Les Misérables, v. 5/5: Jean Valjean, Page 4

  CHAPTER III.

  CLEARING AND CLOUDING.

  Enjolras had gone out to reconnoitre, and had left by the MondétourLane, keeping in the shadow of the houses. The insurgents, we muststate, were full of hope: the way in which they had repulsed the nightattack almost made them disdain beforehand the attack at daybreak.They waited for it and smiled at it, and no more doubted of theirsuccess than of their cause; moreover, help was evidently going toreach them, and they reckoned on it. With that facility of triumphantprophecy which is a part of the strength of the French fighter, theydivided into three certain phases the opening day,--at six in themorning a regiment, which had been worked upon, would turn; at mid-dayinsurrection all over Paris; at sunset the revolution. The tocsin ofSt. Merry, which had not ceased once since the previous evening, couldbe heard, and this was a proof that the other barricade, the greatone, Jeanne's, still held out. All these hopes were interchanged bythe groups with a species of gay and formidable buzzing which resemblethe war-hum of a swarm of bees. Enjolras reappeared returning from hisgloomy walk in the external darkness. He listened for a moment to allthis joy with his arms folded, and then said, fresh and rosy in thegrowing light of dawn,--

  "The whole army of Paris is out, and one third of that army ispreparing to attack the barricade behind which you now are. There is,too, the National Guard. I distinguished the shakos of the fifth lineregiment and the colors of the sixth legion. You will be attacked inan hour; as for the people, they were in a state of ferment yesterday,but this morning do not stir. There is nothing to wait for, nothing tohope; no more a faubourg than a regiment You are abandoned."

  These words fell on the buzzing groups, and produced the same effectas the first drops of a storm do on a swarm. All remained dumb, andthere was a moment of inexpressible silence, in which death might havebeen heard flying past This moment was short, and a voice shouted toEnjolras from the thickest of the crowd,--

  "Be it so. Let us raise the barricade to a height of twenty feet, andall fall upon it. Citizens, let us offer the protest of corpses, andshow that if the people abandon the republicans, the republicans do notabandon the people."

  These words disengaged the thoughts of all from the painful cloud ofindividual anxieties, and an enthusiastic shout greeted them. Thename of the man who spoke thus was never known; he was Rome unknownblouse-wearer, an unknown man, a forgotten man, a passing hero, thatgreat anonymous always mixed up in human crises and social Geneses,who at the given moment utters the decisive word in a supreme fashion,and who fades away into darkness after having represented for a minute,in the light of a flash, the people and God. This inexorable resolutionwas so strongly in the air of June 6, 1832, that almost at the samehour the insurgents of the St. Merry barricade uttered this cry, whichbecame historical,--"Whether they come to our help, or whether they donot, what matter! Let us all fall here, to the last man!" As we see,the two barricades, though materially isolated, communicated.