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BOOK SEVENTH.--SLANG



CHAPTER I

ORIGIN


Pigritia is a terrible word.

It engenders a whole world, la pegre, for which read theft,
and a hell, la pegrenne, for which read hunger.

Thus, idleness is the mother.

She has a son, theft, and a daughter, hunger.

Where are we at this moment?  In the land of slang.

What is slang?  It is at one and the same time, a nation and a dialect;
it is theft in its two kinds; people and language.

When, four and thirty years ago, the narrator of this grave
and sombre history introduced into a work written with the same
aim as this[39] a thief who talked argot, there arose amazement
and clamor.--"What! How!  Argot!  Why, argot is horrible!
It is the language of prisons, galleys, convicts, of everything
that is most abominable in society!" etc., etc.


[39] The Last Day of a Condemned Man.


We have never understood this sort of objections.

Since that time, two powerful romancers, one of whom is a profound
observer of the human heart, the other an intrepid friend of
the people, Balzac and Eugene Sue, having represented their ruffians
as talking their natural language, as the author of The Last Day
of a Condemned Man did in 1828, the same objections have been raised.
People repeated:  "What do authors mean by that revolting dialect?
Slang is odious!  Slang makes one shudder!"

Who denies that?  Of course it does.

When it is a question of probing a wound, a gulf, a society,
since when has it been considered wrong to go too far? to go
to the bottom?  We have always thought that it was sometimes a
courageous act, and, at least, a simple and useful deed, worthy of
the sympathetic attention which duty accepted and fulfilled merits.
Why should one not explore everything, and study everything?
Why should one halt on the way?  The halt is a matter depending
on the sounding-line, and not on the leadsman.

Certainly, too, it is neither an attractive nor an easy task to
undertake an investigation into the lowest depths of the social order,
where terra firma comes to an end and where mud begins, to rummage
in those vague, murky waves, to follow up, to seize and to fling,
still quivering, upon the pavement that abject dialect which is dripping
with filth when thus brought to the light, that pustulous vocabulary
each word of which seems an unclean ring from a monster of the mire
and the shadows.  Nothing is more lugubrious than the contemplation
thus in its nudity, in the broad light of thought, of the horrible
swarming of slang.  It seems, in fact, to be a sort of horrible beast
made for the night which has just been torn from its cesspool.
One thinks one beholds a frightful, living, and bristling thicket
which quivers, rustles, wavers, returns to shadow, threatens and glares.
One word resembles a claw, another an extinguished and bleeding eye,
such and such a phrase seems to move like the claw of a crab.
All this is alive with the hideous vitality of things which have been
organized out of disorganization.

Now, when has horror ever excluded study?  Since when has malady
banished medicine?  Can one imagine a naturalist refusing to study
the viper, the bat, the scorpion, the centipede, the tarantula,
and one who would cast them back into their darkness, saying:  "Oh! how
ugly that is!"  The thinker who should turn aside from slang would
resemble a surgeon who should avert his face from an ulcer or a wart.
He would be like a philologist refusing to examine a fact in language,
a philosopher hesitating to scrutinize a fact in humanity.
For, it must be stated to those who are ignorant of the case,
that argot is both a literary phenomenon and a social result.
What is slang, properly speaking?  It is the language of wretchedness.

We may be stopped; the fact may be put to us in general terms,
which is one way of attenuating it; we may be told, that all trades,
professions, it may be added, all the accidents of the social
hierarchy and all forms of intelligence, have their own slang.
The merchant who says:  "Montpellier not active, Marseilles fine quality,"
the broker on 'change who says:  "Assets at end of current month,"
the gambler who says:  "Tiers et tout, refait de pique," the sheriff
of the Norman Isles who says:  The holder in fee reverting to his landed
estate cannot claim the fruits of that estate during the hereditary
seizure of the real estate by the mortgagor," the playwright who says:
"The piece was hissed," the comedian who says:  "I've made a hit,"
the philosopher who says:  "Phenomenal triplicity," the huntsman
who says:  "Voileci allais, Voileci fuyant," the phrenologist
who says:  "Amativeness, combativeness, secretiveness," the infantry
soldier who says:  "My shooting-iron," the cavalry-man who says:
"My turkey-cock," the fencing-master who says:  "Tierce, quarte, break,"
the printer who says:  "My shooting-stick and galley,"--all, printer,
fencing-master, cavalry dragoon, infantry-man, phrenologist,
huntsman, philosopher, comedian, playwright, sheriff, gambler,
stock-broker, and merchant, speak slang.  The painter who says:
"My grinder," the notary who says:  "My Skip-the-Gutter,"
the hairdresser who says:  "My mealyback," the cobbler who says:
"My cub," talks slang.  Strictly speaking, if one absolutely insists on
the point, all the different fashions of saying the right and the left,
the sailor's port and starboard, the scene-shifter's court-side, and
garden-side, the beadle's Gospel-side and Epistle-side, are slang.
There is the slang of the affected lady as well as of the precieuses.
The Hotel Rambouillet nearly adjoins the Cour des Miracles.  There is
a slang of duchesses, witness this phrase contained in a love-letter
from a very great lady and a very pretty woman of the Restoration:
"You will find in this gossip a fultitude of reasons why I should
libertize."[40] Diplomatic ciphers are slang; the pontifical
chancellery by using 26 for Rome, grkztntgzyal for despatch,
and abfxustgrnogrkzu tu XI.  for the Due de Modena, speaks slang.
The physicians of the Middle Ages who, for carrot, radish, and turnip,
said Opoponach, perfroschinum, reptitalmus, dracatholicum, angelorum,
postmegorum, talked slang.  The sugar-manufacturer who says:
"Loaf, clarified, lumps, bastard, common, burnt,"--this honest
manufacturer talks slang.  A certain school of criticism twenty years ago,
which used to say:  "Half of the works of Shakespeare consists of plays
upon words and puns,"--talked slang.  The poet, and the artist who,
with profound understanding, would designate M. de Montmorency
as "a bourgeois," if he were not a judge of verses and statues,
speak slang.  The classic Academician who calls flowers "Flora," fruits,
"Pomona," the sea, "Neptune," love, "fires," beauty, "charms," a horse,
"a courser," the white or tricolored cockade, "the rose of Bellona,"
the three-cornered hat, "Mars' triangle,"--that classical Academician
talks slang.  Algebra, medicine, botany, have each their slang.
The tongue which is employed on board ship, that wonderful language
of the sea, which is so complete and so picturesque, which was spoken
by Jean Bart, Duquesne, Suffren, and Duperre, which mingles with
the whistling of the rigging, the sound of the speaking-trumpets,
the shock of the boarding-irons, the roll of the sea, the wind,
the gale, the cannon, is wholly a heroic and dazzling slang, which
is to the fierce slang of the thieves what the lion is to the jackal.


[40] "Vous trouverez dans ces potains-la, une foultitude de raisons
pour que je me libertise."


No doubt.  But say what we will, this manner of understanding
the word slang is an extension which every one will not admit.
For our part, we reserve to the word its ancient and precise,
circumscribed and determined significance, and we restrict slang
to slang.  The veritable slang and the slang that is pre-eminently
slang, if the two words can be coupled thus, the slang immemorial
which was a kingdom, is nothing else, we repeat, than the homely,
uneasy, crafty, treacherous, venomous, cruel, equivocal, vile, profound,
fatal tongue of wretchedness.  There exists, at the extremity of all
abasement and all misfortunes, a last misery which revolts and makes
up its mind to enter into conflict with the whole mass of fortunate
facts and reigning rights; a fearful conflict, where, now cunning,
now violent, unhealthy and ferocious at one and the same time,
it attacks the social order with pin-pricks through vice, and with
club-blows through crime.  To meet the needs of this conflict,
wretchedness has invented a language of combat, which is slang.

To keep afloat and to rescue from oblivion, to hold above the gulf,
were it but a fragment of some language which man has spoken and
which would, otherwise, be lost, that is to say, one of the elements,
good or bad, of which civilization is composed, or by which it
is complicated, to extend the records of social observation;
is to serve civilization itself.  This service Plautus rendered,
consciously or unconsciously, by making two Carthaginian soldiers
talk Phoenician; that service Moliere rendered, by making so many
of his characters talk Levantine and all sorts of dialects.
Here objections spring up afresh.  Phoenician, very good!
Levantine, quite right!  Even dialect, let that pass!  They are
tongues which have belonged to nations or provinces; but slang!
What is the use of preserving slang?  What is the good of assisting
slang "to survive"?

To this we reply in one word, only.  Assuredly, if the tongue
which a nation or a province has spoken is worthy of interest,
the language which has been spoken by a misery is still more worthy
of attention and study.

It is the language which has been spoken, in France, for example,
for more than four centuries, not only by a misery, but by every
possible human misery.

And then, we insist upon it, the study of social deformities
and infirmities, and the task of pointing them out with a view
to remedy, is not a business in which choice is permitted.
The historian of manners and ideas has no less austere a mission than
the historian of events.  The latter has the surface of civilization,
the conflicts of crowns, the births of princes, the marriages of kings,
battles, assemblages, great public men, revolutions in the daylight,
everything on the exterior; the other historian has the interior,
the depths, the people who toil, suffer, wait, the oppressed woman,
the agonizing child, the secret war between man and man,
obscure ferocities, prejudices, plotted iniquities, the subterranean,
the indistinct tremors of multitudes, the die-of-hunger,
the counter-blows of the law, the secret evolution of souls,
the go-bare-foot, the bare-armed, the disinherited, the orphans,
the unhappy, and the infamous, all the forms which roam through
the darkness.  He must descend with his heart full of charity,
and severity at the same time, as a brother and as a judge, to those
impenetrable casemates where crawl, pell-mell, those who bleed
and those who deal the blow, those who weep and those who curse,
those who fast and those who devour, those who endure evil and those
who inflict it.  Have these historians of hearts and souls duties
at all inferior to the historians of external facts?  Does any one
think that Alighieri has any fewer things to say than Machiavelli?
Is the under side of civilization any less important than the upper
side merely because it is deeper and more sombre?  Do we really
know the mountain well when we are not acquainted with the cavern?

Let us say, moreover, parenthetically, that from a few words
of what precedes a marked separation might be inferred between
the two classes of historians which does not exist in our mind.
No one is a good historian of the patent, visible, striking,
and public life of peoples, if he is not, at the same time,
in a certain measure, the historian of their deep and hidden life;
and no one is a good historian of the interior unless he
understands how, at need, to be the historian of the exterior also.
The history of manners and ideas permeates the history of events,
and this is true reciprocally.  They constitute two different orders
of facts which correspond to each other, which are always interlaced,
and which often bring forth results.  All the lineaments which
providence traces on the surface of a nation have their parallels,
sombre but distinct, in their depths, and all convulsions of the
depths produce ebullitions on the surface.  True history being
a mixture of all things, the true historian mingles in everything.

Man is not a circle with a single centre; he is an ellipse with
a double focus.  Facts form one of these, and ideas the other.

Slang is nothing but a dressing-room where the tongue having some
bad action to perform, disguises itself.  There it clothes itself
in word-masks, in metaphor-rags. In this guise it becomes horrible.

One finds it difficult to recognize.  Is it really the French tongue,
the great human tongue?  Behold it ready to step upon the stage
and to retort upon crime, and prepared for all the employments
of the repertory of evil.  It no longer walks, it hobbles; it limps
on the crutch of the Court of Miracles, a crutch metamorphosable
into a club; it is called vagrancy; every sort of spectre,
its dressers, have painted its face, it crawls and rears, the double
gait of the reptile.  Henceforth, it is apt at all roles, it is made
suspicious by the counterfeiter, covered with verdigris by the forger,
blacked by the soot of the incendiary; and the murderer applies its rouge.

When one listens, by the side of honest men, at the portals of society,
one overhears the dialogues of those who are on the outside.
One distinguishes questions and replies.  One perceives, without
understanding it, a hideous murmur, sounding almost like human accents,
but more nearly resembling a howl than an articulate word.
It is slang.  The words are misshapen and stamped with an indescribable
and fantastic bestiality.  One thinks one hears hydras talking.

It is unintelligible in the dark.  It gnashes and whispers,
completing the gloom with mystery.  It is black in misfortune,
it is blacker still in crime; these two blacknesses amalgamated,
compose slang.  Obscurity in the atmosphere, obscurity in acts,
obscurity in voices.  Terrible, toad-like tongue which goes
and comes, leaps, crawls, slobbers, and stirs about in monstrous
wise in that immense gray fog composed of rain and night, of hunger,
of vice, of falsehood, of injustice, of nudity, of suffocation,
and of winter, the high noonday of the miserable.

Let us have compassion on the chastised.  Alas!  Who are we ourselves?
Who am I who now address you?  Who are you who are listening to me?
And are you very sure that we have done nothing before we were born?
The earth is not devoid of resemblance to a jail.  Who knows
whether man is not a recaptured offender against divine justice?
Look closely at life.  It is so made, that everywhere we feel the sense
of punishment.

Are you what is called a happy man?  Well! you are sad every day.
Each day has its own great grief or its little care.  Yesterday you
were trembling for a health that is dear to you, to-day you fear
for your own; to-morrow it will be anxiety about money, the day
after to-morrow the diatribe of a slanderer, the day after that,
the misfortune of some friend; then the prevailing weather, then something
that has been broken or lost, then a pleasure with which your
conscience and your vertebral column reproach you; again, the course
of public affairs.  This without reckoning in the pains of the heart.
And so it goes on.  One cloud is dispelled, another forms.
There is hardly one day out of a hundred which is wholly joyous
and sunny.  And you belong to that small class who are happy!
As for the rest of mankind, stagnating night rests upon them.

Thoughtful minds make but little use of the phrase:  the fortunate
and the unfortunate.  In this world, evidently the vestibule
of another, there are no fortunate.

The real human division is this:  the luminous and the shady.
To diminish the number of the shady, to augment the number
of the luminous,--that is the object.  That is why we cry:
Education! science!  To teach reading, means to light the fire;
every syllable spelled out sparkles.

However, he who says light does not, necessarily, say joy.
People suffer in the light; excess burns.  The flame is the enemy
of the wing.  To burn without ceasing to fly,--therein lies the
marvel of genius.

When you shall have learned to know, and to love, you will
still suffer.  The day is born in tears.  The luminous weep,
if only over those in darkness.



CHAPTER II

ROOTS


Slang is the tongue of those who sit in darkness.

Thought is moved in its most sombre depths, social philosophy
is bidden to its most poignant meditations, in the presence
of that enigmatic dialect at once so blighted and rebellious.
Therein lies chastisement made visible.  Every syllable has
an air of being marked.  The words of the vulgar tongue appear
therein wrinkled and shrivelled, as it were, beneath the hot iron
of the executioner.  Some seem to be still smoking.  Such and such
a phrase produces upon you the effect of the shoulder of a thief
branded with the fleur-de-lys, which has suddenly been laid bare.
Ideas almost refuse to be expressed in these substantives which
are fugitives from justice.  Metaphor is sometimes so shameless,
that one feels that it has worn the iron neck-fetter.

Moreover, in spite of all this, and because of all this, this strange
dialect has by rights, its own compartment in that great impartial
case of pigeon-holes where there is room for the rusty farthing
as well as for the gold medal, and which is called literature.
Slang, whether the public admit the fact or not has its syntax
and its poetry.  It is a language.  Yes, by the deformity of
certain terms, we recognize the fact that it was chewed by Mandrin,
and by the splendor of certain metonymies, we feel that Villon spoke it.

That exquisite and celebrated verse--

          Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?
          But where are the snows of years gone by?

is a verse of slang.  Antam--ante annum--is a word of Thunes slang,
which signified the past year, and by extension, formerly.
Thirty-five years ago, at the epoch of the departure of the great
chain-gang, there could be read in one of the cells at Bicetre,
this maxim engraved with a nail on the wall by a king of Thunes
condemned to the galleys:  Les dabs d'antan trimaient siempre pour
la pierre du Coesre.  This means Kings in days gone by always
went and had themselves anointed.  In the opinion of that king,
anointment meant the galleys.

The word decarade, which expresses the departure of heavy vehicles
at a gallop, is attributed to Villon, and it is worthy of him.
This word, which strikes fire with all four of its feet, sums up in a
masterly onomatopoeia the whole of La Fontaine's admirable verse:--

          Six forts chevaux tiraient un coche.
          Six stout horses drew a coach.


From a purely literary point of view, few studies would prove more
curious and fruitful than the study of slang.  It is a whole language
within a language, a sort of sickly excrescence, an unhealthy graft
which has produced a vegetation, a parasite which has its roots
in the old Gallic trunk, and whose sinister foliage crawls all over
one side of the language.  This is what may be called the first,
the vulgar aspect of slang.  But, for those who study the tongue as it
should be studied, that is to say, as geologists study the earth,
slang appears like a veritable alluvial deposit.  According as one digs
a longer or shorter distance into it, one finds in slang, below the old
popular French, Provencal, Spanish, Italian, Levantine, that language
of the Mediterranean ports, English and German, the Romance language
in its three varieties, French, Italian, and Romance Romance, Latin,
and finally Basque and Celtic.  A profound and unique formation.
A subterranean edifice erected in common by all the miserable.
Each accursed race has deposited its layer, each suffering has
dropped its stone there, each heart has contributed its pebble.
A throng of evil, base, or irritated souls, who have traversed
life and have vanished into eternity, linger there almost entirely
visible still beneath the form of some monstrous word.

Do you want Spanish?  The old Gothic slang abounded in it.
Here is boffete, a box on the ear, which is derived from bofeton;
vantane, window (later on vanterne), which comes from vantana;
gat, cat, which comes from gato; acite, oil, which comes from aceyte.
Do you want Italian?  Here is spade, sword, which comes from spada;
carvel, boat, which comes from caravella.  Do you want English?
Here is bichot, which comes from bishop; raille, spy, which comes from
rascal, rascalion; pilche, a case, which comes from pilcher, a sheath.
Do you want German?  Here is the caleur, the waiter, kellner; the hers,
the master, herzog (duke). Do you want Latin?  Here is frangir,
to break, frangere; affurer, to steal, fur; cadene, chain, catena.
There is one word which crops up in every language of the continent,
with a sort of mysterious power and authority.  It is the word magnus;
the Scotchman makes of it his mac, which designates the chief
of the clan; Mac-Farlane, Mac-Callumore, the great Farlane,
the great Callumore[41]; slang turns it into meck and later le meg,
that is to say, God.  Would you like Basque?  Here is gahisto,
the devil, which comes from gaiztoa, evil; sorgabon, good night,
which comes from gabon, good evening.  Do you want Celtic?
Here is blavin, a handkerchief, which comes from blavet, gushing water;
menesse, a woman (in a bad sense), which comes from meinec, full
of stones; barant, brook, from baranton, fountain; goffeur, locksmith,
from goff, blacksmith; guedouze, death, which comes from guenn-du,
black-white. Finally, would you like history?  Slang calls crowns les
malteses, a souvenir of the coin in circulation on the galleys of Malta.


[41] It must be observed, however, that mac in Celtic means son.


In addition to the philological origins just indicated, slang possesses
other and still more natural roots, which spring, so to speak,
from the mind of man itself.

In the first place, the direct creation of words.  Therein lies
the mystery of tongues.  To paint with words, which contains
figures one knows not how or why, is the primitive foundation
of all human languages, what may be called their granite.

Slang abounds in words of this description, immediate words,
words created instantaneously no one knows either where or by whom,
without etymology, without analogies, without derivatives, solitary,
barbarous, sometimes hideous words, which at times possess a singular
power of expression and which live.  The executioner, le taule;
the forest, le sabri; fear, flight, taf; the lackey, le larbin;
the mineral, the prefect, the minister, pharos; the devil, le rabouin.
Nothing is stranger than these words which both mask and reveal.
Some, le rabouin, for example, are at the same time grotesque
and terrible, and produce on you the effect of a cyclopean grimace.

ln the second place, metaphor.  The peculiarity of a language which
is desirous of saying all yet concealing all is that it is rich
in figures.  Metaphor is an enigma, wherein the thief who is plotting
a stroke, the prisoner who is arranging an escape, take refuge.
No idiom is more metaphorical than slang:  devisser le coco (to
unscrew the nut), to twist the neck; tortiller (to wriggle), to eat;
etre gerbe, to be tried; a rat, a bread thief; il lansquine, it rains,
a striking, ancient figure which partly bears its date about it,
which assimilates long oblique lines of rain, with the dense and
slanting pikes of the lancers, and which compresses into a single word
the popular expression:  it rains halberds.  Sometimes, in proportion
as slang progresses from the first epoch to the second, words pass
from the primitive and savage sense to the metaphorical sense.
The devil ceases to be le rabouin, and becomes le boulanger (the
baker), who puts the bread into the oven.  This is more witty,
but less grand, something like Racine after Corneille, like Euripides
after AEschylus.  Certain slang phrases which participate in the two
epochs and have at once the barbaric character and the metaphorical
character resemble phantasmagories.  Les sorgueuers vont solliciter
des gails a la lune--the prowlers are going to steal horses by night,--
this passes before the mind like a group of spectres.  One knows not
what one sees.

In the third place, the expedient.  Slang lives on the language.
It uses it in accordance with its fancy, it dips into it hap-hazard,
and it often confines itself, when occasion arises, to alter it
in a gross and summary fashion.  Occasionally, with the ordinary
words thus deformed and complicated with words of pure slang,
picturesque phrases are formed, in which there can be felt the mixture
of the two preceding elements, the direct creation and the metaphor:
le cab jaspine, je marronne que la roulotte de Pantin trime dans le sabri,
the dog is barking, I suspect that the diligence for Paris is passing
through the woods.  Le dab est sinve, la dabuge est merloussiere,
la fee est bative, the bourgeois is stupid, the bourgeoise is cunning,
the daughter is pretty.  Generally, to throw listeners off the track,
slang confines itself to adding to all the words of the language
without distinction, an ignoble tail, a termination in aille,
in orgue, in iergue, or in uche.  Thus:  Vousiergue trouvaille
bonorgue ce gigotmuche?  Do you think that leg of mutton good?
A phrase addressed by Cartouche to a turnkey in order to find out
whether the sum offered for his escape suited him.

The termination in mar has been added recently.

