPES HO GRAS.
One winter the showers and the hail amused themselves with effacing the "S" which terminated the first word, and the "G" which began the last, and the following was left:—
CARPE HO RAS.
By the aid of time and rain a humble gastronomic notice had become a profound counsel. In this way it happened that Hucheloup, not knowing French, had known Latin, had brought philosophy out of the kitchen, and while simply wishing to eclipse Carême, equalled Horace. And the striking thing was that this also meant "enter my inn." Nothing of all this exists at the present day; the Mondétour labyrinth was gutted and widened in 1847, and probably is no longer to be found. The Rue de la Chanvrerie and Corinth have disappeared under the pavement of the Rue Rambuteau. As we have said, Corinth was a meeting-place, if not a gathering-place, of Courfeyrac and his friends, and it was Grantaire who discovered it. He went in for the sake of the carpe ho ras, and returned for the sake of the carp au gras. People drank there, ate there, and made a row there: they paid little, paid badly, or paid not at all, but were always welcome. Father Hucheloup was a worthy fellow. Hucheloup, whom we have just called a worthy fellow, was an eating-house keeper with a moustache,—an amusing variety. He always looked ill-tempered, appeared wishful to intimidate his customers, growled at persons who came in, and seemed more disposed to quarrel with them than serve them. And yet we maintain people were always welcome. This peculiarity filled his bar, and brought to him young men who said, "Let us go and have a look at Father Hucheloup." He had been a fencing-master, and would suddenly break out into a laugh; he had a rough voice, but was a merry fellow. He had a comical background with a tragical appearance; he asked for nothing better than to frighten you, something like the snuff-boxes which had the shape of a pistol,—the detonation produces a sneeze. He had for wife a Mother Hucheloup, a bearded and very ugly being. About 1830 Father Hucheloup died, and with him disappeared the secret of the carp au gras. His widow, who was almost inconsolable, carried on the business, but the cooking degenerated and became execrable, and the wine, which had always been bad, was frightful. Courfeyrac and his friends, however, continued to go to Corinth,—through pity, said Bossuet.
Widow Hucheloup was short of breath and shapeless, and had rustic recollections, which she deprived of their insipidity by her pronunciation. She had a way of her own of saying things which seasoned her reminiscences of her village and the spring: it had formerly been her delight, she declared, to hear "the red-beasts singing in the awe-thorns."[1] The first-floor room, where the restaurant was, was a large, long apartment, crowded with stools, chairs, benches, and tables, and an old rickety billiard-table. It was reached by the spiral staircase which led to a square hole in the corner of the room, like a ship's hatchway. This apartment, lighted by only one narrow window and a constantly-burning lamp, had a garret-look about it, and all the four-legged articles of furniture behaved as if they had only three. The white-washed wall had for sole ornament the following quatrain in honor of Mame Hucheloup:—
"Elle étonne à dix pas, elle épouvante à deux,
Une verrue habite en son nez hasardeux;
On tremble à chaque instant qu'elle ne vous la mouche,
Et qu'un beau jour son nez ne tombe dans sa bouche."
This was written in charcoal on the wall. Mame Hucheloup, very like her description, walked past this quatrain from morning till night with the most perfect tranquillity. Two servant-girls, called Matelote and Gibelotte, and who were never known by other names, helped Mame Hucheloup in placing on the tables bottles of blue wine, and the various messes served to the hungry guests in earthenware bowls. Matelote, stout, round, red-haired, and noisy, an ex-favorite sultana of the defunct Hucheloup, was uglier than the ugliest mythological monster; and yet, as it is always proper that the servant should be a little behind the mistress, she was not so ugly as Mame Hucheloup. Gibelotte, tall, delicate, white with a lymphatic whiteness, with blue circles round her eyes, and drooping lids, ever exhausted and oppressed, and suffering from what may be called chronic lassitude, the first to rise, the last to go to bed, waited on everybody, even the other servant, silently and gently, and smiling a sort of vague, sleepy smile through her weariness. Before entering the restaurant the following line written by Courfeyrac in chalk was legible: "Régale si tu peux et mange si tu l'oses."
[1] The original malapropism, "les loups-de-gorge chanter dans les ogrépines," is utterly untranslatable. The above is only an attempt to convey some approximative idea.
[CHAPTER II.]
PRELIMINARY GAYETIES.
Laigle of Meaux, as we know, liked better to live with Joly than any one else, and he had a lodging much as the bird has a branch. The two friends lived together, ate together, slept together, and had everything in common, even a little Musichetta. They were what they call bini in the house of the Assistant Brothers. On the morning of June 5 they went to breakfast at Corinth. Joly had a cold in his head, and Laigles coat was threadbare, while Joly was well dressed. It was about nine in the morning when they pushed open the door of Corinth, and went up to the first-floor room, where they were received by Matelote and Gibelotte.
"Oysters, cheese, and ham," said Laigle.
They sat down at a table; the room was empty; there was no one in it but themselves. Gibelotte, recognizing Joly and Laigle, placed a bottle of wine on the table, and they attacked the first dozen of oysters. A head appeared in the hatchway and a voice said,—
"As I was passing I smelt a delicious perfume of Brie cheese, so I stepped in."
It was Grantaire; he took a stool and sat down at the table. Gibelotte, on seeing Grantaire, placed two bottles of wine on the table, which made three.
"Are you going to drink these two bottles?" Laigle asked Grantaire, who replied,—
"All men are ingenious, but you alone are ingenuous. Two bottles never yet astonished a man."
The others began with eating, but Grantaire began with drinking; a pint was soon swallowed.
"Why, you must have a hole in your stomach," said Laigle.
"Well, you have one in your elbow," Grantaire retorted, and after emptying his glass, he added,—
"Oh yes, Laigle of the funeral orations, your coat is old."
"I should hope so," Laigle replied, "for my coat and I live comfortably together. It has assumed all my wrinkles, does not hurt me anywhere, has moulded itself on my deformities, and is complacent to all my movements, and I only feel its presence because it keeps me warm. Old coats and old friends are the same thing."
"Grantaire," Joly asked, "have you come from the boulevard?"
"No."
"Laigle and I have just seen the head of the procession pass. It is a marvellous sight."
