Geoffroy Langevin into the Rue Sainte Avoye. This is without counting
innumerable barricades in twenty other districts of Paris, as the
Marais and the Montagne Sainte Geneviève; one in the Rue Ménilmontant,
in which a gate could be seen torn off its hinges; and another near
the little bridge of the Hôtel Dieu, made of an overthrown vehicle.
Three hundred yards from the Préfecture of Police, at the barricade
in the Rue des Ménétriers, a well-dressed man distributed money to
the artisans; at the barricade in the Rue Grenetat a horseman rode up
and handed to the man who seemed to be the chief of the barricade a
roll, which looked like money. "Here," he said, "is something to pay
the expenses,--the wine, etc." A light-haired young man, without a
cravat, went from one barricade to another, carrying the passwords; and
another, with drawn sabre and a blue forage-cap on his head, stationed
sentries. In the interior, within the barricades, the wine-shops and
cabarets were converted into guard-rooms, and the riot was managed
in accordance with the most skilful military tactics. The narrow,
uneven, winding streets, full of corners and turnings, were admirably
selected,--the vicinity of the Halles more especially, a network of
streets more tangled than a forest. The society of the Friends of the
People had, it was said, taken the direction of the insurrection in the
Sainte Avoye district, and a plan of Paris was found on the body of a
man killed in the Rue du Ponceau.

What had really assumed the direction of the insurrection was a sort
of unknown impetuosity that was in the atmosphere. The insurrection
had suddenly built barricades with one hand, and with the other seized
nearly all the garrison posts. In less than three hours the insurgents,
like a powder-train fired, had seized and occupied on the right bank
the Arsenal, the Mayoralty of the Place Royale, all the Marais, the
Popincourt arms-factory, the Galiote the Château d'Eau, and all the
streets near the Halles; on the left bank the Veterans' barracks,
Sainte Pélagie, the Place Maubert, the powder manufactory of the Deux
Moulins, and all the barrières. At five in the evening they were
masters of the Bastille, the Lingerie, and the Blancs-Manteaux; while
their scouts were close to the Place des Victoires and menaced the
Bank, the barracks of the Petits-Pères and the Post-office. One third
of Paris was in the hands of the revolt. On all points the struggle
had begun on a gigantic scale, and the result of the disarmaments,
the domiciliary visits, and the attack on the gunsmiths' shops, was
that the fight which had begun with stone-throwing was continued with
musket-shots.

About six in the evening the Passage du Saumon became the battle-field;
the rioters were at one end and the troops at the other, and they fired
from one gate at the other. An observer, a dreamer, the author of this
book, who had gone to have a near look at the volcano, found himself
caught between two fires in the passage, and had nothing to protect him
from the bullets but the projecting semi-columns which used to separate
the shops; he was nearly half an hour in this delicate position. In
the mean while the tattoo was beaten, the National Guards hurriedly
dressed and armed themselves, the legions issued from the Mayoralty,
and the regiments from the barracks. Opposite the Passage de l'Ancre
a drummer was stabbed; another was attacked in the Rue du Cygne by
thirty young men, who ripped up his drum and took his sabre, while
a third was killed in the Rue Grenier St. Lazare. In the Rue Michel
le Comte three officers fell dead one after the other, and several
municipal guards, wounded in the Rue des Lombards, recoiled. In front
of the Cour Batave, a detachment of National Guards found a red flag,
bearing this inscription, "Republican Revolution, No. 127." Was it
really a revolution? The insurrection had made of the heart of Paris
a sort of inextricable, tortuous, and colossal citadel; there was the
nucleus, there the question would be solved; all the rest was merely
skirmishing. The proof that all would be decided there lay in the fact
that fighting had not yet begun there.

In some regiments the troops were uncertain, which added to the
startling obscurity of the crisis; and they remembered the popular
ovation which, in July, 1830, greeted the neutrality of the 53d line.
Two intrepid men, tried by the great wars, Marshal de Lobau and General
Bugeaud, commanded,--Bugeaud under Lobau. Enormous patrols, composed
of battalions of the line enclosed in entire companies of the National
Guard, and preceded by the Police Commissary in his scarf, went to
reconnoitre the insurgent streets. On their side, the insurgents
posted-vedettes at the corner of the streets, and audaciously sent
patrols beyond the barricades. Both sides were observing each other;
the Government, with an army in its hand, hesitated, night was setting
in, and the tocsin of St. Mary was beginning to be heard. Marshal
Soult, the Minister of War at that day, who had seen Austerlitz,
looked at all this with a gloomy air. These old sailors, habituated
to correct manœuvres, and having no other resource and guide but
tactics, the compass of battles, are completely thrown out when in the
presence of that immense foam which is called the public anger. The
wind of revolutions is not favorable for sailing. The National Guards
of the suburbs ran up hastily and disorderly; a battalion of the 12th
Light Infantry came at the double from St. Denis; the 14th line arrived
from Courbevoie, the batteries of the military school had taken up
position at the Carrousel, and guns were brought in from Vincennes.

Solitude set in at the Tuileries. Louis Philippe was full of serenity.

CHAPTER V.

ORIGINALITY OF PARIS.

During the two past years Paris, as we said, had seen more than one
insurrection. With the exception of the insurgent districts, as a rule,
nothing is more strangely calm than the physiognomy of Paris during
a riot. Paris very soon grows accustomed to everything--it is only a
riot; and Paris has so much to do that it does not put itself out of
the way for such a trifle. These colossal cities alone can offer such
spectacles. These immense enclosures alone can contain simultaneously
civil war and a strange tranquillity. Usually, when the insurrection
begins, when the drum, the tattoo, and the assembly are heard, the
shopkeeper confines himself to saying:

"Ah, there seems to be a row in the Rue St. Martin."

Or,--

"The Faubourg St. Antoine."

And he often adds, negligently,--

"Somewhere over that way."

At a later date, when the heart-rending and mournful sound of musketry
and platoon fire can be distinguished, the shopkeeper says,--

"Bless me, it is growing hot!"

