Les Misérables
“No, gentlemen.”
“Do you say no?”
“I say no, my goo—”
The porter did not finish. The shot was fired; the ball entered under
his chin and came out at the nape of his neck, after traversing the
jugular vein.
The old man fell back without a sigh. The candle fell and was
extinguished, and nothing more was to be seen except a motionless head
lying on the sill of the small window, and a little whitish smoke which
floated off towards the roof.
“There!” said Le Cabuc, dropping the butt end of his gun to the
pavement.
He had hardly uttered this word, when he felt a hand laid on his
shoulder with the weight of an eagle’s talon, and he heard a voice
saying to him:—
“On your knees.”
The murderer turned round and saw before him Enjolras’ cold, white
face.
Enjolras held a pistol in his hand.
He had hastened up at the sound of the discharge.
He had seized Cabuc’s collar, blouse, shirt, and suspender with his
left hand.
“On your knees!” he repeated.
And, with an imperious motion, the frail young man of twenty years bent
the thickset and sturdy porter like a reed, and brought him to his
knees in the mire.
Le Cabuc attempted to resist, but he seemed to have been seized by a
superhuman hand.
Enjolras, pale, with bare neck and dishevelled hair, and his woman’s
face, had about him at that moment something of the antique Themis. His
dilated nostrils, his downcast eyes, gave to his implacable Greek
profile that expression of wrath and that expression of Chastity which,
as the ancient world viewed the matter, befit Justice.
The whole barricade hastened up, then all ranged themselves in a circle
at a distance, feeling that it was impossible to utter a word in the
presence of the thing which they were about to behold.
Le Cabuc, vanquished, no longer tried to struggle, and trembled in
every limb.
Enjolras released him and drew out his watch.
“Collect yourself,” said he. “Think or pray. You have one minute.”
“Mercy!” murmured the murderer; then he dropped his head and stammered
a few inarticulate oaths.
Enjolras never took his eyes off of him: he allowed a minute to pass,
then he replaced his watch in his fob. That done, he grasped Le Cabuc
by the hair, as the latter coiled himself into a ball at his knees and
shrieked, and placed the muzzle of the pistol to his ear. Many of those
intrepid men, who had so tranquilly entered upon the most terrible of
adventures, turned aside their heads.
An explosion was heard, the assassin fell to the pavement face
downwards.
Enjolras straightened himself up, and cast a convinced and severe
glance around him. Then he spurned the corpse with his foot and said:—
“Throw that outside.”
Three men raised the body of the unhappy wretch, which was still
agitated by the last mechanical convulsions of the life that had fled,
and flung it over the little barricade into the Rue Mondétour.
Enjolras was thoughtful. It is impossible to say what grandiose shadows
slowly spread over his redoubtable serenity. All at once he raised his
voice.
A silence fell upon them.
“Citizens,” said Enjolras, “what that man did is frightful, what I have
done is horrible. He killed, therefore I killed him. I had to do it,
because insurrection must have its discipline. Assassination is even
more of a crime here than elsewhere; we are under the eyes of the
Revolution, we are the priests of the Republic, we are the victims of
duty, and must not be possible to slander our combat. I have,
therefore, tried that man, and condemned him to death. As for myself,
constrained as I am to do what I have done, and yet abhorring it, I
have judged myself also, and you shall soon see to what I have
condemned myself.”
Those who listened to him shuddered.
“We will share thy fate,” cried Combeferre.
“So be it,” replied Enjolras. “One word more. In executing this man, I
have obeyed necessity; but necessity is a monster of the old world,
necessity’s name is Fatality. Now, the law of progress is, that
monsters shall disappear before the angels, and that Fatality shall
vanish before Fraternity. It is a bad moment to pronounce the word
love. No matter, I do pronounce it. And I glorify it. Love, the future
is thine. Death, I make use of thee, but I hate thee. Citizens, in the
future there will be neither darkness nor thunderbolts; neither
ferocious ignorance, nor bloody retaliation. As there will be no more
Satan, there will be no more Michael. In the future no one will kill
any one else, the earth will beam with radiance, the human race will
love. The day will come, citizens, when all will be concord, harmony,
light, joy and life; it will come, and it is in order that it may come
that we are about to die.”
Enjolras ceased. His virgin lips closed; and he remained for some time
standing on the spot where he had shed blood, in marble immobility. His
staring eye caused those about him to speak in low tones.
Jean Prouvaire and Combeferre pressed each other’s hands silently, and,
leaning against each other in an angle of the barricade, they watched
with an admiration in which there was some compassion, that grave young
man, executioner and priest, composed of light, like crystal, and also
of rock.
Let us say at once that later on, after the action, when the bodies
were taken to the morgue and searched, a police agent’s card was found
on Le Cabuc. The author of this book had in his hands, in 1848, the
special report on this subject made to the Prefect of Police in 1832.
We will add, that if we are to believe a tradition of the police, which
is strange but probably well founded, Le Cabuc was Claquesous. The fact
is, that dating from the death of Le Cabuc, there was no longer any
question of Claquesous. Claquesous had nowhere left any trace of his
disappearance; he would seem to have amalgamated himself with the
invisible. His life had been all shadows, his end was night.