"How quiet this street is!" Laigle exclaimed. "Who could suspect that Paris is turned topsy-turvy? How easy it is to see that formerly there were monasteries all round here! Du Breuil and Sauval give a list of them, and so does the Abbé Lebeuf. There was all around where we are now sitting a busy swarm of monks, shod and barefooted, tonsured and bearded, gray, black, white, Franciscans, Minims, Capuchins, Carmelites, little Augustines, great Augustines, old Augustines—"
"Don't talk about monks," Grantaire interrupted, "for it makes me want to scratch myself." Then he exclaimed,—
"Bouh! I have just swallowed a bad oyster, and that has brought back my hypochondria. Oysters are spoiled, servant-girls are ugly, and I hate the human race. I passed just now before the great public library in the Rue Richelieu, and that pile of oyster-shells, which is called a library, disgusts me with thinking. What paper! What ink! What pot-hooks and hangers! All that has been written! What ass was that said man was a featherless biped? And then, too, I met a pretty girl I know, lovely as spring, and worthy to be called Floréal, who was ravished, transported, happy in Paradise, the wretch, because yesterday a hideous banker spotted with small-pox deigned to throw his handkerchief to her! Alas! woman looks out for a keeper quite as much as a lover; cats catch mice as well as birds. This girl not two months ago was living respectably in a garret, and fitted little copper circles into the eyelet-holes of stays,—what do you call it? She sewed, she had a flockbed, she lived by the side of a pot of flowers, and was happy. Now she is a bankeress, and the transformation took place last night. I met the victim this morning perfectly happy, and the hideous thing was that the wretched creature was quite as pretty this morning as she was yesterday, and there was no sign of the financier on her face. Roses have this more or less than women, that the traces which the caterpillars leave on them are visible. Ah! there is no morality left in the world, and I call as witnesses the myrtle, symbol of love, the laurel, symbol of war, the olive, that absurd symbol of peace, the apple-tree, which nearly choked Adam with its pips, and the fig-tree, the grandfather of petticoats. As for justice, do you know what justice is? The Gauls covet Clusium, Rome protects Clusium and asks what wrong Clusium has done them. Brennus answers, 'The wrong which Alba did to you, the wrong that Fidène did to you, the wrong that the Equi, Volscians, and Sabines did to you. They were your neighbors, and the Clusians are ours. We understand neighborhood in the same way as you do. You stole Alba, and we take Clusium.' Rome says, 'You shall not take Clusium,' and Brennus took Rome, and then cried 'Væ victis!' That is what justice is! Oh, what beasts of prey there are in the world! What eagles, what eagles! the thought makes my flesh creep."
He held out his glass to Joly, who filled it, then drank, and continued almost without having been interrupted by the glass of wine, which no one noticed, not even himself:—
"Brennus who takes Rome is an eagle; the banker who takes the grisette is an eagle; and there is no more shame in one than the other. So let us believe nothing; there is only one reality, drinking. Of whatever opinion you may be, whether you back the lean cock, like the canton of Uri, or the fat cock, like the canton of Glaris, it is of no consequence; drink. You talk to me about the boulevard, the procession, etc.; what, are we going to have another revolution? This poverty of resources astonishes me on the part of le bon Dieu; and He must at every moment set to work greasing the groove of events. Things stick and won't move,—look sharp then with a revolution; le bon Dieu has always got his hands black with that filthy cart-wheel grease. In his place I should act more simply, I should not wind up my machinery at every moment, but lead the human race evenly; I should knit facts mesh by mesh without breaking the thread; I should have no temporary substitutes, and no extraordinary repertory. What you fellows call progress has two motive-powers, men and events, but it is a sad thing that something exceptional is required every now and then. For events as for men the ordinary stock company is not sufficient; among men there must be geniuses, and among events revolutions. Great accidents are the law, and the order of things cannot do without them; and, judging from the apparition of comets, we might be tempted to believe that Heaven itself feels a want of leading actors. At the moment when it is least expected, God bills the wall of the firmament with a meteor, and some strange star follows, underlined by an enormous tail; and that causes the death of Cæsar. Brutus gives him a dagger-thrust, and God deals him a blow with a comet. Crac! here is an aurora borealis, here is a revolution, here is a great man: '93 in big letters, napoleon in a line by itself, and the comet of 1811 at the head of the bill. Ah! what a fine blue poster, spangled all over with unexpected flashes! Boum! boum! an extraordinary sight. Raise your eyes, idlers. Everything is in disorder, the star as well as the drama. Oh Lord! It is too much and not enough; and these resources, drawn from exceptional circumstances, seem magnificence and are only poverty. My friends, Providence has fallen into the stage of expedients. What does a revolution prove? That God is running short: He produces a coup d'état, because there is a solution of continuity between the present and the future, and He is unable to join the ends. In fact, this confirms me in my conjectures as to the state of Jehovah's fortune; and on seeing so much discomfort above and below, so much paltriness and pinching and saving and distress both in heaven and on earth, from the bird which has not a seed of grain, to myself who have not one hundred thousand francs a year,—on seeing human destiny which is very much worn, and even royal destiny which is threadbare, as witness the Prince de Condé hanged,—on seeing winter, which is only a rent in the zenith through which the wind blows,—on seeing so many rags, even in the bran-new morning purple on the tops of the hills,—on seeing drops of dew, those false pearls, and hoar-frost, that paste jewelry,—on seeing humanity unripped and events patched, and so many spots on the sun, so many holes in the moon, and so much wretchedness everywhere,—I suspect that God is not rich. There is an appearance, it is true, but I see the pressure, and He gives a revolution just as a merchant whose cash-box is empty gives a ball. We must not judge the gods by appearances, and under the gilding of heaven I catch a glimpse of a poor universe. There is a bankruptcy in creation, and that is why I am dissatisfied. Just see, this is June 5, and it is almost night; I have been waiting since morning for day to come, and it has not come, and I will wager that it does not come at all. It is the irregularity of a badly-paid clerk. Yes, everything is badly arranged, nothing fits into anything, this old world is thrown out of gear, and I place myself in the ranks of the opposition. Everything goes crooked, and the universe is close-fisted; it is like the children,—those who ask get nothing, and those who don't ask get something. And then, again, it afflicts me to look at that bald-headed Laigle of Meaux, and I am humiliated by the thought that I am of the same age as that knee. However, I criticise but do not insult; the universe is what it is, and I speak without any evil meaning, and solely to do my duty by my conscience. Ah! by all the saints of Olympus, and by all the gods of Paradise, I was not made to be a Parisian, that is to say, to be constantly thrown like a shuttle-cock between two battledores, from a group of idlers to a group of noisy fellows. No! I was meant to be a Turk, looking all day at Egyptian damsels performing those exquisite dances, wanton like the dreams of a chaste man, or a Beauceron peasant, or a Venetian gentleman surrounded by fair ladies, or a little German prince, supplying one half a soldier to the Germanic Confederation, and employing his leisure hours in drying his stockings on his hedge, that is to say, his frontier! Such were the destinies for which I was born. Yes, I said Turk, and I will not recall it. I do not understand why the Turks are usually looked upon askance, for Mahom has some good points. Let us respect the inventor of harems of houris, and Paradises of Odalisques, and we ought not to insult Mahometism, the only religion adorned with a hen-coop! After this, I insist on drinking, for the earth is a great piece of stupidity. And it appears that all those asses are going to fight, to break each other's heads and massacre one another in the heart of summer, in the month of June, when they might go off with a creature on their arm to inhale in the fields the perfume of that immense cup of tea of cut hay. Really, too many follies are committed. An old broken lantern, which I saw just now at a bric-à-brac dealer's, suggests a reflection to me, 'it is high time to enlighten the human race.' Yes, I am sad again, and it has come from swallowing an oyster and a revolution the wrong way. I am growing lugubrious again. Oh, frightful old world! On your surface people strive, are destitute, prostitute themselves, kill themselves, and grow accustomed to it!"