Slang, being the dialect of corruption, quickly becomes corrupted itself.
Besides this, as it is always seeking concealment, as soon as it feels
that it is understood, it changes its form.  Contrary to what happens
with every other vegetation, every ray of light which falls upon
it kills whatever it touches.  Thus slang is in constant process
of decomposition and recomposition; an obscure and rapid work which
never pauses.  It passes over more ground in ten years than a language
in ten centuries.  Thus le larton (bread) becomes le lartif; le gail
(horse) becomes le gaye; la fertanche (straw) becomes la fertille;
le momignard (brat), le momacque; les fiques (duds), frusques;
la chique (the church), l'egrugeoir; le colabre (neck), le colas.
The devil is at first, gahisto, then le rabouin, then the baker;
the priest is a ratichon, then the boar (le sanglier); the dagger is
le vingt-deux (twenty-two), then le surin, then le lingre; the police
are railles, then roussins, then rousses, then marchands de lacets
(dealers in stay-laces), then coquers, then cognes; the executioner
is le taule, then Charlot, l'atigeur, then le becquillard.
In the seventeenth century, to fight was "to give each other snuff";
in the nineteenth it is "to chew each other's throats."
There have been twenty different phrases between these two extremes.
Cartouche's talk would have been Hebrew to Lacenaire.  All the words
of this language are perpetually engaged in flight like the men
who utter them.

Still, from time to time, and in consequence of this very movement,
the ancient slang crops up again and becomes new once more.  It has
its headquarters where it maintains its sway.  The Temple preserved
the slang of the seventeenth century; Bicetre, when it was a prison,
preserved the slang of Thunes.  There one could hear the termination
in anche of the old Thuneurs.  Boyanches-tu (bois-tu), do you drink?
But perpetual movement remains its law, nevertheless.

If the philosopher succeeds in fixing, for a moment, for purposes
of observation, this language which is incessantly evaporating,
he falls into doleful and useful meditation.  No study is more
efficacious and more fecund in instruction.  There is not a metaphor,
not an analogy, in slang, which does not contain a lesson.
Among these men, to beat means to feign; one beats a malady;
ruse is their strength.

For them, the idea of the man is not separated from the idea
of darkness.  The night is called la sorgue; man, l'orgue. Man
is a derivative of the night.

They have taken up the practice of considering society in the
light of an atmosphere which kills them, of a fatal force,
and they speak of their liberty as one would speak of his health.
A man under arrest is a sick man; one who is condemned is a dead man.

The most terrible thing for the prisoner within the four walls
in which he is buried, is a sort of glacial chastity, and he calls
the dungeon the castus.  In that funereal place, life outside
always presents itself under its most smiling aspect.  The prisoner
has irons on his feet; you think, perhaps, that his thought
is that it is with the feet that one walks?  No; he is thinking
that it is with the feet that one dances; so, when he has succeeded
in severing his fetters, his first idea is that now he can dance,
and he calls the saw the bastringue (public-house ball).--A name
is a centre; profound assimilation.--The ruffian has two heads,
one of which reasons out his actions and leads him all his life long,
and the other which he has upon his shoulders on the day of his death;
he calls the head which counsels him in crime la sorbonne,
and the head which expiates it la tronche.--When a man has no
longer anything but rags upon his body and vices in his heart,
when he has arrived at that double moral and material degradation
which the word blackguard characterizes in its two acceptations,
he is ripe for crime; he is like a well-whetted knife; he has
two cutting edges, his distress and his malice; so slang does
not say a blackguard, it says un reguise.--What are the galleys?
A brazier of damnation, a hell.  The convict calls himself a fagot.--
And finally, what name do malefactors give to their prison?
The college.  A whole penitentiary system can be evolved from
that word.

Does the reader wish to know where the majority of the songs of
the galleys, those refrains called in the special vocabulary lirlonfa,
have had their birth?

Let him listen to what follows:--

There existed at the Chatelet in Paris a large and long cellar.
This cellar was eight feet below the level of the Seine.  It had
neither windows nor air-holes, its only aperture was the door;
men could enter there, air could not.  This vault had for ceiling
a vault of stone, and for floor ten inches of mud.  It was flagged;
but the pavement had rotted and cracked under the oozing of the water.
Eight feet above the floor, a long and massive beam traversed this
subterranean excavation from side to side; from this beam hung,
at short distances apart, chains three feet long, and at the end
of these chains there were rings for the neck.  In this vault,
men who had been condemned to the galleys were incarcerated until the
day of their departure for Toulon.  They were thrust under this beam,
where each one found his fetters swinging in the darkness and waiting
for him.

The chains, those pendant arms, and the necklets, those open hands,
caught the unhappy wretches by the throat.  They were rivetted and
left there.  As the chain was too short, they could not lie down.
They remained motionless in that cavern, in that night, beneath
that beam, almost hanging, forced to unheard-of efforts to reach
their bread, jug, or their vault overhead, mud even to mid-leg,
filth flowing to their very calves, broken asunder with fatigue,
with thighs and knees giving way, clinging fast to the chain with
their hands in order to obtain some rest, unable to sleep except
when standing erect, and awakened every moment by the strangling
of the collar; some woke no more.  In order to eat, they pushed
the bread, which was flung to them in the mud, along their leg
with their heel until it reached their hand.

How long did they remain thus?  One month, two months, six months
sometimes; one stayed a year.  It was the antechamber of the galleys.
Men were put there for stealing a hare from the king.  In this
sepulchre-hell, what did they do?  What man can do in a sepulchre,
they went through the agonies of death, and what can man do in hell,
they sang; for song lingers where there is no longer any hope.
In the waters of Malta, when a galley was approaching, the song could
be heard before the sound of the oars.  Poor Survincent, the poacher,
who had gone through the prison-cellar of the Chatelet, said:
"It was the rhymes that kept me up."  Uselessness of poetry.
What is the good of rhyme?

It is in this cellar that nearly all the slang songs had
their birth.  It is from the dungeon of the Grand-Chatelet of Paris
that comes the melancholy refrain of the Montgomery galley:
"Timaloumisaine, timaloumison."  The majority of these

       Icicaille est la theatre        Here is the theatre
       Du petit dardant.               Of the little archer (Cupid).


Do what you will, you cannot annihilate that eternal relic
in the heart of man, love.

In this world of dismal deeds, people keep their secrets.
The secret is the thing above all others.  The secret, in the eyes
of these wretches, is unity which serves as a base of union.
To betray a secret is to tear from each member of this fierce
community something of his own personality.  To inform against,
in the energetic slang dialect, is called:  "to eat the bit."
As though the informer drew to himself a little of the substance
of all and nourished himself on a bit of each one's flesh.

What does it signify to receive a box on the ear?
Commonplace metaphor replies:  "It is to see thirty-six candles."

Here slang intervenes and takes it up:  Candle, camoufle.
Thereupon, the ordinary tongue gives camouflet[42] as the synonym
for soufflet.  Thus, by a sort of infiltration from below upwards,
with the aid of metaphor, that incalculable, trajectory slang
mounts from the cavern to the Academy; and Poulailler saying:
"I light my camoufle," causes Voltaire to write:  "Langleviel La
Beaumelle deserves a hundred camouflets."


[42] Smoke puffed in the face of a person asleep.


Researches in slang mean discoveries at every step.  Study and
investigation of this strange idiom lead to the mysterious point
of intersection of regular society with society which is accursed.

The thief also has his food for cannon, stealable matter, you, I,
whoever passes by; le pantre.  (Pan, everybody.)

Slang is language turned convict.

That the thinking principle of man be thrust down ever so low, that it
can be dragged and pinioned there by obscure tyrannies of fatality,
that it can be bound by no one knows what fetters in that abyss,
is sufficient to create consternation.

Oh, poor thought of miserable wretches!

Alas! will no one come to the succor of the human soul in that darkness?
Is it her destiny there to await forever the mind, the liberator,
the immense rider of Pegasi and hippo-griffs, the combatant of heroes
of the dawn who shall descend from the azure between two wings,
the radiant knight of the future?  Will she forever summon in vain
to her assistance the lance of light of the ideal?  Is she condemned
to hear the fearful approach of Evil through the density of the gulf,
and to catch glimpses, nearer and nearer at hand, beneath the
hideous water of that dragon's head, that maw streaked with foam,
and that writhing undulation of claws, swellings, and rings?
Must it remain there, without a gleam of light, without hope,
given over to that terrible approach, vaguely scented out
by the monster, shuddering, dishevelled, wringing its arms,
forever chained to the rock of night, a sombre Andromeda white
and naked amid the shadows!



CHAPTER III

SLANG WHICH WEEPS AND SLANG WHICH LAUGHS


As the reader perceives, slang in its entirety, slang of four hundred
years ago, like the slang of to-day, is permeated with that sombre,
symbolical spirit which gives to all words a mien which is now mournful,
now menacing.  One feels in it the wild and ancient sadness of those
vagrants of the Court of Miracles who played at cards with packs
of their own, some of which have come down to us.  The eight of clubs,
for instance, represented a huge tree bearing eight enormous
trefoil leaves, a sort of fantastic personification of the forest.
At the foot of this tree a fire was burning, over which three hares
were roasting a huntsman on a spit, and behind him, on another fire,
hung a steaming pot, whence emerged the head of a dog.  Nothing can be
more melancholy than these reprisals in painting, by a pack of cards,
in the presence of stakes for the roasting of smugglers and of the
cauldron for the boiling of counterfeiters.  The diverse forms
assumed by thought in the realm of slang, even song, even raillery,
even menace, all partook of this powerless and dejected character.
All the songs, the melodies of some of which have been collected,
were humble and lamentable to the point of evoking tears.
The pegre is always the poor pegre, and he is always the hare
in hiding, the fugitive mouse, the flying bird.  He hardly complains,
he contents himself with sighing; one of his moans has come
down to us:  "I do not understand how God, the father of men,
can torture his children and his grandchildren and hear them cry,
without himself suffering torture."[43] The wretch, whenever he has
time to think, makes himself small before the low, and frail in the
presence of society; he lies down flat on his face, he entreats,
he appeals to the side of compassion; we feel that he is conscious
of his guilt.


[43] Je n'entrave que le dail comment meck, le daron des orgues,
peut atiger ses momes et ses momignards et les locher criblant sans
etre agite lui-meme.


Towards the middle of the last century a change took place,
prison songs and thieves' ritournelles assumed, so to speak, an insolent
and jovial mien.  The plaintive malure was replaced by the larifla.
We find in the eighteenth century, in nearly all the songs of
the galleys and prisons, a diabolical and enigmatical gayety.
We hear this strident and lilting refrain which we should say had
been lighted up by a phosphorescent gleam, and which seems to have
been flung into the forest by a will-o'-the-wisp playing the fife:--

                    Miralabi suslababo
                    Mirliton ribonribette
                    Surlababi mirlababo
                    Mirliton ribonribo.


This was sung in a cellar or in a nook of the forest while cutting
a man's throat.

A serious symptom.  In the eighteenth century, the ancient
melancholy of the dejected classes vanishes.  They began to laugh.
They rally the grand meg and the grand dab.  Given Louis XV.
they call the King of France "le Marquis de Pantin."  And behold,
they are almost gay.  A sort of gleam proceeds from these miserable
wretches, as though their consciences were not heavy within them
any more.  These lamentable tribes of darkness have no longer
merely the desperate audacity of actions, they possess the heedless
audacity of mind.  A sign that they are losing the sense of their
criminality, and that they feel, even among thinkers and dreamers,
some indefinable support which the latter themselves know not of.
A sign that theft and pillage are beginning to filter into doctrines
and sophisms, in such a way as to lose somewhat of their ugliness,
while communicating much of it to sophisms and doctrines.  A sign,
in short, of some outbreak which is prodigious and near unless some
diversion shall arise.

Let us pause a moment.  Whom are we accusing here?  Is it the
eighteenth century?  Is it philosophy?  Certainly not.  The work
of the eighteenth century is healthy and good and wholesome.
The encyclopedists, Diderot at their head; the physiocrates,
Turgot at their head; the philosophers, Voltaire at their head;
the Utopians, Rousseau at their head,--these are four sacred legions.
Humanity's immense advance towards the light is due to them.
They are the four vanguards of the human race, marching towards
the four cardinal points of progress.  Diderot towards the beautiful,
Turgot towards the useful, Voltaire towards the true, Rousseau
towards the just.  But by the side of and above the philosophers,
there were the sophists, a venomous vegetation mingled with a
healthy growth, hemlock in the virgin forest.  While the executioner
was burning the great books of the liberators of the century
on the grand staircase of the court-house, writers now forgotten
were publishing, with the King's sanction, no one knows what strangely
disorganizing writings, which were eagerly read by the unfortunate.
Some of these publications, odd to say, which were patronized
by a prince, are to be found in the Secret Library.  These facts,
significant but unknown, were imperceptible on the surface.
Sometimes, in the very obscurity of a fact lurks its danger.
It is obscure because it is underhand.  Of all these writers,
the one who probably then excavated in the masses the most unhealthy
gallery was Restif de La Bretonne.

This work, peculiar to the whole of Europe, effected more ravages
in Germany than anywhere else.  In Germany, during a given period,
summed up by Schiller in his famous drama The Robbers, theft and pillage
rose up in protest against property and labor, assimilated certain
specious and false elementary ideas, which, though just in appearance,
were absurd in reality, enveloped themselves in these ideas,
disappeared within them, after a fashion, assumed an abstract name,
passed into the state of theory, and in that shape circulated
among the laborious, suffering, and honest masses, unknown even to
the imprudent chemists who had prepared the mixture, unknown even
to the masses who accepted it.  Whenever a fact of this sort
presents itself, the case is grave.  Suffering engenders wrath;
and while the prosperous classes blind themselves or fall asleep,
which is the same thing as shutting one's eyes, the hatred of the
unfortunate classes lights its torch at some aggrieved or ill-made
spirit which dreams in a corner, and sets itself to the scrutiny
of society.  The scrutiny of hatred is a terrible thing.

Hence, if the ill-fortune of the times so wills it, those fearful
commotions which were formerly called jacqueries, beside which purely
political agitations are the merest child's play, which are no
longer the conflict of the oppressed and the oppressor, but the
revolt of discomfort against comfort.  Then everything crumbles.

Jacqueries are earthquakes of the people.

It is this peril, possibly imminent towards the close of the
eighteenth century, which the French Revolution, that immense
act of probity, cut short.

The French Revolution, which is nothing else than the idea armed
with the sword, rose erect, and, with the same abrupt movement,
closed the door of ill and opened the door of good.

It put a stop to torture, promulgated the truth, expelled miasma,
rendered the century healthy, crowned the populace.

It may be said of it that it created man a second time, by giving
him a second soul, the right.

The nineteenth century has inherited and profited by its work,
and to-day, the social catastrophe to which we lately alluded is
simply impossible.  Blind is he who announces it!  Foolish is he
who fears it!  Revolution is the vaccine of Jacquerie.

Thanks to the Revolution, social conditions have changed.
Feudal and monarchical maladies no longer run in our blood.
There is no more of the Middle Ages in our constitution.  We no
longer live in the days when terrible swarms within made irruptions,
when one heard beneath his feet the obscure course of a dull rumble,
when indescribable elevations from mole-like tunnels appeared
on the surface of civilization, where the soil cracked open,
where the roofs of caverns yawned, and where one suddenly beheld
monstrous heads emerging from the earth.

The revolutionary sense is a moral sense.  The sentiment of right,
once developed, develops the sentiment of duty.  The law of all
is liberty, which ends where the liberty of others begins,
according to Robespierre's admirable definition.  Since '89, the
whole people has been dilating into a sublime individual; there is
not a poor man, who, possessing his right, has not his ray of sun;
the die-of-hunger feels within him the honesty of France; the dignity
of the citizen is an internal armor; he who is free is scrupulous;
he who votes reigns.  Hence incorruptibility; hence the miscarriage
of unhealthy lusts; hence eyes heroically lowered before temptations.
The revolutionary wholesomeness is such, that on a day of deliverance,
a 14th of July, a 10th of August, there is no longer any populace.
The first cry of the enlightened and increasing throngs is:
death to thieves!  Progress is an honest man; the ideal and the
absolute do not filch pocket-handkerchiefs. By whom were the wagons
containing the wealth of the Tuileries escorted in 1848?  By the
rag-pickers of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Rags mounted guard over
the treasure.  Virtue rendered these tatterdemalions resplendent.
In those wagons in chests, hardly closed, and some, even, half-open,
amid a hundred dazzling caskets, was that ancient crown of France,
studded with diamonds, surmounted by the carbuncle of royalty,
by the Regent diamond, which was worth thirty millions.  Barefooted,
they guarded that crown.

Hence, no more Jacquerie.  I regret it for the sake of the skilful.
The old fear has produced its last effects in that quarter;
and henceforth it can no longer be employed in politics.  The principal
spring of the red spectre is broken.  Every one knows it now.
The scare-crow scares no longer.  The birds take liberties with
the mannikin, foul creatures alight upon it, the bourgeois laugh
at it.



CHAPTER IV

THE TWO DUTIES:  TO WATCH AND TO HOPE


This being the case, is all social danger dispelled?  Certainly not.
There is no Jacquerie; society may rest assured on that point;
blood will no longer rush to its head.  But let society take heed to
the manner in which it breathes.  Apoplexy is no longer to be feared,
but phthisis is there.  Social phthisis is called misery.

One can perish from being undermined as well as from being struck
by lightning.

Let us not weary of repeating, and sympathetic souls must not forget
that this is the first of fraternal obligations, and selfish hearts
must understand that the first of political necessities consists
in thinking first of all of the disinherited and sorrowing throngs,
in solacing, airing, enlightening, loving them, in enlarging
their horizon to a magnificent extent, in lavishing upon them
education in every form, in offering them the example of labor,
never the example of idleness, in diminishing the individual burden
by enlarging the notion of the universal aim, in setting a limit
to poverty without setting a limit to wealth, in creating vast
fields of public and popular activity, in having, like Briareus,
a hundred hands to extend in all directions to the oppressed
and the feeble, in employing the collective power for that grand
duty of opening workshops for all arms, schools for all aptitudes,
and laboratories for all degrees of intelligence, in augmenting salaries,
diminishing trouble, balancing what should be and what is, that is
to say, in proportioning enjoyment to effort and a glut to need;
in a word, in evolving from the social apparatus more light and more
comfort for the benefit of those who suffer and those who are ignorant.

And, let us say it, all this is but the beginning.  The true
question is this:  labor cannot be a law without being a right.

We will not insist upon this point; this is not the proper place
for that.

If nature calls itself Providence, society should call itself foresight.

Intellectual and moral growth is no less indispensable than
material improvement.  To know is a sacrament, to think is
the prime necessity, truth is nourishment as well as grain.
A reason which fasts from science and wisdom grows thin.  Let us
enter equal complaint against stomachs and minds which do not eat.
If there is anything more heart-breaking than a body perishing
for lack of bread, it is a soul which is dying from hunger for the light.

The whole of progress tends in the direction of solution.
Some day we shall be amazed.  As the human race mounts upward,
the deep layers emerge naturally from the zone of distress.
The obliteration of misery will be accomplished by a simple elevation
of level.

We should do wrong were we to doubt this blessed consummation.

The past is very strong, it is true, at the present moment.  It censures.
This rejuvenation of a corpse is surprising.  Behold, it is walking
and advancing.  It seems a victor; this dead body is a conqueror.
He arrives with his legions, superstitions, with his sword, despotism,
with his banner, ignorance; a while ago, he won ten battles.
He advances, he threatens, he laughs, he is at our doors.  Let us
not despair, on our side.  Let us sell the field on which Hannibal
is encamped.

What have we to fear, we who believe?

No such thing as a back-flow of ideas exists any more than there
exists a return of a river on its course.

But let those who do not desire a future reflect on this matter.
When they say "no" to progress, it is not the future but themselves
that they are condemning.  They are giving themselves a sad malady;
they are inoculating themselves with the past.  There is but one way
of rejecting To-morrow, and that is to die.

Now, no death, that of the body as late as possible, that of the
soul never,--this is what we desire.

Yes, the enigma will utter its word, the sphinx will speak,
the problem will be solved.

Yes, the people, sketched out by the eighteenth century, will be
finished by the nineteenth.  He who doubts this is an idiot!
The future blossoming, the near blossoming forth of universal
well-being, is a divinely fatal phenomenon.

Immense combined propulsions direct human affairs and conduct
them within a given time to a logical state, that is to say,
to a state of equilibrium; that is to say, to equity.  A force
composed of earth and heaven results from humanity and governs it;
this force is a worker of miracles; marvellous issues are no more
difficult to it than extraordinary vicissitudes.  Aided by science,
which comes from one man, and by the event, which comes from another,
it is not greatly alarmed by these contradictions in the attitude
of problems, which seem impossibilities to the vulgar herd.
It is no less skilful at causing a solution to spring forth from the
reconciliation of ideas, than a lesson from the reconciliation of facts,
and we may expect anything from that mysterious power of progress,
which brought the Orient and the Occident face to face one fine day,
in the depths of a sepulchre, and made the imaums converse with
Bonaparte in the interior of the Great Pyramid.

In the meantime, let there be no halt, no hesitation, no pause
in the grandiose onward march of minds.  Social philosophy consists
essentially in science and peace.  Its object is, and its result
must be, to dissolve wrath by the study of antagonisms.  It examines,
it scrutinizes, it analyzes; then it puts together once more,
it proceeds by means of reduction, discarding all hatred.

More than once, a society has been seen to give way before the wind
which is let loose upon mankind; history is full of the shipwrecks
of nations and empires; manners, customs, laws, religions,--and some
fine day that unknown force, the hurricane, passes by and bears them
all away.  The civilizations of India, of Chaldea, of Persia, of Syria,
of Egypt, have disappeared one after the other.  Why?  We know not.
What are the causes of these disasters?  We do not know.
Could these societies have been saved?  Was it their fault?
Did they persist in the fatal vice which destroyed them?
What is the amount of suicide in these terrible deaths of a
nation and a race?  Questions to which there exists no reply.
Darkness enwraps condemned civilizations.  They sprung a leak,
then they sank.  We have nothing more to say; and it is with a sort
of terror that we look on, at the bottom of that sea which is called
the past, behind those colossal waves, at the shipwreck of those
immense vessels, Babylon, Nineveh, Tarsus, Thebes, Rome, beneath the
fearful gusts which emerge from all the mouths of the shadows.
But shadows are there, and light is here.  We are not acquainted
with the maladies of these ancient civilizations, we do not know
the infirmities of our own.  Everywhere upon it we have the right
of light, we contemplate its beauties, we lay bare its defects.
Where it is ill, we probe; and the sickness once diagnosed,
the study of the cause leads to the discovery of the remedy.
Our civilization, the work of twenty centuries, is its law and
its prodigy; it is worth the trouble of saving.  It will be saved.
It is already much to have solaced it; its enlightenment is yet
another point.  All the labors of modern social philosophies must
converge towards this point.  The thinker of to-day has a great duty--
to auscultate civilization.