A moment later, if the riot approaches and spreads, he precipitately
closes his shop and puts on his uniform; that is to say, places his
wares in safety, and risks his person. Men shoot themselves on a
square, in a passage, or a blind alley; barricades are taken, lost,
and retaken, blood flows, the grape-shot pockmark the fronts of the
houses, bullets kill people in their beds, and corpses encumber the
pavement. A few yards off you hear the click of the billiard-balls
in the coffee-houses. The theatres open their doors and play farces;
and gossips talk and laugh two yards from these streets full of war.
Hackney coaches roll along, and their fares are going to dine out,
sometimes in the very district where the fighting is. In 1831 a
fusillade was interrupted in order to let a wedding pass. During the
insurrection of May 12, 1839, in the Rue St. Martin, a little old
infirm man, dragging a hand-truck surmounted by a tricolor rag, and
carrying bottles full of some fluid, came and went from the barricade
to the troops, and from the troops to the barricade, impartially
offering glasses of cocoa, first to the Government and then to anarchy.
Nothing can be stranger; and this is the peculiar character of Parisian
riots, which is not found in any other capital, as two things are
required for it,--the grandeur of Paris and its gayety, the city of
Voltaire and of Napoleon. This time, however, in the insurrection of
June 5, 1832, the great city felt something which was perhaps stronger
than itself, and was frightened. Everywhere, in the most remote and
disinterested districts, doors, windows, and shutters were closed in
broad daylight. The courageous armed, the cowardly hid themselves,
and the careless and busy passengers disappeared. Many streets were as
empty as at four in the morning. Alarming details were hawked about,
and fatal news spread,--that _they_ were masters of the Bank; that at
the cloisters of St. Merry alone they were six hundred, intrenched
with loopholes in a church; that the line was not sure; that Armand
Carrel had been to see Marshal Clausel, and the latter said to him,
"Have a regiment first;" that Lafayette, though ill, had said to them,
"I am with you, and will follow you where-ever there is room for a
chair;" that people must be on their guard, for at night burglars
would plunder isolated houses in the deserted corners of Paris (in
this could be recognized the imagination of the police, that Anne
Radcliffe blended with government); that a battery had been established
in the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher; that Lobau and Bugeaud were agreed, and
that at midnight, or at daybreak at the latest, four columns would
march together on the centre of the revolt, the first coming from the
Bastille, the second from the Porte St. Martin, the third from the
Grève, and the fourth from the Halles that perhaps, too, the troops
would evacuate Paris, and retire on the Champ de Mars; that no one knew
what would happen, but this time it was certainly very serious. People
were alarmed too by the hesitation of Marshal Soult; why did he not
attack at once? It is certain that he was greatly absorbed, and the old
lion seemed to scent an unknown monster in the darkness.

Night came, and the theatres were not opened, the patrols went
their rounds with an air of irritation, passers-by were searched,
and suspected persons arrested. At nine o'clock there were more
than eight hundred persons taken up, and the Préfecture of Police,
the Conciergerie, and La Force were crowded. At the Conciergerie,
especially, the long vault called the Rue de Paris was strewn with
trusses of straw, on which lay a pile of prisoners, whom Lagrange, the
man of Lyons, valiantly harangued. All this straw, moved by all these
men, produced the sound of a shower. Elsewhere the prisoners slept in
the open air on lawns; there was anxiety everywhere, and a certain
trembling, not at all usual to Paris. People barricaded themselves in
the houses; wives and mothers were alarmed, and nothing else but this
was heard, "Oh heavens! he has not come in!" Only the rolling of a few
vehicles could be heard in the distance, and people listened in the
doorways to the noises, cries, tumults, and dull, indistinct sounds,
of which they said, "That is the cavalry," or, "It is the galloping of
tumbrils;" to the bugles, the drums, the firing, and before all to the
lamentable tocsin of St. Merry. They waited for the first artillery
round, and men rose at the corner of the streets and disappeared, after
shouting, "Go in." And they hastened to bolt their doors, saying, "How
will it all end?" From moment to moment, as the night became darker,
Paris seemed to be more lugubriously colored by the formidable flashes
of the revolt.

BOOK XI.

THE ATOM FRATERNIZES WITH HURRICANE.

CHAPTER I.

THE ORIGIN OF THE POETRY OF GAVROCHE

AND THE INFLUENCE OF AN ACADEMICIAN UPON IT.

At the moment when the insurrection, breaking out through the collision
between the people and the troops in front of the Arsenal, produced
a retrograde movement in the multitude that followed the hearse, and
which pressed with the whole length of the boulevards upon the head of
the procession, there was a frightful reflux. The ranks were broken,
and all ran or escaped, some with cries of attack, others with the
pallor of flight. The great stream which covered the boulevards divided
in a second, overflowed on the right and left, and spread in torrents
over two hundred streets at once, as if a dyke had burst. At this
moment a ragged lad who was coming down the Rue Ménilmontant, holding
in his hand a branch of flowering laburnum which he had picked on the
heights of Belleville, noticed in the shop of a dealer in bric-à-brac
an old hostler pistol. He threw his branch on the pavement, and
cried,--

"Mother What's-your-name, I'll borrow your machine."

And he ran off with the pistol. Two minutes after, a crowd of
frightened cits, flying through the Rue Amelot and the Rue Basse, met
the lad, who was brandishing his pistol and singing,--

    "La nuit on ne voit rien,
     Le jour on voit très bien,
     D'un écrit apocryphe
     Le bourgeois s'ébouriffe,
     Pratiquez la vertu,
     Tutu, chapeau pointu!"

It was little Gavroche going to the wars; on the boulevard he noticed
that his pistol had no hammer. Who was the composer of this couplet
which served to punctuate his march, and all the other songs which
he was fond of singing when he had a chance? Who knows? Himself,
perhaps. Besides, Gavroche was acquainted with all the popular tunes
in circulation, and mingled with them his own chirping, and, as a
young vagabond, he made a _pot-pourri_ of the voices of nature and
the voices of Paris. He combined, the repertoire of the birds with
that of the studios, and he was acquainted with artists' students, a
tribe contiguous to his own. He had been for three months, it appears,
apprenticed to a painter, and had one day delivered a message for M.
Baour Lormian, one of the Forty; Gavroche was a gamin of letters.

Gavroche did not suspect, by the way, that on that wretched rainy
night, when he offered the hospitality of his elephant to the two boys,
he was performing the offices of Providence to his two brothers. His
brothers in the evening, his father in the morning,--such had been his
night. On leaving the Rue des Ballets at dawn, he hurried back to the
elephant, artistically extracted the two boys, shared with them the
sort of breakfast which he had invented, and then went away, confiding
them to that good mother, the street, who had almost brought himself
up. On leaving them he appointed to meet them on the same spot at
night, and left them this speech as farewell,--"I am going to cut my
stick, otherwise to say, I intend to bolt, or as they say at court, I
shall make myself scarce. My brats, if you do not find papa and mamma,
come here again to-night. I will give you your supper and put you to
bed." The two lads, picked up by some policeman and placed at the
station, or stolen by some mountebank, or simply lost in that Chinese
puzzle, Paris, did not return. The substrata of the existing social
world are full of such lost traces. Gavroche had not seen them again,
and ten or twelve weeks had elapsed since that night. More than once he
had scratched his head and asked himself, "Where the deuce are my two
children?"