And after this burst of eloquence Grantaire had a burst of coughing, which was well deserved.
"Talking of a revolution," said Joly, "it seebs that Barius is certaidly in love."
"Do you know with whom?" Laigle asked.
"Do."
"No?"
"Do, I tell you."
"The loves of Marius!" Grantaire exclaimed, "I can see them from here. Marius is a fog and will have found a vapor. Marius is of the poetic race. Who says poet says madman. Tymbræus Apollo. Marius and his Marie, or his Maria, or his Mariette, or his Marion, must be a funny brace of lovers. I can fancy what it is: ecstasies in which kissing is forgotten. Chaste on earth but connected in the infinitude. They are souls that have feelings, and they sleep together in the stars."
Grantaire was attacking his second bottle, and perhaps his second harangue, when a new head emerged from the staircase hatchway. It was a boy under ten years of age, ragged, very short and yellow, with a bull-dog face, a quick eye, and an enormous head of hair; he was dripping with wet, but seemed happy. The lad choosing without hesitating among the three, though he knew none of them, addressed Laigle of Meaux.
"Are you Monsieur Bossuet?" he asked.
"I am called so," Laigle replied; "what do you want?"
"A big blonde on the boulevard said to me, 'Do you know Mother Hucheloup's?' I said,' Yes, Rue Chanvrerie, the widow of the old buffer,' He says to me, 'Go there; you will find Monsieur Bossuet there, and say to him from me, A—B—C.' I suppose it's a trick played you, eh? He gave me ten sous."
"Joly, lend me ten sous," said Laigle; and turning to Grantaire, "Grantaire, lend me ten sous."
This made twenty sous, which Laigle gave the lad. "Thank you, sir," he said.
"What is your name?" Laigle asked.
"Navet, Gavroche's friend."
"Stay with us," Laigle said.
"Breakfast with us," Grantaire added.
The lad replied, "I can't, for I belong to the procession, and have to cry, 'Down with Polignac!'"
And, drawing his foot slowly after him, which is the most respectful of bows possible, he went away. When he was gone, Grantaire remarked,—
"That is the pure gamin, and there are many varieties in the gamin genus. The notary-gamin is called 'skip-the-gutter;' the cook-gamin is called 'scullion;' the baker-gamin is called 'paper-cap;' the footman-gamin is called 'tiger;' the sailor-gamin is called 'cabin-boy;' the soldier-gamin is called 'drummer-boy;' the painter-gamin is called 'dauber;' the tradesman-gamin is called 'errand-boy;' the courtier-gamin is called 'favorite;' the royal-gamin is called 'dauphin;' and the divine-gamin is called 'Bambino.'"
In the mean while Laigle meditated, and said in a low voice,—
"A—B—C, that is to say, funeral of General Lamarque."
"The tall, fair man," Grantaire observed, "is Enjolras, who has sent to warn you."
"Shall we go?" asked Bossuet.
"It's raiding," said Joly; "I have sworn to go through fire but dot through water, and I do dot wish to bake by cold worse."
"I shall stay here," Grantaire remarked; "I prefer a breakfast to a hearse."
"Conclusion, we remain," Laigle continued; "in that case let us drink. Besides, we may miss the funeral without missing the row."
"Ah, the row!" cried Joly, "I'b id that."
Laigle rubbed his hands.
"So the revolution of 1830 is going to begin over again. Indeed, it disturbs people by brushing against them."
"I do not care a rap for your revolution," Grantaire remarked, "and I do not execrate the present Government, for it is the crown tempered by the cotton nightcap, a sceptre terminating in an umbrella. In such weather as this Louis Philippe might use his royalty for two objects,—stretch out the sceptre-end against the people, and open the umbrella-end against the sky."
The room was dark, and heavy clouds completely veiled the daylight. There was no one in the wine-shop or in the streets, for everybody had gone "to see the events."
"Is it midday or midnight?" Bossuet asked; "I can see nothing; bring a candle, Gibelotte."
Grantaire was drinking sorrowfully.
"Enjolras disdains me," he muttered. "Enjolras said to himself, 'Joly is ill and Grantaire is drunk,' and so he sent Navet to Bossuet. And yet, if he had fetched me, I would have followed him. All the worse for Enjolras! I will not go to his funeral."
This resolution formed, Bousset, Grantaire, and Joly did not stir from the wine-shop, and at about 2 P.M. the table at which they sat was covered with empty bottles. Two candles burned on it, one in a perfectly green copper candlestick, the other in the neck of a cracked water-bottle. Grantaire had led Joly and Bossuet to wine, and Bossuet and Joly had brought Grantaire back to joy. As for Grantaire, he gave up wine at midday, as a poor inspirer of illusions. Wine is not particularly valued by serious sots, for in ebriety there is black magic and white magic, and wine is only the white magic. Grantaire was an adventurous drinker of dreams. The blackness of a formidable intoxication yawning before him, far from arresting, attracted him, and he had given up bottles and taken to the dram-glass, which is an abyss. Not having at hand either opium or hashish, and wishing to fill his brain with darkness, he turned to that frightful mixture of brandy, stout, and absinthe, which produces such terrible lethargies. Of these three vapors, beer, brandy, and absinthe, the lead of the soul is made: they are three darknesses in which the celestial butterfly is drowned; and there are formed in a membraneous smoke, vaguely condensed into a bat's wing, three dumb furies, Nightmare, Night, and Death, which hover over the sleeping Psyche. Grantaire had not yet reached that phase; far from it: he was prodigiously gay, and Bossuet and Joly kept even with him. Grantaire added to the eccentric accentuation of words and ideas the vagary of gestures; he laid his left hand on his knee with a dignified air, and with his neckcloth unloosed, straddling his stool, and with his full glass in his right hand, he threw these solemn words at the stout servant-girl Matelote:—
"Open the gates of the Palace! Let every man belong to the Académie Française, and have the right of embracing Madame Hucheloup! Let us drink."