We repeat, that this auscultation brings encouragement; it is by this
persistence in encouragement that we wish to conclude these pages,
an austere interlude in a mournful drama.  Beneath the social mortality,
we feel human imperishableness.  The globe does not perish,
because it has these wounds, craters, eruptions, sulphur pits,
here and there, nor because of a volcano which ejects its pus.
The maladies of the people do not kill man.

And yet, any one who follows the course of social clinics shakes
his head at times.  The strongest, the tenderest, the most logical
have their hours of weakness.

Will the future arrive?  It seems as though we might almost
put this question, when we behold so much terrible darkness.
Melancholy face-to-face encounter of selfish and wretched.  On the
part of the selfish, the prejudices, shadows of costly education,
appetite increasing through intoxication, a giddiness of prosperity
which dulls, a fear of suffering which, in some, goes as far
as an aversion for the suffering, an implacable satisfaction,
the I so swollen that it bars the soul; on the side of the
wretched covetousness, envy, hatred of seeing others enjoy,
the profound impulses of the human beast towards assuaging its desires,
hearts full of mist, sadness, need, fatality, impure and simple ignorance.

Shall we continue to raise our eyes to heaven? is the luminous
point which we distinguish there one of those which vanish?
The ideal is frightful to behold, thus lost in the depths, small,
isolated, imperceptible, brilliant, but surrounded by those great,
black menaces, monstrously heaped around it; yet no more in danger
than a star in the maw of the clouds.



BOOK EIGHTH.--ENCHANTMENTS AND DESOLATIONS



CHAPTER I

FULL LIGHT


The reader has probably understood that Eponine, having recognized
through the gate, the inhabitant of that Rue Plumet whither
Magnon had sent her, had begun by keeping the ruffians away from
the Rue Plumet, and had then conducted Marius thither, and that,
after many days spent in ecstasy before that gate, Marius, drawn on
by that force which draws the iron to the magnet and a lover towards
the stones of which is built the house of her whom he loves,
had finally entered Cosette's garden as Romeo entered the garden
of Juliet.  This had even proved easier for him than for Romeo;
Romeo was obliged to scale a wall, Marius had only to use a little
force on one of the bars of the decrepit gate which vacillated
in its rusty recess, after the fashion of old people's teeth.
Marius was slender and readily passed through.

As there was never any one in the street, and as Marius never
entered the garden except at night, he ran no risk of being seen.

Beginning with that blessed and holy hour when a kiss betrothed
these two souls, Marius was there every evening.  If, at that period
of her existence, Cosette had fallen in love with a man in the least
unscrupulous or debauched, she would have been lost; for there are
generous natures which yield themselves, and Cosette was one of them.
One of woman's magnanimities is to yield.  Love, at the height where
it is absolute, is complicated with some indescribably celestial
blindness of modesty.  But what dangers you run, O noble souls!
Often you give the heart, and we take the body.  Your heart remains
with you, you gaze upon it in the gloom with a shudder.  Love has
no middle course; it either ruins or it saves.  All human destiny
lies in this dilemma.  This dilemma, ruin, or safety, is set forth
no more inexorably by any fatality than by love.  Love is life,
if it is not death.  Cradle; also coffin.  The same sentiment says
"yes" and "no" in the human heart.  Of all the things that God
has made, the human heart is the one which sheds the most light,
alas! and the most darkness.

God willed that Cosette's love should encounter one of the loves
which save.

Throughout the whole of the month of May of that year 1832,
there were there, in every night, in that poor, neglected garden,
beneath that thicket which grew thicker and more fragrant day by day,
two beings composed of all chastity, all innocence, overflowing with
all the felicity of heaven, nearer to the archangels than to mankind,
pure, honest, intoxicated, radiant, who shone for each other amid
the shadows.  It seemed to Cosette that Marius had a crown, and to
Marius that Cosette had a nimbus.  They touched each other, they gazed
at each other, they clasped each other's hands, they pressed close
to each other; but there was a distance which they did not pass.
Not that they respected it; they did not know of its existence.
Marius was conscious of a barrier, Cosette's innocence; and Cosette
of a support, Marius' loyalty.  The first kiss had also been
the last.  Marius, since that time, had not gone further than to touch
Cosette's hand, or her kerchief, or a lock of her hair, with his lips.
For him, Cosette was a perfume and not a woman.  He inhaled her.
She refused nothing, and he asked nothing.  Cosette was happy,
and Marius was satisfied.  They lived in this ecstatic state which
can be described as the dazzling of one soul by another soul.
It was the ineffable first embrace of two maiden souls in the ideal.
Two swans meeting on the Jungfrau.

At that hour of love, an hour when voluptuousness is absolutely mute,
beneath the omnipotence of ecstasy, Marius, the pure and seraphic Marius,
would rather have gone to a woman of the town than have raised
Cosette's robe to the height of her ankle.  Once, in the moonlight,
Cosette stooped to pick up something on the ground, her bodice fell
apart and permitted a glimpse of the beginning of her throat.
Marius turned away his eyes.

What took place between these two beings?  Nothing.  They adored
each other.

At night, when they were there, that garden seemed a living and a
sacred spot.  All flowers unfolded around them and sent them incense;
and they opened their souls and scattered them over the flowers.
The wanton and vigorous vegetation quivered, full of strength
and intoxication, around these two innocents, and they uttered words
of love which set the trees to trembling.

What words were these?  Breaths.  Nothing more.  These breaths
sufficed to trouble and to touch all nature round about.
Magic power which we should find it difficult to understand were we
to read in a book these conversations which are made to be borne away
and dispersed like smoke wreaths by the breeze beneath the leaves.
Take from those murmurs of two lovers that melody which proceeds
from the soul and which accompanies them like a lyre, and what
remains is nothing more than a shade; you say:  "What! is that all!"
eh! yes, childish prattle, repetitions, laughter at nothing,
nonsense, everything that is deepest and most sublime in the world!
The only things which are worth the trouble of saying and hearing!

The man who has never heard, the man who has never uttered
these absurdities, these paltry remarks, is an imbecile
and a malicious fellow.  Cosette said to Marius:--

"Dost thou know?--"

[In all this and athwart this celestial maidenliness, and without
either of them being able to say how it had come about, they had
begun to call each other thou.]

"Dost thou know?  My name is Euphrasie."

"Euphrasie?  Why, no, thy name is Cosette."

"Oh!  Cosette is a very ugly name that was given to me when I
was a little thing.  But my real name is Euphrasie.  Dost thou
like that name--Euphrasie?"

"Yes.  But Cosette is not ugly."

"Do you like it better than Euphrasie?"

"Why, yes."

"Then I like it better too.  Truly, it is pretty, Cosette.
Call me Cosette."

And the smile that she added made of this dialogue an idyl worthy
of a grove situated in heaven.  On another occasion she gazed
intently at him and exclaimed:--

"Monsieur, you are handsome, you are good-looking, you are witty,
you are not at all stupid, you are much more learned than I am,
but I bid you defiance with this word:  I love you!"

And Marius, in the very heavens, thought he heard a strain sung
by a star.

Or she bestowed on him a gentle tap because he coughed, and she
said to him:--

"Don't cough, sir; I will not have people cough on my domain without
my permission.  It's very naughty to cough and to disturb me.
I want you to be well, because, in the first place, if you were
not well, I should be very unhappy.  What should I do then?"

And this was simply divine.

Once Marius said to Cosette:--

"Just imagine, I thought at one time that your name was Ursule."

This made both of them laugh the whole evening.

In the middle of another conversation, he chanced to exclaim:--

"Oh!  One day, at the Luxembourg, I had a good mind to finish
breaking up a veteran!"  But he stopped short, and went no further.
He would have been obliged to speak to Cosette of her garter,
and that was impossible.  This bordered on a strange theme, the flesh,
before which that immense and innocent love recoiled with a sort
of sacred fright.

Marius pictured life with Cosette to himself like this,
without anything else; to come every evening to the Rue Plumet,
to displace the old and accommodating bar of the chief-justice's gate,
to sit elbow to elbow on that bench, to gaze through the trees at
the scintillation of the on-coming night, to fit a fold of the knee
of his trousers into the ample fall of Cosette's gown, to caress
her thumb-nail, to call her thou, to smell of the same flower,
one after the other, forever, indefinitely.  During this time,
clouds passed above their heads.  Every time that the wind blows it
bears with it more of the dreams of men than of the clouds of heaven.

This chaste, almost shy love was not devoid of gallantry,
by any means.  To pay compliments to the woman whom a man loves
is the first method of bestowing caresses, and he is half audacious
who tries it.  A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.
Voluptuousness mingles there with its sweet tiny point, while it
hides itself.  The heart draws back before voluptuousness only to
love the more.  Marius' blandishments, all saturated with fancy,
were, so to speak, of azure hue.  The birds when they fly up yonder,
in the direction of the angels, must hear such words.  There were
mingled with them, nevertheless, life, humanity, all the positiveness
of which Marius was capable.  It was what is said in the bower,
a prelude to what will be said in the chamber; a lyrical effusion,
strophe and sonnet intermingled, pleasing hyperboles of cooing,
all the refinements of adoration arranged in a bouquet and exhaling
a celestial perfume, an ineffable twitter of heart to heart.

"Oh!" murmured Marius, "how beautiful you are!  I dare not look at you.
It is all over with me when I contemplate you.  You are a grace.
I know not what is the matter with me.  The hem of your gown,
when the tip of your shoe peeps from beneath, upsets me.  And then,
what an enchanted gleam when you open your thought even but a little!
You talk astonishingly good sense.  It seems to me at times
that you are a dream.  Speak, I listen, I admire.  Oh Cosette!
how strange it is and how charming!  I am really beside myself.
You are adorable, Mademoiselle.  I study your feet with the microscope
and your soul with the telescope."

And Cosette answered:--

"I have been loving a little more all the time that has passed
since this morning."

Questions and replies took care of themselves in this dialogue,
which always turned with mutual consent upon love, as the little
pith figures always turn on their peg.

Cosette's whole person was ingenuousness, ingenuity, transparency,
whiteness, candor, radiance.  It might have been said of Cosette
that she was clear.  She produced on those who saw her the
sensation of April and dawn.  There was dew in her eyes.
Cosette was a condensation of the auroral light in the form of a woman.

It was quite simple that Marius should admire her, since he adored her.
But the truth is, that this little school-girl, fresh from the convent,
talked with exquisite penetration and uttered, at times, all sorts
of true and delicate sayings.  Her prattle was conversation.
She never made a mistake about anything, and she saw things justly.
The woman feels and speaks with the tender instinct of the heart,
which is infallible.

No one understands so well as a woman, how to say things that are,
at once, both sweet and deep.  Sweetness and depth, they are the whole
of woman; in them lies the whole of heaven.

In this full felicity, tears welled up to their eyes every instant.
A crushed lady-bug, a feather fallen from a nest, a branch of
hawthorn broken, aroused their pity, and their ecstasy, sweetly mingled
with melancholy, seemed to ask nothing better than to weep.
The most sovereign symptom of love is a tenderness that is, at times,
almost unbearable.

And, in addition to this,--all these contradictions are the lightning
play of love,--they were fond of laughing, they laughed readily
and with a delicious freedom, and so familiarly that they sometimes
presented the air of two boys.

Still, though unknown to hearts intoxicated with purity, nature is always
present and will not be forgotten.  She is there with her brutal and
sublime object; and however great may be the innocence of souls, one feels
in the most modest private interview, the adorable and mysterious
shade which separates a couple of lovers from a pair of friends.

They idolized each other.

The permanent and the immutable are persistent.  People live,
they smile, they laugh, they make little grimaces with the tips of
their lips, they interlace their fingers, they call each other thou,
and that does not prevent eternity.

Two lovers hide themselves in the evening, in the twilight,
in the invisible, with the birds, with the roses; they fascinate
each other in the darkness with their hearts which they throw
into their eyes, they murmur, they whisper, and in the meantime,
immense librations of the planets fill the infinite universe.



CHAPTER II

THE BEWILDERMENT OF PERFECT HAPPINESS


They existed vaguely, frightened at their happiness.  They did not notice
the cholera which decimated Paris precisely during that very month.
They had confided in each other as far as possible, but this
had not extended much further than their names.  Marius had told
Cosette that he was an orphan, that his name was Marius Pontmercy,
that he was a lawyer, that he lived by writing things for publishers,
that his father had been a colonel, that the latter had been a hero,
and that he, Marius, was on bad terms with his grandfather who
was rich.  He had also hinted at being a baron, but this had produced
no effect on Cosette.  She did not know the meaning of the word.
Marius was Marius.  On her side, she had confided to him that she
had been brought up at the Petit-Picpus convent, that her mother,
like his own, was dead, that her father's name was M. Fauchelevent,
that he was very good, that he gave a great deal to the poor,
but that he was poor himself, and that he denied himself everything
though he denied her nothing.

Strange to say, in the sort of symphony which Marius had lived
since he had been in the habit of seeing Cosette, the past,
even the most recent past, had become so confused and distant
to him, that what Cosette told him satisfied him completely.
It did not even occur to him to tell her about the nocturnal
adventure in the hovel, about Thenardier, about the burn,
and about the strange attitude and singular flight of her father.
Marius had momentarily forgotten all this; in the evening he did
not even know that there had been a morning, what he had done,
where he had breakfasted, nor who had spoken to him; he had songs
in his ears which rendered him deaf to every other thought;
he only existed at the hours when he saw Cosette.  Then, as he
was in heaven, it was quite natural that he should forget earth.
Both bore languidly the indefinable burden of immaterial pleasures.
Thus lived these somnambulists who are called lovers.

Alas!  Who is there who has not felt all these things?  Why does
there come an hour when one emerges from this azure, and why does
life go on afterwards?

Loving almost takes the place of thinking.  Love is an ardent
forgetfulness of all the rest.  Then ask logic of passion if you will.
There is no more absolute logical sequence in the human heart than
there is a perfect geometrical figure in the celestial mechanism.
For Cosette and Marius nothing existed except Marius and Cosette.
The universe around them had fallen into a hole.  They lived in a
golden minute.  There was nothing before them, nothing behind.
It hardly occurred to Marius that Cosette had a father.  His brain
was dazzled and obliterated.  Of what did these lovers talk then?
We have seen, of the flowers, and the swallows, the setting sun and
the rising moon, and all sorts of important things.  They had told
each other everything except everything.  The everything of lovers
is nothing.  But the father, the realities, that lair, the ruffians,
that adventure, to what purpose?  And was he very sure that this
nightmare had actually existed?  They were two, and they adored
each other, and beyond that there was nothing.  Nothing else existed.
It is probable that this vanishing of hell in our rear is inherent
to the arrival of paradise.  Have we beheld demons?  Are there any?
Have we trembled?  Have we suffered?  We no longer know.  A rosy cloud
hangs over it.

So these two beings lived in this manner, high aloft, with all
that improbability which is in nature; neither at the nadir nor at
the zenith, between man and seraphim, above the mire, below the ether,
in the clouds; hardly flesh and blood, soul and ecstasy from head
to foot; already too sublime to walk the earth, still too heavily
charged with humanity to disappear in the blue, suspended like atoms
which are waiting to be precipitated; apparently beyond the bounds
of destiny; ignorant of that rut; yesterday, to-day, to-morrow;
amazed, rapturous, floating, soaring; at times so light that they
could take their flight out into the infinite; almost prepared to soar
away to all eternity.  They slept wide-awake, thus sweetly lulled.
Oh! splendid lethargy of the real overwhelmed by the ideal.

Sometimes, beautiful as Cosette was, Marius shut his eyes in
her presence.  The best way to look at the soul is through closed eyes.

Marius and Cosette never asked themselves whither this was to lead them.
They considered that they had already arrived.  It is a strange
claim on man's part to wish that love should lead to something.



CHAPTER III

THE BEGINNING OF SHADOW


Jean Valjean suspected nothing.

Cosette, who was rather less dreamy than Marius, was gay,
and that sufficed for Jean Valjean's happiness.  The thoughts which
Cosette cherished, her tender preoccupations, Marius' image which
filled her heart, took away nothing from the incomparable purity
of her beautiful, chaste, and smiling brow.  She was at the age when
the virgin bears her love as the angel his lily.  So Jean Valjean
was at ease.  And then, when two lovers have come to an understanding,
things always go well; the third party who might disturb their love
is kept in a state of perfect blindness by a restricted number
of precautions which are always the same in the case of all lovers.
Thus, Cosette never objected to any of Jean Valjean's proposals.
Did she want to take a walk?  "Yes, dear little father."  Did she
want to stay at home?  Very good.  Did he wish to pass the evening
with Cosette?  She was delighted.  As he always went to bed at ten
o'clock, Marius did not come to the garden on such occasions until
after that hour, when, from the street, he heard Cosette open the
long glass door on the veranda.  Of course, no one ever met Marius
in the daytime.  Jean Valjean never even dreamed any longer that
Marius was in existence.  Only once, one morning, he chanced to say
to Cosette:  "Why, you have whitewash on your back!"  On the previous
evening, Marius, in a transport, had pushed Cosette against the wall.

Old Toussaint, who retired early, thought of nothing but her sleep,
and was as ignorant of the whole matter as Jean Valjean.

Marius never set foot in the house.  When he was with Cosette,
they hid themselves in a recess near the steps, in order that they
might neither be seen nor heard from the street, and there they sat,
frequently contenting themselves, by way of conversation,
with pressing each other's hands twenty times a minute as they
gazed at the branches of the trees.  At such times, a thunderbolt
might have fallen thirty paces from them, and they would not have
noticed it, so deeply was the revery of the one absorbed and sunk
in the revery of the other.

Limpid purity.  Hours wholly white; almost all alike.  This sort
of love is a recollection of lily petals and the plumage of the dove.

The whole extent of the garden lay between them and the street.
Every time that Marius entered and left, he carefully adjusted the bar
of the gate in such a manner that no displacement was visible.

He usually went away about midnight, and returned
to Courfeyrac's lodgings.  Courfeyrac said to Bahorel:--

"Would you believe it?  Marius comes home nowadays at one o'clock
in the morning."

Bahorel replied:--

"What do you expect?  There's always a petard in a seminary fellow."

At times, Courfeyrac folded his arms, assumed a serious air,
and said to Marius:--

"You are getting irregular in your habits, young man."

Courfeyrac, being a practical man, did not take in good part
this reflection of an invisible paradise upon Marius; he was not
much in the habit of concealed passions; it made him impatient,
and now and then he called upon Marius to come back to reality.

One morning, he threw him this admonition:--

"My dear fellow, you produce upon me the effect of being located
in the moon, the realm of dreams, the province of illusions,
capital, soap-bubble. Come, be a good boy, what's her name?"

But nothing could induce Marius "to talk."  They might have torn
out his nails before one of the two sacred syllables of which that
ineffable name, Cosette, was composed.  True love is as luminous
as the dawn and as silent as the tomb.  Only, Courfeyrac saw this
change in Marius, that his taciturnity was of the beaming order.

During this sweet month of May, Marius and Cosette learned to know
these immense delights.  To dispute and to say you for thou,
simply that they might say thou the better afterwards.  To talk at
great length with very minute details, of persons in whom they took
not the slightest interest in the world; another proof that in that
ravishing opera called love, the libretto counts for almost nothing;

For Marius, to listen to Cosette discussing finery;

For Cosette, to listen to Marius talk in politics;

To listen, knee pressed to knee, to the carriages rolling along
the Rue de Babylone;

To gaze upon the same planet in space, or at the same glowworm
gleaming in the grass;

To hold their peace together; a still greater delight than conversation;

Etc., etc.

In the meantime, divers complications were approaching.

One evening, Marius was on his way to the rendezvous, by way of the
Boulevard des Invalides.  He habitually walked with drooping head.
As he was on the point of turning the corner of the Rue Plumet,
he heard some one quite close to him say:--

"Good evening, Monsieur Marius."

He raised his head and recognized Eponine.

This produced a singular effect upon him.  He had not thought
of that girl a single time since the day when she had conducted
him to the Rue Plumet, he had not seen her again, and she had
gone completely out of his mind.  He had no reasons for anything
but gratitude towards her, he owed her his happiness, and yet,
it was embarrassing to him to meet her.

It is an error to think that passion, when it is pure and happy,
leads man to a state of perfection; it simply leads him, as we
have noted, to a state of oblivion.  In this situation, man forgets
to be bad, but he also forgets to be good.  Gratitude, duty,
matters essential and important to be remembered, vanish.  At any
other time, Marius would have behaved quite differently to Eponine.
Absorbed in Cosette, he had not even clearly put it to himself
that this Eponine was named Eponine Thenardier, and that she bore
the name inscribed in his father's will, that name, for which,
but a few months before, he would have so ardently sacrificed himself.
We show Marius as he was.  His father himself was fading out of his
soul to some extent, under the splendor of his love.

He replied with some embarrassment:--

"Ah! so it's you, Eponine?"

"Why do you call me you?  Have I done anything to you?"

"No," he answered.

Certainly, he had nothing against her.  Far from it.  Only, he felt
that he could not do otherwise, now that he used thou to Cosette,
than say you to Eponine.

As he remained silent, she exclaimed:--

"Say--"

Then she paused.  It seemed as though words failed that creature
formerly so heedless and so bold.  She tried to smile and could not.
Then she resumed:--

"Well?"

Then she paused again, and remained with downcast eyes.

"Good evening, Mr. Marius," said she suddenly and abruptly;
and away she went.



CHAPTER IV

A CAB RUNS IN ENGLISH AND BARKS IN SLANG


The following day was the 3d of June, 1832, a date which it
is necessary to indicate on account of the grave events
which at that epoch hung on the horizon of Paris in the state
of lightning-charged clouds.  Marius, at nightfall, was pursuing
the same road as on the preceding evening, with the same thoughts
of delight in his heart, when he caught sight of Eponine approaching,
through the trees of the boulevard.  Two days in succession--
this was too much.  He turned hastily aside, quitted the boulevard,
changed his course and went to the Rue Plumet through the Rue Monsieur.

This caused Eponine to follow him to the Rue Plumet, a thing
which she had not yet done.  Up to that time, she had contented
herself with watching him on his passage along the boulevard
without ever seeking to encounter him.  It was only on the evening
before that she had attempted to address him.

So Eponine followed him, without his suspecting the fact.
She saw him displace the bar and slip into the garden.

She approached the railing, felt of the bars one after the other,
and readily recognized the one which Marius had moved.

She murmured in a low voice and in gloomy accents:--

"None of that, Lisette!"

