BOOK TWELFTH
CORINTH



I. HISTORY OF CORINTH FROM ITS FOUNDATION



THE PARISIANS who, to-day, upon entering the Rue Rambuteau from the
side of the markets, notice on their right, opposite the Rue Mondetour, a
basket-maker's shop, with a basket for a sign, in the shape of the Emperor
Napoleon the Great, with this inscription:

NAPOLEON EST FAIT
TOUT EN OSIER,

NAPOLEON IS MADE,
ALL OF WILLOW BRAID.

do not suspect the terrible scenes which this very place saw thirty years ago.
Here were the Rue de la Chanvrerie, which the old signs spelled Chanverrerie,
and the celebrated wine-shop called Corinth.

The reader will remember all that has been said about the barricade
erected on this spot and eclipsed elsewhere by the barricade of Saint Merry.
Upon this famous barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, now fallen into
deep obscurity, we are about to throw some little light.

Permit us to recur, for the sake of clearness, to the simple means
already employed by us for Waterloo. Those who would picture to themselves
with sufficient exactness the confused blocks of houses which stood at
that period near the Pointe Saint Eustache, at the northeast corner of the
markets of Paris, where is now the mouth of the Rue Rambuteau, have only
to figure to themselves, touching the Rue Saint Denis at its summit, and the
markets at its base, an N, of which the two vertical strokes would be the
Rue de la Grande Truanderie and the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and the Rue de
la Petite Truanderie would make the transverse stroke. The old Rue
Mondetour cut the three strokes at the most awkward angles. So that the
labyrinthine entanglement of these four streets sufficed to make, in a space
of four hundred square yards, between the markets and the Rue Saint
Denis, in one direction, and between the Rue du Cygne and the Rue des
Precheurs in the other direction, seven islets of houses, oddly intersecting,
of various sizes, placed crosswise and as if by chance, and separated but
slightly, like blocks of stone in a stone yard, by narrow crevices.

We say narrow crevices, and we cannot give a more just idea of those
obscure, contracted, angular lanes, bordered by ruins eight stories high.
These houses were so dilapidated, that in the Rues de la Chanvrerie and
de la Petite Truanderie, the fronts were shored up with beams, reaching
from one house to another. The street was narrow and the gutter wide, the
passer walked along a pavement which was always wet, beside shops that
were like cellars, great stone blocks encircled with iron, immense garbage
heaps, and alley gates armed with enormous and venerable gratings. The
Rue Rambuteau has devastated all this.

The name Mondetour pictures marvellously well the windings of all this
route. A little further along you found them still better expressed by the
Rue Pirouette, which ran into the Rue Mondetour.

The passer who came from the Rue Saint Denis into the Rue de la Chan-
vrerie saw it gradually narrow away before him as if he had entered an
elongated funnel. At the end of the street, which was very short, he found
the passage barred on the market side, and he would have thought himself
in a cul-de-sac, if he had not perceived on the right and on the left two
black openings by which he could escape. These were the Rue Mondetour,
which communicated on the one side with the Rue des Precheurs, on the
other with the Rues du Cygne and Petite Truanderie. At the end of this
sort of cul-de-sac, at the corner of the opening on the right, might be
seen a house lower than the rest, and forming a kind of cape on the street.
In this house, only two stories high, had been festively installed for
three hundred years an illustrious wine-shop. This wine-shop raised a
joyful sound in the very place which old Theophile has rendered famous
in these two lines:

La branle le squelette horrible
D'un pauvre amant qui se pendit.2
There rattles the horrible skeleton
of a poor lover who hung himself.

The location was good. The proprietorship descended from father to
son.

In the times of Mathurin Regnier, this wine-shop was called the Pot
aux Roses (the Pot of Roses), and as rebuses were in fashion, it had for a sign
a post (poteau) painted rose colour. In the last century, the worthy Natoire,
one of the fantastic masters now held in disdain by the rigid school, having
got tipsy several times in this wine-shop at the same table where Regnier
had got drunk, out of gratitude painted a bunch of Corinth grapes upon
the rose-coloured post. The landlord, from joy, changed his sign and had
gilded below the bunch these words: The Grape of Corinth. Hence the name
Corinth. Nothing is more natural to drinkers than an ellipsis. The ellipsis is
the zigzag of phrase. Corinth gradually dethroned the Pot aux Roses. The
last landlord of the dynasty, Father Hucheloup, not even knowing the tradition,
had the post painted blue.

A basement room in which was the counter, a room on the first floor in
which was the billiard table, a spiral wooden staircase piercing the ceiling,
wine on the tables, smoke on the walls, candles in broad day, such was the
wine-shop. A stairway with a trap-door in the basement-room led to the
cellar. On the second floor were the rooms of the Hucheloups. You
ascended by a stairway, which was rather a ladder than a stairway, the only
entrance to which was by a back door in the large room on the first floor. In
the attic, two garret rooms, with dormer windows, nests for servants. The
kitchen divided the ground-floor with the counting-room.

Father Hucheloup was perhaps a born chemist, he was certainly a
cook; people not only drank in his wine-shop, they ate there. Hucheloup
had invented an excellent dish which was found only at his house; it was
stuffed carps which he called carpes au gras. This was eaten by the light
of a tallow candle or a lamp of the time of Louis XVI., upon tables on which
an oil-cloth was nailed for a tablecloth. Men came there from a distance.
Hucheloup, one fine morning, thought proper to advertise by-passers of his
"specialty;" he dipped a brush in a pot of blacking, and as he had an or-
thography of his own, even as he had a cuisine of his own, he improvised upon
his wall this remarkable inscription:

CARPES HO GRAS.

One winter, the showers and the storms took a fancy to efface the S
which terminated the first word and the G which commenced the third; it
was left like this:

CARPE HO RAS.

Time and the rain aiding, a humble gastronomic advertisement had
become a profound piece of advice.

So that it happened that, not knowing French, Father Hucheloup had
known Latin, that he had brought philosophy out of his kitchen and that,
desiring simply to eclipse Careme, he had equalled Horace. And what was
striking was that this also meant: Enter my wineshop.

Nothing of all this is at present in existence. The Mondetour labyrinth
was ripped up and opened wide in 1847, and probably is now no more. The
Rue de la Chanvrerie and Corinth have disappeared under the pavements
of the Rue Rambuteau.

As we have said, Corinth was one of the meeting, if not rallying places,
of Courfeyrac and his friends. It was Grantaire who had discovered
Corinth. He had entered on account of Carpe Horas, and he returned on
account of Carpes au Gras. They drank there, they ate there, they shouted
there; they paid little, they paid poorly, they did not pay at all, they
were always welcome. Father Hucheloup was a goodman.

Hucheloup, a goodman, we have just said, was a cook with moustaches:
an amusing variety. He had always an ill-humoured face, seemed to wish
to intimidate his customers, grumbled at people who came to his house,
and appeared more disposed to pick a quarrel with them than to serve them
their soup. And still, we maintain, they were always welcome. This oddity
had brought custom to his shop, and led young men to him, saying to each
other: "Come and hear Father Hucheloup grumble." He had been a fencing-
master. He would suddenly burst out laughing. Coarse voice, good devil.
His was a comic heart, with a tragic face; he asked nothing better than
to frighten you, much like those snuff-boxes which have the shape of a
pistol. The discharge is a sneeze.

His wife was Mother Hucheloup, a bearded creature, and very ugly.

Towards 1830, Father Hucheloup died. With him the secret of the carpes
au gras was lost. His widow, scarcely consolable, continued the wineshop.
But the cuisine degenerated and became execrable, the wine, which
had always been bad, became frightful. Courfeyrac and his friends continued
to go to Corinth, however--"from pity," said Bossuet.

