NOTHING CAME YET. The clock of Saint Merry had struck ten. Enjolras
and Combeferre had sat down, carbine in hand, near the opening of the
great barricade. They were not talking, they were listening; seeking to
catch even the faintest and most distant sound of a march.

Suddenly, in the midst of this dismal calm, a clear, young, cheerful
voice, which seemed to come from the Rue Saint Denis, arose and began
to sing distinctly to the old popular air, Au clair de la lune, these lines
which ended in a sort of cry similar to the crow of cock:

Mon nez est en larmes,
Mon ami Bugeaud,
Pret-moi tes gendarmes
Pour leur dire un mot.
Encapote bleue,
La poule au shako,
Voici la banlieue!
Co-cocorico!
My nose is in tears,
My good friend Bugeaud,
Just lend me your spears
To tell them my woe.
In blue cassimere,
And feathered shako,
The banlieue is here!
Co-cocorico!

They grasped each other by the hand:

"It is Gavroche," said Enjolras.

"He is warning us," said Combeferre.

A headlong run startled the empty street; they saw a creature nimbler
than a clown climb over the omnibus, and Gavroche bounded into the barricade
all breathless, saying:

"My musket! Here they are."

An electric thrill ran through the whole barricade, and a moving of
hands was heard, feeling for their muskets.

"Do you want my carbine?" said Enjolras to the gamin.

"I want the big musket," answered Gavroche.

And he took Javert's musket.

Two sentinels had been driven back, and had come in almost at the
same time as Gavroche. They were the sentinel from the end of the street,
and the vidette from de la Petite Truanderie. The vidette in the little Rue
des Precheurs remained at his post, which indicated that nothing was coming
from the direction of the bridges and the markets.

The Rue de la Chanvrerie, in which a few paving-stones were dimly
visible by the reflection of the light which was thrown upon the flag,
offered to the insurgents the appearance of a great black porch opening
into a cloud of smoke.

Every man had taken his post for the combat.

Forty-three insurgents, among them Enjolras, Combeferre, Courfeyrac,
Bossuet, Joly, Bahorel, and Gavroche, were on their knees in the great
barricade, their heads even with the crest of the wall, the barrels of
their muskets and their carbines pointed over the paving-stones as through
loopholes, watchful, silent, ready to fire. Six, commanded by Feuilly, were
stationed with their muskets at their shoulders, in the windows of the two
upper stories of Corinth.

A few moments more elapsed, then a sound of steps, measured, heavy,
numerous, was distinctly heard from the direction of Saint Leu. This
sound, at first faint, then distinct, then heavy and sonorous, approached
slowly, without halt, without interruption, with a tranquil and terrible
continuity. Nothing but this could be heard. It was at once the silence and
the sound of the statue of the Commander, but this stony tread was so in-
describably enormous and so multiplex, that it called up at the same time
the idea of a throng and of a spectre. You would have thought you heard the
stride of the fearful statue Legion. This tread approached; it approached
still nearer, and stopped. They seemed to hear at the end of the street the
breathing of many men. They saw nothing, however, only they discovered
at the very end, in that dense obscurity, a multitude of metallic threads,
as fine as needles and almost imperceptible, which moved about like those
indescribable phosphoric networks which we perceive under our closed
eyelids at the moment of going to sleep, in the first mists of slumber. They
were bayonets and musket barrels dimly lighted up by the distant reflection
of the torch.

There was still a pause, as if on both sides they were awaiting. Sud-
denly, from the depth of that shadow, a voice, so much the more ominous,
because nobody could be seen, and because it seemed as if it were the
obscurity itself which was speaking, cried:

"Who is there?"

At the same time they heard the click of the levelled muskets.

Enjolras answered in a lofty and ringing tone:

"French Revolution!"

"Fire!" said the voice.

A flash empurpled all the facades on the street, as if the door of a furnace
were opened and suddenly closed.

A fearful explosion burst over the barricade. The red flag fell. The volley
had been so heavy and so dense that it had cut the staff, that is to say,
the very point of the pole of the omnibus. Some balls, which ricocheted
from the cornices of the houses, entered the barricade and wounded several
men.

