Les Misérables
Father and son entered the labyrinth of walks which leads to the grand
flight of steps near the clump of trees on the side of the Rue Madame.
As soon as they had disappeared from view, the elder child hastily
flung himself flat on his stomach on the rounding curb of the basin,
and clinging to it with his left hand, and leaning over the water, on
the verge of falling in, he stretched out his right hand with his stick
towards the cake. The swans, perceiving the enemy, made haste, and in
so doing, they produced an effect of their breasts which was of service
to the little fisher; the water flowed back before the swans, and one
of these gentle concentric undulations softly floated the brioche
towards the child’s wand. Just as the swans came up, the stick touched
the cake. The child gave it a brisk rap, drew in the brioche,
frightened away the swans, seized the cake, and sprang to his feet. The
cake was wet; but they were hungry and thirsty. The elder broke the
cake into two portions, a large one and a small one, took the small one
for himself, gave the large one to his brother, and said to him:
“Ram that into your muzzle.”
CHAPTER XVII—MORTUUS PATER FILIUM MORITURUM EXPECTAT
Marius dashed out of the barricade, Combeferre followed him. But he was
too late. Gavroche was dead. Combeferre brought back the basket of
cartridges; Marius bore the child.
“Alas!” he thought, “that which the father had done for his father, he
was requiting to the son; only, Thénardier had brought back his father
alive; he was bringing back the child dead.”
When Marius re-entered the redoubt with Gavroche in his arms, his face,
like the child, was inundated with blood.
At the moment when he had stooped to lift Gavroche, a bullet had grazed
his head; he had not noticed it.
Courfeyrac untied his cravat and with it bandaged Marius’ brow.
They laid Gavroche on the same table with Mabeuf, and spread over the
two corpses the black shawl. There was enough of it for both the old
man and the child.
Combeferre distributed the cartridges from the basket which he had
brought in.
This gave each man fifteen rounds to fire.
Jean Valjean was still in the same place, motionless on his stone post.
When Combeferre offered him his fifteen cartridges, he shook his head.
“Here’s a rare eccentric,” said Combeferre in a low voice to Enjolras.
“He finds a way of not fighting in this barricade.”
“Which does not prevent him from defending it,” responded Enjolras.
“Heroism has its originals,” resumed Combeferre.
And Courfeyrac, who had overheard, added:
“He is another sort from Father Mabeuf.”
One thing which must be noted is, that the fire which was battering the
barricade hardly disturbed the interior. Those who have never traversed
the whirlwind of this sort of war can form no idea of the singular
moments of tranquillity mingled with these convulsions. Men go and
come, they talk, they jest, they lounge. Some one whom we know heard a
combatant say to him in the midst of the grape-shot: “We are here as at
a bachelor breakfast.” The redoubt of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, we
repeat, seemed very calm within. All mutations and all phases had been,
or were about to be, exhausted. The position, from critical, had become
menacing, and, from menacing, was probably about to become desperate.
In proportion as the situation grew gloomy, the glow of heroism
empurpled the barricade more and more. Enjolras, who was grave,
dominated it, in the attitude of a young Spartan sacrificing his naked
sword to the sombre genius, Epidotas.
Combeferre, wearing an apron, was dressing the wounds: Bossuet and
Feuilly were making cartridges with the powder-flask picked up by
Gavroche on the dead corporal, and Bossuet said to Feuilly: “We are
soon to take the diligence for another planet”; Courfeyrac was
disposing and arranging on some paving-stones which he had reserved for
himself near Enjolras, a complete arsenal, his sword-cane, his gun, two
holster pistols, and a cudgel, with the care of a young girl setting a
small dunkerque in order. Jean Valjean stared silently at the wall
opposite him. An artisan was fastening Mother Hucheloup’s big straw hat
on his head with a string, “for fear of sun-stroke,” as he said. The
young men from the Cougourde d’Aix were chatting merrily among
themselves, as though eager to speak patois for the last time. Joly,
who had taken Widow Hucheloup’s mirror from the wall, was examining his
tongue in it. Some combatants, having discovered a few crusts of rather
mouldy bread, in a drawer, were eagerly devouring them. Marius was
disturbed with regard to what his father was about to say to him.
CHAPTER XVIII—THE VULTURE BECOME PREY
We must insist upon one psychological fact peculiar to barricades.
Nothing which is characteristic of that surprising war of the streets
should be omitted.
Whatever may have been the singular inward tranquillity which we have
just mentioned, the barricade, for those who are inside it, remains,
nonetheless, a vision.
There is something of the apocalypse in civil war, all the mists of the
unknown are commingled with fierce flashes, revolutions are sphinxes,
and any one who has passed through a barricade thinks he has traversed
a dream.
The feelings to which one is subject in these places we have pointed
out in the case of Marius, and we shall see the consequences; they are
both more and less than life. On emerging from a barricade, one no
longer knows what one has seen there. One has been terrible, but one
knows it not. One has been surrounded with conflicting ideas which had
human faces; one’s head has been in the light of the future. There were
corpses lying prone there, and phantoms standing erect. The hours were
colossal and seemed hours of eternity. One has lived in death. Shadows
have passed by. What were they?