Widow Hucheloup was short-winded and deformed, with memories of
the country. She relieved their tiresomeness by her pronunciation. She had
a way of her own of saying things which spiced her village and spring-time
reminiscences. It had once been her fortune, she affirmed, to hear "the
lead-breasts sing in the hawkthorns."

The room on the first floor, in which was "the restaurant," was a long
and wide room, encumbered with stools, crickets, chairs, benches, and
tables, and a rickety old billiard-table. It was reached by the spiral staircase
which terminated at the corner of the room in a square hole like the hatchway
of a ship.

This room, lighted by a single narrow window and by a lamp which was al-
ways burning, had the appearance of a garret. All the pieces of furniture
on four legs behaved as if they had but three. The whitewashed walls
had no ornament except this quatrain in honour of Ma'am Hucheloup:

Elle etonne a dix pas, elle epouvante a deux,
Une verrue habite en son nez hasardeux;
On tremble a chaque instant qu'elle ne vous la mouche,
Et qu'un beau jour son nez ne tombe dans a bouche.3
She astounds at ten paces, she terrifies at two,
a wart inhabits her dangerous nose,
you tremble every moment lest she blow it you,
and lest some fine day her nose may fall into her mouth.

This was written in charcoal upon the wall.

Ma'am Hucheloup, the original, went back and forth from morning till
night before this quatrain in perfect tranquillity. Two servants, called
Chowder and Fricassee, and for whom nobody had ever known any other
names, helped Ma'am Hucheloup to put upon the tables the pitchers of
blue wine and the various broths which were served to the hungry in
earthen dishes. Chowder, fat, round, red, and boisterous, former favourite
sultana of the defunct Hucheloup, was uglier than any mythological monster;
still, as it is fitting that the servant should always keep behind the
mistress, she was less ugly than Ma'am Hucheloup. Fricassee, long, del-
icate, white with a lymphatic whiteness, rings around her eyes, eyelids
drooping, always exhausted and dejected, subject to what might be called
chronic weariness, up first, in bed last, served everybody, even the other
servant, mildly and in silence, smiling through fatigue with a sort of
vague sleepy smile.

Before entering the restaurant room, you might read upon the door
this line written in chalk by Courfeyrac:

Regale si tu peux et mange si tu l'oses.4
Feast if you can and eat if you dare.



II. PRELIMINARY GAIETY



LAIGLE DE MEAUX, we know, lived more with Joly than elsewhere. He had
a lodging as the bird has a branch. The two friends lived together, ate
together, slept together. Everything was in common with them, even
Musichetta a little. They were what, among the Chapeau Brothers, are
called bini. On the morning of the 5th of June, they went to breakfast at
Corinth. Joly, whose head was stopped up, had a bad cold, which Laigle
was beginning to share. Laigle's coat was threadbare, but Joly was well
dressed.

It was about nine o'clock in the morning door of Corinth.

They went up to the first floor.

Chowder and Fricassee received them: "Oysters, cheese, and ham,"
said Laigle.

And they sat down at a table.

The wine-shop was empty; they two only were there.

Fricassee, recognising Joly and Laigle, put a bottle of wine on the table.
As they were at their first oysters, a head appeared at the hatchway of
the stairs, and a voice said:

"I was passing. I smelt in the street a delicious odour of Brie cheese. I
have come in."

It was Grantaire.

Grantaire took a stool and sat down at the table.

Fricassee, seeing Grantaire, put two bottles of wine on the table.
That made three.

"Are you going to drink those two bottles?" inquired Laigle of
Grantaire.

Grantaire answered:

"All are ingenious, you alone are ingenuous. Two bottles never astonished
a man."

The others had begun by eating. Grantaire began by drinking. A half
bottle was quickly swallowed.

"Have you a hole in your stomach?" resumed Laigle.

"You surely have one in your elbow," said Grantaire.

And, after emptying his glass, he added:

"Ah, now, Laigle of the funeral orations, your coat is old."

"I hope so," replied Laigle. "That makes us agree so well, my coat and I.
It has got all my wrinkles, it doesn't bind me anywhere, it has fitted it-
self to all my deformities, it is complaisant to all my motions; I feel it
only because it keeps me warm. Old coats are the same thing as old friends."

"That's true," exclaimed Joly, joining in the dialogue, "an old habit
[coat] is an old abi [friend]."

"Especially," said Grantaire, "in the mouth of a man whose head is
stopped up."

"Grantaire," asked Laigle, "do you come from the boulevard?"

"No."

"We just saw the head of the procession pass, Joly and I."

"It is a barvellous spectacle," said Joly.

"How quiet this street is!" exclaimed Laigle. "Who would suspect that
Paris is all topsy-turvy? You see this was formerly all monasteries about
here! Du Breul and Sauval give the list of them, and the Abbe Lebeuf. They
were all around here, they swarmed, the shod, the unshod, the shaven, the
bearded, the greys, the blacks, the whites, the Franciscans, the Minimi, the
Capuchins, the Carmelites, the Lesser Augustines, the Greater Augustines,
the Old Augustines. They littered."

"Don't talk about monks," interrupted Grantaire, "it makes me want
to scratch."

Then he exclaimed:

"Peugh! I have just swallowed a bad oyster. Here's the hypochondria
upon me again. The oysters are spoiled, the servants are ugly. I hate human
kind. I passed just now in the Rue Richelieu before the great public library.
This heap of oyster shells, which they call a library, disgusts me to think
of. How much paper! how much ink! how much scribbling! Somebody has
written all that! What booby was it who said that man is a biped with fea-
thers? And then, I met a pretty girl whom I knew, beautiful as Spring, worthy
to be called Floreal, and delighted, transported, happy, with the angels, the
poor creature, because yesterday a horrid banker, pitted with small-pox,
deigned to fancy her. Alas! woman watches the publican no less than the
fop; cats chase mice as well as birds. This damsel, less than two months ago,
was a good girl in a garret, she fixed the little ring, of copper in the eyelets
of corsets, how do you call it? She sewed, she had a bed, she lived with a
flower-pot, she was contented. Now she is a bankeress. This transformation
was wrought last night. I met the victim this morning, full of joy. The
hideous part of it is, that the wench was quite as pretty to-day as yesterday.
Her financier didn't appear on her face. Roses have this much more or less
than women, that the traces which worms leave on them are visible. Ah!
there is no morality upon the earth; I call to witness the myrtle, the symbol
of love, the laurel, the symbol of war, the olive; that goose, the symbol
of peace, the apple, which almost strangled Adam with its seed, and the fig,
the grandfather of petticoats. As to rights, do you want to know what rights
are? The Gauls covet Clusium, Rome protects Clusium, and asks them
what Clusium has done to them. Brennus answers: ‘What Alba did to you,
what Fidena did to you, what the Aqui, the Volsci, and the Sabines did to
you. They were your neighbours. The Clusians are ours. We understand
neighbourhood as you do. You stole Alba, we take Clusium.' Rome says:
‘You will not take Clusium.' Brennus took Rome. Then he cried: ‘Va victis!'
That is what rights are. Ah! in this world, what beasts of prey! what eagles!
it makes me crawl all over."

He reached his glass to Joly, who filled it again, then he drank, and
proceeded, almost without having been interrupted by this glass of wine,
which nobody perceived, not even himself.

