Les Misérables
They already covered more than two-thirds of the barrier, but they did
not leap into the enclosure, as though wavering in the fear of some
trap. They gazed into the dark barricade as one would gaze into a
lion’s den. The light of the torch illuminated only their bayonets,
their bear-skin caps, and the upper part of their uneasy and angry
faces.
Marius had no longer any weapons; he had flung away his discharged
pistols after firing them; but he had caught sight of the barrel of
powder in the tap-room, near the door.
As he turned half round, gazing in that direction, a soldier took aim
at him. At the moment when the soldier was sighting Marius, a hand was
laid on the muzzle of the gun and obstructed it. This was done by some
one who had darted forward,—the young workman in velvet trousers. The
shot sped, traversed the hand and possibly, also, the workman, since he
fell, but the ball did not strike Marius. All this, which was rather to
be apprehended than seen through the smoke, Marius, who was entering
the tap-room, hardly noticed. Still, he had, in a confused way,
perceived that gun-barrel aimed at him, and the hand which had blocked
it, and he had heard the discharge. But in moments like this, the
things which one sees vacillate and are precipitated, and one pauses
for nothing. One feels obscurely impelled towards more darkness still,
and all is cloud.
The insurgents, surprised but not terrified, had rallied. Enjolras had
shouted: “Wait! Don’t fire at random!” In the first confusion, they
might, in fact, wound each other. The majority of them had ascended to
the window on the first story and to the attic windows, whence they
commanded the assailants.
The most determined, with Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Jean Prouvaire, and
Combeferre, had proudly placed themselves with their backs against the
houses at the rear, unsheltered and facing the ranks of soldiers and
guards who crowned the barricade.
All this was accomplished without haste, with that strange and
threatening gravity which precedes engagements. They took aim, point
blank, on both sides: they were so close that they could talk together
without raising their voices.
When they had reached this point where the spark is on the brink of
darting forth, an officer in a gorget extended his sword and said:—
“Lay down your arms!”
“Fire!” replied Enjolras.
The two discharges took place at the same moment, and all disappeared
in smoke.
An acrid and stifling smoke in which dying and wounded lay with weak,
dull groans. When the smoke cleared away, the combatants on both sides
could be seen to be thinned out, but still in the same positions,
reloading in silence. All at once, a thundering voice was heard,
shouting:—
“Be off with you, or I’ll blow up the barricade!”
All turned in the direction whence the voice proceeded.
Marius had entered the tap-room, and had seized the barrel of powder,
then he had taken advantage of the smoke, and the sort of obscure mist
which filled the entrenched enclosure, to glide along the barricade as
far as that cage of paving-stones where the torch was fixed. To tear it
from the torch, to replace it by the barrel of powder, to thrust the
pile of stones under the barrel, which was instantly staved in, with a
sort of horrible obedience,—all this had cost Marius but the time
necessary to stoop and rise again; and now all, National Guards,
Municipal Guards, officers, soldiers, huddled at the other extremity of
the barricade, gazed stupidly at him, as he stood with his foot on the
stones, his torch in his hand, his haughty face illuminated by a fatal
resolution, drooping the flame of the torch towards that redoubtable
pile where they could make out the broken barrel of powder, and giving
vent to that startling cry:—
“Be off with you, or I’ll blow up the barricade!”
Marius on that barricade after the octogenarian was the vision of the
young revolution after the apparition of the old.
“Blow up the barricade!” said a sergeant, “and yourself with it!”
Marius retorted: “And myself also.”
And he dropped the torch towards the barrel of powder.
But there was no longer any one on the barrier. The assailants,
abandoning their dead and wounded, flowed back pell-mell and in
disorder towards the extremity of the street, and there were again lost
in the night. It was a headlong flight.
The barricade was free.
CHAPTER V—END OF THE VERSES OF JEAN PROUVAIRE
All flocked around Marius. Courfeyrac flung himself on his neck.
“Here you are!”
“What luck!” said Combeferre.
“You came in opportunely!” ejaculated Bossuet.
“If it had not been for you, I should have been dead!” began Courfeyrac
again.
“If it had not been for you, I should have been gobbled up!” added
Gavroche.
Marius asked:—
“Where is the chief?”
“You are he!” said Enjolras.
Marius had had a furnace in his brain all day long; now it was a
whirlwind. This whirlwind which was within him, produced on him the
effect of being outside of him and of bearing him away. It seemed to
him that he was already at an immense distance from life. His two
luminous months of joy and love, ending abruptly at that frightful
precipice, Cosette lost to him, that barricade, M. Mabeuf getting
himself killed for the Republic, himself the leader of the
insurgents,—all these things appeared to him like a tremendous
nightmare. He was obliged to make a mental effort to recall the fact
that all that surrounded him was real. Marius had already seen too much
of life not to know that nothing is more imminent than the impossible,
and that what it is always necessary to foresee is the unforeseen. He
had looked on at his own drama as a piece which one does not
understand.
In the mists which enveloped his thoughts, he did not recognize Javert,
who, bound to his post, had not so much as moved his head during the
whole of the attack on the barricade, and who had gazed on the revolt
seething around him with the resignation of a martyr and the majesty of
a judge. Marius had not even seen him.