She seated herself on the underpinning of the railing, close beside
the bar, as though she were guarding it.  It was precisely
at the point where the railing touched the neighboring wall.
There was a dim nook there, in which Eponine was entirely concealed.

She remained thus for more than an hour, without stirring
and without breathing, a prey to her thoughts.

Towards ten o'clock in the evening, one of the two or three persons
who passed through the Rue Plumet, an old, belated bourgeois who
was making haste to escape from this deserted spot of evil repute,
as he skirted the garden railings and reached the angle which it
made with the wall, heard a dull and threatening voice saying:--

"I'm no longer surprised that he comes here every evening."

The passer-by cast a glance around him, saw no one, dared not peer
into the black niche, and was greatly alarmed.  He redoubled his pace.

This passer-by had reason to make haste, for a very few
instants later, six men, who were marching separately
and at some distance from each other, along the wall,
and who might have been taken for a gray patrol, entered the Rue Plumet.

The first to arrive at the garden railing halted, and waited
for the others; a second later, all six were reunited.

These men began to talk in a low voice.

"This is the place," said one of them.

"Is there a cab [dog] in the garden?" asked another.

"I don't know.  In any case, I have fetched a ball that we'll make
him eat."

"Have you some putty to break the pane with?"

"Yes."

"The railing is old," interpolated a fifth, who had the voice
of a ventriloquist.

"So much the better," said the second who had spoken.  "It won't
screech under the saw, and it won't be hard to cut."

The sixth, who had not yet opened his lips, now began to inspect
the gate, as Eponine had done an hour earlier, grasping each bar
in succession, and shaking them cautiously.

Thus he came to the bar which Marius had loosened.  As he was on the
point of grasping this bar, a hand emerged abruptly from the darkness,
fell upon his arm; he felt himself vigorously thrust aside by a
push in the middle of his breast, and a hoarse voice said to him,
but not loudly:--

"There's a dog."

At the same moment, he perceived a pale girl standing before him.

The man underwent that shock which the unexpected always brings.
He bristled up in hideous wise; nothing is so formidable to behold as
ferocious beasts who are uneasy; their terrified air evokes terror.

He recoiled and stammered:--

"What jade is this?"

"Your daughter."

It was, in fact, Eponine, who had addressed Thenardier.

At the apparition of Eponine, the other five, that is to say,
Claquesous, Guelemer, Babet, Brujon, and Montparnasse had noiselessly
drawn near, without precipitation, without uttering a word,
with the sinister slowness peculiar to these men of the night.

Some indescribable but hideous tools were visible in their hands.
Guelemer held one of those pairs of curved pincers which prowlers
call fanchons.

"Ah, see here, what are you about there?  What do you want with us?
Are you crazy?" exclaimed Thenardier, as loudly as one can exclaim
and still speak low; "what have you come here to hinder our work for?"

Eponine burst out laughing, and threw herself on his neck.

"I am here, little father, because I am here.  Isn't a person
allowed to sit on the stones nowadays?  It's you who ought not
to be here.  What have you come here for, since it's a biscuit?
I told Magnon so.  There's nothing to be done here.  But embrace me,
my good little father!  It's a long time since I've seen you!
So you're out?"

Thenardier tried to disentangle himself from Eponine's arms,
and grumbled:--

"That's good.  You've embraced me.  Yes, I'm out.  I'm not in.
Now, get away with you."

But Eponine did not release her hold, and redoubled her caresses.

"But how did you manage it, little pa?  You must have been very
clever to get out of that.  Tell me about it!  And my mother?
Where is mother?  Tell me about mamma."

Thenardier replied:--

"She's well.  I don't know, let me alone, and be off, I tell you.

"I won't go, so there now," pouted Eponine like a spoiled child;
"you send me off, and it's four months since I saw you, and I've
hardly had time to kiss you."

And she caught her father round the neck again.

"Come, now, this is stupid!" said Babet.

"Make haste!" said Guelemer, "the cops may pass."

The ventriloquist's voice repeated his distich:--


"Nous n' sommes pas le jour de l'an, "This isn't New Year's day
      A becoter papa, maman."                 To peck at pa and ma."


Eponine turned to the five ruffians.

"Why, it's Monsieur Brujon.  Good day, Monsieur Babet.  Good day,
Monsieur Claquesous.  Don't you know me, Monsieur Guelemer?
How goes it, Montparnasse?"

"Yes, they know you!" ejaculated Thenardier.  "But good day,
good evening, sheer off! leave us alone!"

"It's the hour for foxes, not for chickens," said Montparnasse.

"You see the job we have on hand here," added Babet.

Eponine caught Montparnasse's hand.

"Take care," said he, "you'll cut yourself, I've a knife open."

"My little Montparnasse," responded Eponine very gently, "you must
have confidence in people.  I am the daughter of my father, perhaps.
Monsieur Babet, Monsieur Guelemer, I'm the person who was charged
to investigate this matter."

It is remarkable that Eponine did not talk slang.  That frightful
tongue had become impossible to her since she had known Marius.

She pressed in her hand, small, bony, and feeble as that of a skeleton,
Guelemer's huge, coarse fingers, and continued:--

"You know well that I'm no fool.  Ordinarily, I am believed.
I have rendered you service on various occasions.  Well, I have
made inquiries; you will expose yourselves to no purpose, you see.
I swear to you that there is nothing in this house."

"There are lone women," said Guelemer.

"No, the persons have moved away."

"The candles haven't, anyway!" ejaculated Babet.

And he pointed out to Eponine, across the tops of the trees, a light
which was wandering about in the mansard roof of the pavilion.
It was Toussaint, who had stayed up to spread out some linen
to dry.

Eponine made a final effort.

"Well," said she, "they're very poor folks, and it's a hovel
where there isn't a sou."

"Go to the devil!" cried Thenardier.  "When we've turned the house
upside down and put the cellar at the top and the attic below,
we'll tell you what there is inside, and whether it's francs or sous
or half-farthings."

And he pushed her aside with the intention of entering.

"My good friend, Mr. Montparnasse," said Eponine, "I entreat you,
you are a good fellow, don't enter."

"Take care, you'll cut yourself," replied Montparnasse.

Thenardier resumed in his decided tone:--

"Decamp, my girl, and leave men to their own affairs!"

Eponine released Montparnasse's hand, which she had grasped again,
and said:--

"So you mean to enter this house?"

"Rather!" grinned the ventriloquist.

Then she set her back against the gate, faced the six ruffians
who were armed to the teeth, and to whom the night lent the visages
of demons, and said in a firm, low voice:--

"Well, I don't mean that you shall."

They halted in amazement.  The ventriloquist, however, finished his grin.
She went on:--

"Friends!  Listen well.  This is not what you want.  Now I'm talking.
In the first place, if you enter this garden, if you lay a hand on
this gate, I'll scream, I'll beat on the door, I'll rouse everybody,
I'll have the whole six of you seized, I'll call the police."

"She'd do it, too," said Thenardier in a low tone to Brujon
and the ventriloquist.

She shook her head and added:--

"Beginning with my father!"

Thenardier stepped nearer.

"Not so close, my good man!" said she.

He retreated, growling between his teeth:--

"Why, what's the matter with her?"

And he added:--

"Bitch!"

She began to laugh in a terrible way:--

"As you like, but you shall not enter here.  I'm not the daughter
of a dog, since I'm the daughter of a wolf.  There are six of you,
what matters that to me?  You are men.  Well, I'm a woman.
You don't frighten me.  I tell you that you shan't enter this house,
because it doesn't suit me.  If you approach, I'll bark.  I told you,
I'm the dog, and I don't care a straw for you.  Go your way,
you bore me!  Go where you please, but don't come here, I forbid it!
You can use your knives.  I'll use kicks; it's all the same to me,
come on!"

She advanced a pace nearer the ruffians, she was terrible, she burst
out laughing:--

"Pardine!  I'm not afraid.  I shall be hungry this summer, and I shall
be cold this winter.  Aren't they ridiculous, these ninnies of men,
to think they can scare a girl!  What!  Scare?  Oh, yes, much!
Because you have finical poppets of mistresses who hide under the bed
when you put on a big voice, forsooth!  I ain't afraid of anything,
that I ain't!"

She fastened her intent gaze upon Thenardier and said:--

"Not even of you, father!"

Then she continued, as she cast her blood-shot, spectre-like eyes
upon the ruffians in turn:--

"What do I care if I'm picked up to-morrow morning on the pavement
of the Rue Plumet, killed by the blows of my father's club,
or whether I'm found a year from now in the nets at Saint-Cloud
or the Isle of Swans in the midst of rotten old corks and drowned dogs?"

She was forced to pause; she was seized by a dry cough, her breath
came from her weak and narrow chest like the death-rattle.

She resumed:--

"I have only to cry out, and people will come, and then slap, bang!
There are six of you; I represent the whole world."

Thenardier made a movement towards her.

"Don't approach!" she cried.

He halted, and said gently:--

"Well, no; I won't approach, but don't speak so loud.  So you intend
to hinder us in our work, my daughter?  But we must earn our living
all the same.  Have you no longer any kind feeling for your father?"

"You bother me," said Eponine.

"But we must live, we must eat--"

"Burst!"

So saying, she seated herself on the underpinning of the fence
and hummed:--

       "Mon bras si dodu,            "My arm so plump,
        Ma jambe bien faite           My leg well formed,
        Et le temps perdu."           And time wasted."


She had set her elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand,
and she swung her foot with an air of indifference.  Her tattered
gown permitted a view of her thin shoulder-blades. The neighboring
street lantern illuminated her profile and her attitude.
Nothing more resolute and more surprising could be seen.

The six rascals, speechless and gloomy at being held in check
by a girl, retreated beneath the shadow cast by the lantern,
and held counsel with furious and humiliated shrugs.

In the meantime she stared at them with a stern but peaceful air.

"There's something the matter with her," said Babet.  "A reason.
Is she in love with the dog?  It's a shame to miss this, anyway.
Two women, an old fellow who lodges in the back-yard, and curtains
that ain't so bad at the windows.  The old cove must be a Jew.
I think the job's a good one."

"Well, go in, then, the rest of you," exclaimed Montparnasse.
"Do the job.  I'll stay here with the girl, and if she fails us--"

He flashed the knife, which he held open in his hand, in the light
of the lantern.

Thenardier said not a word, and seemed ready for whatever
the rest pleased.

Brujon, who was somewhat of an oracle, and who had, as the reader knows,
"put up the job," had not as yet spoken.  He seemed thoughtful.
He had the reputation of not sticking at anything, and it was
known that he had plundered a police post simply out of bravado.
Besides this he made verses and songs, which gave him great authority.

Babet interrogated him:--

"You say nothing, Brujon?"

Brujon remained silent an instant longer, then he shook his head
in various ways, and finally concluded to speak:--

"See here; this morning I came across two sparrows fighting,
this evening I jostled a woman who was quarrelling.  All that's bad.
Let's quit."

They went away.

As they went, Montparnasse muttered:--

"Never mind! if they had wanted, I'd have cut her throat."

Babet responded

"I wouldn't. I don't hit a lady."

At the corner of the street they halted and exchanged the following
enigmatical dialogue in a low tone:--

"Where shall we go to sleep to-night?"

"Under Pantin [Paris]."

"Have you the key to the gate, Thenardier?"

"Pardi."

Eponine, who never took her eyes off of them, saw them retreat
by the road by which they had come.  She rose and began to creep
after them along the walls and the houses.  She followed them thus
as far as the boulevard.

There they parted, and she saw these six men plunge into the gloom,
where they appeared to melt away.



CHAPTER V

THINGS OF THE NIGHT


After the departure of the ruffians, the Rue Plumet resumed its tranquil,
nocturnal aspect.  That which had just taken place in this street
would not have astonished a forest.  The lofty trees, the copses,
the heaths, the branches rudely interlaced, the tall grass,
exist in a sombre manner; the savage swarming there catches glimpses
of sudden apparitions of the invisible; that which is below
man distinguishes, through the mists, that which is beyond man;
and the things of which we living beings are ignorant there
meet face to face in the night.  Nature, bristling and wild,
takes alarm at certain approaches in which she fancies that she
feels the supernatural.  The forces of the gloom know each other,
and are strangely balanced by each other.  Teeth and claws fear what
they cannot grasp.  Blood-drinking bestiality, voracious appetites,
hunger in search of prey, the armed instincts of nails and jaws
which have for source and aim the belly, glare and smell out
uneasily the impassive spectral forms straying beneath a shroud,
erect in its vague and shuddering robe, and which seem to them
to live with a dead and terrible life.  These brutalities,
which are only matter, entertain a confused fear of having to deal
with the immense obscurity condensed into an unknown being.
A black figure barring the way stops the wild beast short.
That which emerges from the cemetery intimidates and disconcerts
that which emerges from the cave; the ferocious fear the sinister;
wolves recoil when they encounter a ghoul.



CHAPTER VI

MARIUS BECOMES PRACTICAL ONCE MORE TO THE EXTENT OF GIVING COSETTE
HIS ADDRESS


While this sort of a dog with a human face was mounting guard
over the gate, and while the six ruffians were yielding to a girl,
Marius was by Cosette's side.

Never had the sky been more studded with stars and more charming,
the trees more trembling, the odor of the grass more penetrating;
never had the birds fallen asleep among the leaves with a sweeter noise;
never had all the harmonies of universal serenity responded more
thoroughly to the inward music of love; never had Marius been
more captivated, more happy, more ecstatic.

But he had found Cosette sad; Cosette had been weeping.  Her eyes
were red.

This was the first cloud in that wonderful dream.

Marius' first word had been:  "What is the matter?"

And she had replied:  "This."

Then she had seated herself on the bench near the steps, and while
he tremblingly took his place beside her, she had continued:--

"My father told me this morning to hold myself in readiness,
because he has business, and we may go away from here."

Marius shivered from head to foot.

When one is at the end of one's life, to die means to go away;
when one is at the beginning of it, to go away means to die.

For the last six weeks, Marius had little by little, slowly, by degrees,
taken possession of Cosette each day.  As we have already explained,
in the case of first love, the soul is taken long before the body;
later on, one takes the body long before the soul; sometimes one
does not take the soul at all; the Faublas and the Prudhommes add:
"Because there is none"; but the sarcasm is, fortunately, a blasphemy.
So Marius possessed Cosette, as spirits possess, but he enveloped her
with all his soul, and seized her jealously with incredible conviction.
He possessed her smile, her breath, her perfume, the profound radiance
of her blue eyes, the sweetness of her skin when he touched her hand,
the charming mark which she had on her neck, all her thoughts.
Therefore, he possessed all Cosette's dreams.

He incessantly gazed at, and he sometimes touched lightly with
his breath, the short locks on the nape of her neck, and he declared
to himself that there was not one of those short hairs which did
not belong to him, Marius.  He gazed upon and adored the things
that she wore, her knot of ribbon, her gloves, her sleeves,
her shoes, her cuffs, as sacred objects of which he was the master.
He dreamed that he was the lord of those pretty shell combs which
she wore in her hair, and he even said to himself, in confused
and suppressed stammerings of voluptuousness which did not make
their way to the light, that there was not a ribbon of her gown,
not a mesh in her stockings, not a fold in her bodice, which was
not his.  Beside Cosette he felt himself beside his own property,
his own thing, his own despot and his slave.  It seemed as though they
had so intermingled their souls, that it would have been impossible
to tell them apart had they wished to take them back again.--"This
is mine."  "No, it is mine."  "I assure you that you are mistaken.
This is my property."  "What you are taking as your own is myself."--
Marius was something that made a part of Cosette, and Cosette
was something which made a part of Marius.  Marius felt Cosette
within him.  To have Cosette, to possess Cosette, this, to him,
was not to be distinguished from breathing.  It was in the midst
of this faith, of this intoxication, of this virgin possession,
unprecedented and absolute, of this sovereignty, that these words:
"We are going away," fell suddenly, at a blow, and that the harsh voice
of reality cried to him:  "Cosette is not yours!"

Marius awoke.  For six weeks Marius had been living, as we have said,
outside of life; those words, going away! caused him to re-enter
it harshly.

He found not a word to say.  Cosette merely felt that his hand
was very cold.  She said to him in her turn:  "What is the matter?"

He replied in so low a tone that Cosette hardly heard him:--

"I did not understand what you said."

She began again:--

"This morning my father told me to settle all my little affairs
and to hold myself in readiness, that he would give me his linen
to put in a trunk, that he was obliged to go on a journey, that we
were to go away, that it is necessary to have a large trunk for me
and a small one for him, and that all is to be ready in a week
from now, and that we might go to England."

"But this is outrageous!" exclaimed Marius.

It is certain, that, at that moment, no abuse of power, no violence,
not one of the abominations of the worst tyrants, no action of Busiris,
of Tiberius, or of Henry VIII., could have equalled this in atrocity,
in the opinion of Marius; M. Fauchelevent taking his daughter off
to England because he had business there.

He demanded in a weak voice:--

"And when do you start?"

"He did not say when."

"And when shall you return?"

"He did not say when."

Marius rose and said coldly:--

"Cosette, shall you go?"

Cosette turned toward him her beautiful eyes, all filled with anguish,
and replied in a sort of bewilderment:--

"Where?"

"To England.  Shall you go?"

"Why do you say you to me?"

"I ask you whether you will go?"

"What do you expect me to do?" she said, clasping her hands.

"So, you will go?"

"If my father goes."

"So, you will go?"

Cosette took Marius' hand, and pressed it without replying.

"Very well," said Marius, "then I will go elsewhere."

Cosette felt rather than understood the meaning of these words.
She turned so pale that her face shone white through the gloom.
She stammered:--

"What do you mean?"

Marius looked at her, then raised his eyes to heaven,
and answered:  "Nothing."

When his eyes fell again, he saw Cosette smiling at him.
The smile of a woman whom one loves possesses a visible radiance,
even at night.

"How silly we are!  Marius, I have an idea."

"What is it?"

"If we go away, do you go too!  I will tell you where!  Come and
join me wherever I am."

Marius was now a thoroughly roused man.  He had fallen back
into reality.  He cried to Cosette:--

"Go away with you!  Are you mad?  Why, I should have to have money,
and I have none!  Go to England?  But I am in debt now, I owe,
I don't know how much, more than ten louis to Courfeyrac, one of
my friends with whom you are not acquainted!  I have an old hat
which is not worth three francs, I have a coat which lacks buttons
in front, my shirt is all ragged, my elbows are torn, my boots let
in the water; for the last six weeks I have not thought about it,
and I have not told you about it.  You only see me at night,
and you give me your love; if you were to see me in the daytime,
you would give me a sou!  Go to England!  Eh!  I haven't enough to pay
for a passport!"

He threw himself against a tree which was close at hand, erect,
his brow pressed close to the bark, feeling neither the wood which
flayed his skin, nor the fever which was throbbing in his temples,
and there he stood motionless, on the point of falling, like the
statue of despair.

He remained a long time thus.  One could remain for eternity
in such abysses.  At last he turned round.  He heard behind him
a faint stifled noise, which was sweet yet sad.

It was Cosette sobbing.

She had been weeping for more than two hours beside Marius
as he meditated.

He came to her, fell at her knees, and slowly prostrating himself,
he took the tip of her foot which peeped out from beneath her robe,
and kissed it.

She let him have his way in silence.  There are moments when a
woman accepts, like a sombre and resigned goddess, the religion
of love.

"Do not weep," he said.

She murmured:--

"Not when I may be going away, and you cannot come!"

He went on:--

"Do you love me?"

She replied, sobbing, by that word from paradise which is never
more charming than amid tears:--

"I adore you!"

He continued in a tone which was an indescribable caress:--

"Do not weep.  Tell me, will you do this for me, and cease to weep?"

"Do you love me?" said she.

He took her hand.

"Cosette, I have never given my word of honor to any one,
because my word of honor terrifies me.  I feel that my father
is by my side.  Well, I give you my most sacred word of honor,
that if you go away I shall die."

In the tone with which he uttered these words there lay a melancholy
so solemn and so tranquil, that Cosette trembled.  She felt that
chill which is produced by a true and gloomy thing as it passes by.
The shock made her cease weeping.

"Now, listen," said he, "do not expect me to-morrow."

"Why?"

"Do not expect me until the day after to-morrow."

"Oh!  Why?"

"You will see."

"A day without seeing you!  But that is impossible!"

"Let us sacrifice one day in order to gain our whole lives, perhaps."

And Marius added in a low tone and in an aside:--

"He is a man who never changes his habits, and he has never received
any one except in the evening."

"Of what man are you speaking?" asked Cosette.

"I?  I said nothing."

"What do you hope, then?"

"Wait until the day after to-morrow."

"You wish it?"

"Yes, Cosette."

She took his head in both her hands, raising herself on tiptoe
in order to be on a level with him, and tried to read his hope
in his eyes.

Marius resumed:--

"Now that I think of it, you ought to know my address:
something might happen, one never knows; I live with that friend
named Courfeyrac, Rue de la Verrerie, No. 16."

He searched in his pocket, pulled out his penknife, and with the
blade he wrote on the plaster of the wall:--

"16 Rue de la Verrerie."

In the meantime, Cosette had begun to gaze into his eyes once more.

"Tell me your thought, Marius; you have some idea.  Tell it to me.
Oh! tell me, so that I may pass a pleasant night."

"This is my idea:  that it is impossible that God should mean
to part us.  Wait; expect me the day after to-morrow."

"What shall I do until then?" said Cosette.
"You are outside, you go, and come!  How happy men are!
I shall remain entirely alone!  Oh!  How sad I shall
be!  What is it that you are going to do to-morrow evening? tell me."

"I am going to try something."

"Then I will pray to God and I will think of you here, so that you
may be successful.  I will question you no further, since you
do not wish it.  You are my master.  I shall pass the evening
to-morrow in singing that music from Euryanthe that you love,
and that you came one evening to listen to, outside my shutters.
But day after to-morrow you will come early.  I shall expect
you at dusk, at nine o'clock precisely, I warn you.  Mon Dieu!
how sad it is that the days are so long!  On the stroke of nine,
do you understand, I shall be in the garden."

"And I also."

And without having uttered it, moved by the same thought,
impelled by those electric currents which place lovers in
continual communication, both being intoxicated with delight
even in their sorrow, they fell into each other's arms,
without perceiving that their lips met while their uplifted
eyes, overflowing with rapture and full of tears, gazed upon the stars.

When Marius went forth, the street was deserted.  This was the
moment when Eponine was following the ruffians to the boulevard.

While Marius had been dreaming with his head pressed to the tree,
an idea had crossed his mind; an idea, alas! that he himself judged
to be senseless and impossible.  He had come to a desperate decision.