The impression produced by this first charge was freezing. The attack
was impetuous, and such as to make the boldest ponder. It was evident that
they had to do with a whole regiment at least.

"Comrades," cried Courfeyrac, "don't waste the powder. Let us wait to
reply till they come into the street."

"And first of all," said Enjolras, "let us hoist the flag again!"

He picked up the flag which had fallen just at his feet.

They heard from without the rattling of the ramrods in the muskets:
the troops were reloading.

Enjolras continued:

"Who is there here who has courage? who replants the flag on the
barricade?"

Nobody answered. To mount the barricade at the moment when without
doubt it was aimed at anew, was simply death. The bravest hesitates
to sentence himself, Enjolras himself felt a shudder. He repeated:

"Nobody volunteers?"

II. THE FLAG: SECOND ACT

SINCE THEY HAD arrived at Corinth and had commenced building the barri-
cade, hardly any attention had been paid to Father Mabeuf. M. Mabeuf,
however, had not left the company. He had entered the ground floor of
the wine-shop and sat down behind the counter. There he had been, so to
speak, annihilated in himself. He no longer seemed to look or to think.
Courfeyrac and others had accosted him two or three times, warning him
of the danger, entreating him to withdraw, but he had not appeared to hear
them. When nobody was speaking to him, his lips moved as if he were
answering somebody, and as soon as anybody addressed a word to him, his
lips became still and his eyes lost all appearance of life. Some hours before
the barricade was attacked, he had taken a position which he had not left
since, his hands upon his knees and his head bent forward as if he were
looking into an abyss. Nothing had been able to draw him out of this atti-
tude; it appeared as if his mind were not in the barricade. When everybody
had gone to take his place for the combat, there remained in the basement
room only Javert tied to the post, an insurgent with drawn sabre watching
Javert, and he, Mabeuf. At the moment of the attack, at the discharge, the
physical shock reached him, and, as it were, awakened him; he rose suddenly,
crossed the room, and at the instant when Enjolras repeated his
appeal: "Nobody volunteers?" they saw the old man appear in the doorway
of the wine-shop.

His presence produced some commotion in the group. A cry arose:

"It is the Voter! it is the Conventionist! it is the Representative of the
people!"

It is probable that he did not hear.

He walked straight to Enjolras, the insurgents fell back before him
with a religious awe, he snatched the flag from Enjolras, who drew back
petrified, and then, nobody daring to stop him, or to aid him, this old man
of eighty, with shaking head but firm foot, began to climb slowly up the
stairway of paving-stones built into the barricade. It was so gloomy and so
grand that all about him cried: "Hats off!" At each step it was frightful; his
white hair, his decrepit face, his large forehead bald and wrinkled, his hollow
eyes, his quivering and open mouth, his old arm raising the red banner,
surged up out of the shadow and grew grand in the bloody light of the
torch, and they seemed to see the ghost of '93 rising out of the earth, the
flag of terror in its hand.

When he was on the top of the last step, when this trembling and terrible
phantom, standing upon that mound of rubbish before twelve
hundred invisible muskets, rose up, in the face of death and as if he were
stronger than it, the whole barricade had in the darkness a supernatural and
colossal appearance.

There was one of those silences which occur only in the presence of
prodigies.

In the midst of this silence the old man waved the red flag and cried:

"Vive la revolution! vive la republique! fraternity! equality! and death!"

They heard from the barricade a low and rapid muttering like the murmur
of a hurried priest dispatching a prayer. It was probably the commissary
of police who was making the legal summons at the other end of the street.

Then the same ringing voice which had cried: "Who is there?" cried:

"Disperse!"

M. Mabeuf, pallid, haggard, his eyes illumined by the mournful fires of
insanity, raised the flag above his head and repeated:
"Vive la republique!"
"Fire!" said the voice.
A second discharge, like a shower of grape, beat against the barricade.
The old man fell upon his knees, then rose up, let the flag drop, and
fell backwards upon the pavement within, like a log, at full length with his
arms crossed.

