Les Misérables, v. 5/5: Jean Valjean, Page 3

  CHAPTER II.

  NOTHING TO DO IN THE ABYSS BUT TALK.

  Sixteen years count in the subterranean education of revolt, and June,1848, knew a great deal more than June, 1832. Hence the barricade inthe Rue de la Chanvrerie was only a sketch and an embryo when comparedwith the two colossal barricades which we have just described; butfor the period it was formidable. The insurgents, under the eye ofEnjolras,--for Marius no longer looked at anything,--had turned thenight to good account: the barricade had not only been repaired butincreased. It had been raised two feet, and iron bars planted in thepaving-stones resembled lances in rest. All sorts of rubbish, added andbrought from all sides, complicated the external confusion, and theredoubt had been cleverly converted into a wall inside and a thicketoutside. The staircase of paving-stones, which allowed the top of thebarricade to be reached, was restored, the ground-floor of the roomof the inn was cleared out, the kitchen converted into an infirmary,the wounds were dressed, the powder scattered about the tables andfloor was collected, bullets were cast, cartridges manufactured,lint plucked, the fallen arms distributed; the dead were carried offand laid in a heap in the Mondétour Lane, of which they were stillmasters. The pavement remained for a long time red at that spot. Amongthe dead were four suburban National Guards, and Enjolras ordered theiruniforms to be laid on one side. Enjolras had advised two hours' sleep,and his advice was an order; still, only three or four took advantageof it, and Feuilly employed the two hours in engraving this inscriptionon the wall facing the wine-shop,--

  "LONG LIVE THE PEOPLES."

  These four words, carved in the stone with a nail, could still be readon this wall in 1848. The three women took advantage of the respiteto disappear entirely, which allowed the insurgents to breathe moreat their ease; and they contrived to find refuge in some neighboringhouse. Most of the wounded could and would still fight. There were,on a pile of mattresses and trusses of straw laid in the kitchenconverted into an infirmary, five men seriously wounded, of whom twowere Municipal Guards; the wounds of the latter were dressed first. Noone remained in the ground-floor room save Mabœuf under his blackcere-cloth, and Javert fastened to the post.

  "This is the charnel-house," said Enjolras.

  In the interior of this room, which was scarce lighted by a solitarycandle, the mortuary table at the end being behind the post like ahorizontal bar, a sort of large vague cross resulted from Javertstanding and Mabœuf lying down. Although the pole of the omnibus wasmutilated by the bullets, sufficient remained for a flag to be attachedto it. Enjolras, who possessed that quality of a chief of always doingwhat he said, fastened to it the bullet-pierced and blood-stained coatof the killed old man. No meal was possible, for there was neitherbread nor meat. The fifty men during the sixteen hours they had stoodat the barricade speedily exhausted the scanty provisions of the inn.At a given moment every barricade that holds out becomes the raft ofthe _Méduse_, and the combatants must resign themselves to hunger.They had reached the early hours of that Spartan day, June 6, when atthe barricade of St. Merry, Jeanne, surrounded by insurgents who criedfor bread, answered, "What for? It is three o'clock; at four we shallbe dead." As they could no longer eat, Enjolras prohibited drinking;he put the wine under an interdict, and served out the spirits. Somefifteen full bottles, hermetically sealed, were found in the cellar,which Enjolras and Combeferre examined. Combeferre on coming up againsaid, "It belongs to Father Hucheloup's stock at the time when he wasa grocer." "It must be real wine," Bossuet observed; "it is lucky thatGrantaire is asleep, for if he were up, we should have a difficulty insaving those bottles." Enjolras, in spite of the murmurs, put his vetoon the fifteen bottles, and in order that no one might touch them, andthat they should be to some extent sacred, he had placed them under thetable on which Father Mabœuf lay.

  At about two in the morning they counted their strength; there werestill thirty-seven. Day was beginning to appear, and the torch, whichhad been returned to its stone lantern, was extinguished. The interiorof the barricade, that species of small yard taken from the street, wasbathed in darkness, and resembled, through the vague twilight horror,the deck of a dismasted ship. The combatants moved about like blackforms. Above this frightful nest of gloom the floors of the silenthouses stood out lividly, and above them again the chimney-pots wereassuming a roseate hue. The sky had that charming tint which may bewhite and may be blue, and the birds flew about in it with twitteringsof joy. The tall house which formed the background of the barricadelooked to the east, and had a pink reflection on its roof. At thethird-floor window the morning breeze blew about the gray hair on thehead of the dead man.

  "I am delighted that the torch is put out," Courfeyrac said to Feuilly."That flame flickering in the breeze annoyed me, for it seemed to befrightened. The light of torches resembles the wisdom of cowards; itillumines badly because it trembles."

  The dawn arouses minds like birds, and all were talking. Joly, seeing acat stalking along a gutter, extracted this philosophy from the fact.

  "What is the cat?" he exclaimed. "It is a correction. _Le bon Dieu_having made a mouse, said to himself, 'Hilloh! I have done a foolishtrick,' and he made the cat, which is the erratum of the mouse. Themouse plus the cat is the revised and corrected proof of creation."

  Combeferre, surrounded by students and workmen, was talking of thedead, of Jean Prouvaire, of Bahorel, of Mabœuf, and even of Cabuc,and the stern sorrow of Enjolras. He said,--

  "Harmodius and Aristogiton, Brutus, Chereas, Stephanus, Cromwell,Charlotte Corday, Sand, all had their moment of agony after the blowwas struck. Our heart is so quivering, and human life such a mystery,that even in a civic murder, even in a liberating murder, if there besuch a thing, the remorse at having struck a man exceeds the joy ofhaving benefited the human race."

  And, such are the meanderings of interchanged words, a moment later, bya transition which came from Jean Prouvaire's verses, Combeferre wascomparing together the translators of the Georgics, Raux with Cournand,Cournand with Delille, and pointing out the few passages translated byMalfilâtre, especially the wonders of the death of Cæsar, and at thatname the conversation reverted to Brutus.

  "Cæsar," said Combeferre, "fell justly. Cicero was severe to Cæsar,and was in the right, for such severity is not a diatribe. When Zoïlusinsults Homer, when Mævius insults Virgil, when Visé insults Molière,when Pope insults Shakspeare, when Fréron insults Voltaire, it is anold law of envy and hatred being carried out; for genius attractsinsult, and great men are all barked at more or less. But Zoïlus andCicero are different. Cicero is a justiciary with thought in the sameway as Brutus is a justiciary with the sword. For my part, I blame thatlast justice, the glaive; antiquity allowed it. Cæsar, the violator ofthe Rubicon, conferring, as if coming from him, dignities that camefrom the people, and not rising on the entrance of the senate, behaved,as Eutropius said, like a king, and almost like a tyrant, _regiâ acpene tyrannica_. He was a great man; all the worse or all the better,the lesson is the more elevated. His three-and-twenty wounds affect meless than the spitting on the brow of Christ. Cæsar is stabbed by thesenators, Christ is buffeted by soldiers. God is felt in the greateroutrage."

  Bossuet, standing on a pile of stones, and commanding the speaker,exclaimed, gun in hand,--

  "O Cydathenæum! O Myrrhinus! O Probalynthus! O graces of Æanthus! Oh,who will inspire me to pronounce the verses of Homer like a Greek ofLaureum or Edapteon!"