One has beheld hands on which there was blood; there was a deafening
horror; there was also a frightful silence; there were open mouths
which shouted, and other open mouths which held their peace; one was in
the midst of smoke, of night, perhaps. One fancied that one had touched
the sinister ooze of unknown depths; one stares at something red on
one’s finger nails. One no longer remembers anything.
Let us return to the Rue de la Chanvrerie.
All at once, between two discharges, the distant sound of a clock
striking the hour became audible.
“It is midday,” said Combeferre.
The twelve strokes had not finished striking when Enjolras sprang to
his feet, and from the summit of the barricade hurled this thundering
shout:
“Carry stones up into the houses; line the windowsills and the roofs
with them. Half the men to their guns, the other half to the
paving-stones. There is not a minute to be lost.”
A squad of sappers and miners, axe on shoulder, had just made their
appearance in battle array at the end of the street.
This could only be the head of a column; and of what column? The
attacking column, evidently; the sappers charged with the demolition of
the barricade must always precede the soldiers who are to scale it.
They were, evidently, on the brink of that moment which M.
Clermont-Tonnerre, in 1822, called “the tug of war.”
Enjolras’ order was executed with the correct haste which is peculiar
to ships and barricades, the only two scenes of combat where escape is
impossible. In less than a minute, two thirds of the stones which
Enjolras had had piled up at the door of Corinthe had been carried up
to the first floor and the attic, and before a second minute had
elapsed, these stones, artistically set one upon the other, walled up
the sash-window on the first floor and the windows in the roof to half
their height. A few loop-holes carefully planned by Feuilly, the
principal architect, allowed of the passage of the gun-barrels. This
armament of the windows could be effected all the more easily since the
firing of grape-shot had ceased. The two cannons were now discharging
ball against the centre of the barrier in order to make a hole there,
and, if possible, a breach for the assault.
When the stones destined to the final defence were in place, Enjolras
had the bottles which he had set under the table where Mabeuf lay,
carried to the first floor.
“Who is to drink that?” Bossuet asked him.
“They,” replied Enjolras.
Then they barricaded the window below, and held in readiness the iron
cross-bars which served to secure the door of the wine-shop at night.
The fortress was complete. The barricade was the rampart, the wine-shop
was the dungeon. With the stones which remained they stopped up the
outlet.
As the defenders of a barricade are always obliged to be sparing of
their ammunition, and as the assailants know this, the assailants
combine their arrangements with a sort of irritating leisure, expose
themselves to fire prematurely, though in appearance more than in
reality, and take their ease. The preparations for attack are always
made with a certain methodical deliberation; after which, the lightning
strikes.
This deliberation permitted Enjolras to take a review of everything and
to perfect everything. He felt that, since such men were to die, their
death ought to be a masterpiece.
He said to Marius: “We are the two leaders. I will give the last orders
inside. Do you remain outside and observe.”
Marius posted himself on the lookout upon the crest of the barricade.
Enjolras had the door of the kitchen, which was the ambulance, as the
reader will remember, nailed up.
“No splashing of the wounded,” he said.
He issued his final orders in the tap-room in a curt, but profoundly
tranquil tone; Feuilly listened and replied in the name of all.
“On the first floor, hold your axes in readiness to cut the staircase.
Have you them?”
“Yes,” said Feuilly.
“How many?”
“Two axes and a pole-axe.”
“That is good. There are now twenty-six combatants of us on foot. How
many guns are there?”
“Thirty-four.”
“Eight too many. Keep those eight guns loaded like the rest and at
hand. Swords and pistols in your belts. Twenty men to the barricade.
Six ambushed in the attic windows, and at the window on the first floor
to fire on the assailants through the loop-holes in the stones. Let not
a single worker remain inactive here. Presently, when the drum beats
the assault, let the twenty below stairs rush to the barricade. The
first to arrive will have the best places.”
These arrangements made, he turned to Javert and said:
“I am not forgetting you.”
And, laying a pistol on the table, he added:
“The last man to leave this room will smash the skull of this spy.”
“Here?” inquired a voice.
“No, let us not mix their corpses with our own. The little barricade of
the Mondétour lane can be scaled. It is only four feet high. The man is
well pinioned. He shall be taken thither and put to death.”
There was some one who was more impassive at that moment than Enjolras,
it was Javert. Here Jean Valjean made his appearance.
He had been lost among the group of insurgents. He stepped forth and
said to Enjolras:
“You are the commander?”
“Yes.”
“You thanked me a while ago.”
“In the name of the Republic. The barricade has two saviors, Marius
Pontmercy and yourself.”
“Do you think that I deserve a recompense?”
“Certainly.”
“Well, I request one.”
“What is it?”
“That I may blow that man’s brains out.”
Javert raised his head, saw Jean Valjean, made an almost imperceptible
movement, and said:
“That is just.”
As for Enjolras, he had begun to re-load his rifle; he cut his eyes
about him:
“No objections.”
And he turned to Jean Valjean:
“Take the spy.”
Jean Valjean did, in fact, take possession of Javert, by seating