"Brennus, who takes Rome, is an eagle; the banker, who takes the
grisette, is an eagle. No more shame here than there. Then let us believe
in nothing. There is but one reality: to drink. Whatever may be your opin
ion, whether you are for the lean cock like the Canton of Uri, or for the
fat cock, like the Canton of Glaris, matters little, drink. You talk to me of
the boulevard, of the procession, et catera. Ah, now, there is going to be a
revolution again, is there? This poverty of means on the part of God aston-
ishes me. He has to keep greasing the grooves of events continually. It
hitches, it does not go. Quick, a revolution. God has his hands black with
this villainous cart-grease all the time. In his place, I would work more
simply, I wouldn't be winding up my machine every minute, I would lead the
human race smoothly, I would knit the facts stitch to stitch, without break-
ing the thread, I would have no emergency, I would have no extraordinary
repertory. What you fellows call progress moves by two springs, men and
events. But sad to say, from time to time the exceptional is necessary. For
events as well as for men, the stock company is not enough; geniuses are
needed among men, and revolutions among events. Great accidents are the
law; the order of things cannot get along without them; and, to see the
apparitions of comets, one would be tempted to believe that Heaven itself
is in need of star actors. At the moment you least expect it, God placards a
meteor on the wall of the firmament. Some strange star comes along,
underlined by an enormous tail. And that makes Casar die. Brutus strikes
him with a knife, and God with a comet. Crack, there is an aurora borealis,
there is a revolution, there is a great man; '93 in big letters. Napoleon with
a line to himself, the comet of 1811 at the top of the poster. Ah! the beau-
tiful blue poster, all studded with unexpected flourishes! Boom! boom!
extraordinary spectacle. Look up, loungers. All is dishevelled, the star as
well as the drama. Good God, it is too much, and it is not enough. These
resources, used in emergency, seem magnificence, and are poverty. My
friends, Providence is put to his trumps. A revolution, what does that prove?
That God is hard up. He makes a coup d'etat, because there is a solution
of continuity between the present and the future, and because he, God,
is unable to join the two ends. In fact, that confirms me in my conjectures
about the condition of Jehovah's fortune; and to see so much discomfort
above and below, so much rascality and odiousness and stinginess and dis-
tress in the heavens and on the earth, from the bird which has not a grain
of millet to me who have not a hundred thousand livres of income, to see
human destiny, which is very much worn out, and even royal destiny, which
shows the warp, witness the Prince of Conde hung, to see winter, which is
nothing but a rent in the zenith through which the wind blows, to see so
many tatters even in the brand new purple of the morning on the tops of
the hills, to see the dew drops, those false pearls, to see the frost, that paste,
to see humanity ripped, and events patched, and so many spots on the sun,
and so many holes in the moon, to see so much misery everywhere, I sus-
pect that God is not rich. He keeps up appearances, it is true, but I feel the
pinch. He gives a revolution as a merchant, whose credit is low, gives a ball.
We must not judge the gods from appearances. Beneath the gilding of the
sky I catch a glimpse of a poor universe. Creation is bankrupt. That is why
I am a malcontent. See, it is the fifth of June, it is very dark: since morning
I have been waiting for the daybreak, it has not come, and I will bet that it
won't come all day. It is a negligence of a badly paid clerk. Yes, everything
is badly arranged, nothing fits anything, this old world is all rickety, I range
myself with the opposition. Everything goes cross-grained; the universe is
a tease. It is like children, those who want it haven't it, those who don't
want it have it. Total: I scoff. Besides, Laigle de Meaux, that bald-head,
afflicts my sight. It humiliates me to think that I am the same age as that
knee. Still, I criticise, but I don't insult. The universe is what it is. I speak
here without malice, and to ease my conscience. Receive, Father Eternal,
the assurance of my distinguished consideration. Oh! by all saints of Olympus
and by all the gods of Paradise, I was not made to be a Parisian, that is
to say, to ricochet for ever, like a shuttlecock between two battledores, from
the company of loafers to the company of rioters! I was made to be a Turk
looking all day long at Oriental jades executing those exquisite dances of
Egypt, as lascivious as the dreams of a chaste man, or a Beauce peasant, or
a Venetian gentleman surrounded by gentledames, or a little German prince,
furnishing the half of a foot soldier to the Germanic Confederation, and
occupying his leisure in drying his socks upon his hedge, that is to say, upon
his frontier! Such is the destiny for which I was born! Yes, I said Turk, and
I don't unsay it. I don't understand why the Turks are commonly held in
bad repute; there is some good in Mahomet; respect for the inventor of
seraglios with houris, and paradises with odalisques! Let us not insult
Mahometanism, the only religion that is adorned with a hen-roost! On
that, I insist upon drinking. The earth is a great folly. And it appears that
they are going to fight, all these idiots, to get their heads broken, to mass-
acre one another, in midsummer, in the month of June, when they might
go off with some creature under their arm, to scent in the fields the huge
cup of tea of the new mown hay! Really, they are too silly. An old broken
lamp which I saw just now at a second-hand shop suggests me a reflection.
It is time to enlighten the human race. Yes, here I am again sad. What a
thing it is to swallow an oyster or a revolution the wrong way! I am getting
dismal. Oh! the frightful old world! They strive with one another, they
plunder one another, they prostitute one another, they kill one another,
they get used to one another!"

And Grantaire, after this fit of eloquence, had a fit of coughing, which
he deserved.

"Speakig of revolutiod," said Joly, "it appears that Barius is decidedly
abourous."

"Does anybody know of whom?" inquired Laigle.

"Do."

"No?"

"Do! I tell you."

"Marius' amours!" exclaimed Grantaire, "I see them now. Marius is a
fog, and he must have found a vapour. Marius is of the race of poets. He
who says poet, says fool. Tymbras Apollo. Marius and his Mary, or his Maria,
or his Marietta, or his Marion, they must make droll lovers. I imagine how
it is. Ecstasies where they forget to kiss. Chaste upon the earth, but coupling
in the infinite. They are souls which have senses. They sleep together
in the stars."

Grantaire was entering on his second bottle, and perhaps his second
harangue, when a new actor emerged from the square hole of the stairway.
It was a boy of less than ten years, ragged, very small, yellow, a mug of a
face, a keen eye, monstrous long hair, wet to the skin, a complacent look.

The child, choosing without hesitation among the three, although he
evidently knew none of them, addressed himself to Laigle de Meaux.

"Are you Monsieur Bossuet?" asked he.

"That is my nickname," answered Laigle. "What do you want of me?"

"This is it. A big light-complexioned fellow on the boulevard said to
me: Do you know Mother Hucheloup? I said: Yes, Rue de la Chanvrerie,
the widow of the old man. He said to me. Go there. You will find Monsieur
Bossuet there, and you will tell him from me: A--B--C. It is a joke
that somebody is playing on you, isn't it? He gave me ten sous."

"Joly, lend me ten sous," said Laigle, and turning towards Grantaire:
"Grantaire, lend me ten sous."

This made twenty sous which Laigle gave the child.

"Thank you, monsieur," said the little fellow.

"What is your name?" asked Laigle.

"Navet, Gavroche's friend."

"Stop with us," said Laigle.

"Breakfast with us," said Grantaire.

The child answered:

"I can't, I am with the procession, I am the one to cry, Down with
Polignac."

And giving his foot a long scrape behind him, which is the most
respectful of all possible bows, he went away.

The child gone, Grantaire resumed:

"This is the pure gamin. There are many varieties in the gamin genus.

The notary gamin is called saute-ruisseau, the cook gamin is called marmiton,
the baker gamin is called mitron, the lackey gamin is called groom, the sailor
gamin is called mousse, the soldier gamin is called tapin, the painter gamin is
called rapin, the trader gamin is called trottin, the courtier gamin is called
menin, the king gamin is called dauphin, the god gamin is called bambino."

Meanwhile Laigle was meditating; he said in an under tone:

"A--B--C, that is to say: Lamarque's funeral."

"The big light-complexioned man," observed Grantaire, "is Enjolras,
who sent to notify you."

"Shall we go?" said Bossuet.

"It raids," said Joly. "I have sword to go through fire, dot water. I
dod't wadt to catch cold."

"I stay here," said Grantaire. "I prefer a breakfast to a hearse."