Streams of blood ran from beneath him. His old face, pale and sad,
seemed to behold the sky.

One of those emotions superior to man, which make us forget even to
defend ourselves, seized the insurgents, and they approached the corpse
with a respectful dismay.

"What men these regicides are!" said Enjolras.

Courfeyrac bent over to Enjolras' ear.

"This is only for you, and I don't wish to diminish the enthusiasm. But
he was anything but a regicide. I knew him. His name was Father Mabeuf.
I don't know what ailed him to-day. But he was a brave blockhead. Just look
at his head."

"Blockhead and Brutus heart," answered Enjolras.

Then he raised his voice:

"Citizens! This is the example which the old give to the young. We
hesitated, he came! we fell back, he advanced! Behold what those who
tremble with old age teach those who tremble with fear! This patriarch is
august in the sight of the country. He has had a long life and a magnificent
death! Now let us protect his corpse, let every one defend this old man
dead as he would defend his father living, and let his presence among us
make the barricade impregnable!"

A murmur of gloomy and determined adhesion followed these words.

Enjolras stooped down, raised the old man's head, and timidly kissed
him on the forehead, then separating his arms, and handling the dead with
a tender care, as if he feared to hurt him, he took off his coat, showed the
bleeding holes to all, and said:

"There now is our flag."

III. GAVROCHE WOULD HAVE DONE BETTER TO ACCEPT ENJOLRAS' CARBINE

THEY THREW a long black shawl belonging to the widow Hucheloup over
Father Mabeuf. Six men made a barrow of their muskets, they laid the
corpse upon it, and they bore it, bareheaded, with solemn slowness, to the
large table in the basement room.

These men, completely absorbed in the grave and sacred thing which
they were doing, no longer thought of the perilous situation in which they
were.

When the corpse passed near Javert, who was still impassible, Enjolras
said to the spy:

"You! directly."

During this time little Gavroche, who alone had not left his post and
had remained on the watch, thought he saw some men approaching the
barricade with a stealthy step. Suddenly he cried:

"Take care!"

Courfeyrac, Enjolras, Jean Prouvaire, Combeferre, Joly, Bahorel,
Bosseut, all sprang tumultuously from the wine-shop. There was hardly a
moment to spare. They perceived a sparkling breadth of bayonets undula-
ting above the barricade. Municipal Guards of tall stature were
penetrating, some by climbing over the omnibus, others by the opening,
pushing before them the gamin, who fell back, but did not fly.

The moment was critical. It was that first fearful instant of the inun-
dation, when the stream rises to the level of the bank and when the water
begins to infiltrate through the fissures in the dyke. A second more, and
the barricade had been taken.

Bahorel sprang upon the first Municipal Guard who entered, and killed
him at the very muzzle of his carbine; the second killed Bahorel with
his bayonet. Another had already prostrated Courfeyrac, who was crying
"Help!" The largest of all, a kind of colossus, marched upon Gavroche with
fixed bayonet. The gamin took Javert's enormous musket in his little arms,
aimed it resolutely at the giant, and pulled the trigger. Nothing went off.
Javert had not loaded his musket. The Municipal Guard burst into a laugh
and raised his bayonet over the child.

Before the bayonet touched Gavroche the musket dropped from the soldier's
hands, a ball had struck the Municipal Guard in the middle of the forehead,
and he fell on his back. A second ball struck the other Guard, who had
assailed Courfeyrac, full in the breast, and threw him upon the pavement.

It was Marius who had just entered the barricade.

IV. THE KEG OF POWDER

MARIUS, still hidden in the corner of the Rue Mondetour, had watched the
first phase of the combat, irresolute and shuddering. However, he was not
able long to resist that mysterious and sovereign infatuation which we may
call the appeal of the abyss. Before the imminence of the danger, before
the death of M. Mabeuf, that fatal enigma, before Bahorel slain, Courfeyrac
crying "Help!" that child threatened, his friends to succour or to avenge, all
hesitation had vanished, and he had rushed into the conflict, his two pistols
in his hands. By the first shot he had saved Gavroche and by the second
delivered Courfeyrac.

