Les Misérables
“Do you want anything?” Enjolras asked him.
Javert replied: “When are you going to kill me?”
“Wait. We need all our cartridges just at present.”
“Then give me a drink,” said Javert.
Enjolras himself offered him a glass of water, and, as Javert was
pinioned, he helped him to drink.
“Is that all?” inquired Enjolras.
“I am uncomfortable against this post,” replied Javert. “You are not
tender to have left me to pass the night here. Bind me as you please,
but you surely might lay me out on a table like that other man.”
And with a motion of the head, he indicated the body of M. Mabeuf.
There was, as the reader will remember, a long, broad table at the end
of the room, on which they had been running bullets and making
cartridges. All the cartridges having been made, and all the powder
used, this table was free.
At Enjolras’ command, four insurgents unbound Javert from the post.
While they were loosing him, a fifth held a bayonet against his breast.
Leaving his arms tied behind his back, they placed about his feet a
slender but stout whip-cord, as is done to men on the point of mounting
the scaffold, which allowed him to take steps about fifteen inches in
length, and made him walk to the table at the end of the room, where
they laid him down, closely bound about the middle of the body.
By way of further security, and by means of a rope fastened to his
neck, they added to the system of ligatures which rendered every
attempt at escape impossible, that sort of bond which is called in
prisons a martingale, which, starting at the neck, forks on the
stomach, and meets the hands, after passing between the legs.
While they were binding Javert, a man standing on the threshold was
surveying him with singular attention. The shadow cast by this man made
Javert turn his head. He raised his eyes, and recognized Jean Valjean.
He did not even start, but dropped his lids proudly and confined
himself to the remark: “It is perfectly simple.”
CHAPTER VII—THE SITUATION BECOMES AGGRAVATED
The daylight was increasing rapidly. Not a window was opened, not a
door stood ajar; it was the dawn but not the awaking. The end of the
Rue de la Chanvrerie, opposite the barricade, had been evacuated by the
troops, as we have stated, it seemed to be free, and presented itself
to passers-by with a sinister tranquillity. The Rue Saint-Denis was as
dumb as the avenue of Sphinxes at Thebes. Not a living being in the
crossroads, which gleamed white in the light of the sun. Nothing is so
mournful as this light in deserted streets. Nothing was to be seen, but
there was something to be heard. A mysterious movement was going on at
a certain distance. It was evident that the critical moment was
approaching. As on the previous evening, the sentinels had come in; but
this time all had come.
The barricade was stronger than on the occasion of the first attack.
Since the departure of the five, they had increased its height still
further.
On the advice of the sentinel who had examined the region of the
Halles, Enjolras, for fear of a surprise in the rear, came to a serious
decision. He had the small gut of the Mondétour lane, which had been
left open up to that time, barricaded. For this purpose, they tore up
the pavement for the length of several houses more. In this manner, the
barricade, walled on three streets, in front on the Rue de la
Chanvrerie, to the left on the Rues du Cygne and de la Petite
Truanderie, to the right on the Rue Mondétour, was really almost
impregnable; it is true that they were fatally hemmed in there. It had
three fronts, but no exit.—“A fortress but a rat hole too,” said
Courfeyrac with a laugh.
Enjolras had about thirty paving-stones “torn up in excess,” said
Bossuet, piled up near the door of the wine-shop.
The silence was now so profound in the quarter whence the attack must
needs come, that Enjolras had each man resume his post of battle.
An allowance of brandy was doled out to each.
Nothing is more curious than a barricade preparing for an assault. Each
man selects his place as though at the theatre. They jostle, and elbow
and crowd each other. There are some who make stalls of paving-stones.
Here is a corner of the wall which is in the way, it is removed; here
is a redan which may afford protection, they take shelter behind it.
Left-handed men are precious; they take the places that are
inconvenient to the rest. Many arrange to fight in a sitting posture.
They wish to be at ease to kill, and to die comfortably. In the sad war
of June, 1848, an insurgent who was a formidable marksman, and who was
firing from the top of a terrace upon a roof, had a reclining-chair
brought there for his use; a charge of grape-shot found him out there.
As soon as the leader has given the order to clear the decks for
action, all disorderly movements cease; there is no more pulling from
one another; there are no more coteries; no more asides, there is no
more holding aloof; everything in their spirits converges in, and
changes into, a waiting for the assailants. A barricade before the
arrival of danger is chaos; in danger, it is discipline itself. Peril
produces order.
As soon as Enjolras had seized his double-barrelled rifle, and had
placed himself in a sort of embrasure which he had reserved for
himself, all the rest held their peace. A series of faint, sharp noises
resounded confusedly along the wall of paving-stones. It was the men
cocking their guns.
Moreover, their attitudes were prouder, more confident than ever; the
excess of sacrifice strengthens; they no longer cherished any hope, but
they had despair, despair,—the last weapon, which sometimes gives
victory; Virgil has said so. Supreme resources spring from extreme
resolutions. To embark in death is sometimes the means of escaping a
shipwreck; and the lid of the coffin becomes a plank of safety.