"Conclusion: we stay," resumed Laigle. "Well, let us drink then.
Besides we can miss the funeral, without missing the emeute."

"Ah! the ebeute, I am id for that," exclaimed Joly.

Laigle rubbed his hands:

"Now they are going to retouch the Revolution of 1830. In fact, it
binds the people in the armholes."

"It don't make much difference with me, your revolution," said Gran-
taire. "I don't execrate this government. It is the crown tempered with
the night-cap. It is a sceptre terminating in an umbrella. In fact, to-day,
I should think, in this weather Louis Philippe could make good use of his
royalty at both ends, extend the sceptre end against the people, and open
the umbrella end against the sky."

The room was dark, great clouds were completing the suppression of the
daylight. There was nobody in the wine-shop, nor in the street, everybody
having gone "to see the events."

"Is it noon or midnight?" cried Bossuet. "We can't see a speck. Fricassee,
a light."

Grantaire, melancholy, was drinking.

Enjolras despises me," murmured he. "Enjolras said Joly is sick.
Grantaire is drunk. It was to Bossuet that he sent Navet. If he had come
for me I would have followed him. So much the worse for Enjolras! I won't
go to his funeral."

This resolution taken, Bossuet, Joly, and Grantaire did not stir from
the wine-shop. About two o'clock in the afternoon, the table on which they
were leaning was covered with empty bottles. Two candles were burning,
one in a perfectly green copper candlestick, the other in the neck of a
cracked decanter. Grantaire had drawn Joly and Bossuet towards wine;
Bossuet and Joly had led Grantaire towards joy.

As for Grantaire, since noon, he had got beyond wine, an indifferent
source of dreams. Wine, with serious drunkards, has only a quiet success.
There is, in point of inebriety, black magic and white magic, wine is only
white magic. Grantaire was a daring drinker of dreams. The blackness of a
fearful drunkenness yawning before him, far from checking him, drew him
on. He had left the bottle behind and taken to the jug. The jug is the abyss.
Having at his hand neither opium nor hashish, and wishing to fill his brain
with mist, he had had recourse to that frightful mixture of brandy, stout,
and absinthe, which produces such terrible lethargy. It is from these three
vapours, beer, bandy, and absinthe; that the lead of the soul is formed. They
are three darknesses; the celestial butterfly is drowned in them; and there
arise, in a membranous smoke vaguely condensed into bat wings, three
dumb furies, nightmare, night, death, flitting above the sleeping Psyche.

Grantaire was not yet at this dreary phase; far from it. He was extrava-
gantly gay, and Bossuet and Joly kept pace with him. They touched
glasses. Grantaire added to the eccentric accentuation of his words and
ideas incoherency of gesture; he rested his left wrist upon his knee with
dignity, his arms a-kimbo, and his cravat untied, bestriding a stool, his
full glass in his right hand, he threw out to the fat servant Chowder these
solemn words:

"Let the palace doors be opened! Let everybody belong to the
Academie Francaise, and have the right of embracing Madame Hucheloup!
let us drink."

And turning towards Ma'am Hucheloup he added:

"Antique woman consecrated by use, approach that I may gaze upon
thee!"

And Joly exclaimed:

"Chowder add Fricassee, dod't give Gradtaire ady bore to drigk. He
spedds his bodey foolishly. He has already devoured sidce this bordigg in
desperate prodigality two fragcs didety-five cedtibes."

And Grantaire replied:

"Who has been unhooking the stars without my permission to put
them on the table in the shape of candles?"

Bossuet, very drunk, had preserved his calmness.

He sat in the open window, wetting his back with the falling rain, and
gazed at his two friends.

Suddenly he heard a tumult behind him, hurried steps, cries to arms!
He turned, and saw in the Rue Saint Denis, at the end of the Rue de la
Chanvrerie, Enjolras passing, carbine in hand, and Gavroche with his
pistol, Feuilly with his sabre, Courfeyrac with his sword, Jean Prouvaire
with his musketoon, Combeferre with his musket, Bahorel with his musket,
and all the armed and stormy gathering which followed them.

The Rue de la Chanvrerie was hardly as long as the range of a carbine.
Bossuet improvised a speaking trumpet with his two hands, and shouted:

"Courfeyrac! Courfeyrac! ahoy!"

Courfeyrac heard the call, perceived Bossuet, and came a few steps into
the Rue de la Chanvrerie, crying a "what do you want?" which was met on
the way by a "where are you going?"

"To make a barricade," answered Courfeyrac.

"Well, here! This is a good place! make it here!"

"That is true, Eagle," said Courfeyrac.

And at a sign from Courfeyrac, the band rushed into the Rue de la
Chanvrerie.



III. NIGHT BEGINS TO GATHER OVER GRANTAIRE



THE PLACE WAS indeed admirably chosen, the entrance of the street wide,
the further end contracted and like a cul-de-sac, Corinth throttling it, Rue
Mondetour easy to bar at the right and left, no attack possible except from
the Rue Saint Denis, that is from the front, and without cover. Bossuet
tipsy had the coup d'?il of Hannibal fasting.

At the irruption of the mob, dismay seized the whole street, not a
passer but had gone into eclipse. In a flash, at the end, on the right, on the
left, shops, stalls, alley gates, windows, blinds, dormer-windows, shutters of
every size, were closed from the ground to the roofs. One frightened old
woman had fixed a mattress before her window on two clothes poles, as a
shield against the musketry. The wine-shop was the only house which
remained open; and that for a good reason, because the band had rushed
into it. "Oh my God! Oh my God!" sighed Ma'am Hucheloup.

Bossuet had gone down to meet Courfeyrac.

Joly, who had come to the window, cried:

"Courfeyrac, you bust take ad ubbrella. You will catch cold."

Meanwhile, in a few minutes, twenty iron bars had been wrested from
the grated front of the wine-shop, twenty yards of pavement had been torn
up, Gavroche and Bahorel had seized on its passage and tipped over the
dray of a lime merchant named Anceau, this dray contained three barrels
full of lime, which they had placed under the piles of paving stones; En-
jolras had opened the trap-door of the cellar and all the widow Hucheloup's
empty casks had gone to flank the lime barrels; Feuilly, with his fingers
accustomed to colour the delicate folds of fans, had buttressed the barrels
and the dray with two massive heaps of stones. Stones improvised like the
rest, and obtained nobody knows where. Some shoring-timbers had been
pulled down from the front of a neighbouring house and laid upon the
casks. When Bossuet and Courfeyrac turned round, half the street was
already barred by a rampart higher than a man. There is nothing like the
popular hand to build whatever can be built by demolishing.

Chowder and Fricassee had joined the labourers. Fricassee went back
and forth loaded with rubbish. Her weariness contributed to the barricade.
She served paving stones, as she would have served wine, with a sleepy air.

An omnibus with two white horses passed at the end of the street.
Bossuet sprang over the pavement, ran, stopped the driver, made the
passengers get down, gave his hand "to the ladies," dismissed the
conductor, and came back with the vehicle, leading the horses by the
bridle.

"An omnibus," said he, "doesn't pass by Corinth. Non licet omnibus
adire Corinthum."

A moment later the horses were unhitched and going off at will
through the Rue Mondetour, and the omnibus, lying on its side, completed
the barring of the street.

Ma'am Hucheloup, completely upset, had taken refuge in the first story.

Her eyes were wandering, and she looked without seeing, crying in a
whisper. Her cries were dismayed and dared not come out of her throat.

"It is the end of the world," she murmured.

Joly deposited a kiss upon Ma'am Hucheloup's coarse, red, and wrinkled
neck, and said to Grantaire: "My dear fellow, I have always considered
a woman's neck an infinitely delicate thing."