At the shots, at the cries of the wounded Guards, the assailants had
scaled the intrenchment, upon the summit of which could now be seen
thronging Municipal Guards, soldiers of the Line, National Guards of the
banlieue, musket in hand. They already covered more than two-thirds of
the wall, but they did not leap into the inclosure; they seemed to hesitate,
fearing some snare. They looked into the obscure barricade as one would
look into a den of lions. The light of the torch only lighted up their
bayonets, their bearskin caps, and the upper part of their anxious and
angry faces.

Marius had now no arms, he had thrown away his discharged pistols,
but he had noticed the keg of powder in the basement room near the door.

As he turned half round, looking in that direction, a soldier aimed at
him. At the moment the soldier aimed at Marius, a hand was laid upon the
muzzle of the musket, and stopped it. It was somebody who had sprung for-
ward, the young working-man with velvet pantaloons. The shot went off,
passed through the hand, and perhaps also through the working-man, for
he fell, but the ball did not reach Marius. All this in the smoke, rather
guessed than seen. Marius, who was entering the basement room, hardly
noticed it. Still he had caught a dim glimpse of that musket directed at
him, and that hand which had stopped it, and he had heard the shot: But in
moments like that the things which we see, waver and rush headlong, and
we stop for nothing. We feel ourselves vaguely pushed towards still deeper
shadow, and all is cloud.

The insurgents, surprised, but not dismayed, had rallied. Enjolras had
cried: "Wait! don't fire at random!" In the first confusion, in fact, they
might hit one another. Most of them had gone up to the window of the second
story and to the dormer windows, whence they commanded the assailants.
The most determined, with Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Jean Prouvaire, and Com-
beferre, had haughtily placed their backs to the houses in the rear, openly
facing the ranks of soldiers and guards which crowded the barricade.

All this was accomplished without precipitation, with that strange and
threatening gravity which precedes melees. On both sides they were taking
aim, the muzzles of the guns almost touching; they were so near that
they could talk with each other in an ordinary tone. Just as the spark was
about to fly, an officer in a gorget and with huge epaulets, extended his
sword and said:

"Take aim!"

"Fire!" said Enjolras.

The two explosions were simultaneous, and everything disappeared in
the smoke.

A stinging and stifling smoke amid which writhed, with dull and feeble
groans, the wounded and the dying.

When the smoke cleared away, on both sides the combatants were seen,
thinned out, but still in the same places, and reloading their pieces in
silence.

Suddenly, a thundering voice was heard, crying:

"Begone, or I'll blow up the barricade!"

All turned in the direction whence the voice came.

Marius had entered the basement room, and had taken the keg of powder,
then he had profited by the smoke and the kind of obscure fog which
filled the intrenched inclosure, to glide along the barricade as far as that
cage of paving-stones in which the torch was fixed. To pull out the torch, to
put the keg of powder in its place, to push the pile of paving-stones upon
the keg, which stove it in, with a sort of terrible self-control--all this had
been for Marius the work of stooping down and rising up; and now all,
National Guards, Municipal Guards, officers, soldiers, grouped at the other
extremity of the barricade, beheld him with horror, his foot upon the
stones, the torch in his hand, his stern face lighted by a deadly resolution,
bending the flame of the torch towards that formidable pile in which they
discerned the broken barrel of powder, and uttering that terrific cry:

"Begone, or I'll blow up the barricade!"

Marius upon this 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 also!"

Marius answered:

"And myself also."

And he approached the torch to the keg of powder.

But there was no longer anybody on the wall. The assailants, leaving
their dead and wounded, fled pell-mell and in disorder towards the
extremity of the street, and were again lost in the night. It was a rout.
The barricade was redeemed.

V. END OF JEAN PROUVAIRE'S RHYME

ALL FLOCKED round Marius. Courfeyrac sprang to his neck.

"You here!"

"How fortunate!" said Combeferre.

