Les Misérables
Je baisais au vol tes bras frais et ronds.
Dante in folio nous servait de table
Pour manger gaîment un cent de marrons.
La première fois qu’en mon joyeux bouge
Je pris un baiser à ta lèvre en feu,
Quand tu t’en allais décoiffée et rouge,
Je restai tout pâle et je crus en Dieu!
Te rappelles-tu nos bonheurs sans nombre,
Et tous ces fichus changés en chiffons?
Oh que de soupirs, de nos cœurs pleins d’ombre,
Se sont envolés dans les cieux profonds!53
The hour, the spot, these souvenirs of youth recalled, a few stars
which began to twinkle in the sky, the funeral repose of those deserted
streets, the imminence of the inexorable adventure, which was in
preparation, gave a pathetic charm to these verses murmured in a low
tone in the dusk by Jean Prouvaire, who, as we have said, was a gentle
poet.
In the meantime, a lamp had been lighted in the small barricade, and in
the large one, one of those wax torches such as are to be met with on
Shrove-Tuesday in front of vehicles loaded with masks, on their way to
la Courtille. These torches, as the reader has seen, came from the
Faubourg Saint-Antoine.
The torch had been placed in a sort of cage of paving-stones closed on
three sides to shelter it from the wind, and disposed in such a fashion
that all the light fell on the flag. The street and the barricade
remained sunk in gloom, and nothing was to be seen except the red flag
formidably illuminated as by an enormous dark-lantern.
This light enhanced the scarlet of the flag, with an indescribable and
terrible purple.
CHAPTER VII—THE MAN RECRUITED IN THE RUE DES BILLETTES
Night was fully come, nothing made its appearance. All that they heard
was confused noises, and at intervals, fusillades; but these were rare,
badly sustained and distant. This respite, which was thus prolonged,
was a sign that the Government was taking its time, and collecting its
forces. These fifty men were waiting for sixty thousand.
Enjolras felt attacked by that impatience which seizes on strong souls
on the threshold of redoubtable events. He went in search of Gavroche,
who had set to making cartridges in the tap-room, by the dubious light
of two candles placed on the counter by way of precaution, on account
of the powder which was scattered on the tables. These two candles cast
no gleam outside. The insurgents had, moreover, taken pains not to have
any light in the upper stories.
Gavroche was deeply preoccupied at that moment, but not precisely with
his cartridges. The man of the Rue des Billettes had just entered the
tap-room and had seated himself at the table which was the least
lighted. A musket of large model had fallen to his share, and he held
it between his legs. Gavroche, who had been, up to that moment,
distracted by a hundred “amusing” things, had not even seen this man.
When he entered, Gavroche followed him mechanically with his eyes,
admiring his gun; then, all at once, when the man was seated, the
street urchin sprang to his feet. Any one who had spied upon that man
up to that moment, would have seen that he was observing everything in
the barricade and in the band of insurgents, with singular attention;
but, from the moment when he had entered this room, he had fallen into
a sort of brown study, and no longer seemed to see anything that was
going on. The gamin approached this pensive personage, and began to
step around him on tiptoe, as one walks in the vicinity of a person
whom one is afraid of waking. At the same time, over his childish
countenance which was, at once so impudent and so serious, so giddy and
so profound, so gay and so heart-breaking, passed all those grimaces of
an old man which signify: Ah bah! impossible! My sight is bad! I am
dreaming! can this be? no, it is not! but yes! why, no! etc. Gavroche
balanced on his heels, clenched both fists in his pockets, moved his
neck around like a bird, expended in a gigantic pout all the sagacity
of his lower lip. He was astounded, uncertain, incredulous, convinced,
dazzled. He had the mien of the chief of the eunuchs in the slave mart,
discovering a Venus among the blowsy females, and the air of an amateur
recognizing a Raphael in a heap of daubs. His whole being was at work,
the instinct which scents out, and the intelligence which combines. It
was evident that a great event had happened in Gavroche’s life.
It was at the most intense point of this preoccupation that Enjolras
accosted him.
“You are small,” said Enjolras, “you will not be seen. Go out of the
barricade, slip along close to the houses, skirmish about a bit in the
streets, and come back and tell me what is going on.”
Gavroche raised himself on his haunches.
“So the little chaps are good for something! that’s very lucky! I’ll
go! In the meanwhile, trust to the little fellows, and distrust the big
ones.” And Gavroche, raising his head and lowering his voice, added, as
he indicated the man of the Rue des Billettes: “Do you see that big
fellow there?”
“Well?”
“He’s a police spy.”
“Are you sure of it?”
“It isn’t two weeks since he pulled me off the cornice of the Port
Royal, where I was taking the air, by my ear.”
Enjolras hastily quitted the urchin and murmured a few words in a very
low tone to a longshoreman from the winedocks who chanced to be at
hand. The man left the room, and returned almost immediately,
accompanied by three others. The four men, four porters with broad
shoulders, went and placed themselves without doing anything to attract
his attention, behind the table on which the man of the Rue des
Billettes was leaning with his elbows. They were evidently ready to
hurl themselves upon him.
Then Enjolras approached the man and demanded of him:—
“Who are you?”