And turning to the landlady, he added,—
"Antique female, consecrated by custom, approach, that I may contemplate thee."
And Joly exclaimed,—
"Batelote and Gibelotte, don't give Grantaire adybore drink. He is spending a frightful sum, and odly since this borning has devoured in shabeful prodigality two francs, dwenty-five centibes."
And Grantaire went on,—
"Who has unhooked the stars without my leave, in order to place them on the table in lieu of candles?"
Bossuet, who was very drunk, had retained his calmness, and was sitting on the sill of the open window, letting the rain drench his back, while he gazed at his two friends. All at once he heard behind him a tumult, hurried footsteps, and shouts of "To arms!" He turned, and noticed in the Rue St. Denis, at the end of the Rue Chanvrerie, Enjolras passing, carbine in hand, Gavroche with his pistol, Feuilly with his sabre, Courfeyrac with his sword, Jean Prouvaire with his musquetoon, Combeferre with his gun, Bahorel with his, and the whole armed and stormy band that followed them. The Rue de la Chanvrerie was not a pistol-shot in length, so Bossuet improvised a speaking-trumpet with his two hands round his mouth, and shouted,—
"Courfeyrac! Courfeyrac! hilloh!"
Courfeyrac heard the summons, perceived Bossuet, and walked a few steps down the Rue de la Chanvrerie, exclaiming, "What do you want?" which was crossed by a "Where are you going?"
"To make a barricade," Courfeyrac answered.
"Well, why not make it here? the spot is good."
"That is true, Eagle," Courfeyrac remarked.
And at a sign from Courfeyrac the mob rushed into the Rue de la Chanvrerie.
[CHAPTER III.]
THE NIGHT BEGINS TO FALL ON GRANTAIRE.
The ground was, in fact, admirably suited; the entrance of the street was wide, the end narrowed, and, like a blind alley, Corinth formed a contraction in it, the Rue de Mondétour could be easily barred right and left, and no attack was possible save by the Rue St. Denis; that is to say, from the front and in the open. Bossuet drunk had had the inspiration of Hannibal sober. At the sound of the band rushing on, terror seized on the whole street, and not a passer-by but disappeared. More quickly than a flash of lightning, shops, stalls, gates, doors, Venetian blinds, and shutters of every size were shut from the ground-floor to the roofs, at the end, on the right, and on the left. An old terrified woman fixed up a mattress before her window with clothes-props, in order to deaden the musketry, and the public-house alone remained open,—and for an excellent reason, because the insurgents had rushed into it.
"Oh Lord! oh Lord!" Mame Hucheloup sighed.
Bossuet ran down to meet Courfeyrac, and Joly, who had gone to the window, shouted,—
"Courfeyrac, you ought to have brought an umbrella. You will catch cold."
In a few minutes twenty iron bars were pulled down from the railings in front of the inn, and ten yards of pavement dug up. Gavroche and Bahorel seized, as it passed, the truck of a lime-dealer of the name of Anceau, and found in it three barrels of lime, which they placed under the piles of paving-stones; Enjolras had raised the cellar-flap, and all Mame Hucheloup's empty casks went to join the barrels of lime; Feuilly, with his fingers accustomed to illumine the delicate sticks of fans, reinforced the barrels and the trucks with two massive piles of stones,—rough stones, improvised like the rest, and taken from no one knew where. The supporting shores were pulled away from the frontage of an adjoining house, and laid on the casks. When Courfeyrac and Bossuet turned round, one half the street was already barred by a rampart taller than a man, for there is nothing like the hand of the people to build up anything that is built by demolishing. Matelote and Gibelotte were mixed up with the workmen, and the latter went backwards and forwards, loaded with rubbish, and her lassitude helped at the barricade. She served paving-stones, as she would have served wine, with a sleepy look. An omnibus drawn by two white horses passed the end of the street; Bossuet jumped over the stones, ran up, stopped the driver, ordered the passengers to get out, offered his hand to "the ladies," dismissed the conductor, and returned, pulling the horses on by the bridles.
"Omnibuses," he said, "must not pass before Corinth. Non licet omnibus adire Corinthum."
A moment after, the unharnessed horses were straggling down the Rue Mondétour, and the omnibus lying on its side completed the barricade. Mame Hucheloup, quite upset, had sought refuge on the first-floor; her eyes were wandering and looked without seeing, and her cries of alarm dared not issue from her throat.
"It is the end of the world," she muttered.
Joly deposited a kiss on Mame Hucheloup's fat, red, wrinkled neck, and said to Grantaire, "My dear fellow, I have always considered a woman's neck an infinitely delicate thing." But Grantaire had reached the highest regions of dithyramb. When Matelote came up to the first-floor, he seized her round the waist and burst into loud peals of laughter at the window.
"Matelote is ugly," he cried; "Matelote is the ideal of ugliness; she is a chimera. Here is the secret of her birth,—a Gothic Pygmalion, who was carving cathedral gargoyles, fell in love on a fine morning with the most horrible of them. He implored love to animate it, and this produced Matelote. Look at her, citizens! She has chromate-of-lead-colored hair, like Titian's mistress, and is a good girl; I will answer that she fights well, for every good girl contains a hero. As for Mother Hucheloup, she is an old brave. Look at her mustachios; she inherited them from her husband. She will fight too, and the couple will terrify the whole of the suburbs. Comrades, we will overthrow the Government so truly as there are fifteen intermediate acids between margaric acid and formic acid; however, it is a matter of perfect indifference to me. My father always detested me because I could not understand mathematics; I only understand love and liberty. I am Grantaire, the good fellow; never having had any money, I have not grown accustomed to it, and for that reason have never wanted it; but, had I been rich, there would be no poor left! You would have seen! Oh, if good hearts had large purses, how much better things would be! I can imagine the Saviour with Rothschild's fortune! What good he would do! Matelote, embrace me! You are voluptuous and timid; you have cheeks that claim the kiss of a sister, and lips that claim the kiss of a lover!"
"Hold your tongue, barrel!" Courfeyrac said. Grantaire replied,—
"I am the Capitoul and master of the Floral games!"
Enjolras, who was standing on the top of the barricade, gun in hand, raised his handsome, stern face. Enjolras, as we know, blended the Spartan with the Puritan; he would have died at Thermopylæ with Leonidas, and burned Drogheda with Cromwell.
"Grantaire," he cried, "go and sleep off your wine elsewhere; this is the place for intoxication, and not for drunkenness. Do not dishonor the barricade."
These stinging words produced on Grantaire a singular effect, and it seemed as if he had received a glass of cold water in his face. He appeared suddenly sobered, sat down near the window, gazed at Enjolras with inexpressible tenderness, and said to him,—
"Let me sleep here."
