Les Misérables
containing a bullet-mould, a wooden punch for the preparation of
cartridges, a wooden bowl, in which there were grains of
hunting-powder, and a little cast-iron pot whose interior presented
evident traces of melted lead.
Police agents, making their way suddenly and unexpectedly at five
o’clock in the morning, into the dwelling of a certain Pardon, who was
afterwards a member of the Barricade-Merry section and got himself
killed in the insurrection of April, 1834, found him standing near his
bed, and holding in his hand some cartridges which he was in the act of
preparing.
Towards the hour when workingmen repose, two men were seen to meet
between the Barrière Picpus and the Barrière Charenton in a little lane
between two walls, near a wine-shop, in front of which there was a “Jeu
de Siam.”33 One drew a pistol from beneath his blouse and handed it to
the other. As he was handing it to him, he noticed that the
perspiration of his chest had made the powder damp. He primed the
pistol and added more powder to what was already in the pan. Then the
two men parted.
A certain Gallais, afterwards killed in the Rue Beaubourg in the affair
of April, boasted of having in his house seven hundred cartridges and
twenty-four flints.
The government one day received a warning that arms and two hundred
thousand cartridges had just been distributed in the faubourg. On the
following week thirty thousand cartridges were distributed. The
remarkable point about it was, that the police were not able to seize a
single one.
An intercepted letter read: “The day is not far distant when, within
four hours by the clock, eighty thousand patriots will be under arms.”
All this fermentation was public, one might almost say tranquil. The
approaching insurrection was preparing its storm calmly in the face of
the government. No singularity was lacking to this still subterranean
crisis, which was already perceptible. The bourgeois talked peaceably
to the working-classes of what was in preparation. They said: “How is
the rising coming along?” in the same tone in which they would have
said: “How is your wife?”
A furniture-dealer, of the Rue Moreau, inquired: “Well, when are you
going to make the attack?”
Another shop-keeper said:—
“The attack will be made soon.”
“I know it. A month ago, there were fifteen thousand of you, now there
are twenty-five thousand.” He offered his gun, and a neighbor offered a
small pistol which he was willing to sell for seven francs.
Moreover, the revolutionary fever was growing. Not a point in Paris nor
in France was exempt from it. The artery was beating everywhere. Like
those membranes which arise from certain inflammations and form in the
human body, the network of secret societies began to spread all over
the country. From the associations of the Friends of the People, which
was at the same time public and secret, sprang the Society of the
Rights of Man, which also dated from one of the orders of the day:
_Pluviôse, Year 40 of the republican era_, which was destined to
survive even the mandate of the Court of Assizes which pronounced its
dissolution, and which did not hesitate to bestow on its sections
significant names like the following:—
Pikes.
Tocsin.
Signal cannon.
Phrygian cap.
January 21.
The beggars.
The vagabonds.
Forward march.
Robespierre.
Level.
Ça Ira.
The Society of the Rights of Man engendered the Society of Action.
These were impatient individuals who broke away and hastened ahead.
Other associations sought to recruit themselves from the great mother
societies. The members of sections complained that they were torn
asunder. Thus, the Gallic Society, and the committee of organization of
the Municipalities. Thus the associations for the liberty of the press,
for individual liberty, for the instruction of the people against
indirect taxes. Then the Society of Equal Workingmen which was divided
into three fractions, the levellers, the communists, the reformers.
Then the Army of the Bastilles, a sort of cohort organized on a
military footing, four men commanded by a corporal, ten by a sergeant,
twenty by a sub-lieutenant, forty by a lieutenant; there were never
more than five men who knew each other. Creation where precaution is
combined with audacity and which seemed stamped with the genius of
Venice.
The central committee, which was at the head, had two arms, the Society
of Action, and the Army of the Bastilles.
A legitimist association, the Chevaliers of Fidelity, stirred about
among these the republican affiliations. It was denounced and
repudiated there.
The Parisian societies had ramifications in the principal cities,
Lyons, Nantes, Lille, Marseilles, and each had its Society of the
Rights of Man, the Charbonnière, and The Free Men. All had a
revolutionary society which was called the Cougourde. We have already
mentioned this word.
In Paris, the Faubourg Saint-Marceau kept up an equal buzzing with the
Faubourg Saint-Antoine, and the schools were no less moved than the
faubourgs. A café in the Rue Saint-Hyacinthe and the wine-shop of the
_Seven Billiards_, Rue des Mathurins-Saint-Jacques, served as rallying
points for the students. The Society of the Friends of the A B C
affiliated to the Mutualists of Angers, and to the Cougourde of Aix,
met, as we have seen, in the Café Musain. These same young men
assembled also, as we have stated already, in a restaurant wine-shop of
the Rue Mondétour which was called Corinthe. These meetings were
secret. Others were as public as possible, and the reader can judge of
their boldness from these fragments of an interrogatory undergone in
one of the ulterior prosecutions: “Where was this meeting held?” “In
the Rue de la Paix.” “At whose house?” “In the street.” “What sections
were there?” “Only one.” “Which?” “The Manuel section.” “Who was its
leader?” “I.” “You are too young to have decided alone upon the bold
course of attacking the government. Where did your instructions come
from?” “From the central committee.”
