Les Misérables
a meteor on the wall of the firmament. Some queer star turns up,
underlined by an enormous tail. And that causes the death of Cæsar.
Brutus deals him a blow with a knife, and God a blow with a comet.
_Crac_, and behold an aurora borealis, behold a revolution, behold a
great man; ’93 in big letters, Napoleon on guard, the comet of 1811 at
the head of the poster. Ah! what a beautiful blue theatre all studded
with unexpected flashes! Boum! Boum! extraordinary show! Raise your
eyes, boobies. Everything is in disorder, the star as well as the
drama. Good God, it is too much and not enough. These resources,
gathered from exception, seem magnificence and poverty. My friends,
Providence has come down to expedients. What does a revolution prove?
That God is in a quandry. He effects a _coup d’état_ because he, God,
has not been able to make both ends meet. In fact, this confirms me in
my conjectures as to Jehovah’s fortune; and when I see so much distress
in heaven and on earth, from the bird who has not a grain of millet to
myself without a hundred thousand livres of income, when I see human
destiny, which is very badly worn, and even royal destiny, which is
threadbare, witness the Prince de Condé hung, when I see winter, which
is nothing but a rent in the zenith through which the wind blows, when
I see so many rags even in the perfectly new purple of the morning on
the crests of hills, when I see the drops of dew, those mock pearls,
when I see the frost, that paste, when I see humanity ripped apart and
events patched up, and so many spots on the sun and so many holes in
the moon, when I see so much misery everywhere, I suspect that God is
not rich. The appearance exists, it is true, but I feel that he is hard
up. He gives a revolution as a tradesman whose money-box is empty gives
a ball. God must not be judged from appearances. Beneath the gilding of
heaven I perceive a poverty-stricken universe. Creation is bankrupt.
That is why I am discontented. Here it is the 4th of June, it is almost
night; ever since this morning I have been waiting for daylight to
come; it has not come, and I bet that it won’t come all day. This is
the inexactness of an ill-paid clerk. Yes, everything is badly
arranged, nothing fits anything else, this old world is all warped, I
take my stand on the opposition, everything goes awry; the universe is
a tease. It’s like children, those who want them have none, and those
who don’t want them have them. Total: I’m vexed. Besides, Laigle de
Meaux, that bald-head, offends my sight. It humiliates me to think that
I am of the same age as that baldy. However, I criticise, but I do not
insult. The universe is what it is. I speak here without evil intent
and to ease my conscience. Receive, Eternal Father, the assurance of my
distinguished consideration. Ah! by all the saints of Olympus and by
all the gods of paradise, I was not intended to be a Parisian, that is
to say, to rebound forever, like a shuttlecock between two battledores,
from the group of the loungers to the group of the roysterers. I was
made to be a Turk, watching oriental houris all day long, executing
those exquisite Egyptian dances, as sensuous as the dream of a chaste
man, or a Beauceron peasant, or a Venetian gentleman surrounded by
gentlewoman, or a petty German prince, furnishing the half of a
foot-soldier to the Germanic confederation, and occupying his leisure
with drying his breeches on his hedge, that is to say, his frontier.
Those are the positions for which I was born! Yes, I have said a Turk,
and I will not retract. I do not understand how people can habitually
take Turks in bad part; Mohammed had his good points; respect for the
inventor of seraglios with houris and paradises with odalisques! Let us
not insult Mohammedanism, the only religion which is ornamented with a
hen-roost! Now, I insist on a drink. The earth is a great piece of
stupidity. And it appears that they are going to fight, all those
imbeciles, and to break each other’s profiles and to massacre each
other in the heart of summer, in the month of June, when they might go
off with a creature on their arm, to breathe the immense heaps of
new-mown hay in the meadows! Really, people do commit altogether too
many follies. An old broken lantern which I have just seen at a
bric-à-brac merchant’s suggests a reflection to my mind; it is time to
enlighten the human race. Yes, behold me sad again. That’s what comes
of swallowing an oyster and a revolution the wrong way! I am growing
melancholy once more. Oh! frightful old world. People strive, turn each
other out, prostitute themselves, kill each other, and get used to it!”
And Grantaire, after this fit of eloquence, had a fit of coughing,
which was well earned.
“À propos of revolution,” said Joly, “it is decidedly abberent that
Barius is in lub.”
“Does any one know with whom?” demanded Laigle.
“Do.”
“No?”
“Do! I tell you.”
“Marius’ love affairs!” exclaimed Grantaire. “I can imagine it. Marius
is a fog, and he must have found a vapor. Marius is of the race of
poets. He who says poet, says fool, madman, _Tymbræus Apollo_. Marius
and his Marie, or his Marion, or his Maria, or his Mariette. They must
make a queer pair of lovers. I know just what it is like. Ecstasies in
which they forget to kiss. Pure on earth, but joined in heaven. They
are souls possessed of senses. They lie among the stars.”
Grantaire was attacking his second bottle and, possibly, his second
harangue, when a new personage emerged from the square aperture of the
stairs. It was a boy less than ten years of age, ragged, very small,
yellow, with an odd phiz, a vivacious eye, an enormous amount of hair
drenched with rain, and wearing a contented air.
The child unhesitatingly making his choice among the three, addressed
himself to Laigle de Meaux.
“Are you Monsieur Bossuet?”
“That is my nickname,” replied Laigle. “What do you want with me?”