"You came in good time!" said Bossuet.

"Without you I should have been dead!" continued Courfeyrac.

"Without you I'd been gobbled!" added Gavroche.

Marius inquired:

"Where is the chief?"

"You are the chief," said Enjolras.

Marius had all day had a furnace in his brain, now it was a whirlwind.
This whirlwind which was within him, affected him as if it were without,
and were sweeping him along. It seemed to him that he was already at an
immense distance from life. His two luminous months of joy and of love,
terminating abruptly upon this frightful precipice, Cosette lost to him, this
barricade, M. Mabeuf dying for the republic, himself a chief of insurgents,
all these things appeared a monstrous nightmare. He was obliged to make a
mental effort to assure himself that all this which surrounded him was real.
Marius had lived too little as yet to know that nothing is more imminent
than the impossible, and that what we must always foresee is the unforeseen.
He was a spectator of his own drama, as of a play which one does not
comprehend.

In this mist in which his mind was struggling, he did not recognise
Javert who, bound to his post, had not moved his head during the attack
upon the barricade, and who beheld the revolt going on about him with
the resignation of a martyr and the majesty of a judge. Marius did not
even perceive him.

Meanwhile the assailants made no movement, they were heard marching
and swarming at the end of the street, but they did not venture forward,
either that they were awaiting orders, or that before rushing anew upon
that impregnable redoubt, they were awaiting reinforcements. The insur-
gents had posted sentinels, and some who were students in medicine had
set about dressing the wounded.

They had thrown the tables out of the wine-shop, with the exception
of two reserved for lint and cartridges, and that on which lay Father
Mabeuf; they added them to the barricade, and had replaced them in the
basement room by the mattresses from the beds of the widow Hucheloup,
and the servants. Upon these mattresses they had laid the wounded; as for
the three poor creatures who lived in Corinth, nobody knew what had
become of them. They found them at last, however, hidden in the cellar.

A bitter emotion came to darken their joy over the redeemed barricade.

They called the roll. One of the insurgents was missing. And who?
One of the dearest. One of the most valiant, Jean Prouvaire. They sought
him among the wounded, he was not there. They sought him among the
dead, he was not there. He was evidently a prisoner.

Combeferre said to Enjolras:

"They have our friend; we have their officer. Have you set your heart
on the death of this spy?"

"Yes," said Enjolras; "but less than on the life of Jean Prouvaire."

This passed in the basement room near Javert's post.

"Well," replied Combeferre, "I am going to tie my handkerchief to my
cane, and go with a flag of truce to offer to give them their man for
ours."

"Listen," said Enjolras, laying his hand on Combeferre's arm.

There was a significant clicking of arms at the end of the street.

They heard a manly voice cry:

"Vive la France! Vive l'avenir!"

They recognised Prouvaire's voice.

There was a flash and an explosion.

Silence reigned again.

"They have killed him," exclaimed Combeferre.

Enjolras looked at Javert and said to him:

"Your friends have just shot you."

VI. THE AGONY OF DEATH AFTER THE AGONY OF LIFE

A PECULIARITY OF THIS KIND of war is that the attack on the barricades is
almost always made in front, and that in general the assailants abstain from
turning the positions, whether it be that they dread ambuscades, or that
they fear to become entangled in the crooked streets. The whole attention
of the insurgents therefore was directed to the great barricade, which was
evidently the point still threatened, and where the struggle must infallibly
recommence. Marius, however, thought of the little barricade and went to
it. It was deserted, and was guarded only by the lamp which flickered
between the stones. The little Rue Mondetour, moreover, and the branch
streets de la Petite Truanderie and du Cygne, were perfectly quiet.

As Marius, the inspection made, was retiring, he heard his name faintly
pronounced in the obscurity:

"Monsieur Marius!"

He shuddered, for he recognised the voice which had called him two
hours before, through the grating in the Rue Plumet.

Only this voice now seemed to be but a breath.

He looked about him and saw nobody.

Marius thought he was deceived, and that it was an illusion added by
his mind to the extraordinary realities which were thronging about him.
He started to leave the retired recess in which the barricade was situated.
"Monsieur Marius!" repeated the voice.