CHAPTER VII

THE OLD HEART AND THE YOUNG HEART IN THE PRESENCE OF EACH OTHER


At that epoch, Father Gillenormand was well past his ninety-first
birthday.  He still lived with Mademoiselle Gillenormand in the Rue
des Filles-du-Calvaire, No. 6, in the old house which he owned.
He was, as the reader will remember, one of those antique old men
who await death perfectly erect, whom age bears down without bending,
and whom even sorrow cannot curve.

Still, his daughter had been saying for some time:  "My father
is sinking."  He no longer boxed the maids' ears; he no longer thumped
the landing-place so vigorously with his cane when Basque was slow
in opening the door.  The Revolution of July had exasperated him
for the space of barely six months.  He had viewed, almost tranquilly,
that coupling of words, in the Moniteur:  M. Humblot-Conte, peer
of France.  The fact is, that the old man was deeply dejected.
He did not bend, he did not yield; this was no more a characteristic
of his physical than of his moral nature, but he felt himself giving
way internally.  For four years he had been waiting for Marius,
with his foot firmly planted, that is the exact word, in the conviction
that that good-for-nothing young scamp would ring at his door
some day or other; now he had reached the point, where, at certain
gloomy hours, he said to himself, that if Marius made him wait
much longer--It was not death that was insupportable to him;
it was the idea that perhaps he should never see Marius again.
The idea of never seeing Marius again had never entered his
brain until that day; now the thought began to recur to him,
and it chilled him.  Absence, as is always the case in genuine
and natural sentiments, had only served to augment the grandfather's
love for the ungrateful child, who had gone off like a flash.
It is during December nights, when the cold stands at ten degrees,
that one thinks oftenest of the son.

M. Gillenormand was, or thought himself, above all things,
incapable of taking a single step, he--the grandfather,
towards his grandson; "I would die rather," he said to himself.
He did not consider himself as the least to blame; but he thought
of Marius only with profound tenderness, and the mute despair
of an elderly, kindly old man who is about to vanish in the dark.

He began to lose his teeth, which added to his sadness.

M. Gillenormand, without however acknowledging it to himself,
for it would have rendered him furious and ashamed, had never loved
a mistress as he loved Marius.

He had had placed in his chamber, opposite the head of his bed,
so that it should be the first thing on which his eyes fell on waking,
an old portrait of his other daughter, who was dead, Madame Pontmercy,
a portrait which had been taken when she was eighteen.  He gazed
incessantly at that portrait.  One day, he happened to say, as he
gazed upon it:--

"I think the likeness is strong."

"To my sister?" inquired Mademoiselle Gillenormand.  "Yes, certainly."

"The old man added:--

"And to him also."

Once as he sat with his knees pressed together, and his eyes
almost closed, in a despondent attitude, his daughter ventured
to say to him:--

"Father, are you as angry with him as ever?"

She paused, not daring to proceed further.

"With whom?" he demanded.

"With that poor Marius."

He raised his aged head, laid his withered and emaciated fist on
the table, and exclaimed in his most irritated and vibrating tone:--

"Poor Marius, do you say!  That gentleman is a knave, a wretched
scoundrel, a vain little ingrate, a heartless, soulless, haughty,
and wicked man!"

And he turned away so that his daughter might not see the tear
that stood in his eye.

Three days later he broke a silence which had lasted four hours,
to say to his daughter point-blank:--

"I had the honor to ask Mademoiselle Gillenormand never to mention
him to me."

Aunt Gillenormand renounced every effort, and pronounced this
acute diagnosis:  "My father never cared very much for my sister
after her folly.  It is clear that he detests Marius."

"After her folly" meant:  "after she had married the colonel."

However, as the reader has been able to conjecture, Mademoiselle
Gillenormand had failed in her attempt to substitute her favorite,
the officer of lancers, for Marius.  The substitute, Theodule,
had not been a success.  M. Gillenormand had not accepted the quid
pro quo.  A vacancy in the heart does not accommodate itself to a
stop-gap. Theodule, on his side, though he scented the inheritance,
was disgusted at the task of pleasing.  The goodman bored the lancer;
and the lancer shocked the goodman.  Lieutenant Theodule was gay,
no doubt, but a chatter-box, frivolous, but vulgar; a high liver,
but a frequenter of bad company; he had mistresses, it is true,
and he had a great deal to say about them, it is true also;
but he talked badly.  All his good qualities had a defect.
M. Gillenormand was worn out with hearing him tell about the love
affairs that he had in the vicinity of the barracks in the Rue
de Babylone.  And then, Lieutenant Gillenormand sometimes came
in his uniform, with the tricolored cockade.  This rendered him
downright intolerable.  Finally, Father Gillenormand had said to
his daughter:  "I've had enough of that Theodule.  I haven't much
taste for warriors in time of peace.  Receive him if you choose.
I don't know but I prefer slashers to fellows that drag their swords.
The clash of blades in battle is less dismal, after all, than the
clank of the scabbard on the pavement.  And then, throwing out your
chest like a bully and lacing yourself like a girl, with stays under
your cuirass, is doubly ridiculous.  When one is a veritable man,
one holds equally aloof from swagger and from affected airs.  He is
neither a blusterer nor a finnicky-hearted man.  Keep your Theodule
for yourself."

It was in vain that his daughter said to him:  "But he is your
grandnephew, nevertheless,"--it turned out that M. Gillenormand, who was
a grandfather to the very finger-tips, was not in the least a grand-uncle.

In fact, as he had good sense, and as he had compared the two,
Theodule had only served to make him regret Marius all the more.

One evening,--it was the 24th of June, which did not prevent
Father Gillenormand having a rousing fire on the hearth,--he had
dismissed his daughter, who was sewing in a neighboring apartment.
He was alone in his chamber, amid its pastoral scenes, with his
feet propped on the andirons, half enveloped in his huge screen of
coromandel lacquer, with its nine leaves, with his elbow resting on
a table where burned two candles under a green shade, engulfed in his
tapestry armchair, and in his hand a book which he was not reading.
He was dressed, according to his wont, like an incroyable,
and resembled an antique portrait by Garat.  This would have made
people run after him in the street, had not his daughter covered
him up, whenever he went out, in a vast bishop's wadded cloak,
which concealed his attire.  At home, he never wore a dressing gown,
except when he rose and retired.  "It gives one a look of age,"
said he.

Father Gillenormand was thinking of Marius lovingly and bitterly;
and, as usual, bitterness predominated.  His tenderness once
soured always ended by boiling and turning to indignation.
He had reached the point where a man tries to make up his mind and
to accept that which rends his heart.  He was explaining to himself
that there was no longer any reason why Marius should return,
that if he intended to return, he should have done it long ago,
that he must renounce the idea.  He was trying to accustom himself
to the thought that all was over, and that he should die without
having beheld "that gentleman" again.  But his whole nature revolted;
his aged paternity would not consent to this.  "Well!" said he,--
this was his doleful refrain,--"he will not return!"  His bald head
had fallen upon his breast, and he fixed a melancholy and irritated
gaze upon the ashes on his hearth.

In the very midst of his revery, his old servant Basque entered,
and inquired:--

"Can Monsieur receive M. Marius?"

The old man sat up erect, pallid, and like a corpse which rises
under the influence of a galvanic shock.  All his blood had retreated
to his heart.  He stammered:--

"M. Marius what?"

"I don't know," replied Basque, intimidated and put out of countenance
by his master's air; "I have not seen him.  Nicolette came in and
said to me:  `There's a young man here; say that it is M. Marius.'"

Father Gillenormand stammered in a low voice:--

"Show him in."

And he remained in the same attitude, with shaking head, and his eyes
fixed on the door.  It opened once more.  A young man entered.
It was Marius.

Marius halted at the door, as though waiting to be bidden to enter.

His almost squalid attire was not perceptible in the obscurity
caused by the shade.  Nothing could be seen but his calm, grave,
but strangely sad face.

It was several minutes before Father Gillenormand, dulled with amazement
and joy, could see anything except a brightness as when one is in
the presence of an apparition.  He was on the point of swooning;
he saw Marius through a dazzling light.  It certainly was he,
it certainly was Marius.

At last!  After the lapse of four years!  He grasped him entire,
so to speak, in a single glance.  He found him noble, handsome,
distinguished, well-grown, a complete man, with a suitable
mien and a charming air.  He felt a desire to open his arms,
to call him, to fling himself forward; his heart melted with rapture,
affectionate words swelled and overflowed his breast; at length
all his tenderness came to the light and reached his lips, and,
by a contrast which constituted the very foundation of his nature,
what came forth was harshness.  He said abruptly:--

"What have you come here for?"

Marius replied with embarrassment:--

"Monsieur--"

M. Gillenormand would have liked to have Marius throw himself
into his arms.  He was displeased with Marius and with himself.
He was conscious that he was brusque, and that Marius was cold.
It caused the goodman unendurable and irritating anxiety to feel
so tender and forlorn within, and only to be able to be hard outside.
Bitterness returned.  He interrupted Marius in a peevish tone:--

"Then why did you come?"

That "then" signified:  If you do not come to embrace me.
Marius looked at his grandfather, whose pallor gave him a face
of marble.

"Monsieur--"

"Have you come to beg my pardon?  Do you acknowledge your faults?"

He thought he was putting Marius on the right road, and that "the child"
would yield.  Marius shivered; it was the denial of his father
that was required of him; he dropped his eyes and replied:--

"No, sir."

"Then," exclaimed the old man impetuously, with a grief that was
poignant and full of wrath, "what do you want of me?"

Marius clasped his hands, advanced a step, and said in a feeble
and trembling voice:--

"Sir, have pity on me."

These words touched M. Gillenormand; uttered a little sooner,
they would have rendered him tender, but they came too late.
The grandfather rose; he supported himself with both hands on his cane;
his lips were white, his brow wavered, but his lofty form towered
above Marius as he bowed.

"Pity on you, sir!  It is youth demanding pity of the old man
of ninety-one! You are entering into life, I am leaving it;
you go to the play, to balls, to the cafe, to the billiard-hall;
you have wit, you please the women, you are a handsome fellow;
as for me, I spit on my brands in the heart of summer; you are rich
with the only riches that are really such, I possess all the poverty
of age; infirmity, isolation!  You have your thirty-two teeth,
a good digestion, bright eyes, strength, appetite, health, gayety,
a forest of black hair; I have no longer even white hair,
I have lost my teeth, I am losing my legs, I am losing my memory;
there are three names of streets that I confound incessantly,
the Rue Charlot, the Rue du Chaume, and the Rue Saint-Claude,
that is what I have come to; you have before you the whole future,
full of sunshine, and I am beginning to lose my sight, so far am
I advancing into the night; you are in love, that is a matter
of course, I am beloved by no one in all the world; and you ask pity
of me!  Parbleu!  Moliere forgot that.  If that is the way you jest
at the courthouse, Messieurs the lawyers, I sincerely compliment you.
You are droll."

And the octogenarian went on in a grave and angry voice:--

"Come, now, what do you want of me?"

"Sir," said Marius, "I know that my presence is displeasing to you,
but I have come merely to ask one thing of you, and then I shall go
away immediately."

"You are a fool!" said the old man.  "Who said that you were
to go away?"

This was the translation of the tender words which lay at the bottom
of his heart:--

"Ask my pardon!  Throw yourself on my neck!"

M. Gillenormand felt that Marius would leave him in a few moments,
that his harsh reception had repelled the lad, that his hardness was
driving him away; he said all this to himself, and it augmented his grief;
and as his grief was straightway converted into wrath, it increased
his harshness.  He would have liked to have Marius understand,
and Marius did not understand, which made the goodman furious.

He began again:--

"What! you deserted me, your grandfather, you left my house to go
no one knows whither, you drove your aunt to despair, you went off,
it is easily guessed, to lead a bachelor life; it's more convenient,
to play the dandy, to come in at all hours, to amuse yourself;
you have given me no signs of life, you have contracted debts without
even telling me to pay them, you have become a smasher of windows
and a blusterer, and, at the end of four years, you come to me,
and that is all you have to say to me!"

This violent fashion of driving a grandson to tenderness was
productive only of silence on the part of Marius.  M. Gillenormand
folded his arms; a gesture which with him was peculiarly imperious,
and apostrophized Marius bitterly:--

"Let us make an end of this.  You have come to ask something of me,
you say?  Well, what?  What is it?  Speak!"

"Sir," said Marius, with the look of a man who feels that he is falling
over a precipice, "I have come to ask your permission to marry."

M. Gillenormand rang the bell.  Basque opened the door half-way.

"Call my daughter."

A second later, the door was opened once more, Mademoiselle Gillenormand
did not enter, but showed herself; Marius was standing, mute, with
pendant arms and the face of a criminal; M. Gillenormand was pacing
back and forth in the room.  He turned to his daughter and said to her:--

"Nothing.  It is Monsieur Marius.  Say good day to him.
Monsieur wishes to marry.  That's all.  Go away."

The curt, hoarse sound of the old man's voice announced a strange
degree of excitement.  The aunt gazed at Marius with a frightened air,
hardly appeared to recognize him, did not allow a gesture or a
syllable to escape her, and disappeared at her father's breath
more swiftly than a straw before the hurricane.

In the meantime, Father Gillenormand had returned and placed his
back against the chimney-piece once more.

"You marry!  At one and twenty!  You have arranged that!  You have
only a permission to ask! a formality.  Sit down, sir.  Well, you
have had a revolution since I had the honor to see you last.
The Jacobins got the upper hand.  You must have been delighted.
Are you not a Republican since you are a Baron?  You can make
that agree.  The Republic makes a good sauce for the barony.
Are you one of those decorated by July?  Have you taken the Louvre
at all, sir?  Quite near here, in the Rue Saint-Antoine, opposite
the Rue des Nonamdieres, there is a cannon-ball incrusted in
the wall of the third story of a house with this inscription:
`July 28th, 1830.'  Go take a look at that.  It produces a good effect.
Ah! those friends of yours do pretty things.  By the way, aren't they
erecting a fountain in the place of the monument of M. le Duc de Berry?
So you want to marry?  Whom?  Can one inquire without indiscretion?"

He paused, and, before Marius had time to answer, he added violently:--

"Come now, you have a profession?  A fortune made?  How much do you
earn at your trade of lawyer?"

"Nothing," said Marius, with a sort of firmness and resolution
that was almost fierce.

"Nothing?  Then all that you have to live upon is the twelve hundred
livres that I allow you?"

Marius did not reply.  M. Gillenormand continued:--

"Then I understand the girl is rich?"

"As rich as I am."

"What!  No dowry?"

"No."

"Expectations?"

"I think not."

"Utterly naked!  What's the father?"

"I don't know."

"And what's her name?"

"Mademoiselle Fauchelevent."

"Fauchewhat?"

"Fauchelevent."

"Pttt!" ejaculated the old gentleman.

"Sir!" exclaimed Marius.

M. Gillenormand interrupted him with the tone of a man who is
speaking to himself:--

"That's right, one and twenty years of age, no profession,
twelve hundred livres a year, Madame la Baronne de Pontmercy will go
and purchase a couple of sous' worth of parsley from the fruiterer."

"Sir," repeated Marius, in the despair at the last hope,
which was vanishing, "I entreat you!  I conjure you in the name
of Heaven, with clasped hands, sir, I throw myself at your feet,
permit me to marry her!"

The old man burst into a shout of strident and mournful laughter,
coughing and laughing at the same time.

"Ah! ah! ah!  You said to yourself:  `Pardine! I'll go hunt up
that old blockhead, that absurd numskull!  What a shame that I'm
not twenty-five! How I'd treat him to a nice respectful summons!
How nicely I'd get along without him!  It's nothing to me,
I'd say to him:  "You're only too happy to see me, you old idiot,
I want to marry, I desire to wed Mamselle No-matter-whom, daughter
of Monsieur No-matter-what, I have no shoes, she has no chemise,
that just suits; I want to throw my career, my future, my youth,
my life to the dogs; I wish to take a plunge into wretchedness with
a woman around my neck, that's an idea, and you must consent to it!"
and the old fossil will consent.'  Go, my lad, do as you like,
attach your paving-stone, marry your Pousselevent, your Coupelevent--
Never, sir, never!"

"Father--"

"Never!"

At the tone in which that "never" was uttered, Marius lost all hope.
He traversed the chamber with slow steps, with bowed head, tottering and
more like a dying man than like one merely taking his departure.
M. Gillenormand followed him with his eyes, and at the moment
when the door opened, and Marius was on the point of going out,
he advanced four paces, with the senile vivacity of impetuous and
spoiled old gentlemen, seized Marius by the collar, brought him back
energetically into the room, flung him into an armchair and said
to him:--

"Tell me all about it!"

"It was that single word "father" which had effected this revolution.

Marius stared at him in bewilderment.  M. Gillenormand's mobile
face was no longer expressive of anything but rough and ineffable
good-nature. The grandsire had given way before the grandfather.

"Come, see here, speak, tell me about your love affairs, jabber,
tell me everything!  Sapristi! how stupid young folks are!"

"Father--" repeated Marius.

The old man's entire countenance lighted up with indescribable radiance.

"Yes, that's right, call me father, and you'll see!"

There was now something so kind, so gentle, so openhearted,
and so paternal in this brusqueness, that Marius, in the sudden
transition from discouragement to hope, was stunned and intoxicated
by it, as it were.  He was seated near the table, the light
from the candles brought out the dilapidation of his costume,
which Father Gillenormand regarded with amazement.

"Well, father--" said Marius.

"Ah, by the way," interrupted M. Gillenormand, "you really have
not a penny then?  You are dressed like a pickpocket."

He rummaged in a drawer, drew forth a purse, which he laid
on the table:  "Here are a hundred louis, buy yourself a hat."

"Father," pursued Marius, "my good father, if you only knew!  I love her.
You cannot imagine it; the first time I saw her was at the Luxembourg,
she came there; in the beginning, I did not pay much heed to her,
and then, I don't know how it came about, I fell in love with her.
Oh! how unhappy that made me!  Now, at last, I see her every day,
at her own home, her father does not know it, just fancy, they are
going away, it is in the garden that we meet, in the evening,
her father means to take her to England, then I said to myself:
`I'll go and see my grandfather and tell him all about the affair.
I should go mad first, I should die, I should fall ill, I should
throw myself into the water.  I absolutely must marry her,
since I should go mad otherwise.'  This is the whole truth, and I
do not think that I have omitted anything.  She lives in a garden
with an iron fence, in the Rue Plumet.  It is in the neighborhood of
the Invalides."

Father Gillenormand had seated himself, with a beaming countenance,
beside Marius.  As he listened to him and drank in the sound of
his voice, he enjoyed at the same time a protracted pinch of snuff.
At the words "Rue Plumet" he interrupted his inhalation and allowed
the remainder of his snuff to fall upon his knees.

"The Rue Plumet, the Rue Plumet, did you say?--Let us see!--Are there
not barracks in that vicinity?--Why, yes, that's it.  Your cousin
Theodule has spoken to me about it.  The lancer, the officer.
A gay girl, my good friend, a gay girl!--Pardieu, yes, the Rue Plumet.
It is what used to be called the Rue Blomet.--It all comes back
to me now.  I have heard of that little girl of the iron railing
in the Rue Plumet.  In a garden, a Pamela.  Your taste is not bad.
She is said to be a very tidy creature.  Between ourselves,
I think that simpleton of a lancer has been courting her a bit.
I don't know where he did it.  However, that's not to the purpose.
Besides, he is not to be believed.  He brags, Marius!  I think
it quite proper that a young man like you should be in love.
It's the right thing at your age.  I like you better as a lover
than as a Jacobin.  I like you better in love with a petticoat,
sapristi! with twenty petticoats, than with M. de Robespierre.
For my part, I will do myself the justice to say, that in the line
of sans-culottes, I have never loved any one but women.  Pretty girls
are pretty girls, the deuce!  There's no objection to that.  As for
the little one, she receives you without her father's knowledge.
That's in the established order of things.  I have had adventures of
that same sort myself.  More than one.  Do you know what is done then?
One does not take the matter ferociously; one does not precipitate
himself into the tragic; one does not make one's mind to marriage
and M. le Maire with his scarf.  One simply behaves like a fellow
of spirit.  One shows good sense.  Slip along, mortals; don't marry.
You come and look up your grandfather, who is a good-natured fellow
at bottom, and who always has a few rolls of louis in an old drawer;
you say to him:  `See here, grandfather.'  And the grandfather says:
`That's a simple matter.  Youth must amuse itself, and old age
must wear out.  I have been young, you will be old.  Come, my boy,
you shall pass it on to your grandson.  Here are two hundred pistoles.
Amuse yourself, deuce take it!'  Nothing better!  That's the way the
affair should be treated.  You don't marry, but that does no harm.
You understand me?"

Marius, petrified and incapable of uttering a syllable, made a sign
with his head that he did not.

The old man burst out laughing, winked his aged eye, gave him
a slap on the knee, stared him full in the face with a mysterious
and beaming air, and said to him, with the tenderest of shrugs
of the shoulder:--

"Booby! make her your mistress."

Marius turned pale.  He had understood nothing of what his grandfather
had just said.  This twaddle about the Rue Blomet, Pamela, the barracks,
the lancer, had passed before Marius like a dissolving view.
Nothing of all that could bear any reference to Cosette, who was
a lily.  The good man was wandering in his mind.  But this wandering
terminated in words which Marius did understand, and which were
a mortal insult to Cosette.  Those words, "make her your mistress,"
entered the heart of the strict young man like a sword.

He rose, picked up his hat which lay on the floor, and walked
to the door with a firm, assured step.  There he turned round,
bowed deeply to his grandfather, raised his head erect again,
and said:--

"Five years ago you insulted my father; to-day you have insulted
my wife.  I ask nothing more of you, sir.  Farewell."

Father Gillenormand, utterly confounded, opened his mouth,
extended his arms, tried to rise, and before he could utter a word,
the door closed once more, and Marius had disappeared.

The old man remained for several minutes motionless and as though
struck by lightning, without the power to speak or breathe, as though
a clenched fist grasped his throat.  At last he tore himself from his
arm-chair, ran, so far as a man can run at ninety-one, to the door,
opened it, and cried:--

"Help!  Help!"

His daughter made her appearance, then the domestics.  He began again,
with a pitiful rattle:  "Run after him!  Bring him back!  What have I
done to him?  He is mad!  He is going away!  Ah! my God!  Ah! my God!
This time he will not come back!"

He went to the window which looked out on the street, threw it open
with his aged and palsied hands, leaned out more than half-way,
while Basque and Nicolette held him behind, and shouted:--

"Marius!  Marius!  Marius!  Marius!"