He reached the Rue du Pont aux Choux, and noticed that there was only
one shop still open in that street, and it was worthy of reflection
that it was a confectioner's. It was a providential opportunity to eat
one more apple-puff before entering the unknown. Gavroche stopped, felt
in his pockets, turned them inside out, found nothing, not even a sou,
and began shouting, "Help!" It is hard to go without the last cake,
but for all that Gavroche went on his way. Two minutes after he was in
the Rue St. Louis, and on crossing the Rue du Parc Royal he felt the
necessity of compensating himself for the impossible apple-puff, and
gave himself the immense treat of tearing down in open daylight the
play-bills. A little farther on, seeing a party of stout gentry who
appeared to him to be retired from business, he shrugged his shoulders
and spat out this mouthful of philosophic bile,--

"How fat annuitants are! they wallow in good dinners. Ask them what
they do with their money, and they don't know. They eat it, eat their
bellyful."

CHAPTER II.

GAVROCHE ON THE MARCH.

Holding a pistol without a cock in the streets is such a public
function, that Gavroche felt his humor increase at every step. He cried
between the scraps of the Marseillaise which he sang,--

"All goes well. I suffer considerably in my left paw. I have broken my
rheumatism, but I am happy, citizens. The bourgeois have only to hold
firm, and I am going to sing them some subversive couplets. What are
the police? Dogs. Holy Moses! we must not lack respect for the dogs.
Besides, I should be quite willing to have one[1] for my pistol. I have
just come from the boulevard, my friends, where it's getting warm, and
the soup is simmering; it is time to skim the pot. Forward, my men,
and let an impure blood inundate the furrows! I give my days for my
country. I shall not see my concubine again; it's all over. Well, no
matter! Long live joy! Let us fight, crebleu! I have had enough of
despotism!"

At this moment the horse of a lancer in the National Guard, who was
passing, fell. Gavroche laid his pistol on the pavement, helped the
man up, and then helped to raise the horse, after which he picked
up his pistol and went his way again. In the Rue de Thorigny all was
peace and silence; and this apathy, peculiar to the Marais, contrasted
with the vast surrounding turmoil. Four gossips were conversing on
the step of a door; Scotland has trios of witches, but Paris has
quartettes of gossips, and the "Thou shalt be king" would be as
lugubriously cast at Bonaparte at the Baudoyer crossway, as to Macbeth
on the Highland heath,--it would be much the same croak. The gossips
in the Rue Thorigny only troubled themselves about their own affairs;
they were three portresses, and a rag-picker with her dorser and her
hook. They seemed to be standing all four at the four corners of old
age, which are decay, decrepitude, ruin, and sorrow. The rag-picker
was humble, for in this open-air world the rag-picker bows, and the
portress protects. The things thrown into the street are fat and lean,
according to the fancy of the person who makes the pile, and there
may be kindness in the broom. This rag-picker was grateful, and she
smiled,--what a smile!--at the three portresses. They were making
remarks like the following,--

"So your cat is as ill-tempered as ever?"

"Well, good gracious! you know that cats are naturally the enemy of
dogs. It's the dogs that complain."

"And people too."

"And yet cats' fleas do not run after people."

"Dogs are really dangerous. I remember one year when there were so many
dogs that they were obliged to put it in the papers. It was at that
time when there were large sheep at the Tuileries to drag the little
carriage of the King of Rome. Do you remember the King of Rome?"

"I preferred the Duc de Bordeaux."

"Well, I know Louis XVII., and I prefer him."

"How dear meat is, Mame Patagon!"

"Oh, dont talk about it! Butcher's meat is a horror,--a horrible
horror. It is only possible to buy bones now."

Here the rag-picker interposed,--

"Ladies, trade does not go on well at all, and the rubbish is
abominable. People do not throw away anything now, but eat it all."

"There are poorer folk than you, Vargoulême."

"Ah, that's true," the rag-picker replied deferentially, "for I have a
profession."

There was a pause, and the rag-picker, yielding to that need of display
which is at the bottom of the human heart, added,--

"When I go home in the morning I empty out my basket and sort the
articles; that makes piles in my room. I put the rags in a box, the
cabbage-stalks in a tub, the pieces of linen in my cupboard, the
woollen rags in my chest of drawers, old papers on the corner of the
window, things good to eat in my porringer, pieces of glass in the
fire-place, old shoes behind the door, and bones under my bed."

Gavroche had stopped, and was listening.

"Aged dames," he said, "what right have you to talk politics?"

A broadside, composed of a quadruple yell, assailed him.

"There's another of the villains."

"What's that he has in his hand,--a pistol?"

"Just think, that rogue of a boy!"

"They are never quiet unless when they are overthrowing the
authorities."

Gavroche disdainfully limited his reprisals to lifting the tip of his
nose with his thumb, and opening his hand to the full extent. The
rag-picker exclaimed,--

"The barefooted scamp!"

The one who answered to the name of Mame Patagon struck her hands
together with scandal.

"There are going to be misfortunes, that's sure. The young fellow
with the beard round the corner, I used to see him pass every morning
with a girl in a pink bonnet on his arm; but this morning I saw him
pass, and he was giving his arm to a gun. Mame Bacheux says there
was a revolution last week at, at, at, at,--where do the calves come
from?--at Pontoise. And then, just look at this atrocious young
villain's pistol. It seems that the Célestins are full of cannon. What
would you have the Government do with these vagabonds who can only
invent ways to upset the world, after we were beginning to get over all
the misfortunes which fell--good gracious!--on that poor Queen whom I
saw pass in a cart! And all this will raise the price of snuff. It is
infamous, and I will certainly go and see you guillotined, malefactor."

"You snuffle, my aged friend," said Gavroche; "blow your promontory."

And he passed on. When he was in the Rue Pavée his thoughts reverted
to the rag-picker, and he had this soliloquy,--

"You are wrong to insult the revolutionists, Mother Cornerpost. This
pistol is on your behalf, and it is for you to have in your baskets
more things good to eat."

All at once he heard a noise behind; it was the portress Patagon, who
had followed him, and now shook her fist at him, crying,--

"You are nothing but a bastard."

"At that I scoff with all my heart," said Gavroche.

A little later he passed the Hôtel Lamoignon, where he burst into this
appeal,--

"Go on to the battle."

And he was attacked by a fit of melancholy; he regarded his pistol
reproachfully, and said to it,--

"I am going off, but you will not go off."

One dog may distract another;[2] a very thin whelp passed, and Gavroche
felt pity for it.

"My poor little creature," he said to it, "you must have swallowed a
barrel, as you show all the hoops."