This time he could not doubt, he had heard distinctly; he looked, and
saw nothing.

"At your feet," said the voice.

He stooped and saw a form in the shadow, which was dragging itself to-
wards him. It was crawling along the pavement. It was this that had spoken
to him.

The lamp enabled him to distinguish a blouse, a pair of torn pantaloons
of coarse velvet, bare feet, and something which resembled a pool
of blood. Marius caught a glimpse of a pale face which rose towards him
and said to him:

"You do not know me?"

"No."

"Eponine."

Marius bent down quickly. It was indeed that unhappy child. She was
dressed as a man.

"How came you here? what are you doing there?"

"I am dying," said she.

There are words and incidents which rouse beings who are crushed.

Marius exclaimed, with a start:

"You are wounded! Wait, I will carry you into the room! They will dress
your wounds! Is it serious? how shall I take you up so as not to hurt
you? Where are you hurt? Help! my God! But what did you come here for?"

And he tried to pass his arm under her to lift her.

In lifting her he touched her hand.

She uttered a feeble cry.

"Have I hurt you?" asked Marius.

"A little."

"But I have only touched your hand."

She raised her hand into Marius' sight, and Marius saw in the centre of
that hand a black hole.

"What is the matter with your hand?" said he.

"It is pierced."

"Pierced?"

"Yes."

"By what?"

"By a ball."

"How?"

"Did you see a musket aimed at you?"

"Yes, and a hand which stopped it."

"That was mine."

Marius shuddered.

"What madness! Poor child! But that is not so bad, if that is all, it is
nothing, let me carry you to a bed. They will care for you, people don't die
from a shot in the hand."

She murmured:

"The ball passed through my hand, but it went out through my back. It is
useless to take me from here. I will tell you how you can care for me,
better than a surgeon. Sit down by me on that stone."

He obeyed; she laid her head on Marius' knees, and without looking
at him, she said:

"Oh! how good it is! How kind he is! That is it! I don't suffer any
more!"

She remained a moment in silence, then she turned her head with
effort and looked at Marius.

"Do you know, Monsieur Marius? It worried me that you should go into
that garden, it was silly, since it was I who had shown you the house,
and then indeed I ought surely to have known that a young man like you--"

She stopped, and, leaping over the gloomy transitions which were
doubtless in her mind, she added with a heartrending smile:

"You thought me ugly, didn't you?"

She continued:

"See, you are lost! Nobody will get out of the barricade, now. It was I
who led you into this, it was! You are going to die, I am sure. And still when
I saw him aiming at you, I put up my hand upon the muzzle of the musket.
How droll it is! But it was because I wanted to die before you. When I got
this ball, I dragged myself here, nobody saw me, nobody picked me up. I
waited for you, I said: He will not come then? Oh! if you knew, I bit my
blouse, I suffered so much! Now I am well. Do you remember the day
when I came into your room, and when I looked at myself in your mirror,
and the day when I met you on the boulevard near some work-women?
How the birds sang! It was not very long ago. You gave me a hundred sous,
and I said to you: I don't want your money. Did you pick up your piece?
You are not rich. I didn't think to tell you to pick it up. The sun shone
bright, I was not cold. Do you remember, Monsieur Marius? Oh! I am
happy! We are all going to die."

She had a wandering, grave, and touching air. Her torn blouse showed
her bare throat. While she was talking she rested her wounded hand upon
her breast where there was another hole, from which there came with each
pulsation a flow of blood like a jet of wine from an open bung.

Marius gazed upon this unfortunate creature with profound compassion.
"Oh!" she exclaimed suddenly, "it is coming back. I am stifling!"

She seized her blouse and bit it, and her legs writhed upon the pavement.

At this moment the chicken voice of little Gavroche resounded through
the barricade. The child had mounted upon a table to load his musket
and was gaily singing the song then so popular:

En voyant Lafayette
Le gendarme repete
Sauvons-nous! sauvons-nous! sauvons-nous!