But Marius could no longer hear him, for at that moment he was
turning the corner of the Rue Saint-Louis.

The octogenarian raised his hands to his temples two or three times
with an expression of anguish, recoiled tottering, and fell back
into an arm-chair, pulseless, voiceless, tearless, with quivering
head and lips which moved with a stupid air, with nothing in his eyes
and nothing any longer in his heart except a gloomy and profound
something which resembled night.



BOOK NINTH.--WHITHER ARE THEY GOING?



CHAPTER I

JEAN VALJEAN


That same day, towards four o'clock in the afternoon, Jean Valjean
was sitting alone on the back side of one of the most solitary
slopes in the Champ-de-Mars. Either from prudence, or from a desire
to meditate, or simply in consequence of one of those insensible
changes of habit which gradually introduce themselves into the
existence of every one, he now rarely went out with Cosette.
He had on his workman's waistcoat, and trousers of gray linen;
and his long-visored cap concealed his countenance.

He was calm and happy now beside Cosette; that which had, for a time,
alarmed and troubled him had been dissipated; but for the last
week or two, anxieties of another nature had come up.  One day,
while walking on the boulevard, he had caught sight of Thenardier;
thanks to his disguise, Thenardier had not recognized him; but since
that day, Jean Valjean had seen him repeatedly, and he was now certain
that Thenardier was prowling about in their neighborhood.

This had been sufficient to make him come to a decision.

Moreover, Paris was not tranquil:  political troubles presented this
inconvenient feature, for any one who had anything to conceal in
his life, that the police had grown very uneasy and very suspicious,
and that while seeking to ferret out a man like Pepin or Morey,
they might very readily discover a man like Jean Valjean.

Jean Valjean had made up his mind to quit Paris, and even France,
and go over to England.

He had warned Cosette.  He wished to set out before the end of the week.

He had seated himself on the slope in the Champ-de-Mars, turning
over all sorts of thoughts in his mind,--Thenardier, the police,
the journey, and the difficulty of procuring a passport.

He was troubled from all these points of view.

Last of all, an inexplicable circumstance which had just attracted
his attention, and from which he had not yet recovered, had added
to his state of alarm.

On the morning of that very day, when he alone of the household
was stirring, while strolling in the garden before Cosette's
shutters were open, he had suddenly perceived on the wall,
the following line, engraved, probably with a nail:--

16 Rue de la Verrerie.

This was perfectly fresh, the grooves in the ancient black mortar
were white, a tuft of nettles at the foot of the wall was powdered
with the fine, fresh plaster.

This had probably been written on the preceding night.

What was this?  A signal for others?  A warning for himself?

In any case, it was evident that the garden had been violated,
and that strangers had made their way into it.

He recalled the odd incidents which had already alarmed the household.

His mind was now filling in this canvas.

He took good care not to speak to Cosette of the line written
on the wall, for fear of alarming her.

In the midst of his preoccupations, he perceived, from a shadow
cast by the sun, that some one had halted on the crest of the slope
immediately behind him.

He was on the point of turning round, when a paper folded in four
fell upon his knees as though a hand had dropped it over his head.

He took the paper, unfolded it, and read these words written
in large characters, with a pencil:--

"MOVE AWAY FROM YOUR HOUSE."

Jean Valjean sprang hastily to his feet; there was no one on the slope;
he gazed all around him and perceived a creature larger than
a child, not so large as a man, clad in a gray blouse and trousers
of dust-colored cotton velvet, who was jumping over the parapet
and who slipped into the moat of the Champde-Mars.

Jean Valjean returned home at once, in a very thoughtful mood.



CHAPTER II

MARIUS


Marius had left M. Gillenormand in despair.  He had entered the
house with very little hope, and quitted it with immense despair.

However, and those who have observed the depths of the human
heart will understand this, the officer, the lancer, the ninny,
Cousin Theodule, had left no trace in his mind.  Not the slightest.
The dramatic poet might, apparently, expect some complications from
this revelation made point-blank by the grandfather to the grandson.
But what the drama would gain thereby, truth would lose.
Marius was at an age when one believes nothing in the line of evil;
later on comes the age when one believes everything.  Suspicions are
nothing else than wrinkles.  Early youth has none of them.
That which overwhelmed Othello glides innocuous over Candide.
Suspect Cosette!  There are hosts of crimes which Marius could sooner
have committed.

He began to wander about the streets, the resource of those who suffer.
He thought of nothing, so far as he could afterwards remember.
At two o'clock in the morning he returned to Courfeyrac's quarters
and flung himself, without undressing, on his mattress.  The sun
was shining brightly when he sank into that frightful leaden slumber
which permits ideas to go and come in the brain.  When he awoke,
he saw Courfeyrac, Enjolras, Feuilly, and Combeferre standing in the
room with their hats on and all ready to go out.

Courfeyrac said to him:--

"Are you coming to General Lamarque's funeral?"

It seemed to him that Courfeyrac was speaking Chinese.

He went out some time after them.  He put in his pocket the pistols
which Javert had given him at the time of the adventure on the 3d
of February, and which had remained in his hands.  These pistols
were still loaded.  It would be difficult to say what vague thought
he had in his mind when he took them with him.

All day long he prowled about, without knowing where he was going;
it rained at times, he did not perceive it; for his dinner, he purchased
a penny roll at a baker's, put it in his pocket and forgot it.
It appears that he took a bath in the Seine without being aware of it.
There are moments when a man has a furnace within his skull.
Marius was passing through one of those moments.  He no longer hoped
for anything; this step he had taken since the preceding evening.
He waited for night with feverish impatience, he had but one idea
clearly before his mind;--this was, that at nine o'clock he should
see Cosette.  This last happiness now constituted his whole future;
after that, gloom.  At intervals, as he roamed through the most deserted
boulevards, it seemed to him that he heard strange noises in Paris.
He thrust his head out of his revery and said:  "Is there fighting
on hand?"

At nightfall, at nine o'clock precisely, as he had promised Cosette,
he was in the Rue Plumet.  When he approached the grating he
forgot everything.  It was forty-eight hours since he had seen Cosette;
he was about to behold her once more; every other thought was effaced,
and he felt only a profound and unheard-of joy.  Those minutes in which
one lives centuries always have this sovereign and wonderful property,
that at the moment when they are passing they fill the heart completely.

Marius displaced the bar, and rushed headlong into the garden.
Cosette was not at the spot where she ordinarily waited for him.
He traversed the thicket, and approached the recess near the flight
of steps:  "She is waiting for me there," said he.  Cosette was
not there.  He raised his eyes, and saw that the shutters of the house
were closed.  He made the tour of the garden, the garden was deserted.
Then he returned to the house, and, rendered senseless by love,
intoxicated, terrified, exasperated with grief and uneasiness,
like a master who returns home at an evil hour, he tapped on
the shutters.  He knocked and knocked again, at the risk of seeing
the window open, and her father's gloomy face make its appearance,
and demand:  "What do you want?"  This was nothing in comparison
with what he dimly caught a glimpse of.  When he had rapped,
he lifted up his voice and called Cosette.--"Cosette!" he cried;
"Cosette!" he repeated imperiously.  There was no reply.  All was over.
No one in the garden; no one in the house.

Marius fixed his despairing eyes on that dismal house, which was as black
and as silent as a tomb and far more empty.  He gazed at the stone
seat on which he had passed so many adorable hours with Cosette.
Then he seated himself on the flight of steps, his heart filled
with sweetness and resolution, he blessed his love in the depths
of his thought, and he said to himself that, since Cosette was gone,
all that there was left for him was to die.

All at once he heard a voice which seemed to proceed from the street,
and which was calling to him through the trees:--

"Mr. Marius!"

He started to his feet.

"Hey?" said he.

"Mr. Marius, are you there?"

"Yes."

"Mr. Marius," went on the voice, "your friends are waiting for you
at the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie."

This voice was not wholly unfamiliar to him.  It resembled the hoarse,
rough voice of Eponine.  Marius hastened to the gate, thrust aside
the movable bar, passed his head through the aperture, and saw
some one who appeared to him to be a young man, disappearing at
a run into the gloom.



CHAPTER III

M. MABEUF


Jean Valjean's purse was of no use to M. Mabeuf.  M. Mabeuf,
in his venerable, infantile austerity, had not accepted the gift
of the stars; he had not admitted that a star could coin itself
into louis d'or. He had not divined that what had fallen from heaven
had come from Gavroche.  He had taken the purse to the police
commissioner of the quarter, as a lost article placed by the finder
at the disposal of claimants.  The purse was actually lost.
It is unnecessary to say that no one claimed it, and that it did
not succor M. Mabeuf.

Moreover, M. Mabeuf had continued his downward course.

His experiments on indigo had been no more successful in the
Jardin des Plantes than in his garden at Austerlitz.  The year
before he had owed his housekeeper's wages; now, as we have seen,
he owed three quarters of his rent.  The pawnshop had sold the
plates of his Flora after the expiration of thirteen months.
Some coppersmith had made stewpans of them.  His copper plates gone,
and being unable to complete even the incomplete copies of his
Flora which were in his possession, he had disposed of the text,
at a miserable price, as waste paper, to a second-hand bookseller.
Nothing now remained to him of his life's work.  He set to work
to eat up the money for these copies.  When he saw that this
wretched resource was becoming exhausted, he gave up his garden
and allowed it to run to waste.  Before this, a long time before,
he had given up his two eggs and the morsel of beef which he ate
from time to time.  He dined on bread and potatoes.  He had sold
the last of his furniture, then all duplicates of his bedding,
his clothing and his blankets, then his herbariums and prints;
but he still retained his most precious books, many of which were
of the greatest rarity, among others, Les Quadrins Historiques de
la Bible, edition of 1560; La Concordance des Bibles, by Pierre
de Besse; Les Marguerites de la Marguerite, of Jean de La Haye,
with a dedication to the Queen of Navarre; the book de la Charge
et Dignite de l'Ambassadeur, by the Sieur de Villiers Hotman;
a Florilegium Rabbinicum of 1644; a Tibullus of 1567, with this
magnificent inscription:  Venetiis, in aedibus Manutianis; and lastly,
a Diogenes Laertius, printed at Lyons in 1644, which contained
the famous variant of the manuscript 411, thirteenth century,
of the Vatican, and those of the two manuscripts of Venice,
393 and 394, consulted with such fruitful results by Henri Estienne,
and all the passages in Doric dialect which are only found
in the celebrated manuscript of the twelfth century belonging to
the Naples Library.  M. Mabeuf never had any fire in his chamber,
and went to bed at sundown, in order not to consume any candles.
It seemed as though he had no longer any neighbors:  people avoided
him when he went out; he perceived the fact.  The wretchedness of a
child interests a mother, the wretchedness of a young man interests
a young girl, the wretchedness of an old man interests no one.
It is, of all distresses, the coldest.  Still, Father Mabeuf had
not entirely lost his childlike serenity.  His eyes acquired some
vivacity when they rested on his books, and he smiled when he gazed
at the Diogenes Laertius, which was a unique copy.  His bookcase
with glass doors was the only piece of furniture which he had kept
beyond what was strictly indispensable.

One day, Mother Plutarque said to him:--

"I have no money to buy any dinner."

What she called dinner was a loaf of bread and four or five potatoes.

"On credit?" suggested M. Mabeuf.

"You know well that people refuse me."

M. Mabeuf opened his bookcase, took a long look at all his books,
one after another, as a father obliged to decimate his children would
gaze upon them before making a choice, then seized one hastily,
put it in under his arm and went out.  He returned two hours later,
without anything under his arm, laid thirty sous on the table,
and said:--

"You will get something for dinner."

From that moment forth, Mother Plutarque saw a sombre veil,
which was never more lifted, descend over the old man's candid face.

On the following day, on the day after, and on the day after that,
it had to be done again.

M. Mabeuf went out with a book and returned with a coin.
As the second-hand dealers perceived that he was forced to sell,
they purchased of him for twenty sous that for which he had paid
twenty francs, sometimes at those very shops.  Volume by volume,
the whole library went the same road.  He said at times:  "But I
am eighty;" as though he cherished some secret hope that he should
arrive at the end of his days before reaching the end of his books.
His melancholy increased.  Once, however, he had a pleasure.
He had gone out with a Robert Estienne, which he had sold for
thirty-five sous under the Quai Malaquais, and he returned with an
Aldus which he had bought for forty sous in the Rue des Gres.--"I
owe five sous," he said, beaming on Mother Plutarque.  That day he
had no dinner.

He belonged to the Horticultural Society.  His destitution became
known there.  The president of the society came to see him,
promised to speak to the Minister of Agriculture and Commerce
about him, and did so.--"Why, what!" exclaimed the Minister,
"I should think so!  An old savant! a botanist! an inoffensive man!
Something must be done for him!"  On the following day, M. Mabeuf
received an invitation to dine with the Minister.  Trembling with joy,
he showed the letter to Mother Plutarque.  "We are saved!" said he.
On the day appointed, he went to the Minister's house.  He perceived
that his ragged cravat, his long, square coat, and his waxed shoes
astonished the ushers.  No one spoke to him, not even the Minister.
About ten o'clock in the evening, while he was still waiting
for a word, he heard the Minister's wife, a beautiful woman in a
low-necked gown whom he had not ventured to approach, inquire:
"Who is that old gentleman?"  He returned home on foot at midnight,
in a driving rain-storm. He had sold an Elzevir to pay for a carriage
in which to go thither.

He had acquired the habit of reading a few pages in his Diogenes
Laertius every night, before he went to bed.  He knew enough
Greek to enjoy the peculiarities of the text which he owned.
He had now no other enjoyment.  Several weeks passed.  All at once,
Mother Plutarque fell ill.  There is one thing sadder than having
no money with which to buy bread at the baker's and that is having
no money to purchase drugs at the apothecary's. One evening,
the doctor had ordered a very expensive potion.  And the malady was
growing worse; a nurse was required.  M. Mabeuf opened his bookcase;
there was nothing there.  The last volume had taken its departure.
All that was left to him was Diogenes Laertius.  He put this unique
copy under his arm, and went out.  It was the 4th of June, 1832;
he went to the Porte Saint-Jacques, to Royal's successor, and returned
with one hundred francs.  He laid the pile of five-franc pieces
on the old serving-woman's nightstand, and returned to his chamber
without saying a word.

On the following morning, at dawn, he seated himself on the overturned
post in his garden, and he could be seen over the top of the hedge,
sitting the whole morning motionless, with drooping head, his eyes
vaguely fixed on the withered flower-beds. It rained at intervals;
the old man did not seem to perceive the fact.

In the afternoon, extraordinary noises broke out in Paris.
They resembled shots and the clamors of a multitude.

Father Mabeuf raised his head.  He saw a gardener passing,
and inquired:--

"What is it?"

The gardener, spade on back, replied in the most unconcerned tone:--

"It is the riots."

"What riots?"

"Yes, they are fighting."

"Why are they fighting?"

"Ah, good Heavens!" ejaculated the gardener.

"In what direction?" went on M. Mabeuf.

"In the neighborhood of the Arsenal."

Father Mabeuf went to his room, took his hat, mechanically sought
for a book to place under his arm, found none, said:  "Ah! truly!"
and went off with a bewildered air.



BOOK TENTH.--THE 5TH OF JUNE, 1832



CHAPTER I

THE SURFACE OF THE QUESTION


Of what is revolt composed?  Of nothing and of everything.
Of an electricity disengaged, little by little, of a flame suddenly
darting forth, of a wandering force, of a passing breath.
This breath encounters heads which speak, brains which dream,
souls which suffer, passions which burn, wretchedness which howls,
and bears them away.

Whither?

At random.  Athwart the state, the laws, athwart prosperity
and the insolence of others.

Irritated convictions, embittered enthusiasms, agitated indignations,
instincts of war which have been repressed, youthful courage which has
been exalted, generous blindness; curiosity, the taste for change,
the thirst for the unexpected, the sentiment which causes one to
take pleasure in reading the posters for the new play, and love,
the prompter's whistle, at the theatre; the vague hatreds,
rancors, disappointments, every vanity which thinks that destiny
has bankrupted it; discomfort, empty dreams, ambitious that are
hedged about, whoever hopes for a downfall, some outcome, in short,
at the very bottom, the rabble, that mud which catches fire,--
such are the elements of revolt.  That which is grandest and that
which is basest; the beings who prowl outside of all bounds,
awaiting an occasion, bohemians, vagrants, vagabonds of the
cross-roads, those who sleep at night in a desert of houses with no
other roof than the cold clouds of heaven, those who, each day,
demand their bread from chance and not from toil, the unknown
of poverty and nothingness, the bare-armed, the bare-footed, belong
to revolt.  Whoever cherishes in his soul a secret revolt against
any deed whatever on the part of the state, of life or of fate,
is ripe for riot, and, as soon as it makes its appearance,
he begins to quiver, and to feel himself borne away with the whirlwind.

Revolt is a sort of waterspout in the social atmosphere which
forms suddenly in certain conditions of temperature, and which,
as it eddies about, mounts, descends, thunders, tears, razes,
crushes, demolishes, uproots, bearing with it great natures
and small, the strong man and the feeble mind, the tree
trunk and the stalk of straw.  Woe to him whom it bears away
as well as to him whom it strikes!  It breaks the one against the other.

It communicates to those whom it seizes an indescribable
and extraordinary power.  It fills the first-comer with the
force of events; it converts everything into projectiles.
It makes a cannon-ball of a rough stone, and a general of a porter.

If we are to believe certain oracles of crafty political views,
a little revolt is desirable from the point of view of power.  System:
revolt strengthens those governments which it does not overthrow.
It puts the army to the test; it consecrates the bourgeoisie,
it draws out the muscles of the police; it demonstrates the force
of the social framework.  It is an exercise in gymnastics;
it is almost hygiene.  Power is in better health after a revolt,
as a man is after a good rubbing down.

Revolt, thirty years ago, was regarded from still other points
of view.

There is for everything a theory, which proclaims itself "good sense";
Philintus against Alcestis; mediation offered between the false and
the true; explanation, admonition, rather haughty extenuation which,
because it is mingled with blame and excuse, thinks itself wisdom,
and is often only pedantry.  A whole political school called "the
golden mean" has been the outcome of this.  As between cold water
and hot water, it is the lukewarm water party.  This school with its
false depth, all on the surface, which dissects effects without going
back to first causes, chides from its height of a demi-science,
the agitation of the public square.

If we listen to this school, "The riots which complicated the affair of
1830 deprived that great event of a portion of its purity.  The Revolution
of July had been a fine popular gale, abruptly followed by blue sky.
They made the cloudy sky reappear.  They caused that revolution,
at first so remarkable for its unanimity, to degenerate into a quarrel.
In the Revolution of July, as in all progress accomplished by fits
and starts, there had been secret fractures; these riots rendered
them perceptible.  It might have been said:  `Ah! this is broken.'
After the Revolution of July, one was sensible only of deliverance;
after the riots, one was conscious of a catastrophe.

"All revolt closes the shops, depresses the funds, throws the
Exchange into consternation, suspends commerce, clogs business,
precipitates failures; no more money, private fortunes rendered uneasy,
public credit shaken, industry disconcerted, capital withdrawing,
work at a discount, fear everywhere; counter-shocks in every town.
Hence gulfs.  It has been calculated that the first day of a riot
costs France twenty millions, the second day forty, the third sixty,
a three days' uprising costs one hundred and twenty millions, that is
to say, if only the financial result be taken into consideration,
it is equivalent to a disaster, a shipwreck or a lost battle,
which should annihilate a fleet of sixty ships of the line.

"No doubt, historically, uprisings have their beauty; the war of the
pavements is no less grandiose, and no less pathetic, than the war
of thickets:  in the one there is the soul of forests, in the other
the heart of cities; the one has Jean Chouan, the other has a Jeanne.
Revolts have illuminated with a red glare all the most original points
of the Parisian character, generosity, devotion, stormy gayety,
students proving that bravery forms part of intelligence,
the National Guard invincible, bivouacs of shopkeepers, fortresses of
street urchins, contempt of death on the part of passers-by. Schools
and legions clashed together.  After all, between the combatants,
there was only a difference of age; the race is the same; it is
the same stoical men who died at the age of twenty for their ideas,
at forty for their families.  The army, always a sad thing in
civil wars, opposed prudence to audacity.  Uprisings, while proving
popular intrepidity, also educated the courage of the bourgeois.

"This is well.  But is all this worth the bloodshed?  And to
the bloodshed add the future darkness, progress compromised,
uneasiness among the best men, honest liberals in despair,
foreign absolutism happy in these wounds dealt to revolution
by its own hand, the vanquished of 1830 triumphing and saying:
`We told you so!'  Add Paris enlarged, possibly, but France most
assuredly diminished.  Add, for all must needs be told, the massacres
which have too often dishonored the victory of order grown ferocious
over liberty gone mad.  To sum up all, uprisings have been disastrous."

Thus speaks that approximation to wisdom with which the bourgeoisie,
that approximation to the people, so willingly contents itself.

For our parts, we reject this word uprisings as too large,
and consequently as too convenient.  We make a distinction
between one popular movement and another popular movement.
We do not inquire whether an uprising costs as much as a battle.
Why a battle, in the first place?  Here the question of war comes up.
Is war less of a scourge than an uprising is of a calamity?  And then,
are all uprisings calamities?  And what if the revolt of July did
cost a hundred and twenty millions?  The establishment of Philip
V. in Spain cost France two milliards.  Even at the same price,
we should prefer the 14th of July.  However, we reject these figures,
which appear to be reasons and which are only words.  An uprising
being given, we examine it by itself.  In all that is said by the
doctrinarian objection above presented, there is no question of
anything but effect, we seek the cause.

We will be explicit.