The army was mined at the same time as the population, as was proved
subsequently by the operations of Béford, Luneville, and Épinard. They
counted on the fifty-second regiment, on the fifth, on the eighth, on
the thirty-seventh, and on the twentieth light cavalry. In Burgundy and
in the southern towns they planted the liberty tree; that is to say, a
pole surmounted by a red cap.
Such was the situation.
The Faubourg Saint-Antoine, more than any other group of the
population, as we stated in the beginning, accentuated this situation
and made it felt. That was the sore point. This old faubourg, peopled
like an ant-hill, laborious, courageous, and angry as a hive of bees,
was quivering with expectation and with the desire for a tumult.
Everything was in a state of agitation there, without any interruption,
however, of the regular work. It is impossible to convey an idea of
this lively yet sombre physiognomy. In this faubourg exists poignant
distress hidden under attic roofs; there also exist rare and ardent
minds. It is particularly in the matter of distress and intelligence
that it is dangerous to have extremes meet.
The Faubourg Saint-Antoine had also other causes to tremble; for it
received the counter-shock of commercial crises, of failures, strikes,
slack seasons, all inherent to great political disturbances. In times
of revolution misery is both cause and effect. The blow which it deals
rebounds upon it. This population full of proud virtue, capable to the
highest degree of latent heat, always ready to fly to arms, prompt to
explode, irritated, deep, undermined, seemed to be only awaiting the
fall of a spark. Whenever certain sparks float on the horizon chased by
the wind of events, it is impossible not to think of the Faubourg
Saint-Antoine and of the formidable chance which has placed at the very
gates of Paris that powder-house of suffering and ideas.
The wine-shops of the _Faubourg Antoine_, which have been more than
once drawn in the sketches which the reader has just perused, possess
historical notoriety. In troublous times people grow intoxicated there
more on words than on wine. A sort of prophetic spirit and an afflatus
of the future circulates there, swelling hearts and enlarging souls.
The cabarets of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine resemble those taverns of
Mont Aventine erected on the cave of the Sibyl and communicating with
the profound and sacred breath; taverns where the tables were almost
tripods, and where was drunk what Ennius calls the _sibylline wine_.
The Faubourg Saint-Antoine is a reservoir of people. Revolutionary
agitations create fissures there, through which trickles the popular
sovereignty. This sovereignty may do evil; it can be mistaken like any
other; but, even when led astray, it remains great. We may say of it as
of the blind cyclops, _Ingens_.
In ’93, according as the idea which was floating about was good or
evil, according as it was the day of fanaticism or of enthusiasm, there
leaped forth from the Faubourg Saint-Antoine now savage legions, now
heroic bands.
Savage. Let us explain this word. When these bristling men, who in the
early days of the revolutionary chaos, tattered, howling, wild, with
uplifted bludgeon, pike on high, hurled themselves upon ancient Paris
in an uproar, what did they want? They wanted an end to oppression, an
end to tyranny, an end to the sword, work for men, instruction for the
child, social sweetness for the woman, liberty, equality, fraternity,
bread for all, the idea for all, the Edenizing of the world. Progress;
and that holy, sweet, and good thing, progress, they claimed in
terrible wise, driven to extremities as they were, half naked, club in
fist, a roar in their mouths. They were savages, yes; but the savages
of civilization.
They proclaimed right furiously; they were desirous, if only with fear
and trembling, to force the human race to paradise. They seemed
barbarians, and they were saviours. They demanded light with the mask
of night.
Facing these men, who were ferocious, we admit, and terrifying, but
ferocious and terrifying for good ends, there are other men, smiling,
embroidered, gilded, beribboned, starred, in silk stockings, in white
plumes, in yellow gloves, in varnished shoes, who, with their elbows on
a velvet table, beside a marble chimney-piece, insist gently on
demeanor and the preservation of the past, of the Middle Ages, of
divine right, of fanaticism, of innocence, of slavery, of the death
penalty, of war, glorifying in low tones and with politeness, the
sword, the stake, and the scaffold. For our part, if we were forced to
make a choice between the barbarians of civilization and the civilized
men of barbarism, we should choose the barbarians.
But, thank Heaven, still another choice is possible. No perpendicular
fall is necessary, in front any more than in the rear.
Neither despotism nor terrorism. We desire progress with a gentle
slope.
God takes care of that. God’s whole policy consists in rendering slopes
less steep.
CHAPTER VI—ENJOLRAS AND HIS LIEUTENANTS
It was about this epoch that Enjolras, in view of a possible
catastrophe, instituted a kind of mysterious census.
All were present at a secret meeting at the Café Musain.
Enjolras said, mixing his words with a few half-enigmatical but
significant metaphors:—
“It is proper that we should know where we stand and on whom we may
count. If combatants are required, they must be provided. It can do no
harm to have something with which to strike. Passers-by always have
more chance of being gored when there are bulls on the road than when
there are none. Let us, therefore, reckon a little on the herd. How
many of us are there? There is no question of postponing this task