Then he proceeded toward the Orme St. Gervais.

[1] The hammer of a pistol is called a dog in France.

[2] Another allusion to the hammer (chien) of the pistol.

CHAPTER III.

JUST INDIGNATION OF A BARBER.

The worthy barber who had turned out the two children for whom Gavroche
had opened the elephant's paternal intestines, was at this moment in
his shop, engaged in shaving an old legionary who had served under
the Empire. The barber had naturally spoken to the veteran about the
riot, then about General Lamarque, and from Lamarque they had come to
the Emperor. Hence arose a conversation between the barber and the
soldier which Prudhomme, had he been present, would have enriched with
arabesques, and entitled, "A dialogue between a razor and a sabre."

"How did the Emperor ride, sir?" the barber asked.

"Badly. He did not know how to fall off, and so he never fell off."

"Had he fine horses? He must have had fine horses!"

"On the day when he gave me the cross I noticed his beast. It was a
white mare. It had its ears very far apart, a deep saddle, a fine head
marked with a black star, a very long neck, prominent knees, projecting
flanks, oblique shoulders, and a strong crupper. It was a little above
fifteen hands high."

"A fine horse," said the barber.

"It was His Majesty's beast."

The barber felt that after this remark a little silence was befitting;
then he went on,--

"The Emperor was wounded only once, I believe, sir?"

The old soldier replied, with the calm and sovereign accent of the man
who has felt wounds,--

"In the heel, at Ratisbon. I never saw him so well dressed as on that
day. He was as clean as a halfpenny."

"And you, sir, I suppose, have received sword-wounds?"

"I," said the soldier; "oh, a mere flea-bite. I received two sabre-cuts
on my neck at Marengo; I got a bullet in my right arm at Jena, another
in the left hip at Jena; at Friedland a bayonet-thrust,--there; at the
Muskowa seven or eight lance-prods, never mind where; at Lützen, a
piece of shell carried off a finger, and--oh, yes! at Waterloo a bullet
from a case-shot in my thigh. That's all."

"How glorious it is," the barber exclaimed, with a Pindaric accent, "to
die on the battle-field! On my word of honor, sooner than die on a bed
of disease, slowly, a bit every day, with drugs, cataplasms, clysters,
and medicine, I would sooner have a cannon-ball in my stomach!"

"And you're right," said the soldier. He had scarce ended ere a
frightful noise shook the shop; a great pane of glass was suddenly
smashed, and the barber turned livid.

"Good Lord!" he cried, "it is one."

"What?"

"A cannon-ball."

"Here it is."

And he picked up something which was rolling on the ground; it was a
pebble. The barber ran to his broken pane, and saw Gavroche flying
at full speed towards the Marché St. Jean. On passing the barber's
shop Gavroche, who had the two lads at his heart, could not resist
the desire of wishing him good-evening, and threw a stone through his
window.

"Just look," the barber yelled, who had become blue instead of livid,
"he does harm for harm's sake. What had I done to that villain?"

CHAPTER IV.

THE CHILD ASTONISHES THE OLD MAN.

On reaching St. Jean market, the post at which had been disarmed
already, Gavroche proceeded "to effect his junction" with a band led
by Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Combeferre, and Feuilly. They were all more
or less armed, and Bahorel and Prouvaire had joined them, and swelled
the group. Enjolras had a double-barrelled fowling-piece, Combeferre
a National Guard's musket bearing the number of a legion, and in his
waist-belt two pistols, which his unbuttoned coat allowed to be seen;
Jean Prouvaire an old cavalry carbine, and Bahorel a rifle; Courfeyrac
brandished a sword drawn from a cane, while Feuilly with a naked sabre
in his hand walked along shouting. "Long live Poland! They reached the
Quai Morland without neck-cloths or hats, panting for breath, drenched
with rain, but with lightning in their eyes. Gavroche calmly approached
them,--

"Where are we going?"

"Come," said Courfeyrac.

Behind Feuilly marched or rather bounded Bahorel, a fish in the water
of revolt. He had a crimson waistcoat, and uttered words which smash
everything. His waistcoat upset a passer-by, who cried wildly, "Here
are the reds!"

"The reds, the reds!" Bahorel answered; "that's a funny fear, citizen.
For my part, I do not tremble at a poppy, and the little red cap does
not inspire me with any terror. Citizen, believe me, we had better
leave a fear of the red to horned cattle."

He noticed a corner wall, on which was placarded the most peaceful
piece of paper in the world, a permission to eat eggs, a Lent
mandamus addressed by the Archbishop of Paris to his "flock." Bahorel
exclaimed,--

"A flock! a polite way of saying geese." And he tore the paper down.
This conquered Gavroche, and from this moment he began studying Bahorel.

"Bahorel," Enjolras observed, "you are wrong; you should have left
that order alone, for we have nothing to do with it, and you uselessly
expended your anger. Keep your stock by you; a man does not fire out of
the ranks any more with his mind than with his gun."

"Every man has his own way, Enjolras," Bahorel replied; "the bishop's
prose offends me, and I insist on eating eggs without receiving
permission to do so. Yours is the cold burning style, while I amuse
myself; moreover, I am not expending myself, but getting the steam up,
and if I tore that order down, Hercle! it is to give me an appetite."

This word _hercle_ struck Gavroche, for he sought every opportunity of
instructing himself, and this tearing down of posters possessed his
esteem. Hence he asked,--

"What's the meaning of _hercle?_"

Bahorel answered,--

"It means cursed name of a dog in latin."

Here Bahorel noticed at a window a pale young man, with a black beard,
who was watching them pass, probably a Friend of the A. B. C He shouted
to him,--

"Quick with the cartridges, _para bellum!_"

"A handsome man [bel homme], that's true," said Gavroche, who now
comprehended Latin.

A tumultuous crowd accompanied them,--students, artists, young men
affiliated to the Cougourde of Aix, artisans, and lightermen, armed
with sticks and bayonets, and some, like Combeferre, with pistols
passed through their trouser-belt. An old man, who appeared very aged,
marched in this band; he had no weapon, and hurried on, that he might
not be left behind, though he looked thoughtful. Gavroche perceived him.

"Keksekça?" said he to Courfeyrac.

"That is an antique."

It was M. Mabœuf.

CHAPTER V.

THE OLD MAN.