CHAPTER II

THE ROOT OF THE MATTER


There is such a thing as an uprising, and there is such a thing
as insurrection; these are two separate phases of wrath; one is
in the wrong, the other is in the right.  In democratic states,
the only ones which are founded on justice, it sometimes happens
that the fraction usurps; then the whole rises and the necessary claim
of its rights may proceed as far as resort to arms.  In all questions
which result from collective sovereignty, the war of the whole
against the fraction is insurrection; the attack of the fraction
against the whole is revolt; according as the Tuileries contain
a king or the Convention, they are justly or unjustly attacked.
The same cannon, pointed against the populace, is wrong on the 10th
of August, and right on the 14th of Vendemiaire.  Alike in appearance,
fundamentally different in reality; the Swiss defend the false,
Bonaparte defends the true.  That which universal suffrage has effected
in its liberty and in its sovereignty cannot be undone by the street.
It is the same in things pertaining purely to civilization;
the instinct of the masses, clear-sighted to-day, may be troubled
to-morrow. The same fury legitimate when directed against Terray
and absurd when directed against Turgot.  The destruction of machines,
the pillage of warehouses, the breaking of rails, the demolition
of docks, the false routes of multitudes, the refusal by the people
of justice to progress, Ramus assassinated by students, Rousseau driven
out of Switzerland and stoned,--that is revolt.  Israel against Moses,
Athens against Phocian, Rome against Cicero,--that is an uprising;
Paris against the Bastille,--that is insurrection.  The soldiers
against Alexander, the sailors against Christopher Columbus,--
this is the same revolt; impious revolt; why?  Because Alexander
is doing for Asia with the sword that which Christopher Columbus
is doing for America with the compass; Alexander like Columbus,
is finding a world.  These gifts of a world to civilization are such
augmentations of light, that all resistance in that case is culpable.
Sometimes the populace counterfeits fidelity to itself.  The masses
are traitors to the people.  Is there, for example, anything stranger
than that long and bloody protest of dealers in contraband salt,
a legitimate chronic revolt, which, at the decisive moment,
on the day of salvation, at the very hour of popular victory,
espouses the throne, turns into chouannerie, and, from having been
an insurrection against, becomes an uprising for, sombre masterpieces
of ignorance!  The contraband salt dealer escapes the royal gibbets,
and with a rope's end round his neck, mounts the white cockade.
"Death to the salt duties," brings forth, "Long live the King!"
The assassins of Saint-Barthelemy, the cut-throats of September,
the manslaughterers of Avignon, the assassins of Coligny, the assassins
of Madam Lamballe, the assassins of Brune, Miquelets, Verdets,
Cadenettes, the companions of Jehu, the chevaliers of Brassard,--
behold an uprising.  La Vendee is a grand, catholic uprising.
The sound of right in movement is recognizable, it does not always
proceed from the trembling of excited masses; there are mad rages,
there are cracked bells, all tocsins do not give out the sound
of bronze.  The brawl of passions and ignorances is quite another
thing from the shock of progress.  Show me in what direction you
are going.  Rise, if you will, but let it be that you may grow great.
There is no insurrection except in a forward direction.  Any other sort
of rising is bad; every violent step towards the rear is a revolt;
to retreat is to commit a deed of violence against the human race.
Insurrection is a fit of rage on the part of truth; the pavements
which the uprising disturbs give forth the spark of right.
These pavements bequeath to the uprising only their mud.
Danton against Louis XIV.  is insurrection; Hebert against Danton is
revolt.

Hence it results that if insurrection in given cases may be,
as Lafayette says, the most holy of duties, an uprising may be
the most fatal of crimes.

There is also a difference in the intensity of heat; insurrection is
often a volcano, revolt is often only a fire of straw.

Revolt, as we have said, is sometimes found among those in power.
Polignac is a rioter; Camille Desmoulins is one of the governing powers.

Insurrection is sometimes resurrection.

The solution of everything by universal suffrage being an absolutely
modern fact, and all history anterior to this fact being,
for the space of four thousand years, filled with violated right,
and the suffering of peoples, each epoch of history brings
with it that protest of which it is capable.  Under the Caesars,
there was no insurrection, but there was Juvenal.

The facit indignatio replaces the Gracchi.

Under the Caesars, there is the exile to Syene; there is also
the man of the Annales.  We do not speak of the immense exile
of Patmos who, on his part also, overwhelms the real world with a
protest in the name of the ideal world, who makes of his vision
an enormous satire and casts on Rome-Nineveh, on Rome-Babylon,
on Rome-Sodom, the flaming reflection of the Apocalypse.  John on
his rock is the sphinx on its pedestal; we may understand him,
he is a Jew, and it is Hebrew; but the man who writes the Annales
is of the Latin race, let us rather say he is a Roman.

As the Neros reign in a black way, they should be painted to match.
The work of the graving-tool alone would be too pale; there must be
poured into the channel a concentrated prose which bites.

Despots count for something in the question of philosophers.
A word that is chained is a terrible word.  The writer doubles and
trebles his style when silence is imposed on a nation by its master.
From this silence there arises a certain mysterious plenitude
which filters into thought and there congeals into bronze.
The compression of history produces conciseness in the historian.
The granite solidity of such and such a celebrated prose is nothing
but the accumulation effected by the tyrant.

Tyranny constrains the writer to conditions of diameter which are
augmentations of force.  The Ciceronian period, which hardly
sufficed for Verres, would be blunted on Caligula.  The less
spread of sail in the phrase, the more intensity in the blow.
Tacitus thinks with all his might.

The honesty of a great heart, condensed in justice and truth,
overwhelms as with lightning.

Be it remarked, in passing, that Tacitus is not historically
superposed upon Caesar.  The Tiberii were reserved for him.
Caesar and Tacitus are two successive phenomena, a meeting between
whom seems to be mysteriously avoided, by the One who, when He sets
the centuries on the stage, regulates the entrances and the exits.
Caesar is great, Tacitus is great; God spares these two greatnesses
by not allowing them to clash with one another.  The guardian
of justice, in striking Caesar, might strike too hard and be unjust.
God does not will it.  The great wars of Africa and Spain,
the pirates of Sicily destroyed, civilization introduced into Gaul,
into Britanny, into Germany,--all this glory covers the Rubicon.
There is here a sort of delicacy of the divine justice, hesitating to
let loose upon the illustrious usurper the formidable historian,
sparing Caesar Tacitus, and according extenuating circumstances
to genius.

Certainly, despotism remains despotism, even under the despot
of genius.  There is corruption under all illustrious tyrants,
but the moral pest is still more hideous under infamous tyrants.
In such reigns, nothing veils the shame; and those who make examples,
Tacitus as well as Juvenal, slap this ignominy which cannot reply,
in the face, more usefully in the presence of all humanity.

Rome smells worse under Vitellius than under Sylla.  Under Claudius
and under Domitian, there is a deformity of baseness corresponding
to the repulsiveness of the tyrant.  The villainy of slaves is a
direct product of the despot; a miasma exhales from these cowering
consciences wherein the master is reflected; public powers are unclean;
hearts are small; consciences are dull, souls are like vermin;
thus it is under Caracalla, thus it is under Commodus, thus it
is under Heliogabalus, while, from the Roman Senate, under Caesar,
there comes nothing but the odor of the dung which is peculiar
to the eyries of the eagles.

Hence the advent, apparently tardy, of the Tacituses and the Juvenals;
it is in the hour for evidence, that the demonstrator makes
his appearance.

But Juvenal and Tacitus, like Isaiah in Biblical times, like Dante
in the Middle Ages, is man; riot and insurrection are the multitude,
which is sometimes right and sometimes wrong.

In the majority of cases, riot proceeds from a material fact;
insurrection is always a moral phenomenon.  Riot is Masaniello;
insurrection, Spartacus.  Insurrection borders on mind, riot on
the stomach; Gaster grows irritated; but Gaster, assuredly, is not
always in the wrong.  In questions of famine, riot, Buzancais,
for example, holds a true, pathetic, and just point of departure.
Nevertheless, it remains a riot.  Why?  It is because, right at bottom,
it was wrong in form.  Shy although in the right, violent although
strong, it struck at random; it walked like a blind elephant;
it left behind it the corpses of old men, of women, and of children;
it wished the blood of inoffensive and innocent persons without
knowing why.  The nourishment of the people is a good object;
to massacre them is a bad means.

All armed protests, even the most legitimate, even that of the 10th
of August, even that of July 14th, begin with the same troubles.
Before the right gets set free, there is foam and tumult.
In the beginning, the insurrection is a riot, just as a river
is a torrent.  Ordinarily it ends in that ocean:  revolution.
Sometimes, however, coming from those lofty mountains which dominate
the moral horizon, justice, wisdom, reason, right, formed of the
pure snow of the ideal, after a long fall from rock to rock,
after having reflected the sky in its transparency and increased
by a hundred affluents in the majestic mien of triumph, insurrection
is suddenly lost in some quagmire, as the Rhine is in a swamp.

All this is of the past, the future is another thing.
Universal suffrage has this admirable property, that it dissolves
riot in its inception, and, by giving the vote to insurrection,
it deprives it of its arms.  The disappearance of wars,
of street wars as well as of wars on the frontiers, such is the
inevitable progression.  Whatever To-day may be, To-morrow will be peace.

However, insurrection, riot, and points of difference between
the former and the latter,--the bourgeois, properly speaking,
knows nothing of such shades.  In his mind, all is sedition,
rebellion pure and simple, the revolt of the dog against his master,
an attempt to bite whom must be punished by the chain and the
kennel, barking, snapping, until such day as the head of the dog,
suddenly enlarged, is outlined vaguely in the gloom face to face
with the lion.

Then the bourgeois shouts:  "Long live the people!"

This explanation given, what does the movement of June, 1832, signify,
so far as history is concerned?  Is it a revolt?  Is it an insurrection?

It may happen to us, in placing this formidable event on the stage,
to say revolt now and then, but merely to distinguish superficial facts,
and always preserving the distinction between revolt, the form,
and insurrection, the foundation.

This movement of 1832 had, in its rapid outbreak and in its
melancholy extinction, so much grandeur, that even those who see in it
only an uprising, never refer to it otherwise than with respect.
For them, it is like a relic of 1830.  Excited imaginations, say they,
are not to be calmed in a day.  A revolution cannot be cut off short.
It must needs undergo some undulations before it returns to a state
of rest, like a mountain sinking into the plain.  There are no Alps
without their Jura, nor Pyrenees without the Asturias.

This pathetic crisis of contemporary history which the memory
of Parisians calls "the epoch of the riots," is certainly
a characteristic hour amid the stormy hours of this century.
A last word, before we enter on the recital.

The facts which we are about to relate belong to that dramatic
and living reality, which the historian sometimes neglects
for lack of time and space.  There, nevertheless, we insist
upon it, is life, palpitation, human tremor.  Petty details,
as we think we have already said, are, so to speak, the foliage
of great events, and are lost in the distance of history.  The epoch,
surnamed "of the riots," abounds in details of this nature.
Judicial inquiries have not revealed, and perhaps have not sounded
the depths, for another reason than history.  We shall therefore
bring to light, among the known and published peculiarities,
things which have not heretofore been known, about facts over which
have passed the forgetfulness of some, and the death of others.
The majority of the actors in these gigantic scenes have disappeared;
beginning with the very next day they held their peace; but of what
we shall relate, we shall be able to say:  "We have seen this."
We alter a few names, for history relates and does not inform against,
but the deed which we shall paint will be genuine.  In accordance
with the conditions of the book which we are now writing, we shall
show only one side and one episode, and certainly, the least known
at that, of the two days, the 5th and the 6th of June, 1832, but we
shall do it in such wise that the reader may catch a glimpse,
beneath the gloomy veil which we are about to lift, of the real form
of this frightful public adventure.



CHAPTER III

A BURIAL; AN OCCASION TO BE BORN AGAIN


In the spring of 1832, although the cholera had been chilling all
minds for the last three months and had cast over their agitation
an indescribable and gloomy pacification, Paris had already long
been ripe for commotion.  As we have said, the great city resembles
a piece of artillery; when it is loaded, it suffices for a spark
to fall, and the shot is discharged.  In June, 1832, the spark
was the death of General Lamarque.

Lamarque was a man of renown and of action.  He had had in succession,
under the Empire and under the Restoration, the sorts of bravery
requisite for the two epochs, the bravery of the battle-field
and the bravery of the tribune.  He was as eloquent as he had
been valiant; a sword was discernible in his speech.  Like Foy,
his predecessor, after upholding the command, he upheld liberty;
he sat between the left and the extreme left, beloved of the people
because he accepted the chances of the future, beloved of the
populace because he had served the Emperor well; he was, in company
with Comtes Gerard and Drouet, one of Napoleon's marshals in petto.
The treaties of 1815 removed him as a personal offence.  He hated
Wellington with a downright hatred which pleased the multitude;
and, for seventeen years, he majestically preserved the sadness
of Waterloo, paying hardly any attention to intervening events.
In his death agony, at his last hour, he clasped to his breast a sword
which had been presented to him by the officers of the Hundred Days.
Napoleon had died uttering the word army, Lamarque uttering the
word country.

His death, which was expected, was dreaded by the people as a loss,
and by the government as an occasion.  This death was an affliction.
Like everything that is bitter, affliction may turn to revolt.
This is what took place.

On the preceding evening, and on the morning of the 5th of June,
the day appointed for Lamarque's burial, the Faubourg Saint-Antoine,
which the procession was to touch at, assumed a formidable aspect.
This tumultuous network of streets was filled with rumors.
They armed themselves as best they might.  Joiners carried off
door-weights of their establishment "to break down doors."  One of them
had made himself a dagger of a stocking-weaver's hook by breaking
off the hook and sharpening the stump.  Another, who was in a fever
"to attack," slept wholly dressed for three days.  A carpenter named
Lombier met a comrade, who asked him:  "Whither are you going?"
"Eh! well, I have no weapons."  "What then?"  "I'm going to my
timber-yard to get my compasses."  "What for?"  "I don't know,"
said Lombier.  A certain Jacqueline, an expeditious man, accosted some
passing artisans:  "Come here, you!"  He treated them to ten sous'
worth of wine and said:  "Have you work?"  "No." "Go to Filspierre,
between the Barriere Charonne and the Barriere Montreuil, and you
will find work."  At Filspierre's they found cartridges and arms.
Certain well-known leaders were going the rounds, that is to say,
running from one house to another, to collect their men.
At Barthelemy's, near the Barriere du Trone, at Capel's, near the
Petit-Chapeau, the drinkers accosted each other with a grave air.
They were heard to say:  "Have you your pistol?"  "Under my blouse."
"And you?"  "Under my shirt."  In the Rue Traversiere, in front
of the Bland workshop, and in the yard of the Maison-Brulee,
in front of tool-maker Bernier's, groups whispered together.
Among them was observed a certain Mavot, who never remained more than
a week in one shop, as the masters always discharged him "because
they were obliged to dispute with him every day."  Mavot was killed
on the following day at the barricade of the Rue Menilmontant.
Pretot, who was destined to perish also in the struggle,
seconded Mavot, and to the question:  "What is your object?"
he replied:  "Insurrection."  Workmen assembled at the corner of
the Rue de Bercy, waited for a certain Lemarin, the revolutionary
agent for the Faubourg Saint-Marceau. Watchwords were exchanged
almost publicly.

On the 5th of June, accordingly, a day of mingled rain and sun,
General Lamarque's funeral procession traversed Paris with official
military pomp, somewhat augmented through precaution.  Two battalions,
with draped drums and reversed arms, ten thousand National Guards,
with their swords at their sides, escorted the coffin.
The hearse was drawn by young men.  The officers of the Invalides
came immediately behind it, bearing laurel branches.  Then came
an innumerable, strange, agitated multitude, the sectionaries of the
Friends of the People, the Law School, the Medical School, refugees of
all nationalities, and Spanish, Italian, German, and Polish flags,
tricolored horizontal banners, every possible sort of banner,
children waving green boughs, stone-cutters and carpenters who were
on strike at the moment, printers who were recognizable by their
paper caps, marching two by two, three by three, uttering cries,
nearly all of them brandishing sticks, some brandishing sabres,
without order and yet with a single soul, now a tumultuous rout,
again a column.  Squads chose themselves leaders; a man armed
with a pair of pistols in full view, seemed to pass the host
in review, and the files separated before him.  On the side alleys
of the boulevards, in the branches of the trees, on balconies,
in windows, on the roofs, swarmed the heads of men, women, and children;
all eyes were filled with anxiety.  An armed throng was passing,
and a terrified throng looked on.

The Government, on its side, was taking observations.  It observed
with its hand on its sword.  Four squadrons of carabineers could
be seen in the Place Louis XV.  in their saddles, with their
trumpets at their head, cartridge-boxes filled and muskets loaded,
all in readiness to march; in the Latin country and at the Jardin
des Plantes, the Municipal Guard echelonned from street to street;
at the Halle-aux-Vins, a squadron of dragoons; at the Greve half
of the 12th Light Infantry, the other half being at the Bastille;
the 6th Dragoons at the Celestins; and the courtyard of the Louvre
full of artillery.  The remainder of the troops were confined
to their barracks, without reckoning the regiments of the environs
of Paris.  Power being uneasy, held suspended over the menacing
multitude twenty-four thousand soldiers in the city and thirty
thousand in the banlieue.

Divers reports were in circulation in the cortege.  Legitimist tricks
were hinted at; they spoke of the Duc de Reichstadt, whom God had marked
out for death at that very moment when the populace were designating
him for the Empire.  One personage, whose name has remained unknown,
announced that at a given hour two overseers who had been won over,
would throw open the doors of a factory of arms to the people.
That which predominated on the uncovered brows of the majority
of those present was enthusiasm mingled with dejection.
Here and there, also, in that multitude given over to such violent
but noble emotions, there were visible genuine visages of criminals
and ignoble mouths which said:  "Let us plunder!"  There are certain
agitations which stir up the bottoms of marshes and make clouds
of mud rise through the water.  A phenomenon to which "well drilled"
policemen are no strangers.

The procession proceeded, with feverish slowness, from the house
of the deceased, by way of the boulevards as far as the Bastille.
It rained from time to time; the rain mattered nothing to that throng.
Many incidents, the coffin borne round the Vendome column,
stones thrown at the Duc de Fitz-James, who was seen on a balcony
with his hat on his head, the Gallic cock torn from a popular flag
and dragged in the mire, a policeman wounded with a blow from a sword
at the Porte Saint-Martin, an officer of the 12th Light Infantry
saying aloud:  "I am a Republican," the Polytechnic School coming
up unexpectedly against orders to remain at home, the shouts of:
"Long live the Polytechnique!  Long live the Republic!" marked the
passage of the funeral train.  At the Bastille, long files of curious
and formidable people who descended from the Faubourg Saint-Antoine,
effected a junction with the procession, and a certain terrible
seething began to agitate the throng.

One man was heard to say to another:  "Do you see that fellow with a
red beard, he's the one who will give the word when we are to fire."
It appears that this red beard was present, at another riot,
the Quenisset affair, entrusted with this same function.

The hearse passed the Bastille, traversed the small bridge, and reached
the esplanade of the bridge of Austerlitz.  There it halted.
The crowd, surveyed at that moment with a bird'seye view, would have
presented the aspect of a comet whose head was on the esplanade and
whose tail spread out over the Quai Bourdon, covered the Bastille,
and was prolonged on the boulevard as far as the Porte Saint-Martin. A
circle was traced around the hearse.  The vast rout held their peace.
Lafayette spoke and bade Lamarque farewell.  This was a touching
and august instant, all heads uncovered, all hearts beat high.

All at once, a man on horseback, clad in black, made his appearance
in the middle of the group with a red flag, others say, with a pike
surmounted with a red liberty-cap. Lafayette turned aside his head.
Exelmans quitted the procession.

This red flag raised a storm, and disappeared in the midst of it.
From the Boulevard Bourdon to the bridge of Austerlitz one of
those clamors which resemble billows stirred the multitude.
Two prodigious shouts went up:  "Lamarque to the Pantheon!--
Lafayette to the Town-hall!" Some young men, amid the declamations
of the throng, harnessed themselves and began to drag Lamarque
in the hearse across the bridge of Austerlitz and Lafayette in a
hackney-coach along the Quai Morland.

In the crowd which surrounded and cheered Lafayette, it was
noticed that a German showed himself named Ludwig Snyder, who died
a centenarian afterwards, who had also been in the war of 1776,
and who had fought at Trenton under Washington, and at Brandywine
under Lafayette.

In the meantime, the municipal cavalry on the left bank had been set
in motion, and came to bar the bridge, on the right bank the dragoons
emerged from the Celestins and deployed along the Quai Morland.
The men who were dragging Lafayette suddenly caught sight of
them at the corner of the quay and shouted:  "The dragoons!"
The dragoons advanced at a walk, in silence, with their pistols
in their holsters, their swords in their scabbards, their guns slung
in their leather sockets, with an air of gloomy expectation.

They halted two hundred paces from the little bridge.  The carriage
in which sat Lafayette advanced to them, their ranks opened and
allowed it to pass, and then closed behind it.  At that moment
the dragoons and the crowd touched.  The women fled in terror.
What took place during that fatal minute?  No one can say.
It is the dark moment when two clouds come together.  Some declare
that a blast of trumpets sounding the charge was heard in the direction
of the Arsenal others that a blow from a dagger was given by a child
to a dragoon.  The fact is, that three shots were suddenly discharged:
the first killed Cholet, chief of the squadron, the second killed
an old deaf woman who was in the act of closing her window,
the third singed the shoulder of an officer; a woman screamed:
"They are beginning too soon!" and all at once, a squadron
of dragoons which had remained in the barracks up to this time,
was seen to debouch at a gallop with bared swords, through the Rue
Bassompierre and the Boulevard Bourdon, sweeping all before them.

Then all is said, the tempest is loosed, stones rain down,
a fusillade breaks forth, many precipitate themselves to the bottom
of the bank, and pass the small arm of the Seine, now filled in,
the timber-yards of the Isle Louviers, that vast citadel ready to hand,
bristle with combatants, stakes are torn up, pistol-shots fired,
a barricade begun, the young men who are thrust back pass the
Austerlitz bridge with the hearse at a run, and the municipal guard,
the carabineers rush up, the dragoons ply their swords, the crowd
disperses in all directions, a rumor of war flies to all four
quarters of Paris, men shout:  "To arms!" they run, tumble down,
flee, resist.  Wrath spreads abroad the riot as wind spreads a fire.



CHAPTER IV

THE EBULLITIONS OF FORMER DAYS


Nothing is more extraordinary than the first breaking out of a riot.
Everything bursts forth everywhere at once.  Was it foreseen?
Yes.  Was it prepared?  No. Whence comes it?  From the pavements.
Whence falls it?  From the clouds.  Here insurrection assumes the
character of a plot; there of an improvisation.  The first comer
seizes a current of the throng and leads it whither he wills.
A beginning full of terror, in which is mingled a sort of
formidable gayety.  First come clamors, the shops are closed,
the displays of the merchants disappear; then come isolated shots;
people flee; blows from gun-stocks beat against portes cocheres,
servants can be heard laughing in the courtyards of houses and saying:
"There's going to be a row!"

A quarter of an hour had not elapsed when this is what was taking
place at twenty different spots in Paris at once.