But Grantaire was attaining the highest regions of dithyramb. Chowder
having come up to the first floor, Grantaire seized her by the waist and
pulled her towards the window with long bursts of laughter.

"Chowder is ugly!" cried he; "Chowder is the dream of ugliness! Chow-
der is a chimera. Listen to the secret of her birth: a Gothic Pygmalion
who was making cathedral waterspouts, fell in love with one of them one
fine morning, the most horrible of all. He implored Love to animate her,
and that made Chowder. Behold her, citizens! her hair is the colour of
chromate of lead, like that of Titian's mistress, and she is a good girl.
I warrant you that she will fight well. Every good girl contains a hero. As
for Mother Hucheloup, she is an old brave. Look at her moustaches! she
inherited them from her husband. A hussaress, indeed, she will fight too.
They two by themselves will frighten the banlieue. Comrades, we will overturn
the government, as true as there are fifteen acids intermediate between
margaric acid and formic acid, which I don't care a fig about. Messieurs, my
father always detested me, because I could not understand mathematics. I
only understand love and liberty. I am Grantaire, a good boy. Never having
had any money, I have never got used to it, and by that means I have never
felt the need of it, but if I had been rich, there would have been no more
poor! you should have seen. Oh! if the good hearts had the fat purses, how
much better everything would go! I imagine Jesus Christ with Rothschild's
fortune! How much good he would have done! Chowder, embrace me! you
are voluptuous and timid! you have cheeks which call for the kiss of a
sister, and lips which demand the kiss of a lover."

"Be still, wine-cask!" said Courfeyrac.

Grantaire answered:

"I am Capitoul and Master of Floral Games!"

Enjolras, who was standing on the crest of the barricade, musket in
hand, raised his fine austere face. Enjolras, we know, had something of the
Spartan and of the Puritan. He would have died at Thermopyla with
Leonidas, and would have burned Drogheda with Cromwell.

"Grantaire," cried he, "go sleep yourself sober away from here. This
is the place for intoxication and not for drunkenness. Do not dishonour the
barricade!"

This angry speech produced upon Grantaire a singular effect. One
would have said that he had received a glass of cold water in his face. He
appeared suddenly sobered. He sat down, leaned upon a table near the window,
looked at Enjolras with an inexpressible gentleness, and said to him:

"Let me sleep here."

"Go sleep elsewhere," cried Enjolras.

But Grantaire, keeping his tender and troubled eyes fixed upon him,
answered:

"Let me sleep here--until I die here."

Enjolras regarded him with a disdainful eye:

"Grantaire, you are incapable of belief, of thought, of will, of life, and
of death."

He stammered out a few more unintelligible words, then his head fell
heavily upon the table, and, a common effect of the second stage of ineb-
riety into which Enjolras had rudely and suddenly pushed him, a moment
later he was asleep.



IV. ATTEMPT AT CONSOLATION UPON THE WIDOW HUCHELOUP



BAHOREL, in ecstasies with the barricade, cried:

"There is the street in a low neck, how well it looks!"

Courfeyrac, even while helping to demolish the wine-shop, sought to
console the widowed landlady.

"Mother Hucheloup, were you not complaining the other day that you
had been summoned and fined because Fricassee had shaken a rug out of
your window?"

"Yes, my good Monsieur Courfeyrac. Oh! my God! are you going to put
that table also into your horror? And besides that, for the rug, and also
for a flower-pot which fell from the attic into the street, the government
fined me a hundred francs. If that isn't an abomination!"

"Well, Mother Hucheloup, we are avenging you."

Mother Hucheloup, in this reparation which they were making her, did
not seem to very well understand her advantage. She was satisfied after
the manner of that Arab woman who, having received a blow from her husband,
went to complain to her father, crying for vengeance and saying:

"Father, you owe my husband affront for affront." The father asked: "Upon
which cheek did you receive the blow?" "Upon the left cheek." The father
struck the right cheek, and said: "Now you are satisfied. Go and tell your
husband that he has struck my daughter, but that I have struck his wife."

The rain had ceased. Recruits had arrived. Some working-men had brought
under their blouses a keg of powder, a hamper containing bottles of vit-
riol, two or three carnival torches, and a basket full of lamps, "relics of
the king's fete," which fete was quite recent, having taken place the 1st of
May. It was said that these supplies came from a grocer of the Faubourg
Saint Antoine, named Pepin. They broke the only lamp in the Rue de la
Chanvrerie, the lamp opposite the Rue Saint Denis, and all the lamps in
the surrounding streets, Mondetour, du Cygne, des Precheurs, and de la
Grande and de la Petite Truanderie.

Enjolras, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac, directed everything. Two barri-
cades were now building at the same time, both resting on the house of
Corinth and making a right angle; the larger one closed the Rue de la
Chanvrerie, the other closed the Rue Mondetour in the direction of the
Rue du Cygne. This last barricade, very narrow, was constructed only of
casks and paving stones. There were about fifty labourers there, some thirty
armed with muskets, for, on their way, they had effected a wholesale loan
from an armourer's shop.

Nothing could be more fantastic and more motley than this band. One
had a short-jacket, a cavalry sabre, and two horse-pistols; another was in
shirt sleeves, with a round hat, and a powder-horn hung at his side; a third
had a breast-plate of nine sheets of brown paper, and was armed with a sad-
dler's awl. There was one of them who cried: "Let us exterminate to the last
man, and die on the point of our bayonets!" This man had no bayonet. Another
displayed over his coat a cross-belt and cartridge-box of the National
Guard, with the box cover adorned with this inscription in red cloth: Public
Order. Many muskets bearing the numbers of their legions, few hats, no
cravats, many bare arms, some pikes. Add to this all ages, all faces, small
pale young men, bronzed wharfmen. All were hurrying, and, while helping each
other, they talked about the possible chances--that they would have help by
three o'clock in the morning--that they were sure of one regiment--that Paris
would rise. Terrible subjects, with which were mingled a sort of cordial
joviality. One would have said they were brothers, they did not know each
other's names. Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to light the
fraternity of strangers.

A fire had been kindled in the kitchen, and they were melting pitchers,
dishes, forks, all the pewter ware of the wine-shop into bullets. They
drank through it all. Percussion-caps and buck-shot rolled pell-mell upon
the tables with glasses of wine. In the billiard-room, Ma'am Hucheloup,
Chowder, and Fricassee, variously modified by terror, one being stupefied,
another breathless, the third alert, were tearing up old linen and making
lint; three insurgents assisted them, three long-haired, bearded, and
moustached wags who tore up the cloth with the fingers of a linen-draper,
and who made them tremble.

The man of tall stature whom Courfeyrac, Combeferre, and Enjolras
had noticed, at the moment he joined the company at the corner of the Rue
des Billettes, was working on the little barricade, and making himself useful
there. Gavroche worked on the large one. As for the young man who had
waited for Courfeyrac at his house, and had asked him for Monsieur Marius,
he had disappeared very nearly at the moment the omnibus was overturned.

Gavroche, completely carried away and radiant, had charged himself with
making all ready. He went, came, mounted, descended, remounted, bustled,
sparkled. He seemed to be there for the encouragement of all. Had he a
spur? yes, certainly, his misery; had he wings? yes, certainly, his joy.
Gavroche was a whirlwind. They saw him incessantly, they heard him con-
stantly. He filled the air, being everywhere at once. He was a kind of
stimulating ubiquity; no stop possible with him. The enormous barricade
felt him on its back. He vexed the loungers, he excited the idle, he re-
animated the weary, he provoked the thoughtful, kept some in cheerfulness,
others in breath, others in anger, all in motion, piqued a student, was
biting to a working-man; took position, stopped, started on, flitted above
the tumult and the effort, leaped from these to those, murmured, hummed,
and stirred up the whole train; the fly on the revolutionary coach.