We will tell what had occurred. Enjolras and his friends were on the
Bourdon Boulevard near the granaries at the moment when the dragoons
charged, and Enjolras, Courfeyrac, and Combeferre were among those
who turned into the Rue Bassompierre shouting, "To the barricades!"
In the Rue Lesdiguières they met an old man walking along, and what
attracted their attention was, that he was moving very irregularly,
as if intoxicated. Moreover, he had his hat in his hand, although it
had rained the whole morning, and was raining rather hard at that
very moment. Courfeyrac recognized Father Mabœuf, whom he knew
through having accompanied Marius sometimes as far as his door.
Knowing the peaceful and more than timid habits of the churchwarden
and bibliomaniac, and stupefied at seeing him in the midst of the
tumult, within two yards of cavalry charges, almost in the midst of the
musketry fire, bareheaded in the rain, and walking about among bullets,
he accosted him, and the rebel of five-and-twenty and the octogenarian
exchanged this dialogue:--

"Monsieur Mabœuf, you had better go home."

"Why so?"

"There is going to be a row."

"Very good."

"Sabre-cuts and shots, Monsieur Mabœuf."

"Very good."

"Cannon-shots."

"Very good. Where are you gentlemen going?"

"To upset the Government."

"Very good."

And he began following them, but since that moment had not said a word.
His step had become suddenly firm, and when workmen offered him an arm,
he declined it with a shake of the head. He walked almost at the head
of the column, having at once the command of a man who is marching and
the face of a man who is asleep.

"What a determined old fellow!" the students muttered; and the rumor
ran along the party that he was an ex-conventionalist, an old regicide.
The band turn into the Rue de la Verrerie, and little Gavroche marched
at the head, singing at the top of his voice, which made him resemble a
bugler. He sang:--

            "Voici la lune qui paraît,
              Quand irons-nous dans la forêt?
              Demandait Charlot à Charlotte.

                   "Tou tou tou
                    Pour Chatou.
Je n'ai qu'un Dieu, qu'un roi, qu'un liard et qu'une botte.

            "Pour avoir bu de grand matin
             La rosée à même le thym,
             Deux moineaux étaient en ribotte.

                   "Zi zi zi
                    Pour Passy.
Je n'ai qu'un Dieu, qu'un roi, qu'un liard et qu'une botte.

            "Et ces deux pauvres petits loups,
             Comme deux grives étaient soûls;
             Un tigre en riait dans sa grotte.

                   "Don don don
                    Pour Meudon.
Je n'ai qu'un Dieu, qu'un roi, qu'un liard et qu'une botte.

            "L'un jurait et l'autre sacrait,
             Quand irons-nous dans la forêt?
             Demandait Charlot à Charlotte.

                   "Tin tin tin
                    Pour Pantin.
Je n'ai qu'un Dieu, qu'un roi, qu'un liard et qu'une botte."

They proceeded towards St. Merry.

CHAPTER VI.

RECRUITS.

The band swelled every moment, and near the Rue des Billettes, a tall,
grayish-haired man, whose rough bold face Courfeyrac, Enjolras, and
Combeferre noticed, though not one of them knew him, joined them.
Gavroche, busy singing, whistling, and shouting, and rapping the
window-shutters with his pistol-butt, paid no attention to this man.
As they went through the Rue de la Verrerie they happened to pass
Courfeyrac's door.

"That's lucky," said Courfeyrac, "for I have forgotten my purse and
lost my hat."

He left the band and bounded up-stairs, where he put on an old hat and
put his purse in his pocket. He also took up a large square box of the
size of a portmanteau, which was concealed among his dirty linen. As he
was running down-stairs again his portress hailed him.

"Monsieur de Courfeyrac!"

"Portress, what is your name?" Courfeyrac retorted.

She stood in stupefaction.

"Why, you know very well, sir, that my name is Mother Veuvain."

"Well, then, if ever you call me M. de Courfeyrac again I shall call
you Mother de Veuvain. Now speak; what is it?"

"Some one wishes to speak to you."

"Who is it?"

"I don't know."

"Where is he?"

"In my lodge."

"Oh, the devil!" said Courfeyrac.

"Why! he has been waiting for more than an hour for you to come in."

At the same time a species of young workman, thin, livid, small,
marked with freckles, dressed in an old blouse and a pair of patched
cotton-velvet trousers, who looked more like a girl attired as a boy
than a man, stepped out of the lodge and said to Courfeyrac in a voice
which was not the least in the world a feminine voice,--

"Monsieur Marius, if you please?"

"He is not here."

"Will he come in to-night?"

"I do not know."

And Courfeyrac added, "I shall not be in to-night."

The young man looked at him intently and asked,--

"Why not?"

"Because I shall not."

"Where are you going?"

"How does that concern you?"

"Shall I carry your chest for you?"

"I am going to the barricades."

"May I go with you?"

"If you like," Courfeyrac replied; "the street is free, and the
pavement belongs to everybody."

And he ran off to join his friends again; when he had done so, he gave
one of them the box to carry, and it was not till a quarter of an hour
after that he noticed that the young man was really following them. A
mob does not go exactly where it wishes, and we have explained that a
puff of wind directs it. They passed St. Merry, and found themselves,
without knowing exactly why, in the Rue St. Denis.

BOOK XII.

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.

BOOK XIII.

MARIUS ENTERS THE SHADOW.

CHAPTER I.

FROM THE RUE PLUMET TO THE QUARTIER ST. DENIS.

The voice which summoned Marius through the twilight to the barricade
in the Rue de la Chanvrerie had produced on him the effect of the voice
of destiny. He wished to die, and the opportunity offered; he rapped
at the door of the tomb, and a hand held out the key to him from the
shadows. Such gloomy openings in the darkness just in front of despair
are tempting; Marius removed the bar which had so often allowed him to
pass, left the garden, and said, "I will go." Mad with grief, feeling
nothing fixed and solid in his brain, incapable of accepting anything
henceforth of destiny, after the two months spent in the intoxication
of youth and love, and crushed by all the reveries of despair at once,
he had only one wish left,--to finish with it all at once. He began
walking rapidly, and he happened to be armed, as he had Javert's
pistols in his pocket. The young man whom he fancied that he had seen
had got out of his sight in the streets.