The whole insurgent group was still under the influence of the emotion
of that tragic case which had been so quickly tried and so quickly
terminated, when Courfeyrac again beheld on the barricade, the small
young man who had inquired of him that morning for Marius.
This lad, who had a bold and reckless air, had come by night to join
the insurgents.
BOOK THIRTEENTH—MARIUS ENTERS THE SHADOW
CHAPTER I—FROM THE RUE PLUMET TO THE QUARTIER SAINT-DENIS
The voice which had summoned Marius through the twilight to the
barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, had produced on him the effect
of the voice of destiny. He wished to die; the opportunity presented
itself; he knocked at the door of the tomb, a hand in the darkness
offered him the key. These melancholy openings which take place in the
gloom before despair, are tempting. Marius thrust aside the bar which
had so often allowed him to pass, emerged from the garden, and said: “I
will go.”
Mad with grief, no longer conscious of anything fixed or solid in his
brain, incapable of accepting anything thenceforth of fate after those
two months passed in the intoxication of youth and love, overwhelmed at
once by all the reveries of despair, he had but one desire remaining,
to make a speedy end of all.
He set out at rapid pace. He found himself most opportunely armed, as
he had Javert’s pistols with him.
The young man of whom he thought that he had caught a glimpse, had
vanished from his sight in the street.
Marius, who had emerged from the Rue Plumet by the boulevard, traversed
the Esplanade and the bridge of the Invalides, the Champs-Élysées, the
Place Louis XV., and reached the Rue de Rivoli. The shops were open
there, the gas was burning under the arcades, women were making their
purchases in the stalls, people were eating ices in the Café Laiter,
and nibbling small cakes at the English pastry-cook’s shop. Only a few
posting-chaises were setting out at a gallop from the Hôtel des Princes
and the Hôtel Meurice.
Marius entered the Rue Saint-Honoré through the Passage Delorme. There
the shops were closed, the merchants were chatting in front of their
half-open doors, people were walking about, the street lanterns were
lighted, beginning with the first floor, all the windows were lighted
as usual. There was cavalry on the Place du Palais-Royal.
Marius followed the Rue Saint-Honoré. In proportion as he left the
Palais-Royal behind him, there were fewer lighted windows, the shops
were fast shut, no one was chatting on the thresholds, the street grew
sombre, and, at the same time, the crowd increased in density. For the
passers-by now amounted to a crowd. No one could be seen to speak in
this throng, and yet there arose from it a dull, deep murmur.
Near the fountain of the Arbre-Sec, there were “assemblages”,
motionless and gloomy groups which were to those who went and came as
stones in the midst of running water.
At the entrance to the Rue des Prouvaires, the crowd no longer walked.
It formed a resisting, massive, solid, compact, almost impenetrable
block of people who were huddled together, and conversing in low tones.
There were hardly any black coats or round hats now, but smock frocks,
blouses, caps, and bristling and cadaverous heads. This multitude
undulated confusedly in the nocturnal gloom. Its whisperings had the
hoarse accent of a vibration. Although not one of them was walking, a
dull trampling was audible in the mire. Beyond this dense portion of
the throng, in the Rue du Roule, in the Rue des Prouvaires, and in the
extension of the Rue Saint-Honoré, there was no longer a single window
in which a candle was burning. Only the solitary and diminishing rows
of lanterns could be seen vanishing into the street in the distance.
The lanterns of that date resembled large red stars, hanging to ropes,
and shed upon the pavement a shadow which had the form of a huge
spider. These streets were not deserted. There could be descried piles
of guns, moving bayonets, and troops bivouacking. No curious observer
passed that limit. There circulation ceased. There the rabble ended and
the army began.
Marius willed with the will of a man who hopes no more. He had been
summoned, he must go. He found a means to traverse the throng and to
pass the bivouac of the troops, he shunned the patrols, he avoided the
sentinels. He made a circuit, reached the Rue de Béthisy, and directed
his course towards the Halles. At the corner of the Rue des
Bourdonnais, there were no longer any lanterns.
After having passed the zone of the crowd, he had passed the limits of
the troops; he found himself in something startling. There was no
longer a passer-by, no longer a soldier, no longer a light, there was
no one; solitude, silence, night, I know not what chill which seized
hold upon one. Entering a street was like entering a cellar.
He continued to advance.
He took a few steps. Some one passed close to him at a run. Was it a
man? Or a woman? Were there many of them? he could not have told. It
had passed and vanished.
Proceeding from circuit to circuit, he reached a lane which he judged
to be the Rue de la Poterie; near the middle of this street, he came in
contact with an obstacle. He extended his hands. It was an overturned
wagon; his foot recognized pools of water, gullies, and paving-stones
scattered and piled up. A barricade had been begun there and abandoned.
He climbed over the stones and found himself on the other side of the
barrier. He walked very near the street-posts, and guided himself along
the walls of the houses. A little beyond the barricade, it seemed to
him that he could make out something white in front of him. He
approached, it took on a form. It was two white horses; the horses of
the omnibus harnessed by Bossuet in the morning, who had been straying