Les Misérables
of one regiment, that Paris would rise. Terrible sayings with which was
mingled a sort of cordial joviality. One would have pronounced them
brothers, but they did not know each other’s names. Great perils have
this fine characteristic, that they bring to light the fraternity of
strangers. A fire had been lighted in the kitchen, and there they were
engaged in moulding into bullets, pewter mugs, spoons, forks, and all
the brass table-ware of the establishment. In the midst of it all, they
drank. Caps and buckshot were mixed pell-mell on the tables with
glasses of wine. In the billiard-hall, Mame Hucheloup, Matelote, and
Gibelotte, variously modified by terror, which had stupefied one,
rendered another breathless, and roused the third, were tearing up old
dish-cloths and making lint; three insurgents were assisting them,
three bushy-haired, jolly blades with beards and moustaches, who
plucked away at the linen with the fingers of seamstresses and who made
them tremble.
The man of lofty stature whom Courfeyrac, Combeferre, and Enjolras had
observed at the moment when he joined the mob at the corner of the Rue
des Billettes, was at work on the smaller barricade and was making
himself useful there. Gavroche was working on the larger one. As for
the young man who had been waiting for Courfeyrac at his lodgings, and
who had inquired for M. Marius, he had disappeared at about the time
when the omnibus had been overturned.
Gavroche, completely carried away and radiant, had undertaken to get
everything in readiness. He went, came, mounted, descended, re-mounted,
whistled, and sparkled. He seemed to be there for the encouragement of
all. Had he any incentive? Yes, certainly, his poverty; had he wings?
yes, certainly, his joy. Gavroche was a whirlwind. He was constantly
visible, he was incessantly audible. He filled the air, as he was
everywhere at once. He was a sort of almost irritating ubiquity; no
halt was possible with him. The enormous barricade felt him on its
haunches. He troubled the loungers, he excited the idle, he reanimated
the weary, he grew impatient over the thoughtful, he inspired gayety in
some, and breath in others, wrath in others, movement in all, now
pricking a student, now biting an artisan; he alighted, paused, flew
off again, hovered over the tumult, and the effort, sprang from one
party to another, murmuring and humming, and harassed the whole
company; a fly on the immense revolutionary coach.
Perpetual motion was in his little arms and perpetual clamor in his
little lungs.
“Courage! more paving-stones! more casks! more machines! Where are you
now? A hod of plaster for me to stop this hole with! Your barricade is
very small. It must be carried up. Put everything on it, fling
everything there, stick it all in. Break down the house. A barricade is
Mother Gibou’s tea. Hullo, here’s a glass door.”
This elicited an exclamation from the workers.
“A glass door? what do you expect us to do with a glass door,
tubercle?”
“Hercules yourselves!” retorted Gavroche. “A glass door is an excellent
thing in a barricade. It does not prevent an attack, but it prevents
the enemy taking it. So you’ve never prigged apples over a wall where
there were broken bottles? A glass door cuts the corns of the National
Guard when they try to mount on the barricade. Pardi! glass is a
treacherous thing. Well, you haven’t a very wildly lively imagination,
comrades.”
However, he was furious over his triggerless pistol. He went from one
to another, demanding: “A gun, I want a gun! Why don’t you give me a
gun?”
“Give you a gun!” said Combeferre.
“Come now!” said Gavroche, “why not? I had one in 1830 when we had a
dispute with Charles X.”
Enjolras shrugged his shoulders.
“When there are enough for the men, we will give some to the children.”
Gavroche wheeled round haughtily, and answered:—
“If you are killed before me, I shall take yours.”
“Gamin!” said Enjolras.
“Greenhorn!” said Gavroche.
A dandy who had lost his way and who lounged past the end of the street
created a diversion! Gavroche shouted to him:—
“Come with us, young fellow! well now, don’t we do anything for this
old country of ours?”
The dandy fled.
CHAPTER V—PREPARATIONS
The journals of the day which said that that _nearly impregnable
structure_, of the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, as they call
it, reached to the level of the first floor, were mistaken. The fact
is, that it did not exceed an average height of six or seven feet. It
was built in such a manner that the combatants could, at their will,
either disappear behind it or dominate the barrier and even scale its
crest by means of a quadruple row of paving-stones placed on top of
each other and arranged as steps in the interior. On the outside, the
front of the barricade, composed of piles of paving-stones and casks
bound together by beams and planks, which were entangled in the wheels
of Anceau’s dray and of the overturned omnibus, had a bristling and
inextricable aspect.
An aperture large enough to allow a man to pass through had been made
between the wall of the houses and the extremity of the barricade which
was furthest from the wine-shop, so that an exit was possible at this
point. The pole of the omnibus was placed upright and held up with
ropes, and a red flag, fastened to this pole, floated over the
barricade.
The little Mondétour barricade, hidden behind the wine-shop building,
was not visible. The two barricades united formed a veritable redoubt.
Enjolras and Courfeyrac had not thought fit to barricade the other
fragment of the Rue Mondétour which opens through the Rue des Prêcheurs
an issue into the Halles, wishing, no doubt, to preserve a possible
communication with the outside, and not entertaining much fear of an
attack through the dangerous and difficult street of the Rue des
Prêcheurs.