Perpetual motion was in his little arms, and perpetual clamour in his
little lungs.

"Cheerly? more paving stones? more barrels? more machines? where
are there any? A basket of plaster, to stop that hole. It is too small, your
barricade. It must go higher. Pile on everything, brace it with everything.
Break up the house. A barricade is Mother Gibou's tea-party. Hold on,
there is a glass-door."

This made the labourers exclaim:

"A glass-door? what do you want us to do with a glass-door, tubercle?"

"Hercules yourselves?" retorted Gavroche. "A glass-door in a barricade
is excellent. It doesn't prevent attacking it, but it bothers them in
taking it. Then you have never hooked apples over a wall with broken bottles
on it? A glass-door, it will cut the corns of the National Guards, when
they try to climb over the barricade. Golly! glass is the devil, Ah, now,
you haven't an unbridled imagination, my comrades."

Still, he was furious at his pistol without a hammer. He went from one
to another, demanding: "A musket? I want a musket! Why don't you give
me a musket?"

"A musket for you?" said Combeferre.

"Well?" replied Gavroche, "why not? I had one in 1830, in the dispute
with Charles X."

Enjolras shrugged his shoulders.

"When there are enough for the men, we will give them to the children."

Gavroche turned fiercely, and answered him:

"If you are killed before me, I will take yours."

"Gamin!" said Enjolras.

"Smooth-face!" said Gavroche.

A stray dandy who was lounging at the end of the street made a diversion.

Gavroche cried to him:

"Come with us, young man? Well, this poor old country, you won't
do anything for her then?"

The dandy fled.



V. THE PREPARATIONS



THE JOURNALS OF THE TIME which said that the barricade of the Rue de la
Chanvrerie, that almost inexpugnable construction, as they call it, attained
the level of a second story, were mistaken. The fact is, that it did not exceed
an average height of six or seven feet. It was built in such a manner that the
combatants could, at will, either disappear behind the wall, or look over it,
and even scale the crest of it by means of a quadruple range of pavingstones
superposed and arranged like steps on the inner side. The front of the bar-
ricade on the outside, composed of piles of paving-stones and of barrels
bound together by timbers and boards which were interlocked in the wheels
of the Anceau cart and the overturned omnibus, had a bristling and
inextricable aspect.

An opening sufficient for a man to pass through had been left between the
wall of the houses and the extremity of the barricade furthest from the
wine-shop; so that a sortie was possible. The pole of the omnibus was
turned directly up and held with ropes, and a red flag fixed to this pole
floated over the barricade.

The little Mondetour barricade, hidden behind the wine-shop, was not
visible. The two barricades united formed a staunch redoubt. Enjolras and
Courfeyrac had not thought proper to barricade the other end of the Rue
Mondetour which opens a passage to the markets through the Rue des
Precheurs, wishing doubtless to preserve a possible communication with
the outside, and having little dread of being attacked from the dangerous
and difficult alley des Precheurs.

Except this passage remaining free, which constituted what Folard, in
his strategic style, would have called a branch-trench, and bearing in mind
also the narrow opening arranged on the Rue de la Chanvrerie, the interior
of the barricade, where the wine-shop made a salient angle, presented an
irregular quadrilateral closed on all sides. There was an interval of about
twenty yards between the great barricade and the tall houses which formed
the end of the street, so that we might say that the barricade leaned against
these houses all inhabited, but closed from top to bottom.

All this labour was accomplished without hindrance in less than an hour,
and without this handful of bold men seeing a bearskin-cap or a bayonet
arise. The few bourgeois who still ventured at that period of the
emeute into the Rue Saint Denis cast a glance down the Rue de la Chanvrerie,
perceived the barricade, and redoubled their pace.

The two barricades finished, the flag run up, a table was dragged out of
the wine-shop; and Courfeyrac mounted upon the table. Enjolras brought
the square box and Courfeyrac opened it. This box was filled with cartridges.
When they saw the cartridges, there was a shudder among the bravest, and
a moment of silence.

Courfeyrac distributed them with a smile.

Each one received thirty cartridges. Many had powder and set about
making others with the balls which they were moulding. As for the keg of
powder, it was on a table by itself near the door, and it was reserved.
The long roll which was running through all Paris was not discontin-
ued, but it had got to be only a monotonous sound to which they paid no
more attention, with melancholy undulations.

They loaded their muskets and their carbines all together, without preci-
pitation, with a solemn gravity. Enjolras placed three sentinels outside
the barricades, one in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, the second in the Rue des
Precheurs, the third at the corner of la Petite Truanderie.

Then, the barricades built, the posts assigned, the muskets loaded, the
videttes placed, alone in these fearful streets in which there were now no
passers, surrounded by these dumb, and as it were dead houses, which
throbbed with no human motion, enwrapped by the deepening shadows of
the twilight, which was beginning to fall, in the midst of this obscurity and
this silence, through which they felt the advance of something inexpressibly
tragical and terrifying, isolated, armed, determined, tranquil, they waited.



VI. WHILE WAITING



IN THESE HOURS of waiting what did they do? This we must tell--for this is
history.

While the men were making cartridges and the women lint, while a large
frying-pan, full of melted pewter and lead, destined for the bulletmould,
was smoking over a burning furnace, while the videttes were watching the
barricades with arms in their hands, while Enjolras, whom nothing could
distract, was watching the videttes, Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Jean Prou-
vaire, Feuilly, Bossuet, Joly, Bahorel, a few others besides, sought each
other and got together, as in the most peaceful days of their student-
chats, and in a corner of this wine-shop changed into a casemate, within
two steps of the redoubt which they had thrown up, their carbines primed
and loaded resting on the backs of their chairs, these gallant young men,
so near their last hour, began to sing love-rhymes.

What rhymes? Here they are:

Vous rappelez-vous notre douce vie,
Lorsque nous etions si jeunes tous deux,
Et que nous n'avions au coeur d'autre envie
Que d'etre bien mis et d'etre amoureux.

Lorsqu'en ajoutant votre age a mon age,
Nous ne comptions pas a deux quarante ans,
Et que, dans notre humble et petit menage,
Tout, meme l'hiver, nous etait printemps?

Beaux jours! Manuel etait fier et sage,
Paris s'asseyait a de saints banquets,
Foy lancait la foudre, et votre corsage
Avait une epingle ou je me piquais.

Tout vous contemplait. Avocat sans causes,
Quand je vous menais au Prado diner,
Vous etiez jolie au point que les roses
Me faisaient l'effet de se retourner.

Je les entendais dire: Est-elle belle!
Comme elle sent bon! quels cheveux a flots!
Sous son mantelet elle cache une aile;
Son bonnet charmant est a peine eclos.

J'errais avec toi, pressant ton bras souple.
Les passants croyaient que l'amour charme
Avait marie, dans notre heureux couple,
Le doux mois d'avril au beau mois de mai.

Nous vivions caches, contents, porte close,
Devorant l'amour, bon fruit defendu;
Ma bouche n'avait pas dit une chose
Que deja ton coeur avait repondu.

La Sorbonne etait l'endroit bucolique
Ou je t'adorais du soir au matin.
C'est ainsi qu'une ame amoureuse applique
La carte du Tendre au pays latin.

O place Maubert! O place Dauphine!
Quand, dans le taudis frais et printanier,
Tu tirais ton bas sur ta jambe fine,
Je voyais un astre au fond du grenier.

J'ai fort lu Platon, mais rien ne m'en reste
Mieux que Malebranche et que Lamennais;
Tu me demontrais la bonte celeste
Avec une fleur que tu me donnais.

Je t'obeissais, tu m'etais soumise.
O grenier dore! te lacer! te voir!
Aller et venir des l'aube en chemise,
Mirant ton front jeune a ton vieux miroir!