Eponine raised herself up, and listened, then she murmured:

"It is he."

And turning towards Marius:

"My brother is here. He must not see me. He would scold me."

"Your brother?" asked Marius, who thought in the bitterest and most sor-
rowful depths of his heart, of the duties which his father had bequeathed
him towards the Thenardiers, "who is your brother?"

"That little boy."

"The one who is singing?"

"Yes."

Marius started.

"Oh! don't go away!" said she, "it will not be long now!"

She was sitting almost upright, but her voice was very low and broken
by hiccoughs. At intervals the death-rattle interrupted her. She approached
her face as near as she could to Marius' face. She added with a strange
expression:

"Listen, I don't want to deceive you. I have a letter in my pocket for you.
Since yesterday. I was told to put it in the post. I kept it. I didn't want
it to reach you. But you would not like it of me perhaps when we meet again
so soon. We do meet again, don't we? Take your letter."

She grasped Marius' hand convulsively with her wounded hand, but she seemed
no longer to feel the pain. She put Marius' hand into the pocket of her
blouse. Marius really felt a paper there.

"Take it," said she.

Marius took the letter.

She made a sign of satisfaction and of consent.

"Now for my pains, promise me----"

And she hesitated.

"What?" asked Marius.

"Promise me!"

"I promise you."

"Promise to kiss me on the forehead when I am dead. I shall feel it."

She let her head fall back upon Marius' knees and her eyelids closed.
He thought that poor soul had gone. Eponine lay motionless; but just when
Marius supposed her for ever asleep, she slowly opened her eyes in which
the gloomy deepness of death appeared, and said to him with an accent the
sweetness of which already seemed to come from another world:

"And then, do you know, Monsieur Marius, I believe I was a little in
love with you."

She essayed to smile again and expired.

VII. GAVROCHE A PROFOUND CALCULATOR OF DISTANCES

MARIUS KEPT his promise. He kissed that livid forehead from which oozed
an icy sweat. This was not infidelity to Cosette; it was a thoughtful and
gentle farewell to an unhappy soul.

He had not taken the letter which Eponine had given him without a
thrill. He had felt at once the presence of an event. He was impatient to
read it. The heart of man is thus made; the unfortunate child had hardly
closed her eyes when Marius thought to unfold this paper. He laid her
gently upon the ground, and went away. Something told him that he could
not read that letter in sight of this corpse.

He went to a candle in the basement-room. It was a little note, folded
and sealed with the elegant care of a woman. The address was in a woman's
hand, and ran:

"To Monsieur, Monsieur Marius Pontmercy, at M. Courfeyrac's, Rue
de la Verrerie, No. 16."

He broke the seal and read:

"My beloved, alas! my father wishes to start immediately. We shall be
to-night in the Rue de l'Homme Arme, No. 7. In a week we shall be in
England. COSETTE June 4th."

Such was the innocence of this love that Marius did not even know
Cosette's handwriting.

What happened may be told in a few words. Eponine had done it all.
After the evening of the 3rd of June, she had had a double thought, to
thwart the projects of her father and the bandits upon the house in the
Rue Plumet, and to separate Marius from Cosette. She had changed rags with
the first young rogue who thought it amusing to dress as a woman while
Eponine disguised herself as a man. It was she who, in the Champ de Mars,
had given Jean Valjean the expressive warning: Remove. Jean Valjean return-
ed home, and said to Cosette: we start to-night, and we are going to the
Rue de l'Homme Arme with Toussaint. Next week we shall be in London.
Cosette, prostrated by this unexpected blow, had hastily written two lines
to Marius. But how should she get the letter to the post? She did not go
out alone, and Toussaint, surprised at such an errand, would surely show
the letter to M. Fauchelevent. In this anxiety, Cosette saw, through the
grating, Eponine in men's clothes, who was now prowling continually about
the garden. Cosette called "this young working-man" and handed him five
francs and the letter, saying to him: "carry this letter to its address
right away." Eponine put the letter in her pocket. The next day, June 5th,
she went to Courfeyrac's to ask for Marius, not to give him the letter, but,
a thing which every jealous and loving soul will understand, "to see."
There she waited for Marius, or, at least, for Courfeyrac--still to see. When
Courfeyrac said to her: we are going to the barricades, an idea flashed
across her mind. To throw herself into that death as she would have thrown
herself into any other, and to push Marius into it. She followed Courfeyrac,
made sure of the post where they were building the barricade; and very sure,
since Marius had received no notice, and she had intercepted the letter,
that he would at nightfall be at his usual evening rendezvous, she went
to the Rue Plumet, waited there for Marius, and sent him, in the name of
his friends, that appeal which must, she thought, lead him to the barri-
cade. She counted upon Marius' despair when he should not find Cosette;
she was not mistaken. She returned herself to the Rue de la Chanvrerie. We
have seen what she did there. She died with that tragic joy of jealous hearts
which drag the being they love into death with them, saying: nobody shall
have him!

