Les Misérables
but this stony step had something indescribably enormous and multiple
about it which awakened the idea of a throng, and, at the same time,
the idea of a spectre. One thought one heard the terrible statue Legion
marching onward. This tread drew near; it drew still nearer, and
stopped. It seemed as though the breathing of many men could be heard
at the end of the street. Nothing was to be seen, however, but at the
bottom of that dense obscurity there could be distinguished a multitude
of metallic threads, as fine as needles and almost imperceptible, which
moved about like those indescribable phosphoric networks which one sees
beneath one’s closed eyelids, in the first mists of slumber at the
moment when one is dropping off to sleep. These were bayonets and
gun-barrels confusedly illuminated by the distant reflection of the
torch.
A pause ensued, as though both sides were waiting. All at once, from
the depths of this darkness, a voice, which was all the more sinister,
since no one was visible, and which appeared to be the gloom itself
speaking, shouted:—
“Who goes there?”
At the same time, the click of guns, as they were lowered into
position, was heard.
Enjolras replied in a haughty and vibrating tone:—
“The French Revolution!”
“Fire!” shouted the voice.
A flash empurpled all the façades in the street as though the door of a
furnace had been flung open, and hastily closed again.
A fearful detonation burst forth on the barricade. The red flag fell.
The discharge had been so violent and so dense that it had cut the
staff, that is to say, the very tip of the omnibus pole.
Bullets which had rebounded from the cornices of the houses penetrated
the barricade and wounded several men.
The impression produced by this first discharge was freezing. The
attack had been rough, and of a nature to inspire reflection in the
boldest. It was evident that they had to deal with an entire regiment
at the very least.
“Comrades!” shouted Courfeyrac, “let us not waste our powder. Let us
wait until they are in the street before replying.”
“And, above all,” said Enjolras, “let us raise the flag again.”
He picked up the flag, which had fallen precisely at his feet.
Outside, the clatter of the ramrods in the guns could be heard; the
troops were re-loading their arms.
Enjolras went on:—
“Who is there here with a bold heart? Who will plant the flag on the
barricade again?”
Not a man responded. To mount on the barricade at the very moment when,
without any doubt, it was again the object of their aim, was simply
death. The bravest hesitated to pronounce his own condemnation.
Enjolras himself felt a thrill. He repeated:—
“Does no one volunteer?”
CHAPTER II—THE FLAG: ACT SECOND
Since they had arrived at Corinthe, and had begun the construction of
the barricade, no attention had been paid to Father Mabeuf. M. Mabeuf
had not quitted the mob, however; he had entered the ground floor of
the wine-shop and had seated himself behind the counter. There he had,
so to speak, retreated into himself. He no longer seemed to look or to
think. Courfeyrac and others had accosted him two or three times,
warning him of his peril, beseeching him to withdraw, but he did not
hear them. When they were not speaking to him, his mouth moved as
though he were replying to some one, and as soon as he was addressed,
his lips became motionless and his eyes no longer had the appearance of
being alive.
Several hours before the barricade was attacked, he had assumed an
attitude which he did not afterwards abandon, with both fists planted
on his knees and his head thrust forward as though he were gazing over
a precipice. Nothing had been able to move him from this attitude; it
did not seem as though his mind were in the barricade. When each had
gone to take up his position for the combat, there remained in the
tap-room where Javert was bound to the post, only a single insurgent
with a naked sword, watching over Javert, and himself, Mabeuf. At the
moment of the attack, at the detonation, the physical shock had reached
him and had, as it were, awakened him; he started up abruptly, crossed
the room, and at the instant when Enjolras repeated his appeal: “Does
no one volunteer?” the old man was seen to make his appearance on the
threshold of the wine-shop. His presence produced a sort of commotion
in the different groups. A shout went up:—
“It is the voter! It is the member of the Convention! It is the
representative of the people!”
It is probable that he did not hear them.
He strode straight up to Enjolras, the insurgents withdrawing before
him with a religious fear; he tore the flag from Enjolras, who recoiled
in amazement and then, since no one dared to stop or to assist him,
this old man of eighty, with shaking head but firm foot, began slowly
to ascend the staircase of paving-stones arranged in the barricade.
This was so melancholy and so grand that all around him cried: “Off
with your hats!” At every step that he mounted, it was a frightful
spectacle; his white locks, his decrepit face, his lofty, bald, and
wrinkled brow, his amazed and open mouth, his aged arm upholding the
red banner, rose through the gloom and were enlarged in the bloody
light of the torch, and the bystanders thought that they beheld the
spectre of ’93 emerging from the earth, with the flag of terror in his
hand.
When he had reached the last step, when this trembling and terrible
phantom, erect on that pile of rubbish in the presence of twelve
hundred invisible guns, drew himself up in the face of death and as
though he were more powerful than it, the whole barricade assumed amid
the darkness, a supernatural and colossal form.
There ensued one of those silences which occur only in the presence of
prodigies. In the midst of this silence, the old man waved the red flag
and shouted:—
“Long live the Revolution! Long live the Republic! Fraternity!
Equality! and Death!”