"Go and sleep elsewhere," Enjolras cried.
But Grantaire, still fixing on him his tender and misty eyes, answered,—
"Let me sleep here till I die here."
Enjolras looked at him disdainfully.
"Grantaire, you are incapable of believing, thinking, wishing, living, and dying."
Grantaire replied in a grave voice,—
"You will see."
He stammered a few more unintelligible words, then his head fell noisily on the table, and—as is the usual effect of the second period of ebriety into which Enjolras had roughly and suddenly thrust him—a moment later he was asleep.
[CHAPTER IV.]
AN ENDEAVOR TO CONSOLE THE WIDOW HUCHELOUP.
Bahorel, delighted with the barricade, exclaimed, "How well the street looks décolleté!"
Courfeyrac, while gradually demolishing the public-house, tried to console the widowed landlady.
"Mother Hucheloup, were you not complaining the other day that you had been summoned by the police, because Gibelotte shook a counterpane out of the window?"
"Yes, my good Monsieur Courfeyrac. Ah! good gracious! are you going to put that table too in your horror? Yes, and the Government also condemned me to a fine of one hundred francs on account of a flower-pot that fell out of the garret into the street. Is that not abominable?"
"Well, Mother Hucheloup, we are going to avenge you."
Mother Hucheloup did not exactly see the advantage accruing to her from the reparation made her. She was satisfied after the fashion of the Arab woman who, having received a box on the ears from her husband, went to complain to her father, crying vengeance, and saying, "Father, you owe my husband affront for affront." The father asked, "On which cheek did you receive the blow?" "On the left cheek." The father boxed her right cheek, and said, "Now you must be satisfied. Go and tell your husband that he buffeted my daughter, but I have buffeted his wife." The rain had ceased, and recruits began to arrive. Artisans brought under their blouses a barrel of gunpowder, a hamper containing carboys of vitriol, two or three carnival torches, and a basket full of lamps, "remaining from the king's birthday," which was quite recent, as it was celebrated on May 1. It was said that this ammunition was sent by a grocer in the Faubourg St. Antoine named Pépin. The only lantern in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and all those in the surrounding streets, were broken. Enjolras, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac directed everything, and now two barricades were erected simultaneously, both of which were supported by Corinth and formed a square; the larger one closed the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and the smaller the Rue Mondétour on the side of the Rue du Cygne. This latter barricade, which was very narrow, was merely made of barrels and paving-stones. There were about fifty workmen there, of whom three were armed with guns, for on the road they had borrowed a gunsmith's entire stock.
Nothing could be stranger or more motley than this group: one had a sleeved waistcoat, a cavalry sabre, and a pair of holster pistols; another was in shirt-sleeves, with a round hat, and a powder-flask hung at his side; while a third was cuirassed with nine sheets of gray paper, and was armed with a saddler's awl. There was one who shouted, "Let us exterminate to the last, and die on the point of our bayonet!" This man had no bayonet. Another displayed over his coat the belts and pouch of a National Guard, with these words sewn in red worsted on the cover, "Public order." There were many muskets, bearing the numbers of legions, few hats, no neckties, a great many bare arms, and a few pikes; add to this all ages, all faces, short pale youths, and bronzed laborers at the docks. All were in a hurry, and while assisting each other, talked about the possible chances,—that they were sure of one regiment, and Paris would rise. There were terrible remarks, with which a sort of cordial joviality was mingled; they might have been taken for brothers, though they did not know one another's names. Great dangers have this beauty about them, that they throw light on the fraternity of strangers.
A fire was lighted in the kitchen, and men were melting in a bullet-mould, bowls, spoons, forks, and all the pewter articles of the public-house. They drank while doing this, and caps and slugs lay pell-mell on the table with glasses of wine. In the billiard-room Mame Hucheloup, Matelote, and Gibelotte, variously affected by terror,—as one was brutalized by it, another had her breath stopped, while the third was awakened,—were tearing up old sheets and making lint; three insurgents helped them,—three hairy, bearded, and moustached fellows, who pulled the linen asunder with the fingers of a sempstress and made them tremble. The tall man, whom Courfeyrac, Combeferre, and Enjolras had noticed as he joined the band at the corner of the Rue des Billetes, was working at the small barricade and making himself useful; Gavroche was working at the large one; and as for the young man who had waited for Courfeyrac at his lodgings and asked after M. Marius, he disappeared just about the time when the omnibus was overthrown.
Gavroche, who was perfectly radiant, had taken the arrangements on himself; he came, went, ascended, descended, went up again, rustled and sparkled. He seemed to be there for the encouragement of all. Had he a spur? Certainly, in his misery. Had he wings? Certainly, in his joy. Gavroche was a whirlwind; he was seen incessantly, and constantly heard, and he filled the air, being everywhere at once. He was a sort of almost irritating ubiquity, and it was impossible to stop with him. The enormous barricade felt him on its crupper; he annoyed the idlers, excited the slothful, reanimated the fatigued, vexed the thoughtful, rendered some gay and gave others time to breathe, set some in a passion and all in motion; he piqued a student and stung a workman; he halted, then started again, flew over the turmoil and the efforts, leaped from one to the other, murmured, buzzed, and harassed the whole team; he was the fly of the immense revolutionary coach. Perpetual movement was in his little arms, and perpetual clamor in his little lungs.
"Push ahead; more paving-stones, more barrels, more vehicles! Where are there any? We want a hodload of plaster to stop up this hole. Your barricade is very small, and must mount. Put everything into it; smash up the house; a barricade is Mother Gibou's tea. Hilloh! there's a glass door."
This made the workmen exclaim,—
"A glass door! What would you have us do with that, tubercule?"
"Hercules yourselves," Gavroche retorted; "a glass door in a barricade is excellent, for though it does not prevent the attack, it makes it awkward to take it. Have you never boned apples over a wall on which there was broken glass? A glass door cuts the corns of the National Guards when they try to climb up the barricade. By Job! glass is treacherous. Well, you fellows have no very bright imagination."
He was furious with his useless pistol, and went from one to the other, saying, "A gun! I want a gun! Why don't you give me a gun?"
"A gun for you?" said Combeferre.
"Well, why not?" Gavroche answered; "I had one in 1830, when we quarrelled with Charles X."
Enjolras shrugged his shoulders.
"When all the men have guns we will give them to boys."
Gavroche turned firmly, and answered him,—
"If you are killed before me I will take yours."
"Gamin!" said Enjolras.
"Puppy!" said Gavroche.
A dandy lounging past the end of the street created a diversion; Gavroche shouted to him,—
"Come to us, young man! What, will you do nothing for your old country?"
The dandy fled.
[CHAPTER V.]
PREPARATIONS.
