On the next day he led Marius to the Café Musain, and whispered in his ear with a smile, "I must introduce you to the Revolution," and he led him to the room of the Friends of the A. B. C. He introduced him to his companions, saying in a low voice, "A pupil," which Marius did not at all comprehend Marius had fallen into a mental wasps' nest, but though he was silent and grave, he was not the less winged and armed.
Marius, hitherto solitary, and muttering soliloquies and asides through habit and taste, was somewhat startled by the swarm of young men around him. The tumultuous movement of all these minds at liberty and at work made his ideas whirl, and at times, in his confusion, they flew so far from him that he had a difficulty in finding them again. He heard philosophy, literature, art, history, and religion spoken of in an unexpected way; he caught a glimpse of strange aspects, and as he did not place them in perspective, he was not sure that he was not gazing at chaos. On giving up his grandfather's opinions for those of his father, he believed himself settled; but he now suspected, anxiously, and not daring to confess it to himself, that it was not so. The angle in which he looked at everything was beginning to be displaced afresh, and a certain oscillation shook all the horizons of his brain. It was a strange internal moving of furniture, and it almost made him ill.
It seemed as if there were no "sacred things" for these young men, and Marius heard singular remarks about all sorts of matters which were offensive to his still timid mind. A play-bill came under notice, adorned with the title of an old stock tragedy, of the so-called classical school. "Down with the tragedy dear to the bourgeois!" Bahorel shouted, and Marius heard Combeferre reply,—
"You are wrong, Bahorel. The cits love tragedy, and they must be left at peace upon that point. Periwigged tragedy has a motive, and I am not one of those who for love of Æschylus contests its right to exist. There are sketches in nature and ready-made parodies in creation; a beak which is no beak, wings which are no wings, gills which are no gills, feet which are no feet, a dolorous cry which makes you inclined to laugh,—there you have the duck. Now, since poultry exist by the side of the bird, I do not see why classic tragedy should not exist face to face with ancient tragedy."
Or else it happened accidentally that Marius passed along the Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau between Enjolras and Courfeyrac, and the latter seized his arm.
"Pay attention I this is the Rue Plûtrière, now called Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau, on account of a singular family that lived here sixty years back, and they were Jean Jacques and Thérèse. From time to time little creatures were born; Thérèse fondled them, and Jean Jacques took them to the Foundling."
And Enjolras reproved Courfeyrac.
"Silence before Jean Jacques! I admire that man. I grant that he abandoned his children, but he adopted the people."
Not one of these young men ever uttered the words,—the Emperor; Jean Prouvaire alone sometimes said Napoleon; all the rest spoke of Bonaparte. Enjolras pronounced it Buonaparte. Marius was vaguely astonished.—Initium sapientiœ