Those in the barricade heard a low and rapid whisper, like the murmur
of a priest who is despatching a prayer in haste. It was probably the
commissary of police who was making the legal summons at the other end
of the street.
Then the same piercing voice which had shouted: “Who goes there?”
shouted:—
“Retire!”
M. Mabeuf, pale, haggard, his eyes lighted up with the mournful flame
of aberration, raised the flag above his head and repeated:—
“Long live the Republic!”
“Fire!” said the voice.
A second discharge, similar to the first, rained down upon the
barricade.
The old man fell on his knees, then rose again, dropped the flag and
fell backwards on the pavement, like a log, at full length, with
outstretched arms.
Rivulets of blood flowed beneath him. His aged head, pale and sad,
seemed to be gazing at the sky.
One of those emotions which are superior to man, which make him forget
even to defend himself, seized upon the insurgents, and they approached
the body with respectful awe.
“What men these regicides were!” said Enjolras.
Courfeyrac bent down to Enjolras’ ear:—
“This is for yourself alone, I do not wish to dampen the enthusiasm.
But this man was anything rather than a regicide. I knew him. His name
was Father Mabeuf. I do not know what was the matter with him to-day.
But he was a brave blockhead. Just look at his head.”
“The head of a blockhead and the heart of a Brutus,” replied Enjolras.
Then he raised his voice:—
“Citizens! This is the example which the old give to the young. We
hesitated, he came! We were drawing back, he advanced! This is what
those who are trembling with age teach to those who tremble with fear!
This aged man is august in the eyes of his country. He has had a long
life and a magnificent death! Now, let us place the body under cover,
that each one of us may defend this old man dead as he would his father
living, and may his presence in our midst render the barricade
impregnable!”
A murmur of gloomy and energetic assent followed these words.
Enjolras bent down, raised the old man’s head, and fierce as he was, he
kissed him on the brow, then, throwing wide his arms, and handling this
dead man with tender precaution, as though he feared to hurt it, he
removed his coat, showed the bloody holes in it to all, and said:—
“This is our flag now.”
CHAPTER III—GAVROCHE WOULD HAVE DONE BETTER TO ACCEPT ENJOLRAS’ CARBINE
They threw a long black shawl of Widow Hucheloup’s over Father Mabeuf.
Six men made a litter of their guns; on this they laid the body, and
bore it, with bared heads, with solemn slowness, to the large table in
the tap-room.
These men, wholly absorbed in the grave and sacred task in which they
were engaged, thought no more of the perilous situation in which they
stood.
When the corpse passed near Javert, who was still impassive, Enjolras
said to the spy:—
“It will be your turn presently!”
During all this time, Little Gavroche, who alone had not quitted his
post, but had remained on guard, thought he espied some men stealthily
approaching the barricade. All at once he shouted:—
“Look out!”
Courfeyrac, Enjolras, Jean Prouvaire, Combeferre, Joly, Bahorel,
Bossuet, and all the rest ran tumultuously from the wine-shop. It was
almost too late. They saw a glistening density of bayonets undulating
above the barricade. Municipal guards of lofty stature were making
their way in, some striding over the omnibus, others through the cut,
thrusting before them the urchin, who retreated, but did not flee.
The moment was critical. It was that first, redoubtable moment of
inundation, when the stream rises to the level of the levee and when
the water begins to filter through the fissures of dike. A second more
and the barricade would have been taken.
Bahorel dashed upon the first municipal guard who was entering, and
killed him on the spot with a blow from his gun; the second killed
Bahorel with a blow from his bayonet. Another had already overthrown
Courfeyrac, who was shouting: “Follow me!” The largest of all, a sort
of colossus, marched on Gavroche with his bayonet fixed. The urchin
took in his arms Javert’s immense gun, levelled it resolutely at the
giant, and fired. No discharge followed. Javert’s gun was not loaded.
The municipal guard burst into a laugh and raised his bayonet at the
child.
Before the bayonet had touched Gavroche, the gun slipped from the
soldier’s grasp, a bullet had struck the municipal guardsman in the
centre of the forehead, and he fell over on his back. A second bullet
struck the other guard, who had assaulted Courfeyrac in the breast, and
laid him low on the pavement.
This was the work of Marius, who had just entered the barricade.
CHAPTER IV—THE BARREL OF POWDER
Marius, still concealed in the turn of the Rue Mondétour, had
witnessed, shuddering and irresolute, the first phase of the combat.
But he had not long been able to resist that mysterious and sovereign
vertigo which may be designated as the call of the abyss. In the
presence of the imminence of the peril, in the presence of the death of
M. Mabeuf, that melancholy enigma, in the presence of Bahorel killed,
and Courfeyrac shouting: “Follow me!” of that child threatened, of his
friends to succor or to avenge, all hesitation had vanished, and he had
flung himself into the conflict, his two pistols in hand. With his
first shot he had saved Gavroche, and with the second delivered
Courfeyrac.
Amid the sound of the shots, amid the cries of the assaulted guards,
the assailants had climbed the entrenchment, on whose summit Municipal
Guards, soldiers of the line and National Guards from the suburbs could
now be seen, gun in hand, rearing themselves to more than half the
height of their bodies.