The journals of the day which stated that the barricade in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, that "almost impregnable fortress," as they called it, reached the level of a first-floor, are mistaken, for the truth is that it did not exceed an average height of six or seven feet. It was so built that the combatants could at will either disappear behind it or ascend to its crest by means of a quadruple row of paving-stones arranged like steps inside. Externally the front of the barricade, composed of piles of paving-stones and barrels, held together by joists and planks passed through the wheels of the truck and the omnibus, had a bristling and inextricable appearance. A gap, sufficiently wide for one man to pass, was left between the house-wall and the end of the barricade farthest from the wine-shop, so that a sortie was possible. The pole of the omnibus was held upright by ropes, and a red flag fixed to this pole floated over the barricade. The small Mondétour barricade, concealed behind the wine-shop, could not be seen, but the two barricades combined formed a real redoubt. Enjolras and Courfeyrac had not thought it advisable to barricade the other portion of the Rue Mondétour, which opens on to the Halles, as they doubtless wished to maintain a possible communication with the outside, and had but little fear of being attacked by the difficult and dangerous Rue des Prêcheurs. With the exception of this issue left free, which constituted what Folard would have called in a strategic style a boyau, and of the narrow passage in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, the interior of the barricade, in which the wine-shop formed a salient angle, presented an irregular quadrilateral enclosed on all sides. There was a space of twenty yards between the great barricade and the tall houses which formed the end of the street, so that it might be said that the barricade leaned against these houses, which were all inhabited, but closed from top to bottom.
All this labor was completed without any obstacle, in less than an hour, during which this handful of men had not seen a single bearskin-cap or bayonet. The few citizens who still ventured at this moment of riot into the Rue St. Denis took a glance into the Rue de la Chanvrerie, perceived the barricade, and doubled their pace. When the two barricades were completed and the flag was hoisted, a table was pulled from the wine-shop into the street, and Courfeyrac got upon it. Enjolras brought up the square chest, which Courfeyrac opened, and it proved to be full of cartridges. When they saw these cartridges the bravest trembled, and there was a moment's silence. Courfeyrac distributed the cartridges smilingly, and each received thirty: many had powder, and began making others with the bullets which had been cast; as for the powder barrel, it was on a separate table, near the door, and was held in reserve. The drum-beat call to arms, which was traversing the whole of Paris, did not cease, but in the end it had become a monotonous sound, to which they no longer paid any attention. This noise at one moment retired, at another came nearer, with lugubrious undulations. The guns and carbines were loaded all together, without precipitation and with a solemn gravity. Enjolras then stationed three sentries outside the barricades, one in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, the second in the Rue des Prêcheurs, the third at the corner of the Petite Truanderie. Then, when the barricades were built, the posts assigned, the guns loaded, the sentries set, the insurgents alone in these formidable streets, through which no one now passed, surrounded by dumb and, as it were, dead houses, in which no human movement palpitated, enveloped in the menacing darkness, in the midst of that silence and obscurity in which they felt something advancing, and which had something tragical and terrifying about it, isolated, armed, determined, and tranquil—waited.
[CHAPTER VI.]
WAITING.
During the hours of waiting, what did they do? We are bound to tell it, because this is historical.
While the men were making cartridges and the women lint, while a large stewpan full of melted tin and lead, intended for the bullet-mould, was smoking on a red-hot chafing-dish, while the vedettes were watching with shouldered guns on the barricade, while Enjolras, whom it was impossible to distract, watched the vedettes, Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Jean Prouvaire, Feuilly, Bossuet, Joly, Bahorel, and a few others, assembled, as in the most peaceful days of their student conversations, and in one corner of the wine-shop converted into a casemate, two paces from the barricade which they had raised, and with their loaded and primed muskets leaning against the back of their chairs,—these fine young men, so near their last hour, wrote love verses.
What verses? Here they are:—
Do you remember those days gone by,
Our youth's high spring-tide? The sweet glad spell
Held us a season, when you and I
Lived but to love and to look well?
Then all your years together with mine
Would not make two-score when all was said;
Our nest it was so cosy and fine,
Spring hid within till Winter had fled.
What days! Manuel, how lofty, how chaste!
Paris, turned godly, would be improved.
And how Foy thundered—and in your waist
Was a pin, that pricked when my fingers roved!
All eyes looked your way. At Prado's where
Your briefless barrister dined with you,
You were so pretty, the roses there
Turned and eyed you, in envy too.
I seemed to hear them whisper, "How fair!
What wealth of ringlets, what rich perfume!
They are wings she hides 'neath her mantle there;
Her bonnet's a blossom all a-bloom!"
Arm linked in arm, together we strayed;
Passers thought, as we went our way,
Light-hearted Cupid a match had made
'Twixt tender April and gallant May.
We lived so merrily hidden away,
Feeding on Love's dear forbidden fruit.
Swifter than aught that my lips could say
Your heart replied, when your lips were mute.
In the Sorbonne 't was, that idyllic spot,
I dreamed of you through the long night-hours.
'T is thus a youthful lover self-taught
In the Latin Quarter sights Love-land's towers.
O Place Maubert! O Place Dauphine!
Dear sky-built palace-attic where
You drew your stocking on, unseen—
I gazed at a star in the ceiling there!
Lamennais, Malebranche, forgotten they,
And Plato too, mastered so carefully;
But I fathomed God's Infinite Love one day
In a flower,—the flower you gave to me.
I was your slave. You my subject were.
O golden attic! to watch you pass
Back and forth, dressing, at daybreak there,
Your girl's face smiling from that old glass!
O golden dawn! O golden days!
Who can outlive them, forget them wholly?
The ribbons too, flowers and gauze and lace,
Wherein Love stammered its first sweet folly.
Our garden,—a tulip-pot held the whole!
Your petticoat curtained the window-pane;
I kept for myself the earthen-ware bowl,
And gave you the cup of porcelain.
And such mishaps too, for mirth and woe!
Your muff had caught fire, your tippet was gone
And that portrait of Shakespeare we valued so
Sold for a song—to be supped upon.
I'd beg and you would your alms bestow,
A kiss from your fair round arm I'd steal.
Our board was that Dante in folio,
And a hundred chestnuts our humble meal.
And that one moment, and all its joy
When your lips met mine and the first kiss given,
You fled, dishevelled and rosy and coy;
I grew quite pale and believed in Heaven!
Do you remember our countless joys?
Those neckerchiefs rumpled? ah, well-a-day!
And now from heavier hearts what sighs
To skies all darkened are borne away!
The hour, the spot, the recollections of youth recalled, a few stars which were beginning to glisten in the sky, the funereal repose of these deserted streets, the imminence of the inexorable adventure which was preparing, gave a pathetic charm to these verses murmured in a low voice in the twilight by Jean Prouvaire, who, as we said, was a gentle poet.