At this abrupt query, the man started. He plunged his gaze deep into
Enjolras’ clear eyes and appeared to grasp the latter’s meaning. He
smiled with a smile than which nothing more disdainful, more energetic,
and more resolute could be seen in the world, and replied with haughty
gravity:—
“I see what it is. Well, yes!”
“You are a police spy?”
“I am an agent of the authorities.”
“And your name?”
“Javert.”
Enjolras made a sign to the four men. In the twinkling of an eye,
before Javert had time to turn round, he was collared, thrown down,
pinioned and searched.
They found on him a little round card pasted between two pieces of
glass, and bearing on one side the arms of France, engraved, and with
this motto: _Supervision and vigilance_, and on the other this note:
“JAVERT, inspector of police, aged fifty-two,” and the signature of the
Prefect of Police of that day, M. Gisquet.
Besides this, he had his watch and his purse, which contained several
gold pieces. They left him his purse and his watch. Under the watch, at
the bottom of his fob, they felt and seized a paper in an envelope,
which Enjolras unfolded, and on which he read these five lines, written
in the very hand of the Prefect of Police:—
“As soon as his political mission is accomplished, Inspector Javert
will make sure, by special supervision, whether it is true that the
malefactors have instituted intrigues on the right bank of the Seine,
near the Jena bridge.”
The search ended, they lifted Javert to his feet, bound his arms behind
his back, and fastened him to that celebrated post in the middle of the
room which had formerly given the wine-shop its name.
Gavroche, who had looked on at the whole of this scene and had approved
of everything with a silent toss of his head, stepped up to Javert and
said to him:—
“It’s the mouse who has caught the cat.”
All this was so rapidly executed, that it was all over when those about
the wine-shop noticed it.
Javert had not uttered a single cry.
At the sight of Javert bound to the post, Courfeyrac, Bossuet, Joly,
Combeferre, and the men scattered over the two barricades came running
up.
Javert, with his back to the post, and so surrounded with ropes that he
could not make a movement, raised his head with the intrepid serenity
of the man who has never lied.
“He is a police spy,” said Enjolras.
And turning to Javert: “You will be shot ten minutes before the
barricade is taken.”
Javert replied in his most imperious tone:—
“Why not at once?”
“We are saving our powder.”
“Then finish the business with a blow from a knife.”
“Spy,” said the handsome Enjolras, “we are judges and not assassins.”
Then he called Gavroche:—
“Here you! go about your business! Do what I told you!”
“I’m going!” cried Gavroche.
And halting as he was on the point of setting out:—
“By the way, you will give me his gun!” and he added: “I leave you the
musician, but I want the clarinet.”
The gamin made the military salute and passed gayly through the opening
in the large barricade.
CHAPTER VIII—MANY INTERROGATION POINTS WITH REGARD TO A CERTAIN LE
CABUC WHOSE NAME MAY NOT HAVE BEEN LE CABUC
The tragic picture which we have undertaken would not be complete, the
reader would not see those grand moments of social birth-pangs in a
revolutionary birth, which contain convulsion mingled with effort, in
their exact and real relief, were we to omit, in the sketch here
outlined, an incident full of epic and savage horror which occurred
almost immediately after Gavroche’s departure.
Mobs, as the reader knows, are like a snowball, and collect as they
roll along, a throng of tumultuous men. These men do not ask each other
whence they come. Among the passers-by who had joined the rabble led by
Enjolras, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac, there had been a person wearing
the jacket of a street porter, which was very threadbare on the
shoulders, who gesticulated and vociferated, and who had the look of a
drunken savage. This man, whose name or nickname was Le Cabuc, and who
was, moreover, an utter stranger to those who pretended to know him,
was very drunk, or assumed the appearance of being so, and had seated
himself with several others at a table which they had dragged outside
of the wine-shop. This Cabuc, while making those who vied with him
drunk seemed to be examining with a thoughtful air the large house at
the extremity of the barricade, whose five stories commanded the whole
street and faced the Rue Saint-Denis. All at once he exclaimed:—
“Do you know, comrades, it is from that house yonder that we must fire.
When we are at the windows, the deuce is in it if any one can advance
into the street!”
“Yes, but the house is closed,” said one of the drinkers.
“Let us knock!”
“They will not open.”
“Let us break in the door!”
Le Cabuc runs to the door, which had a very massive knocker, and
knocks. The door opens not. He strikes a second blow. No one answers. A
third stroke. The same silence.
“Is there any one here?” shouts Cabuc.
Nothing stirs.
Then he seizes a gun and begins to batter the door with the butt end.
It was an ancient alley door, low, vaulted, narrow, solid, entirely of
oak, lined on the inside with a sheet of iron and iron stays, a genuine
prison postern. The blows from the butt end of the gun made the house
tremble, but did not shake the door.
Nevertheless, it is probable that the inhabitants were disturbed, for a
tiny, square window was finally seen to open on the third story, and at
this aperture appeared the reverend and terrified face of a gray-haired
old man, who was the porter, and who held a candle.
The man who was knocking paused.
“Gentlemen,” said the porter, “what do you want?”
“Open!” said Cabuc.
“That cannot be, gentlemen.”
“Open, nevertheless.”
“Impossible, gentlemen.”
Le Cabuc took his gun and aimed at the porter; but as he was below, and
as it was very dark, the porter did not see him.
“Will you open, yes or no?”