Marius covered Cosette's letter with kisses. She loved him then? He
had for a moment the idea that now he need not die. Then he said to him
self: "She is going away. Her father takes her to England and my grandfather
refuses to consent to the marriage. Nothing is changed in the fatality."
Dreamers, like Marius, have these supreme depressions, and paths hence
are chosen in despair. The fatigue of life is insupportable; death is sooner
over. Then he thought that there were two duties remaining for him to fulfil:
to inform Cosette of his death and to send her a last farewell, and to save
from the imminent catastrophe which was approaching, this poor child,
Eponine's brother and Thenardier's son.

He had a pocket-book with him; the same that had contained the pages
upon which he had written so many thoughts of love for Cosette. He tore
out a leaf and wrote with a pencil these few lines:

"Our marriage was impossible. I have asked my grandfather, he has
refused; I am without fortune, and you also. I ran to your house, I did not
find you, you know the promise that I gave you? I keep it, I die, I love you.
When you read this, my soul will be near you, and will smile upon you."

Having nothing to seal this letter with, he merely folded the paper, and
wrote upon it this address:

"To Mademoiselle Cosette Fauchelevent, at M. Fauchelevent's, Rue de
l'Homme Arme, No. 7."

The letter folded, he remained a moment in thought, took his pocketbook
again, opened it, and wrote these four lines on the first page with the
same pencil:

"My name is Marius Pontmercy. Carry my corpse to my grandfather's,
M. Gillenormand, Rue des Filles du Calvaire, No. 6, in the Marais."

He put the book into his coat-pocket, then he called Gavroche. The
gamin, at the sound of Marius' voice, ran up with his joyous and devoted
face:

"Will you do something for me?"

"Anything," said Gavroche. "God of the good God! without you I
should have been cooked, sure."

"You see this letter?"

"Yes."

"Take it. Go out of the barricade immediately (Gavroche, disturbed,
began to scratch his ear), and to-morrow morning you will carry it to its
address, to Mademoiselle Cosette, at M. Fauchelevent's, Rue de l'Homme
Arme, No. 7."

The heroic boy answered:

"Ah, well, but in that time they'll take the barricade, and I shan't be
here."

"The barricade will not be attacked again before daybreak, according
to all appearance, and will not be taken before to-morrow noon."

The new respite which the assailants allowed the barricade was, in fact,
prolonged. It was one of those intermissions, frequent in night combats,
which are always followed by a redoubled fury.

"Well," said Gavroche, "suppose I go and carry your letter in the
morning?"

"It will be too late. The barricade will probably be blockaded; all the
streets will be guarded, and you cannot get out. Go, right away!"

Gavroche had nothing more to say; he stood there, undecided, and sadly
scratching his ear. Suddenly, with one of his birdlike motions, he took
the letter:

"All right," said he.

And he started off on a run by the little Rue Mondetour.

Gavroche had an idea which decided him, but which he did not tell, for
fear Marius would make some objection to it.

That idea was this:

"It is hardly midnight, the Rue de l'Homme Arme is not far, I will
carry the letter right away, and I shall get back in time."