“This. A tall blonde fellow on the boulevard said to me: ‘Do you know
Mother Hucheloup?’ I said: ‘Yes, Rue Chanvrerie, the old man’s widow;’
he said to me: ‘Go there. There you will find M. Bossuet. Tell him from
me: “A B C”.’ It’s a joke that they’re playing on you, isn’t it. 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 handed to the lad.
“Thank you, sir,” said the urchin.
“What is your name?” inquired Laigle.
“Navet, Gavroche’s friend.”
“Stay with us,” said Laigle.
“Breakfast with us,” said Grantaire.
The child replied:—
“I can’t, I belong in the procession, I’m the one to shout ‘Down with
Polignac!’”
And executing a prolonged scrape of his foot behind him, which is the
most respectful of all possible salutes, he took his departure.
The child gone, Grantaire took the word:—
“That is the pure-bred gamin. There are a great many varieties of the
gamin species. The notary’s gamin is called Skip-the-Gutter, the cook’s
gamin is called a scullion, the baker’s gamin is called a _mitron_, the
lackey’s gamin is called a groom, the marine gamin is called the
cabin-boy, the soldier’s gamin is called the drummer-boy, the painter’s
gamin is called paint-grinder, the tradesman’s gamin is called an
errand-boy, the courtesan gamin is called the minion, the kingly gamin
is called the dauphin, the god gamin is called the bambino.”
In the meantime, Laigle was engaged in reflection; he said half aloud:—
“A B C, that is to say: the burial of Lamarque.”
“The tall blonde,” remarked Grantaire, “is Enjolras, who is sending you
a warning.”
“Shall we go?” ejaculated Bossuet.
“It’s raiding,” said Joly. “I have sworn to go through fire, but not
through water. I don’t wand to ged a gold.”
“I shall stay here,” said Grantaire. “I prefer a breakfast to a
hearse.”
“Conclusion: we remain,” said Laigle. “Well, then, let us drink.
Besides, we might miss the funeral without missing the riot.”
“Ah! the riot, I am with you!” cried Joly.
Laigle rubbed his hands.
“Now we’re going to touch up the revolution of 1830. As a matter of
fact, it does hurt the people along the seams.”
“I don’t think much of your revolution,” said Grantaire. “I don’t
execrate this Government. It is the crown tempered by the cotton
night-cap. It is a sceptre ending in an umbrella. In fact, I think that
to-day, with the present weather, Louis Philippe might utilize his
royalty in two directions, he might extend the tip of the sceptre end
against the people, and open the umbrella end against heaven.”
The room was dark, large clouds had just finished the extinction of
daylight. There was no one in the wine-shop, or in the street, every
one having gone off “to watch events.”
“Is it midday or midnight?” cried Bossuet. “You can’t see your hand
before your face. Gibelotte, fetch a light.”
Grantaire was drinking in a melancholy way.
“Enjolras disdains me,” he muttered. “Enjolras said: ‘Joly is ill,
Grantaire is drunk.’ It was to Bossuet that he sent Navet. If he had
come for me, I would have followed him. So much the worse for Enjolras!
I won’t go to his funeral.”
This resolution once arrived at, Bossuet, Joly, and Grantaire did not
stir from the wine-shop. By two o’clock in the afternoon, the table at
which they sat was covered with empty bottles. Two candles were burning
on it, one in a flat copper candlestick which was perfectly green, the
other in the neck of a cracked carafe. Grantaire had seduced Joly and
Bossuet to wine; Bossuet and Joly had conducted Grantaire back towards
cheerfulness.
As for Grantaire, he had got beyond wine, that merely moderate inspirer
of dreams, ever since midday. Wine enjoys only a conventional
popularity with serious drinkers. There is, in fact, in the matter of
inebriety, white magic and black magic; wine is only white magic.
Grantaire was a daring drinker of dreams. The blackness of a terrible
fit of drunkenness yawning before him, far from arresting him,
attracted him. He had abandoned the bottle and taken to the beerglass.
The beer-glass is the abyss. Having neither opium nor hashish on hand,
and being desirous of filling his brain with twilight, he had had
recourse to that fearful mixture of brandy, stout, absinthe, which
produces the most terrible of lethargies. It is of these three vapors,
beer, brandy, and absinthe, that the lead of the soul is composed. They
are three grooms; the celestial butterfly is drowned in them; and there
are formed there in a membranous smoke, vaguely condensed into the wing
of the bat, three mute furies, Nightmare, Night, and Death, which hover
about the slumbering Psyche.
Grantaire had not yet reached that lamentable phase; far from it. He
was tremendously gay, and Bossuet and Joly retorted. They clinked
glasses. Grantaire added to the eccentric accentuation of words and
ideas, a peculiarity of gesture; he rested his left fist on his knee
with dignity, his arm forming a right angle, and, with cravat untied,
seated astride a stool, his full glass in his right hand, he hurled
solemn words at the big maid-servant Matelote:—
“Let the doors of the palace be thrown open! Let every one be a member
of the French Academy and have the right to embrace Madame Hucheloup.
Let us drink.”
And turning to Madame Hucheloup, he added:—
“Woman ancient and consecrated by use, draw near that I may contemplate
thee!”
And Joly exclaimed:—
“Matelote and Gibelotte, dod’t gib Grantaire anything more to drink. He
has already devoured, since this bording, in wild prodigality, two
francs and ninety-five centibes.”
And Grantaire began again:—
“Who has been unhooking the stars without my permission, and putting
them on the table in the guise of candles?”