Marius, who left the Rue Plumet by the boulevard, crossed the esplanade
and bridge of the Invalides, the Champs Élysées, the square of Louis
XV., and reached the Rue de Rivoli. The shops were open there, the gas
blazed under the arcades, ladies were making purchases, and people were
eating ices at the Café Laiter and cakes at the English pastry-cook's.
A few post-chaises, however, were leaving at a gallop the Hôtel des
Princes and Meurice's. Marius entered the Rue St. Honoré by the passage
Delorme. The shops were closed there, the tradesmen were conversing
before their open doors, people walked along, the lamps were lighted,
and from the first-floor upwards the houses were illumined as usual.
Cavalry were stationed on the square of the Palais Royal. Marius
followed the Rue St. Honoré, and the farther he got from the Palais
Royal the fewer windows were lit up; the shops were entirely closed,
nobody was conversing on the thresholds, the street grew darker, and
at the same time the crowd denser, for the passers-by had now become a
crowd. No one could be heard speaking in the crowd, and yet a hollow,
deep buzzing issued from it. Near the Fountain of Arbre Sec there were
motionless mobs, and sombre groups standing among the comers and goers
like stones in the middle of a running stream. At the entrance of the
Rue des Prouvaires, the crowd no longer moved; it was a resisting,
solid, compact, almost impenetrable mob of persons packed together
and conversing in a low voice. There were hardly any black coats or
round hats present, only fustian jackets, blouses, caps, and bristling
beards. This multitude undulated confusedly in the night mist and
its whispering had the hoarse accent of a rustling; and though no one
moved, a tramping in the mud could be heard. Beyond this dense crowd
there was not a window lit up in the surrounding streets, and the
solitary and decreasing rows of lanterns could only be seen in them.
The street-lanterns of that day resembled large red stars suspended
from ropes, and cast on to the pavement a shadow which had the shape of
a large spider. These streets, however, were not deserted, and piled
muskets, moving bayonets, and troops bivouacking could be distinguished
in them. No curious person went beyond this limit, and circulation
ceased there; there the mob ended and the army began.

Marius wished with the will of a man who no longer hopes; he had been
summoned and was bound to go. He found means to traverse the crowd
and bivouacking troops; he hid himself from the patrols and avoided
the sentries. He made a circuit, came to the Rue de Béthisy, and
proceeded in the direction of the markets; at the corner of the Rue
des Bourdonnais the lanterns ceased. After crossing the zone of the
mob he passed the border of troops, and now found himself in something
frightful. There was not a wayfarer, nor a soldier, nor a light,
nothing but solitude, silence, and night, and a strangely-piercing
cold; entering a street was like entering a cellar. Still he continued
to advance: Some one ran close past him: was it a man?--a woman? Were
there more than one? He could not have said, for it had passed and
vanished. By constant circuits he reached a lane, which he judged
to be the Rue de la Poterie, and toward the middle of that lane came
across an obstacle. He stretched out his hands and found that it was
an overturned cart, and his feet recognized pools of water, holes,
scattered and piled-up paving-stones; it was a barricade which had
been begun and then abandoned. He clambered over the stones and soon
found himself on the other side of the obstacle; he walked very close
to the posts, and felt his way along the house walls. A little beyond
the barricade he fancied that he could see something white before him,
and on drawing nearer it assumed a form. It was a pair of white horses,
the omnibus horses unharnessed by Bossuet in the morning, which had
wandered, haphazard, from street to street all day, and at last stopped
here, with the stolid patience of animals which no more comprehend the
actions of man than man comprehends the actions of Providence. Marius
left the horses behind him, and as he entered a street which seemed to
be the Rue du Contrat Social, a musket-shot, which came no one could
say whence, and traversed the darkness at hazard, whizzed close past
him, and pierced above his head a copper shaving-dish, hanging from a
hair-dresser's shop. In 1846 this dish with the hole in it was still
visible at the corner of the pillars of the markets. This shot was
still life, but from this moment nothing further occurred; the whole
itinerary resembled a descent down black steps, but for all that Marius
did not the less advance.

CHAPTER II.

AN OWL'S-EYE VIEW OF PARIS.

Any being hovering over Paris at this moment, with the wings of a
bat or an owl, would have had a gloomy spectacle under his eyes. The
entire old district of the markets, which is like a city within a
city, which is traversed by the Rues St. Denis and St. Martin, and by
a thousand lanes which the insurgents had converted into their redoubt
and arsenal, would have appeared like an enormous black hole dug in
the centre of Paris. Here the eye settled on an abyss, and, owing to
the broken lamps and the closed shutters, all brilliancy, life, noise,
and movement had ceased in it. The invisible police of the revolt were
watching everywhere and maintaining order, that is to say, night.
To hide the small number in a vast obscurity, and to multiply each
combatant by the possibilities which this obscurity contains, this is
the necessary tactics of insurrection, and at nightfall every window in
which a candle gleamed received a bullet; the light was extinguished,
and sometimes the occupant killed. Hence, nothing stirred; there was
nought but terror, mourning, and stupor in the houses, and in the
streets a sort of sacred horror. Not even the long rows of windows and
floors, the network of chimneys and roofs, and the vague reflections
which glisten on the muddy and damp pavement, could be perceived. The
eye which had looked down from above on this mass of shadow might
perhaps have noticed here and there indistinct gleams, which made the
broken and strange lines, and the profile of singular buildings, stand
out, something like flashes flitting through ruins; at such spots were
the barricades. The rest was a lake of darkness and mystery, oppressive
and funereal, above which motionless and mournful outlines rose,--the
Tower of St. Jacques, St. Merry church, and two or three other of those
grand edifices of which man makes giants and night phantoms. All around
this deserted and alarming labyrinth, in those districts where the
circulation of Paris was not stopped, and where a few lamps glistened,
the aerial observer would have distinguished the metallic scintillation
of bayonets, the dull rolling of artillery, and the buzz of silent
battalions which was augmented every moment; it was a formidable belt,
slowly contracting and closing in on the revolt.

The invested district was now but a species of monstrous cavern;
everything seemed there asleep or motionless, and, as we have seen,
each of the streets by which it could be approached only offered
darkness. It was a stern darkness, full of snares, full of unknown and
formidable collisions, into which it was terrifying to penetrate and
horrible to remain, where those who entered shuddered before those who
awaited them, and those who awaited shuddered before those who were
about to come. Invisible combatants were intrenched at the corner
of every street, like sepulchral traps hidden in the thickness of
the night. It was all over; no other light could be hoped for there
henceforth save the flash of musketry, no other meeting than the sudden
and rapid apparition of death. Where, how, when, they did not know,
but it was certain and inevitable: there, in the spot marked out for
the contest, the Government and the insurrection, the National Guards
and the popular society, the bourgeoisie and the rioters, were about
to grope their way toward one another. There was the same necessity
for both sides, and the only issue henceforth possible was to be
killed or conquer. It was such an extreme situation, such a powerful
obscurity, that the most timid felt resolute and the most daring
terrified. On both sides, however, there was equal fury, obstinacy,
and determination; on one side advancing was death, and no one dreamed
of recoiling; on the other, remaining was death, and no one thought of
flying. It was necessary that all should be over by the morrow, that
the victory should be with one side or the other, and the insurrection
either become a revolution or a riot. The Government understood this
as well as the partisans, and the smallest tradesman felt it. Hence
came an agonizing thought with the impenetrable gloom of this district,
where all was about to be decided; hence came a redoubled anxiety
around this silence, whence a catastrophe was going to issue. Only one
sound could be heard,--a sound as heart-rending as a death-rattle and
as menacing as a male-diction, the tocsin of St. Merry. Nothing could
be so chilling as the clamor of this distracted and despairing bell as
it lamented in the darkness.