In the meanwhile, the assailants did not stir, they could be heard
marching and swarming through at the end of the street but they did not
venture into it, either because they were awaiting orders or because
they were awaiting reinforcements before hurling themselves afresh on
this impregnable redoubt. The insurgents had posted sentinels, and some
of them, who were medical students, set about caring for the wounded.
They had thrown the tables out of the wine-shop, with the exception of
the two tables reserved for lint and cartridges, and of the one on
which lay Father Mabeuf; they had added them to the barricade, and had
replaced them in the tap-room with mattresses from the bed of the widow
Hucheloup and her servants. On these mattresses they had laid the
wounded. As for the three poor creatures who inhabited Corinthe, no one
knew what had become of them. They were finally found, however, hidden
in the cellar.
A poignant emotion clouded the joy of the disencumbered barricade.
The roll was called. One of the insurgents was missing. And who was it?
One of the dearest. One of the most valiant. Jean Prouvaire. He was
sought among the wounded, he was not there. He was sought among the
dead, he was not there. He was evidently a prisoner. Combeferre said to
Enjolras:—
“They have our friend; we have their agent. Are you set on the death of
that spy?”
“Yes,” replied Enjolras; “but less so than on the life of Jean
Prouvaire.”
This took place in the tap-room near Javert’s post.
“Well,” resumed Combeferre, “I am going to fasten my handkerchief to my
cane, and go as a flag of truce, to offer to exchange our man for
theirs.”
“Listen,” said Enjolras, laying his hand on Combeferre’s arm.
At the end of the street there was a significant clash of arms.
They heard a manly voice shout:—
“Vive la France! Long live France! Long live the future!”
They recognized the voice of Prouvaire.
A flash passed, a report rang out.
Silence fell again.
“They have killed him,” exclaimed Combeferre.
Enjolras glanced at Javert, and said to him:—
“Your friends have just shot you.”
CHAPTER VI—THE AGONY OF DEATH AFTER THE AGONY OF LIFE
A peculiarity of this species of war is, that the attack of the
barricades is almost always made from the front, and that the
assailants generally abstain from turning the position, either because
they fear ambushes, or because they are afraid of getting entangled in
the tortuous streets. The insurgents’ whole attention had been
directed, therefore, to the grand barricade, which was, evidently, the
spot always menaced, and there the struggle would infallibly
recommence. But Marius thought of the little barricade, and went
thither. It was deserted and guarded only by the fire-pot which
trembled between the paving-stones. Moreover, the Mondétour alley, and
the branches of the Rue de la Petite Truanderie and the Rue du Cygne
were profoundly calm.
As Marius was withdrawing, after concluding his inspection, he heard
his name pronounced feebly in the darkness.
“Monsieur Marius!”
He started, for he recognized the voice which had called to him two
hours before through the gate in the Rue Plumet.
Only, the voice now seemed to be nothing more than a breath.
He looked about him, but saw no one.
Marius thought he had been mistaken, that it was an illusion added by
his mind to the extraordinary realities which were clashing around him.
He advanced a step, in order to quit the distant recess where the
barricade lay.
“Monsieur Marius!” repeated the voice.
This time he could not doubt that he had heard it distinctly; he looked
and saw nothing.
“At your feet,” said the voice.
He bent down, and saw in the darkness a form which was dragging itself
towards him.
It was crawling along the pavement. It was this that had spoken to him.
The fire-pot allowed him to distinguish a blouse, torn trousers of
coarse velvet, bare feet, and something which resembled a pool of
blood. Marius indistinctly made out a pale head which was lifted
towards him and which was saying to him:—
“You do not recognize me?”
“No.”
“Éponine.”
Marius bent hastily down. It was, in fact, that unhappy child. She was
dressed in men’s clothes.
“How come you here? What are you doing here?”
“I am dying,” said she.
There are words and incidents which arouse dejected beings. Marius
cried out with a start:—
“You are wounded! Wait, I will carry you into the room! They will
attend to you there. Is it serious? How must I take hold of you in
order not to hurt you? Where do you suffer? Help! My God! But why did
you come hither?”
And he tried to pass his arm under her, in order to raise her.
She uttered a feeble cry.
“Have I hurt you?” asked Marius.
“A little.”
“But I only touched your hand.”
She raised her hand to Marius, and in the middle of that hand Marius
saw a black hole.
“What is the matter with your hand?” said he.
“It is pierced.”
“Pierced?”
“Yes.”
“What with?”
“A bullet.”
“How?”
“Did you see a gun aimed at you?”
“Yes, and a hand stopping it.”
“It was mine.”
Marius was seized with a shudder.
“What madness! Poor child! But so much the better, if that is all, it
is nothing, let me carry you to a bed. They will dress your wound; one
does not die of a pierced hand.”
She murmured:—
“The bullet traversed my hand, but it came out through my back. It is
useless to remove me from this spot. I will tell you how you can care
for me better than any surgeon. Sit down near me on this stone.”
He obeyed; she laid her head on Marius’ knees, and, without looking at
him, she said:—