As on the preceding evening, the attention of all was directed, we
might almost say leaned upon, the end of the street, now lighted up and
visible.
They had not long to wait. A stir began distinctly in the Saint-Leu
quarter, but it did not resemble the movement of the first attack. A
clashing of chains, the uneasy jolting of a mass, the click of brass
skipping along the pavement, a sort of solemn uproar, announced that
some sinister construction of iron was approaching. There arose a
tremor in the bosoms of these peaceful old streets, pierced and built
for the fertile circulation of interests and ideas, and which are not
made for the horrible rumble of the wheels of war.
The fixity of eye in all the combatants upon the extremity of the
street became ferocious.
A cannon made its appearance.
Artillery-men were pushing the piece; it was in firing trim; the
fore-carriage had been detached; two upheld the gun-carriage, four were
at the wheels; others followed with the caisson. They could see the
smoke of the burning lint-stock.
“Fire!” shouted Enjolras.
The whole barricade fired, the report was terrible; an avalanche of
smoke covered and effaced both cannon and men; after a few seconds, the
cloud dispersed, and the cannon and men reappeared; the gun-crew had
just finished rolling it slowly, correctly, without haste, into
position facing the barricade. Not one of them had been struck. Then
the captain of the piece, bearing down upon the breech in order to
raise the muzzle, began to point the cannon with the gravity of an
astronomer levelling a telescope.
“Bravo for the cannoneers!” cried Bossuet.
And the whole barricade clapped their hands.
A moment later, squarely planted in the very middle of the street,
astride of the gutter, the piece was ready for action. A formidable
pair of jaws yawned on the barricade.
“Come, merrily now!” ejaculated Courfeyrac. “That’s the brutal part of
it. After the fillip on the nose, the blow from the fist. The army is
reaching out its big paw to us. The barricade is going to be severely
shaken up. The fusillade tries, the cannon takes.”
“It is a piece of eight, new model, brass,” added Combeferre. “Those
pieces are liable to burst as soon as the proportion of ten parts of
tin to one hundred of brass is exceeded. The excess of tin renders them
too tender. Then it comes to pass that they have caves and chambers
when looked at from the vent hole. In order to obviate this danger, and
to render it possible to force the charge, it may become necessary to
return to the process of the fourteenth century, hooping, and to
encircle the piece on the outside with a series of unwelded steel
bands, from the breech to the trunnions. In the meantime, they remedy
this defect as best they may; they manage to discover where the holes
are located in the vent of a cannon, by means of a searcher. But there
is a better method, with Gribeauval’s movable star.”
“In the sixteenth century,” remarked Bossuet, “they used to rifle
cannon.”
“Yes,” replied Combeferre, “that augments the projectile force, but
diminishes the accuracy of the firing. In firing at short range, the
trajectory is not as rigid as could be desired, the parabola is
exaggerated, the line of the projectile is no longer sufficiently
rectilinear to allow of its striking intervening objects, which is,
nevertheless, a necessity of battle, the importance of which increases
with the proximity of the enemy and the precipitation of the discharge.
This defect of the tension of the curve of the projectile in the rifled
cannon of the sixteenth century arose from the smallness of the charge;
small charges for that sort of engine are imposed by the ballistic
necessities, such, for instance, as the preservation of the
gun-carriage. In short, that despot, the cannon, cannot do all that it
desires; force is a great weakness. A cannon-ball only travels six
hundred leagues an hour; light travels seventy thousand leagues a
second. Such is the superiority of Jesus Christ over Napoleon.”
“Reload your guns,” said Enjolras.
How was the casing of the barricade going to behave under the
cannon-balls? Would they effect a breach? That was the question. While
the insurgents were reloading their guns, the artillery-men were
loading the cannon.
The anxiety in the redoubt was profound.
The shot sped the report burst forth.
“Present!” shouted a joyous voice.
And Gavroche flung himself into the barricade just as the ball dashed
against it.
He came from the direction of the Rue du Cygne, and he had nimbly
climbed over the auxiliary barricade which fronted on the labyrinth of
the Rue de la Petite Truanderie.
Gavroche produced a greater sensation in the barricade than the
cannon-ball.
The ball buried itself in the mass of rubbish. At the most there was an
omnibus wheel broken, and the old Anceau cart was demolished. On seeing
this, the barricade burst into a laugh.
“Go on!” shouted Bossuet to the artillerists.
CHAPTER VIII—THE ARTILLERY-MEN COMPEL PEOPLE TO TAKE THEM SERIOUSLY
They flocked round Gavroche. But he had no time to tell anything.
Marius drew him aside with a shudder.
“What are you doing here?”
“Hullo!” said the child, “what are you doing here yourself?”
And he stared at Marius intently with his epic effrontery. His eyes
grew larger with the proud light within them.
It was with an accent of severity that Marius continued:
“Who told you to come back? Did you deliver my letter at the address?”
Gavroche was not without some compunctions in the matter of that
letter. In his haste to return to the barricade, he had got rid of it
rather than delivered it. He was forced to acknowledge to himself that
he had confided it rather lightly to that stranger whose face he had
not been able to make out. It is true that the man was bareheaded, but