As often happens, nature seemed to have come to an understanding with
what men were going to do, and nothing deranged the mournful harmonies
of the whole scene. The stars had disappeared, and heavy clouds filled
the entire horizon with their melancholy masses. There was a black
sky over these dead streets, as if an intense pall were cast over
the immense tomb. While a thoroughly political battle was preparing
on the same site which had already witnessed so many revolutionary
events,--while the youth, the secret associations, and the schools
in the name of principles, and the middle classes in the name of
interests, were coming together to try a final fall,--while everybody
was hurrying up and appealing to the last and decisive hour of the
crisis, in the distance and beyond that fatal district, at the lowest
depths of the unfathomable cavities of that old wretched Paris which is
disappearing under the splendor of happy and opulent Paris, the gloomy
voice of the people could be heard hoarsely growling. It is a startling
and sacred voice, composed of the yell of the brute and the word of
God, which terrifies the weak and warns the wise, and which at once
comes from below like the voice of the lion, and from above like the
voice of thunder.

CHAPTER III.

THE EXTREME BRINK.

Marius had reached the markets; there all was calmer, darker, and even
more motionless than in the neighboring streets. It seemed as if the
frozen peace of the tomb had issued from the ground and spread over
the sky. A ruddy tinge, however, brought out from the black background
the tall roofs of the houses which barred the Rue de la Chanvrerie on
the side of St. Eustache. It was the reflection of the torch burning
on the Corinth barricade, and Marius walked toward that ruddy hue;
it led him to the Marché aux Poirées, and he caught a glimpse of the
Rue des Prêcheurs, into which he turned. The sentry of the insurgents
watching at the other end did not notice him; he felt himself quite
close to what he was seeking, and he walked on tiptoe. He thus reached
the corner of that short piece of the Mondétour lane which was, as will
be remembered, the sole communication which Enjolras had maintained
with the outer world. At the corner of the last house on his left he
stopped and peeped into the lane. A little beyond the dark corner
formed by the lane and the Rue de la Chanvrerie, which formed a large
patch of shadow in which he was himself buried, he noticed a little
light on the pavement, a portion of a wine-shop, a lamp flickering in
a sort of shapeless niche, and men crouching down with guns on their
knees,--all this was scarce ten yards from him, and was the interior of
the barricade. The houses that lined the right-hand side of the lane
hid from him the rest of the wine-shop, the large barricade, and the
flag. Marius had but one step to take, and then the unhappy young man
sat down on a post, folded his arms, and thought of his father.

He thought of that heroic Colonel Pontmercy, who had been such a proud
soldier, who had defended under the Republic the frontier of France,
and touched under the Empire the frontier of Asia; who had seen Genoa,
Alexandria, Milan, Turin, Madrid, Vienna, Dresden, Berlin, and Moscow;
who had left on all the victorious battle-fields of Europe drops of the
same blood which Marius had in his veins; who had grown gray before age
in discipline and command; who had lived with his waist-belt buckled,
his epaulettes falling on his chest, his cockade blackened by smoke,
his brow wrinkled by his helmet, in barracks, in camp, in bivouacs, and
in hospitals, and who, at the expiration of twenty years, had returned
from the great wars with his scarred cheek and smiling face, simple,
tranquil, admirable, pure as an infant, having done everything for
France and nothing against her. He said to himself that his own day
had now arrived, that his hour had at length struck, that after his
father he too was going to be brave, intrepid, and bold, to rush to
meet bullets, offer his chest to the bayonets, shed his blood, seek
the enemy, seek death; that he in his turn was about to wage war and
go into the battle-field, and that the battle he would enter was the
street, and the war he was about to wage civil war! He saw civil war
opening like a gulf before him, and that he was going to fell into it;
then he shuddered.

He thought of his fathers sword, which his grandfather had sold to the
old-clothes dealer, and which he had so painfully regretted. He said
to himself that this valiant and chaste sword had done well to escape
from him, and disappear angrily in the darkness; that it fled away thus
because it was intelligent, and foresaw the future,--the riots, the war
of gutters, the war of paving-stones, fusillades from cellar-traps,
and blows dealt and received from behind; that, coming from Marengo
and Austerlitz, it was unwilling to go to the Rue de la Chanvrerie,
and after what it had done with the father refused to do that with the
son! He said to himself that if that sword had been here, if, after
receiving it at his dead fathers bedside, he had dared to take it, and
carry it into this nocturnal combat between Frenchmen in the streets,
it would assuredly have burned his hands, and have flashed before
him like the glaive of the archangel! He said to himself that it was
fortunate it was not there, but had disappeared,--that this was well,
this was just, that his grandfather had been the true guardian of his
fathers glory, and that it was better for the Colonel's sword to have
been put up to auction, sold to the second-hand dealer, or broken up
as old iron, than come to-day to make the flank of the country bleed.
And then he began weeping bitterly. It was horrible, but what was he
to do? He could not live without Cosette, and since she had departed
all left him was to die. Had he not pledged her his word of honor that
he would die? She had gone away knowing this, and it was plain that
she was pleased with Marius's dying; and then it was clear that she no
longer loved him, since she had gone away thus without warning him,
without a word, without a letter, and yet she knew his address! Of what
use was it to live; and why should he live now? And then, to have come
so far and then recoil! to have approached the danger and run away!
to have come to look at the barricade and then slip off! to slip off,
trembling and saying, "After all, I have had enough of that I have seen
it, that is sufficient; it is civil war, and I will be off!" To abandon
his friends who expected him, who perhaps had need of him, who were a
handful against an army! To be false to everything at once,--to love,
to friendship, to his word! to give his poltroonery the pretext of
patriotism! Oh, that was impossible, and if his father's phantom were
there in the shadows, and saw him recoil, it would lash him with the
flat of its sabre, and cry to him, "Forward, coward!"