With the exception of this issue which was left free, and which
constituted what Folard in his strategical style would have termed a
branch and taking into account, also, the narrow cutting arranged on
the Rue de la Chanvrerie, the interior of the barricade, where the
wine-shop formed a salient angle, presented an irregular square, closed
on all sides. There existed an interval of twenty paces between the
grand barrier and the lofty houses which formed the background of the
street, so that one might say that the barricade rested on these
houses, all inhabited, but closed from top to bottom.
All this work was performed without any hindrance, in less than an
hour, and without this handful of bold men seeing a single bear-skin
cap or a single bayonet make their appearance. The very bourgeois who
still ventured at this hour of riot to enter the Rue Saint-Denis cast a
glance at the Rue de la Chanvrerie, caught sight of the barricade, and
redoubled their pace.
The two barricades being finished, and the flag run up, a table was
dragged out of the wine-shop; and Courfeyrac mounted on the table.
Enjolras brought the square coffer, and Courfeyrac opened it. This
coffer was filled with cartridges. When the mob saw the cartridges, a
tremor ran through the bravest, and a momentary silence ensued.
Courfeyrac distributed them with a smile.
Each one received thirty cartridges. Many had powder, and set about
making others with the bullets which they had run. As for the barrel of
powder, it stood on a table on one side, near the door, and was held in
reserve.
The alarm beat which ran through all Paris, did not cease, but it had
finally come to be nothing more than a monotonous noise to which they
no longer paid any attention. This noise retreated at times, and again
drew near, with melancholy undulations.
They loaded the guns and carbines, all together, without haste, with
solemn gravity. Enjolras went and stationed three sentinels outside the
barricades, one in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, the second in the Rue des
Prêcheurs, the third at the corner of the Rue de la Petite Truanderie.
Then, the barricades having been built, the posts assigned, the guns
loaded, the sentinels stationed, they waited, alone in those
redoubtable streets through which no one passed any longer, surrounded
by those dumb houses which seemed dead and in which no human movement
palpitated, enveloped in the deepening shades of twilight which was
drawing on, in the midst of that silence through which something could
be felt advancing, and which had about it something tragic and
terrifying, isolated, armed, determined, and tranquil.
CHAPTER VI—WAITING
During those hours of waiting, what did they do?
We must needs tell, since this is a matter of history.
While the men made bullets and the women lint, while a large saucepan
of melted brass and lead, destined to the bullet-mould smoked over a
glowing brazier, while the sentinels watched, weapon in hand, on the
barricade, while Enjolras, whom it was impossible to divert, kept an
eye on the sentinels, Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Jean Prouvaire, Feuilly,
Bossuet, Joly, Bahorel, and some others, sought each other out and
united as in the most peaceful days of their conversations in their
student life, and, in one corner of this wine-shop which had been
converted into a casement, a couple of paces distant from the redoubt
which they had built, with their carbines loaded and primed resting
against the backs of their chairs, these fine young fellows, so close
to a supreme hour, began to recite love verses.
What verses? These:—
Vous rappelez-vous notre douce vie,
Lorsque nous étions si jeunes tous deux,
Et que nous n’avions au cœur d’autre envie
Que d’être bien mis et d’être amoureux,
Lorsqu’en ajoutant votre âge à mon âge,
Nous ne comptions pas à deux quarante ans,
Et que, dans notre humble et petit ménage,
Tout, même l’hiver, nous était printemps?
Beaux jours! Manuel était fier et sage,
Paris s’asseyait à de saints banquets,
Foy lançait la foudre, et votre corsage
Avait une épingle où je me piquais.
Tout vous contemplait. Avocat sans causes,
Quand je vous menais au Prado dîner,
Vous étiez jolie au point que les roses
Me faisaient l’effet de se retourner.
Je les entendais dire: Est elle belle!
Comme elle sent bon! Quels cheveux à flots!
Sous son mantelet elle cache une aile,
Son bonnet charmant est à peine éclos.
J’errais avec toi, pressant ton bras souple.
Les passants croyaient que l’amour charmé
Avait marié, dans notre heureux couple,
Le doux mois d’avril au beau mois de mai.
Nous vivions cachés, contents, porte close,
Dévorant l’amour, bon fruit défendu,
Ma bouche n’avait pas dit une chose
Que déjà ton cœur avait répondu.
La Sorbonne était l’endroit bucolique
Où je t’adorais du soir au matin.
C’est ainsi qu’une âme amoureuse applique
La carte du Tendre au pays Latin.
O place Maubert! O place Dauphine!
Quand, dans le taudis frais et printanier,
Tu tirais ton bas sur ta jambe fine,
Je voyais un astre au fond du grenier.
J’ai fort lu Platon, mais rien ne m’en reste;
Mieux que Malebranche et que Lamennais,
Tu me démontrais la bonté céleste
Avec une fleur que tu me donnais.
Je t’obéissais, tu m’étais soumise;
O grenier doré! te lacer! te voir
Aller et venir dès l’aube en chemise,
Mirant ton jeune front à ton vieux miroir.
Et qui donc pourrait perdre la mémoire
De ces temps d’aurore et de firmament,
De rubans, de fleurs, de gaze et de moire,
Où l’amour bégaye un argot charmant?
Nos jardins étaient un pot de tulipe;
Tu masquais la vitre avec un jupon;
Je prenais le bol de terre de pipe,
Et je te donnais le tasse en japon.
Et ces grands malheurs qui nous faisaient rire!
Ton manchon brûlé, ton boa perdu!
Et ce cher portrait du divin Shakespeare
Qu’un soir pour souper nons avons vendu!
J’étais mendiant et toi charitable.