In the mean while a lamp had been lit on the small barricade, and on the large one, one of those wax torches such as may be seen on Shrove Tuesday in front of the vehicles crowded with masks that are proceeding to the Courtille. These torches, we know, came from the Faubourg St. Antoine. The torch was placed in a species of lantern of paving-stones closed on three sides to protect it from the wind, and arranged so that the entire light should fall on the flag. The street and the barricade remained plunged in darkness, and nothing was visible save the red flag formidably illumined, as if by an enormous dark-lantern. This light added a strange and terrible purple to the scarlet of the flag.
[CHAPTER VII.]
THE RECRUIT OF THE RUE DES BILLETTES.
Night had quite set in, and nothing occurred, only confused rumors and fusillades now and then could be heard, but they were rare, badly maintained, and distant. This respite, which was prolonged, was a sign that the Government was taking its time and collecting its strength. These fifty men were waiting for the coming of sixty thousand. Enjolras was attacked by that impatience which seizes on powerful minds when they stand on the threshold of formidable events. He looked up Gavroche, who was busy manufacturing cartridges in the ground-floor room by the dubious light of two candles placed on the bar for precaution, on account of the gunpowder sprinkled over the tables. These two candles threw no rays outside, and the insurgents allowed no light in the upper floors. Gavroche was at this moment greatly occupied, though not precisely with his cartridge.
The recruit from the Rue des Billettes had come into the room and seated himself at the least-lighted table. A Brown Bess of the large model had fallen to his share, and he held it between his legs. Gavroche up to this moment, distracted by a hundred "amusing" things, had not even seen this man. When he entered, gavotte looked after him, mechanically admiring his musket, but when the man was seated the gamin suddenly rose. Those who might have watched this man would have noticed him observe everything in the barricade, and the band of insurgents with singular attention; but when he entered the room he fell into a state of contemplation, and seemed to see nothing of what was going on. The gamin approached this pensive man, and began walking round him on tiptoe, in the same way as people move round a man whom they are afraid of awaking. At the same time all the grimaces of an old man passed over his childish face, at once so impudent and so serious, so giddy and so profound, so gay and so affecting, and these grimaces signified, "Oh, stuff! it is not possible, I must see double—I am dreaming—can it be?—no, it is not—yes, it is—no, it is not." Gavroche balanced himself on his heels, clenched his fists in his pockets, moved his neck like a bird, and expended on an enormously outstretched lip all the sagacity of a lower lip. He was stupefied, uncertain, convinced, and dazzled. He had the look of the chief of the eunuchs at the slave-market discovering a Venus among the girls, and the air of an amateur recognizing a Raphael in a pile of daubs. All about him was at work the instinct that scents and the intellect that combines; it was plain that an event was happening to Gavroche. It was when he was deepest in thought that Enjolras accosted him.
"You are little," he said, "and will not be seen. Go out of the barricades, slip along the houses, pass through as many streets as you can, and come back to tell me what is going on."
Gavroche drew himself up.
"So little ones are good for something! That's lucky! I'm off. In the mean while, trust to the little and distrust the big;" and Gavroche, raising his head and dropping his voice, added, as he pointed to the man of the Rue des Billettes,—
"You see that tall fellow?"
"Well?"
"He's a spy."
"Are you sure?"
"Not a fortnight back he pulled me down by the ear from the cornice of the Pont Royal where I was taking the air."
Enjolras hurriedly left the gamin and whispered a few words to a laborer from the wine-docks who was present. The laborer went out and returned almost immediately, followed by three others. The four men, four broad-shouldered porters, stationed themselves silently behind the table at which the man of the Rue des Billettes was seated, in evident readiness to fall upon him, and then Enjolras walked up to the man and asked him,—
"Who are you?"
At this sudden question the man started; he looked into the depths of Enjolras's candid eyeballs, and seemed to read his thoughts. He gave a smile, which was at once the most disdainful, energetic, and resolute possible, and answered, with a haughty gravity,—
"I see what you mean,—well, yes!"
"Are you a spy?"
"I am an agent of the authority!"
"And your name is—"
"Javert."
Enjolras gave the four men a sign, and in a twinkling, before Javert had time to turn round, he was collared, thrown down, bound, and searched. They found on him a small round card fixed between two pieces of glass, and bearing on one side the arms of France, with the motto, "Surveillance and vigilance," and on the other this notice, "JAVERT, Police Inspector, fifty-two years of age," and the signature of the Prefect of Police of that day, M. Gisquet. He had also a watch, and a purse containing some pieces of gold, and both were left him. Behind his watch at the bottom of his fob a paper was found, which Enjolras unfolded, and on which he read these lines, written by the Prefect of Police himself:—
"So soon as his political mission is concluded, Javert will assure himself by a special watch whether it is true that criminals assemble on the slope of the right bank of the Seine, near the bridge of Jena."
When the search was ended, Javert was raised from the ground, his arms were tied behind his back, and he was fastened in the middle of the room to the celebrated post which in olden times gave its name to the wine-shop. Gavroche, who had watched the whole scene and approved of everything with a silent shake of the head, went up to Javert, and said,—
"The mouse has trapped the cat."
All this took place so quickly that it was completed before those outside the wine-shop were aware of it. Javert had not uttered a cry, but on seeing him fastened to the post, Courfeyrac, Bossuet, Combeferre, Joly, and the men scattered over the two barricades, flocked in. Javert, who was surrounded with cords so that he could not stir, raised his head with the intrepid serenity of a man who has never told a falsehood.
"It is a spy," said Enjolras; and turning to Javert, "You will be shot two minutes before the barricade is taken."
Javert replied, with his most imperious accent,—
"Why not at once?"
"We are saving of powder."
"Then settle the affair with a knife."
"Spy," said the beautiful Enjolras, "we are judges, and not assassins."
Then he called Gavroche.
"You be off now and do what I told you."
"I am off," Gavroche cried, but stopped just as he reached the door.
"By the way, you will give me his gun. I leave you the musician, but I want his clarinet."
The gamin gave a military salute, and gayly slipped round the large barricade.
[CHAPTER VIII.]
WAS HIS NAME LE CABUC?
The tragical picture we have undertaken would not be complete, the reader would not see in their exact and real relief those great moments of social lying-in and revolutionary giving birth, in which there are throes blended with effort, if we were to omit in our sketch an incident full of an epic and stern horror, which occurred almost immediately after Gavroche's departure.