A prey to this oscillation of his thoughts, he hung his head, but
suddenly raised it again, for a species of splendid rectification
had just taken place in his mind. There is a dilation of thought
peculiar to the vicinity of the tomb; and to be near death makes
a man see correctly. The vision of the action upon which he saw
himself perhaps on the point of entering, no longer appeared to him
lamentable, but superb; the street was become transfigured by some
internal labor of the soul before his mental eye. All the tumultuous
notes of interrogation of reverie crowded back upon him, but without
troubling him, and he did not leave a single one unanswered. Why would
his father be indignant? Are there not cases in which; insurrection
attains to the dignity of duty? What was there degrading for the son
of Colonel Pontmercy in the combat which was about to begin? It is no
longer Montmirail or Champaubert, it is something else; it is no longer
a question of a sacred territory, but of a holy idea. The country
complains; be it so, but humanity applauds. Is it true, besides, that
the country complains? France bleeds, but liberty smiles, and on seeing
the smile of liberty France forgets her wound. And then, regarding
things from a higher point still, what did people mean by talking of a
civil war?

What is the meaning of civil war? Is there such a thing as a foreign
war? Is not every war between men a war between brothers? War can only
be qualified by its object, and there is neither foreign war nor civil
war, there is only just or unjust war. Up to the day when the great
human concordat is concluded, war, at least that which is the effort
of the hurrying future against the laggard past, may be necessary.
What reproach can be urged against such a war? War does not become a
disgrace, or the sword a dagger, until it assassinates right, progress,
reason, civilization, and truth. In such a case, whether civil war
or foreign war, it is iniquitous, and is called crime. Beyond that
holy thing justice, what right would one form of war have to despise
another? By what right would the sword of Washington ignore the pike of
Camille Desmoulins? Which is the greater, Leonidas contending against
the foreigner, or Timoleon against the tyrant? One is the defender,
the other is the liberator. Must we brand, without investigating the
object, every taking up of arms in the interior of a city? If so, mark
with contumely Brutus, Marcel, Arnould of Blankenheim, and Coligny. A
war of thickets--a street war? Why not? Such was the war of Ambiorix,
of Artevelde, of Marnix, and Pelagius. But Ambiorix struggled against
Rome, Artevelde against France, Marnix against Spain, and Pelagius
against the Moors,--all against the foreigner. Well, monarchy is the
foreigner, oppression is the foreigner, divine right is the foreigner,
and despotism violates the moral frontier as invasion does the
geographical frontier. Expelling the tyrant or expelling the English
is, in either case, a reconquest of territory. An hour arrives when a
protest is insufficient; after philosophy, action is needed; living
strength completes what the idea has sketched out: Prometheus vinctus
begins, Aristogiton ends, the Encyclopædia enlightens minds, and August
10 electrifies them. After Æschylus, Thrasybulus; after Diderot,
Danton. Multitudes have a tendency to accept the master, and their mass
deposits apathy. A crowd is easily led into habits of obedience. These
must be stirred up, impelled, and roughly treated by the very blessing
of their deliverance, their eyes be hurt by the truth, and light
hurled at them in terrible handfuls. They must themselves be to some
extent thunderstruck by their own salvation, for such a dazzling awakes
them. Hence comes the necessity of tocsins and wars: it is necessary
that great combatants should rise, illumine nations by audacity, and
shake up that sorry humanity over which divine right, Cæsarian glory,
strength, fanaticism, irresponsible power, and absolute majesties
cast a shadow,--a mob stupidly occupied in contemplating these gloomy
triumphs of the night in their crepuscular splendor. But what? Whom
are you talking of? Do you call Louis Philippe the tyrant? No; no more
than Louis XVI. These are both what history is accustomed to call
good kings; but principles cannot be broken up, the logic of truth is
rectilinear, and its peculiarity to be deficient in complaining. No
concession therefore; every encroachment on man must be repressed:
there is the right divine in Louis XVI., there is the "because a
Bourbon" in Louis Philippe; both represent to a certain extent the
confiscation of right, and they must be combated in order to sweep away
universal usurpation; it must be so, for France is always the one who
begins, and when the master falls in France he falls everywhere. In a
word, what cause is more just, and consequently what war is greater,
than to re-establish social truth, give back its throne to liberty,
restore the people to the people and the sovereignty to man, to replace
the crown on the head of France, to restore reason and equity in
their plenitude, to suppress every germ of antagonism by giving back
individuality, to annihilate the obstacle which the royalty offers to
the immense human concord, and to place the human race once again on a
level with right? Such wars construct peace. An enormous fortalice of
prejudice, privileges, superstitions, falsehoods, exactions, abuses,
violences, iniquities, and darknesses, is still standing on the
earth with its towers of hatred, and it must be thrown down, and the
monstrous mass crumble away. To conquer at Austerlitz is great, but to
take the Bastille is immense.

No one but will have noticed in himself that the mind--and this is the
marvel of its unity complicated with ubiquity--has the strange aptitude
of reasoning almost coldly in the most violent extremities, and it
often happens that weird passions and deep despair, in the very agony
of their blackest soliloquies, handle subjects and discuss theses.
Logic is mingled with the convulsion, and the thread of syllogism runs
without breaking through the storm of the thoughts: such was Marius's
state of mind. While thinking thus, crushed but resolute, and yet
hesitating and shuddering at what he was going to do, his eyes wandered
about the interior of the barricade. The insurgents were conversing
in whispers, without moving, and that almost silence which marks the
last phase of expectation was perceptible. Above them, at a third-floor
window, Marius distinguished a species of spectator or of witness who
seemed singularly attentive; it was the porter killed by Le Cabuc. From
below, this head could be vaguely perceived in the reflection of the
torch burning on the barricade, and nothing was stranger in this dense
and vacillating light than this motionless, livid, and amazed face,
with its bristling hair, open and fixed eyes, and gaping mouth, bending
over the street in an attitude of curiosity. It might be said that this
dead man was contemplating those who were going to die. A long stream
of blood, which had flowed from his head, descended from the window to
the first-floor, where it stopped.

BOOK XIV.

THE GRANDEUR OF DESPAIR.

CHAPTER I.

THE FLAG: ACT FIRST.

Nothing came yet: it had struck ten by St. Merry's, and Enjolras and
Combeferre were sitting musket in hand near the sally-port of the great
barricade. They did not speak, but were listening, trying to catch the
dullest and most remote sound of marching. Suddenly, in the midst of
this lugubrious calm, a clear, young, gay voice, which seemed to come
from the Rue St. Denis, burst forth, and began singing distinctly, to
the old popular tune of "Au clair de la lune," these lines, terminating
with a cry that resembled a cock-crow:--

    "Mon nez est en larmes,
     Mon ami Bugeaud,
     Prêt'-moi tes gendarmes
     Pour leur dire un mot.
     En capote bleue,
     La poule au shako,
     Voici la banlieue!
     Co-cocorico!"

They shook hands.

"'T is Gavroche," said Enjolras.

"He is warning us," said Combeferre.

Hurried footsteps troubled the deserted streets, and a being more
active than a clown was seen climbing over the omnibus, and Gavroche