Et qui donc pourrait perdre la memoire
De ces temps d'aurore et de firmament,
De rubans, de fleurs, de gaze et de moire,
Ou l'amour begaye un argot charmant?

Nos jardins etaient un pot de tulipe;
Tu masquais la vitre avec un jupon;
Je prenais le bol de terre de pipe,
Et je te donnais la tasse en japon.

Et ces grands malheurs qui nous faisaient rire!
Ton manchon brule, ton boa perdu!
Et ce cher portrait du divin Shakspeare
Qu'un soir pour souper nous avons vendu!

J'etais mendiant, et toi charitable;
Je baisais au vol tes bras frais et ronds.
Dante in-folio nous servait de table
Pour manger gaiment un cent de marrons.

Le premiere fois qu'en mon joyeux bouge
Je pris un baiser a ta levre en feu,
Quand tu t'en allas decoiffee et rouge,
Je restai tout pale et je crus en Dieu!

Te rappeles-tu nos bonheurs sans nombre,
Et tous ces fichus changes en chiffons?
Oh! que de soupirs, de nos coers pleins d'ombre,
Se sont envoles dans les cieux profonds!

The hour, the place, these memories of youth recalled, the few stars
which began to shine in the sky, the funereal repose of these deserted
streets, the imminence of the inexorable event, gave a pathetic charm to
these rhymes, murmured in a low tone in the twilight by Jean Prouvaire,
who, as we have said, was a sweet poet.

Meanwhile they had lighted a lamp at the little barricade, and at the
large one, one of those wax torches which are seen on Mardi Gras in front
of the waggons loaded with masks, which are going to the Comtille. These
torches, we have seen, came from the Faubourg Saint Antoine.

The torch had been placed in a kind of cage, closed in with pavingstones
on three sides, to shelter it from the wind, and disposed in such a
manner that all the light fell upon the flag. The street and the barricade
remained plunged in obscurity, and nothing could be seen but the red flag,
fearfully lighted up, as if by an enormous dark lantern.

This light gave to the scarlet of the flag an indescribably terrible purple.



VII. THE MAN RECRUITED IN THE RUE DES BILLETTES



IT WAS NOW QUITE NIGHT, nothing came. There were only confused sounds,
and at intervals volleys of musketry; but rare, ill-sustained, and distant.
This respite, which was thus prolonged, was a sign that the government
was taking its time, and massing its forces. These fifty men were await-
ing sixty thousand.

Enjolras felt himself possessed by that impatience which seizes strong
souls on the threshold of formidable events. He went to find Gavroche who
had set himself to making cartridges in the basement room by the doubtful
light of two candles placed upon the counter through precaution on
account of the powder scattered over the tables. These two candles threw
no rays outside. The insurgents moreover had taken care not to have any
lights in the upper stories.

Gavroche at this moment was very much engaged, not exactly with his
cartridges.

The man from the Rue des Billettes had just entered the basement room
and had taken a seat at the table which was least lighted. An infantry
musket of large model had fallen to his lot, and he held it between his
knees. Gavroche hitherto, distracted by a hundred "amusing" things, had
not even seen this man.

When he came in, Gavroche mechanically followed him with his eyes,
admiring his musket, then, suddenly, when the man had sat down, the
gamin arose. Had any one watched this man up to this time, he would have
seen him observe everything in the barricade and in the band of insurgents
with a singular attention; but since he had come into the room, he had
fallen into a kind of meditation and appeared to see nothing more of what
was going on. The gamin approached this thoughtful personage, and began
to turn about him on the points of his toes as one walks when near somebody
whom he fears to awake. At the same time, over his childish face, at
once so saucy and so serious, so flighty and so profound, so cheerful and
so touching, there passed all those grimaces of the old which signify: "Oh,
bah! impossible! I am befogged! I am dreaming! can it be? no, it isn't! why
yes! why no!" etc. Gavroche balanced himself upon his heels, clenched both
fists in his pockets, twisted his neck like a bird, expended in one measureless
pout all the sagacity of his lower lip. He was stupefied, uncertain, cred-
ulous, convinced, bewildered. He had the appearance of the chief of the
eunuchs in the slave market discovering a Venus among dumpies, and the
air of an amateur recognising a Raphael in a heap of daubs. Everything in
him was at work, the instinct which scents and the intellect which combines.

It was evident that an event had occurred with Gavroche.

It was in the deepest of this meditation that Enjolras accosted him.

"You are small," said Enjolras, "nobody will see you. Go out of the
barricades, glide along by the houses, look about the streets a little,
and come and tell me what is going on."

Gavroche straightened himself up.

"Little folks are good for something then! that is very lucky! I will go!
meantime, trust the little folks, distrust the big----"And Gavroche, raising
his head and lowering his voice, added, pointing to the man of the Rue des
Billettes:

"You see that big fellow there?"

"Well?"

"He is a spy."

"You are sure?"

"It isn't a fortnight since he pulled me by the ear off the cornice of
the Pont Royal where I was taking the air."

Enjolras hastily left the gamin, and murmured a few words very low
to a working-man from the wine docks who was there. The working-man
went out of the room and returned almost immediately, accompanied by
three others. The four men, four broad-shouldered porters, placed them-
selves, without doing anything which could attract his attention, behind
the table on which the man of the Rue des Billettes was leaning. They
were evidently ready to throw themselves upon him.

Then Enjolras approached the man and asked him:

"Who are you?"

At this abrupt question, the man gave a start. He looked straight to the
bottom of Enjolras' frank eye and appeared to catch his thought. He smiled
with a smile which, of all things in the world, was the most disdainful, the
most energetic, and the most resolute, and answered with a haughty gravity:

"I see how it is----Well, yes!"

"You are a spy?"

"I am an officer of the government."

"Your name is?"

"Javert."

Enjolras made a sign to the four men. In a twinkling, before Javert had
had time to turn around, he was collared, thrown down, bound, searched.

They found upon him a little round card framed between two glasses,
and bearing on one side the arms of France, engraved with this legend:
Surveillance et vigilance, and on the other side this endorsement: JAVERT,
inspector of police, aged fifty-two, and the signature of the prefect of
police of the time, M. Gisquet.

He had besides his watch and his purse, which contained a few gold pieces.
They left him his purse and his watch. Under the watch, at the bottom
of his fob, they felt and seized a paper in an envelope, which Enjolras
opened, and on which he read these six lines, written by the prefect's own
hand.

"As soon as his political mission is fulfilled, Inspector Javert will ascer-
tain, by a special examination, whether it be true that malefactors have
resorts on the slope of the right bank of the Seine, near the bridge of Jena."
The search finished, they raised Javert, tied his arms behind his back,
fastened him in the middle of the basement-room to that celebrated post
which had formerly given its name to the wine-shop.

Gavroche, who had witnessed the whole scene and approved the whole
by silent nods of his head, approached Javert and said to him:

"The mouse has caught the cat."

All this was executed so rapidly that it was finished as soon as it was
perceived about the wine-shop. Javert had not uttered a cry. Seeing Javert
tied to the post, Courfeyrac, Bossuet, Joly, Combeferre, and the men scat-
tered about the two barricades, ran in.

Javert, backed up against the post, and so surrounded with ropes that
he could make no movement, held up his head with the intrepid serenity
of the man who has never lied.

"It is a spy," said Enjolras.

And turning towards Javert:

"You will be shot ten minutes before the barricade is taken."

Javert replied in his most imperious tone:

"Why not immediately?"

"We are economising powder."

"Then do it with a knife."

"Spy," said the handsome Enjolras, "we are judges, not assassins."

Then he called Gavroche.

"You! go about your business! Do what I told you."

"I am going," cried Gavroche.

And stopping just as he was starting:

"By the way, you will give me his musket!" And he added: "I leave you
the musician, but I want the clarionet."