Bands of rioters, it is well known, resemble a snowball, and, as they roll along, agglomerate many tumultuous men, who do not ask one another whence they come. Among the passers-by who joined the band led by Enjolras, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac, there was a man wearing a porter's jacket, much worn at the shoulders, who gesticulated and vociferated, and had the appearance of a drunken savage. This man, whose name or nickname was Le Cabuc, and who was entirely unknown to those who pretended to know him, was seated, in a state of real or feigned intoxication, with four others, round a table which they had dragged out of the wine-shop. This Cabuc, while making the others drink, seemed to be gazing thoughtfully at the large house behind the barricade, whose five stories commanded the whole street and faced the Rue St Denis. All at once he exclaimed,—
"Do you know what, comrades? We must fire from that house. When we are at the windows, hang me if any one can come up the street."
"Yes, but the house is closed," said one of the drinkers.
"We'll knock."
"They won't open."
"Then we'll break in the door."
Le Cabuc ran up to the door, which had a very massive knocker, and rapped; as the door was not opened he rapped again, and no one answering, he gave a third rap, but the silence continued.
"Is there any one in here?" Le Cabuc shouted. But nothing stirred, and so he seized a musket and began hammering the door with the butt end. It was an old, low, narrow, solid door, made of oak, lined with sheet iron inside and a heavy bar, and a thorough postern gate. The blows made the whole house tremble, but did not shake the door. The inmates, however, were probably alarmed, for a little square trap window was at length lit up and opened on the third story, and a candle and the gray-haired head of a terrified old man, who was the porter, appeared in the orifice. The man who was knocking left off.
"What do you want, gentlemen?" the porter asked.
"Open the door!" said Le Cabuc.
"I cannot, gentlemen."
"Open, I tell you!"
"It is impossible, gentlemen."
Le Cabuc raised his musket and took aim at the porter, but as he was below and it was very dark the porter did not notice the fact.
"Will you open? Yes or no."
"No, gentlemen."
"You really mean it?"
"I say no, my kind—"
The porter did not finish the sentence, for the musket was fired; the bullet entered under his chin and came out of his neck, after passing through the jugular vein. The old man fell in a heap, without heaving a sigh, the candle went out, and nothing was visible save a motionless head lying on the sill of the window, and a small wreath of smoke ascending to the roof.
"There," said Le Cabuc, as he let the butt of the musket fall on the pavement again.
He had scarce uttered the word ere he felt a hand laid on his shoulder with the tenacity of an eagle's talon, and he heard a voice saying to him,—
"On your knees!"
The murderer turned, and saw before him Enjolras's white, cold face. Enjolras held a pistol in his hand, and had hurried up on hearing the shot fired, and clutched with his left hand Le Cabuc's blouse, shirt, and braces.
"On your knees!" he repeated.
And with a sovereign movement the frail young man of twenty bent like a reed the muscular and thick-set porter, and forced him to kneel in the mud. Le Cabuc tried to resist, but he seemed to have been seized by a superhuman hand. Enjolras, pale, bare-neck, with his dishevelled hair and feminine face, had at this moment I know not what of the ancient Themis. His dilated nostrils, his downcast eyes, gave to his implacable Greek profile that expression of wrath and that expression of chastity which, in the opinion of the old world, are becoming to justice. All the insurgents had hurried up, and then ranged themselves in a circle at a distance, feeling that it was impossible for them to utter a word in the presence of what they were going to see. Le Cabuc, conquered, no longer attempted to struggle, and trembled all over: Enjolras loosed his grasp, and took out his watch.
"Pray or think!" he said; "you have one minute to do so."
"Mercy!" the murderer stammered, then hung his head and muttered a few inarticulate execrations.
Enjolras did not take his eyes off the watch; he let the minute pass, and then put the watch again in his fob. This done, he seized Le Cabuc by the hair, who clung to his knees with a yell, and placed the muzzle of the pistol to his ear. Many of these intrepid men, who had so tranquilly entered upon the most frightful of adventures, turned away their heads. The explosion was heard, the assassin fell on his head on the pavement, and Enjolras drew himself up and looked round him with a stern air of conviction. Then he kicked the corpse and said,—
"Throw this outside."
Three men raised the body of the wretch, which was still writhing in the last mechanical convulsions of expiring life, and threw it over the small barricade into the Mondétour lane. Enjolras stood pensive; some grand darkness was slowly spreading over his formidable serenity. Presently he raised his voice, and all were silent.
"Citizens," said Enjolras, "what that man did is frightful, and what I have done is horrible; he killed, and that is why I killed, and I was obliged to do so, as insurrection must have its discipline. Assassination is even more of a crime here than elsewhere, for we stand under the eye of the Revolution, we are the priests of the Republic, we are the sacred victims to duty, and we must not do aught that would calumniate our combat. I, therefore, tried and condemned this man to death; for my part, constrained to do what I have done, but abhorring it, I have also tried myself, and you will shortly see what sentence I have passed."
All who listened trembled.
"We will share your fate," Combeferre exclaimed.
"Be it so!" Enjolras continued. "One word more. In executing that man I obeyed Necessity; but Necessity is a monster of the old world, and its true name is Fatality. Now, it is the law of progress that monsters should disappear before angels, and Fatality vanish before Fraternity. It is a bad moment to utter the word love; but no matter, I utter it, and I glorify it. Love, thou hast a future; Death, I make use of thee, but I abhor thee. Citizens, in the future there will be no darkness, no thunderclaps; neither ferocious ignorance nor bloodthirsty retaliation; and as there will be no Satan left, there will be no Saint Michael. In the future no man will kill another man; the earth will be radiant, and the human race will love. The day will come, citizens, when all will be concord, harmony, light, joy, and life, and we are going to die in order that it may come."
Enjolras was silent, his virgin lips closed, and he stood for some time at the spot where he had shed blood, in the motionlessness of a marble statue. His fixed eyes caused people to talk in whispers around him. Jean Prouvaire and Combeferre shook their heads silently, and leaning against each other in an angle of the barricade, gazed, with an admiration in which there was compassion, at this grave young man, who was an executioner and priest, and had, at the same time, the light and the hardness of crystal. Let us say at once, that after the action, when the corpses were conveyed to the Morgue and searched, a police-agent's card was found on Le Cabuc; the author of this work had in his hands, in 1848, the special report on this subject made to the Prefect of Police in 1832. Let us add that, if we may believe a strange but probably well-founded police tradition, Le Cabuc was Claquesous. It is certainly true that after the death of Cabuc, Claquesous was never heard of again, and left no trace of his disappearance. He seemed to have become amalgamated with the invisible; his life had been gloom, and his end was night.
The whole insurgent band were still suffering from the emotion of this tragical trial, so quickly begun and so quickly ended, when Courfeyrac saw again at the barricade the short young man who had come to his lodgings to ask for Marius; this lad, who had a hold and reckless look, had come at night to rejoin the insurgents.