The gamin made a military salute, and sprang gaily through the opening
in the large barricade.



VIII. SEVERAL INTERROGATION POINTS CONCERNING ONE
LE CABUC, WHO PERHAPS WAS NOT LE CABUC



THE TRAGIC PICTURE which we have commenced would not be complete, the
reader would not see in their exact and real relief these grand moments
of social parturition and of revolutionary birth in which there is convul-
sion mingled with effort, were we to omit, in the outline here sketched, an
incident full of epic and savage horror which occurred almost immediately
after Gavroche's departure.

Mobs, as we know, are like snowballs, and gather a heap of tumultuous
men as they roll. These men do not ask one another whence they come.
Among the passers who had joined themselves to the company led by
Enjolras, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac, there was a person wearing a
porter's waistcoat worn out at the shoulders, who gesticulated and vocif-
erated and had the appearance of a sort of savage drunkard. This man,
who was named or nicknamed Le Cabuc, and who was moreover entirely
unknown to those who attempted to recognise him, very drunk, or feigning
to be, was seated with a few others at a table which they had brought outside
of the wine-shop. This Cabuc, while inciting those to drink who were
with him, seemed to gaze with an air of reflection upon the large house at
the back of the barricade, the five stories of which overlooked the whole
street and faced towards the Rue Saint Denis. Suddenly he exclaimed:
"Comrades, do you know? it is from that house that we must fire. If
we are at the windows, devil a one can come into the street."

"Yes, but the house is shut up," said one of the drinkers.

"Knock!"

"They won't open."

"Stave the door in!"

Le Cabuc runs to the door, which had a very massive knocker, and
raps. The door does not open. He raps a second time. Nobody answers.
A third rap. The same silence.

"Is there anybody here?" cries Le Cabuc.

Nothing stirs.

Then he seizes a musket and begins to beat the door with the butt. It
was an old alley door, arched, low, narrow, solid, entirely of oak, lined
on the inside with sheet-iron and with iron braces, a genuine postern of
a bastille. The blows made the house tremble, but did not shake the door.

Nevertheless it is probable that the inhabitants were alarmed, for they fin-
ally saw a little square window on the third story light up and open, and
there appeared at this window a candle, and the pious and frightened face
of a grey-haired goodman who was the porter.

The man who was knocking, stopped.

"Messieurs," asked the porter, "what do you wish?"

"Open!" said Le Cabuc.

"Messieurs, that cannot be."

"Open, I tell you!"

"Impossible, messieurs!"

Le Cabuc took his musket and aimed at the porter's head; but as he
was below, and it was very dark, the porter did not see him.

"Yes, or no, will you open?"

"No, messieurs!"

"You say no?"

"I say no, my good----"

The porter did not finish. The musket went off; the ball entered under
his chin and passed out at the back of the neck, passing through the
jugular. The old man sank down without a sigh. The candle fell and was
extinguished, and nothing could now be seen but an immovable head lying
on the edge of the window, and a little whitish smoke floating towards
the roof.

"That's it!" said Le Cabuc, letting the butt of his musket drop on the
pavement.

Hardly had he uttered these words when he felt a hand pounce upon his
shoulder with the weight of an eagle's talons, and heard a voice which
said to him:

"On your knees."

The murderer turned and saw before him the white cold face of Enjolras.

Enjolras had a pistol in his hand.

At the explosion, he had come up.

He had grasped with his left hand Le Cabuc's collar, blouse, shirt, and
suspenders.

"On your knees," repeated he.

And with a majestic movement the slender young man of twenty bent the
broad-shouldered and robust porter like a reed and made him kneel in
the mud. Le Cabuc tried to resist, but he seemed to have been seized
by a superhuman grasp.

Pale, his neck bare, his hair flying, Enjolras, with his woman's face, had
at that moment an inexpressible something of the ancient Themis. His dis-
tended nostrils, his downcast eyes, gave to his implacable Greek profile that
expression of wrath and that expression of chastity which from the point
of view of the ancient world belonged to justice.

The whole barricade ran up, then all ranged in a circle at a distance,
feeling that it was impossible to utter a word in presence of the act which
they were about to witness.

Le Cabuc, vanquished, no longer attempted to defend himself but trem-
bled in every limb. Enjolras let go of him and took out his watch.

"Collect your thoughts," said he. "Pray or think. You have one
minute."

"Pardon!" murmured the murderer, then he bowed his head and
mumbled some inarticulate oaths.

Enjolras did not take his eyes off his watch; he let the minute pass, then
he put his watch back into his fob. This done, he took Le Cabuc, who was
writhing against his knees and howling, by the hair, and laced the muzzle
of his pistol at his ear. Many of those intrepid men, who had so tranquilly
entered upon the most terrible of enterprises, turned away their heads.
They heard the explosion, the assassin fell face forward on the pavement,
and Enjolras straightened up and cast about him his look determined and
severe.

Then he pushed the body away with his foot, and said:

"Throw that outside."

Three men lifted the body of the wretch, which was quivering with the last
mechanical convulsions of the life that had flown, and threw it over the
small barricade into the little Rue Mondetour.

Enjolras had remained thoughtful. Shadow, mysterious and grand, was
slowly spreading over his fearful serenity. He suddenly raised his voice.

There was a silence.

"Citizens," said Enjolras, "what that man did is horrible, and what I have
done is terrible. He killed, that is why I killed him. I was forced to do
it, for the insurrection must have its discipline. Assassination is a still
greater crime here than elsewhere; we are under the eye of the revolution,
we are the priests of the republic, we are the sacramental host of duty, and
none must be able to calumniate our combat. I therefore judged and condemned
that man to death. As for myself, compelled to do what I have done, but ab-
horring it, I have judged myself also, and you shall soon see to what I
have sentenced myself."

Those who heard shuddered.

"We will share your fate," cried Combeferre.

"So be it," added Enjolras. "A word more. In executing that man, I obey-
ed necessity; but necessity is a monster of the old world, the name of
necessity is Fatality. Now the law of progress is, that monsters disappear
before angels, and that Fatality vanish before Fraternity. This is not a
moment to pronounce the word love. No matter, I pronounce it, and I glorify
it. Love, thine is the future. Death, I use thee, but I hate thee. Citizens,
there shall be in the future neither darkness nor thunderbolts; neither fero-
cious ignorance nor blood for blood. As Satan shall be no more, so Michael
shall be no more. In the future no man shall slay his fellow, the earth shall
be radiant, the human race shall love. It will come, citizens, that day when
all shall be concord, harmony, light, joy, and life; it will come, and it is
that it may come that we are going to die."

Enjolras was silent. His virgin lips closed; and he remained some time
standing on the spot where he had spilled blood, in marble immobility. His
fixed eye made all about him speak low.

Jean Prouvaire and Combeferre silently grasped hands, and, leaning upon one
another in the corner of the barricade, considered, with an admiration not
unmingled with compassion, this severe young man, executioner and priest,
luminous like the crystal, and rock also.

Let us say right here that later, after the action, when the corpses were
carried to the Morgue and searched, there was a police officer's card found
on Le Cabuc. The author of this book had in his own hands, in 1848, the
special report made on that subject to the prefect of police in 1832.
Let us add that, if we are to believe a police tradition, strange, but
probably well founded, Le Cabuc was Claquesous. The fact is, that after the
death of Le Cabuc, nothing more was heard of Claquesous. Claquesous left
no trace of his disappearance, he would seem to have been amalgamated
with the invisible. His life had been darkness, his end was night.

The whole insurgent group were still under the emotion of this tragic
trial, so quickly instituted and so quickly terminated, when Courfeyrac
again saw in the barricade the small young man who in the morning had
called at his house for Marius.

This boy, who had a bold and reckless air, had come at night to rejoin
the insurgents.