In the Rue Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie, twenty young men,
bearded and with long hair, entered a dram-shop and emerged
a moment later, carrying a horizontal tricolored flag covered
with crape, and having at their head three men armed, one with
a sword, one with a gun, and the third with a pike.

In the Rue des Nonaindieres, a very well-dressed bourgeois, who had
a prominent belly, a sonorous voice, a bald head, a lofty brow,
a black beard, and one of these stiff mustaches which will not
lie flat, offered cartridges publicly to passers-by.

In the Rue Saint-Pierre-Montmartre, men with bare arms carried about
a black flag, on which could be read in white letters this inscription:
"Republic or Death!"  In the Rue des Jeuneurs, Rue du Cadran,
Rue Montorgueil, Rue Mandar, groups appeared waving flags on which could
be distinguished in gold letters, the word section with a number.
One of these flags was red and blue with an almost imperceptible
stripe of white between.

They pillaged a factory of small-arms on the Boulevard Saint-Martin,
and three armorers' shops, the first in the Rue Beaubourg, the second
in the Rue Michel-le-Comte, the other in the Rue du Temple.
In a few minutes, the thousand hands of the crowd had seized and
carried off two hundred and thirty guns, nearly all double-barrelled,
sixty-four swords, and eighty-three pistols.  In order to provide
more arms, one man took the gun, the other the bayonet.

Opposite the Quai de la Greve, young men armed with muskets installed
themselves in the houses of some women for the purpose of firing.
One of them had a flint-lock. They rang, entered, and set about
making cartridges.  One of these women relates:  "I did not know
what cartridges were; it was my husband who told me."

One cluster broke into a curiosity shop
in the Rue des Vielles Haudriettes, and seized yataghans and Turkish arms.

The body of a mason who had been killed by a gun-shot lay in the Rue
de la Perle.

And then on the right bank, the left bank, on the quays,
on the boulevards, in the Latin country, in the quarter of the Halles,
panting men, artisans, students, members of sections read proclamations
and shouted:  "To arms!" broke street lanterns, unharnessed carriages,
unpaved the streets, broke in the doors of houses, uprooted trees,
rummaged cellars, rolled out hogsheads, heaped up paving-stones,
rough slabs, furniture and planks, and made barricades.

They forced the bourgeois to assist them in this.  They entered the
dwellings of women, they forced them to hand over the swords and guns
of their absent husbands, and they wrote on the door, with whiting:
"The arms have been delivered"; some signed "their names" to receipts
for the guns and swords and said:  "Send for them to-morrow at
the Mayor's office."  They disarmed isolated sentinels and National
Guardsmen in the streets on their way to the Townhall.  They tore
the epaulets from officers.  In the Rue du Cimitiere-Saint-Nicholas,
an officer of the National Guard, on being pursued by a crowd armed
with clubs and foils, took refuge with difficulty in a house,
whence he was only able to emerge at nightfall and in disguise.

In the Quartier Saint-Jacques, the students swarmed out of their
hotels and ascended the Rue Saint-Hyacinthe to the Cafe du Progress,
or descended to the Cafe des Sept-Billards, in the Rue des Mathurins.
There, in front of the door, young men mounted on the stone
corner-posts, distributed arms.  They plundered the timber-yard
in the Rue Transnonain in order to obtain material for barricades.
On a single point the inhabitants resisted, at the corner
of the Rue Sainte-Avoye and the Rue Simon-Le-Franc, where they
destroyed the barricade with their own hands.  At a single point
the insurgents yielded; they abandoned a barricade begun in the Rue
de Temple after having fired on a detachment of the National Guard,
and fled through the Rue de la Corderie.  The detachment picked up
in the barricade a red flag, a package of cartridges, and three
hundred pistol-balls. The National Guardsmen tore up the flag,
and carried off its tattered remains on the points of their bayonets.

All that we are here relating slowly and successively took place
simultaneously at all points of the city in the midst of a vast tumult,
like a mass of tongues of lightning in one clap of thunder.
In less than an hour, twenty-seven barricades sprang out of the
earth in the quarter of the Halles alone.  In the centre was that
famous house No. 50, which was the fortress of Jeanne and her six
hundred companions, and which, flanked on the one hand by a barricade
at Saint-Merry, and on the other by a barricade of the Rue Maubuee,
commanded three streets, the Rue des Arcis, the Rue Saint-Martin,
and the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher, which it faced.  The barricades
at right angles fell back, the one of the Rue Montorgueil on the
Grande-Truanderie, the other of the Rue Geoffroy-Langevin on the Rue
Sainte-Avoye. Without reckoning innumerable barricades in twenty
other quarters of Paris, in the Marais, at Mont-Sainte-Genevieve;
one in the Rue Menilmontant, where was visible a porte cochere torn
from its hinges; another near the little bridge of the Hotel-Dieu
made with an "ecossais," which had been unharnessed and overthrown,
three hundred paces from the Prefecture of Police.

At the barricade of the Rue des Menetriers, a well-dressed man
distributed money to the workmen.  At the barricade of the Rue Grenetat,
a horseman made his appearance and handed to the one who seemed
to be the commander of the barricade what had the appearance
of a roll of silver.  "Here," said he, "this is to pay expenses,
wine, et caetera."  A light-haired young man, without a cravat,
went from barricade to barricade, carrying pass-words. Another,
with a naked sword, a blue police cap on his head, placed sentinels.
In the interior, beyond the barricades, the wine-shops and porters'
lodges were converted into guard-houses. Otherwise the riot
was conducted after the most scientific military tactics.
The narrow, uneven, sinuous streets, full of angles and turns,
were admirably chosen; the neighborhood of the Halles, in particular,
a network of streets more intricate than a forest.  The Society
of the Friends of the People had, it was said, undertaken to direct
the insurrection in the Quartier Sainte-Avoye. A man killed in the Rue
du Ponceau who was searched had on his person a plan of Paris.

That which had really undertaken the direction of the uprising
was a sort of strange impetuosity which was in the air.
The insurrection had abruptly built barricades with one hand,
and with the other seized nearly all the posts of the garrison.
In less than three hours, like a train of powder catching fire,
the insurgents had invaded and occupied, on the right bank,
the Arsenal, the Mayoralty of the Place Royale, the whole
of the Marais, the Popincourt arms manufactory, la Galiote,
the Chateau-d'Eau, and all the streets near the Halles; on the left bank,
the barracks of the Veterans, Sainte-Pelagie, the Place Maubert,
the powder magazine of the Deux-Moulins, and all the barriers.
At five o'clock in the evening, they were masters of the Bastille,
of the Lingerie, of the Blancs-Manteaux; their scouts had reached the
Place des Victoires, and menaced the Bank, the Petits-Peres barracks,
and the Post-Office. A third of Paris was in the hands of the rioters.

The conflict had been begun on a gigantic scale at all points;
and, as a result of the disarming domiciliary visits, and armorers'
shops hastily invaded, was, that the combat which had begun with
the throwing of stones was continued with gun-shots.

About six o'clock in the evening, the Passage du Saumon became
the field of battle.  The uprising was at one end, the troops were
at the other.  They fired from one gate to the other.  An observer,
a dreamer, the author of this book, who had gone to get a near view
of this volcano, found himself in the passage between the two fires.
All that he had to protect him from the bullets was the swell of
the two half-columns which separate the shops; he remained in this
delicate situation for nearly half an hour.

Meanwhile the call to arms was beaten, the National Guard armed
in haste, the legions emerged from the Mayoralities, the regiments
from their barracks.  Opposite the passage de l'Ancre a drummer
received a blow from a dagger.  Another, in the Rue du Cygne,
was assailed by thirty young men who broke his instrument, and took
away his sword.  Another was killed in the Rue Grenier-Saint-Lazare.
In the Rue-Michelle-Comte, three officers fell dead one after
the other.  Many of the Municipal Guards, on being wounded,
in the Rue des Lombards, retreated.

In front of the Cour-Batave, a detachment of National Guards found
a red flag bearing the following inscription:  Republican revolution,
No. 127.  Was this a revolution, in fact?

The insurrection had made of the centre of Paris a sort
of inextricable, tortuous, colossal citadel.

There was the hearth; there, evidently, was the question.
All the rest was nothing but skirmishes.  The proof that all would
be decided there lay in the fact that there was no fighting going
on there as yet.

In some regiments, the soldiers were uncertain, which added to
the fearful uncertainty of the crisis.  They recalled the popular
ovation which had greeted the neutrality of the 53d of the Line
in July, 1830.  Two intrepid men, tried in great wars, the Marshal
Lobau and General Bugeaud, were in command, Bugeaud under Lobau.
Enormous patrols, composed of battalions of the Line, enclosed in
entire companies of the National Guard, and preceded by a commissary
of police wearing his scarf of office, went to reconnoitre the streets
in rebellion.  The insurgents, on their side, placed videttes
at the corners of all open spaces, and audaciously sent their
patrols outside the barricades.  Each side was watching the other.
The Government, with an army in its hand, hesitated; the night
was almost upon them, and the Saint-Merry tocsin began to make
itself heard.  The Minister of War at that time, Marshal Soult,
who had seen Austerlitz, regarded this with a gloomy air.

These old sailors, accustomed to correct manoeuvres and having
as resource and guide only tactics, that compass of battles,
are utterly disconcerted in the presence of that immense foam
which is called public wrath.

The National Guards of the suburbs rushed up in haste and disorder.
A battalion of the 12th Light came at a run from Saint-Denis,
the 14th of the Line arrived from Courbevoie, the batteries of
the Military School had taken up their position on the Carrousel;
cannons were descending from Vincennes.

Solitude was formed around the Tuileries.  Louis Philippe was
perfectly serene.



CHAPTER V

ORIGINALITY OF PARIS


During the last two years, as we have said, Paris had witnessed
more than one insurrection.  Nothing is, generally, more singularly
calm than the physiognomy of Paris during an uprising beyond the
bounds of the rebellious quarters.  Paris very speedily accustoms
herself to anything,--it is only a riot,--and Paris has so many
affairs on hand, that she does not put herself out for so small
a matter.  These colossal cities alone can offer such spectacles.
These immense enclosures alone can contain at the same time civil
war and an odd and indescribable tranquillity.  Ordinarily, when an
insurrection commences, when the shop-keeper hears the drum, the call
to arms, the general alarm, he contents himself with the remark:--

"There appears to be a squabble in the Rue Saint-Martin."

Or:--

"In the Faubourg Saint-Antoine."

Often he adds carelessly:--

"Or somewhere in that direction."

Later on, when the heart-rending and mournful hubbub of musketry
and firing by platoons becomes audible, the shopkeeper says:--

"It's getting hot!  Hullo, it's getting hot!"

A moment later, the riot approaches and gains in force, he shuts up
his shop precipitately, hastily dons his uniform, that is to say,
he places his merchandise in safety and risks his own person.

Men fire in a square, in a passage, in a blind alley; they take
and re-take the barricade; blood flows, the grape-shot riddles
the fronts of the houses, the balls kill people in their beds,
corpses encumber the streets.  A few streets away, the shock
of billiard-balls can be heard in the cafes.

The theatres open their doors and present vaudevilles; the curious
laugh and chat a couple of paces distant from these streets filled
with war.  Hackney-carriages go their way; passers-by are going
to a dinner somewhere in town.  Sometimes in the very quarter
where the fighting is going on.

In 1831, a fusillade was stopped to allow a wedding party to pass.

At the time of the insurrection of 1839, in the Rue Saint-Martin a little,
infirm old man, pushing a hand-cart surmounted by a tricolored rag,
in which he had carafes filled with some sort of liquid, went and
came from barricade to troops and from troops to the barricade,
offering his glasses of cocoa impartially,--now to the Government,
now to anarchy.

Nothing can be stranger; and this is the peculiar character of
uprisings in Paris, which cannot be found in any other capital.
To this end, two things are requisite, the size of Paris and its gayety.
The city of Voltaire and Napoleon is necessary.

On this occasion, however, in the resort to arms of June 25th, 1832,
the great city felt something which was, perhaps, stronger than itself.
It was afraid.

Closed doors, windows, and shutters were to be seen everywhere,
in the most distant and most "disinterested" quarters.  The courageous
took to arms, the poltroons hid.  The busy and heedless passer-by
disappeared.  Many streets were empty at four o'clock in the morning.

Alarming details were hawked about, fatal news was disseminated,--
that they were masters of the Bank;--that there were six hundred
of them in the Cloister of Saint-Merry alone, entrenched and embattled
in the church; that the line was not to be depended on; that Armand
Carrel had been to see Marshal Clausel and that the Marshal had said:
"Get a regiment first"; that Lafayette was ill, but that he had
said to them, nevertheless:  "I am with you.  I will follow you
wherever there is room for a chair"; that one must be on one's guard;
that at night there would be people pillaging isolated dwellings
in the deserted corners of Paris (there the imagination of the police,
that Anne Radcliffe mixed up with the Government was recognizable);
that a battery had been established in the Rue Aubry le Boucher;
that Lobau and Bugeaud were putting their heads together, and that,
at midnight, or at daybreak at latest, four columns would march
simultaneously on the centre of the uprising, the first coming from
the Bastille, the second from the Porte Saint-Martin, the third
from the Greve, the fourth from the Halles; that perhaps, also,
the troops would evacuate Paris and withdraw to the Champ-de-Mars;
that no one knew what would happen, but that this time, it certainly
was serious.

People busied themselves over Marshal Soult's hesitations.  Why did
not he attack at once?  It is certain that he was profoundly absorbed.
The old lion seemed to scent an unknown monster in that gloom.

Evening came, the theatres did not open; the patrols circulated with
an air of irritation; passers-by were searched; suspicious persons
were arrested.  By nine o'clock, more than eight hundred persons
had been arrested, the Prefecture of Police was encumbered with them,
so was the Conciergerie, so was La Force.

At the Conciergerie in particular, the long vault which is
called the Rue de Paris was littered with trusses of straw upon
which lay a heap of prisoners, whom the man of Lyons, Lagrange,
harangued valiantly.  All that straw rustled by all these men,
produced the sound of a heavy shower.  Elsewhere prisoners
slept in the open air in the meadows, piled on top of each other.

Anxiety reigned everywhere, and a certain tremor which was not
habitual with Paris.

People barricaded themselves in their houses; wives and mothers
were uneasy; nothing was to be heard but this:  "Ah! my God!
He has not come home!"  There was hardly even the distant rumble
of a vehicle to be heard.

People listened on their thresholds, to the rumors, the shouts,
the tumult, the dull and indistinct sounds, to the things that
were said:  "It is cavalry," or:  "Those are the caissons galloping,"
to the trumpets, the drums, the firing, and, above all, to that
lamentable alarm peal from Saint-Merry.

They waited for the first cannon-shot. Men sprang up at the corners
of the streets and disappeared, shouting:  "Go home!"  And people made
haste to bolt their doors.  They said:  "How will all this end?"
From moment to moment, in proportion as the darkness descended,
Paris seemed to take on a more mournful hue from the formidable
flaming of the revolt.



BOOK ELEVENTH.--THE ATOM FRATERNIZES WITH THE HURRICANE



CHAPTER I

SOME EXPLANATIONS WITH REGARD TO THE ORIGIN OF GAVROCHE'S POETRY.
THE INFLUENCE OF AN ACADEMICIAN ON THIS POETRY


At the instant when the insurrection, arising from the shock
of the populace and the military in front of the Arsenal,
started a movement in advance and towards the rear in the multitude
which was following the hearse and which, through the whole
length of the boulevards, weighed, so to speak, on the head of
the procession, there arose a frightful ebb.  The rout was shaken,
their ranks were broken, all ran, fled, made their escape,
some with shouts of attack, others with the pallor of flight.
The great river which covered the boulevards divided in a twinkling,
overflowed to right and left, and spread in torrents over two
hundred streets at once with the roar of a sewer that has broken loose.

At that moment, a ragged child who was coming down through the
Rue Menilmontant, holding in his hand a branch of blossoming laburnum
which he had just plucked on the heights of Belleville, caught sight of
an old holster-pistol in the show-window of a bric-a-brac merchant's shop.

"Mother What's-your-name, I'm going to borrow your machine."

And off he ran with the pistol.

Two minutes later, a flood of frightened bourgeois who were fleeing
through the Rue Amelot and the Rue Basse, encountered the lad
brandishing his pistol and singing:--

               La nuit on ne voit rien,
               Le jour on voit tres bien,
               D'un ecrit apocrypha
               Le bourgeois s'ebouriffe,
               Pratiquez la vertu,
               Tutu, chapeau pointu![44]


[44] At night one sees nothing, by day one sees very well;
the bourgeois gets flurried over an apocryphal scrawl,
practice virtue, tutu, pointed hat!


It was little Gavroche on his way to the wars.

On the boulevard he noticed that the pistol had no trigger.

Who was the author of that couplet which served to punctuate his march,
and of all the other songs which he was fond of singing on occasion?
We know not.  Who does know?  Himself, perhaps.  However, Gavroche was
well up in all the popular tunes in circulation, and he mingled with
them his own chirpings.  An observing urchin and a rogue, he made a
potpourri of the voices of nature and the voices of Paris.  He combined
the repertory of the birds with the repertory of the workshops.
He was acquainted with thieves, a tribe contiguous to his own.
He had, it appears, been for three months apprenticed to a printer.
He had one day executed a commission for M. Baour-Lormian, one of
the Forty.  Gavroche was a gamin of letters.

Moreover, Gavroche had no suspicion of the fact that when he
had offered the hospitality of his elephant to two brats on that
villainously rainy night, it was to his own brothers that he
had played the part of Providence.  His brothers in the evening,
his father in the morning; that is what his night had been like.
On quitting the Rue des Ballets at daybreak, he had returned in haste
to the elephant, had artistically extracted from it the two brats,
had shared with them some sort of breakfast which he had invented,
and had then gone away, confiding them to that good mother,
the street, who had brought him up, almost entirely.  On leaving them,
he had appointed to meet them at the same spot in the evening,
and had left them this discourse by way of a farewell:  "I break a cane,
otherwise expressed, I cut my stick, or, as they say at the court,
I file off.  If you don't find papa and mamma, young 'uns, come back
here this evening.  I'll scramble you up some supper, and I'll give
you a shakedown."  The two children, picked up by some policeman
and placed in the refuge, or stolen by some mountebank, or having
simply strayed off in that immense Chinese puzzle of a Paris,
did not return.  The lowest depths of the actual social world
are full of these lost traces.  Gavroche did not see them again.
Ten or twelve weeks had elapsed since that night.  More than once he
had scratched the back of his head and said:  "Where the devil are my
two children?"

In the meantime, he had arrived, pistol in hand, in the Rue du
Pont-aux-Choux. He noticed that there was but one shop open
in that street, and, a matter worthy of reflection, that was
a pastry-cook's shop.  This presented a providential occasion
to eat another apple-turnover before entering the unknown.
Gavroche halted, fumbled in his fob, turned his pocket inside out,
found nothing, not even a sou, and began to shout:  "Help!"

It is hard to miss the last cake.

Nevertheless, Gavroche pursued his way.

Two minutes later he was in the Rue Saint-Louis. While traversing
the Rue du Parc-Royal, he felt called upon to make good the loss
of the apple-turnover which had been impossible, and he indulged
himself in the immense delight of tearing down the theatre posters
in broad daylight.

A little further on, on catching sight of a group
of comfortable-looking persons, who seemed to be
landed proprietors, he shrugged his shoulders and spit out
at random before him this mouthful of philosophical bile as they passed:

"How fat those moneyed men are!  They're drunk!  They just
wallow in good dinners.  Ask 'em what they do with their money.
They don't know.  They eat it, that's what they do!  As much
as their bellies will hold."



CHAPTER II

GAVROCHE ON THE MARCH


The brandishing of a triggerless pistol, grasped in one's hand
in the open street, is so much of a public function that Gavroche
felt his fervor increasing with every moment.  Amid the scraps
of the Marseillaise which he was singing, he shouted:--

"All goes well.  I suffer a great deal in my left paw, I'm all broken
up with rheumatism, but I'm satisfied, citizens.  All that the
bourgeois have to do is to bear themselves well, I'll sneeze them
out subversive couplets.  What are the police spies?  Dogs.  And I'd
just like to have one of them at the end of my pistol.  I'm just from
the boulevard, my friends.  It's getting hot there, it's getting
into a little boil, it's simmering.  It's time to skim the pot.
Forward march, men!  Let an impure blood inundate the furrows!
I give my days to my country, I shall never see my concubine more,
Nini, finished, yes, Nini?  But never mind!  Long live joy!
Let's fight, crebleu!  I've had enough of despotism."

At that moment, the horse of a lancer of the National Guard
having fallen, Gavroche laid his pistol on the pavement, and picked
up the man, then he assisted in raising the horse.  After which he
picked up his pistol and resumed his way.  In the Rue de Thorigny,
all was peace and silence.  This apathy, peculiar to the Marais,
presented a contrast with the vast surrounding uproar.  Four gossips
were chatting in a doorway.

Scotland has trios of witches, Paris has quartettes of old gossiping hags;
and the "Thou shalt be King" could be quite as mournfully hurled
at Bonaparte in the Carrefour Baudoyer as at Macbeth on the heath
of Armuyr.  The croak would be almost identical.

The gossips of the Rue de Thorigny busied themselves only with
their own concerns.  Three of them were portresses, and the fourth
was a rag-picker with her basket on her back.

All four of them seemed to be standing at the four corners of old age,
which are decrepitude, decay, ruin, and sadness.

The rag-picker was humble.  In this open-air society, it is
the rag-picker who salutes and the portress who patronizes.
This is caused by the corner for refuse, which is fat or lean,
according to the will of the portresses, and after the fancy
of the one who makes the heap.  There may be kindness in the broom.

This rag-picker was a grateful creature, and she smiled, with what
a smile! on the three portresses.  Things of this nature were said:--

"Ah, by the way, is your cat still cross?"

"Good gracious, cats are naturally the enemies of dogs, you know.
It's the dogs who complain."

"And people also."

"But the fleas from a cat don't go after people."

"That's not the trouble, dogs are dangerous.  I remember one year
when there were so many dogs that it was necessary to put it in
the newspapers.  That was at the time when there were at the Tuileries
great sheep that drew the little carriage of the King of Rome.
Do you remember the King of Rome?"

"I liked the Duc de Bordeau better."

"I knew Louis XVIII.  I prefer Louis XVIII."

"Meat is awfully dear, isn't it, Mother Patagon?"

"Ah! don't mention it, the butcher's shop is a horror.
A horrible horror--one can't afford anything but the poor cuts nowadays."

Here the rag-picker interposed:--

"Ladies, business is dull.  The refuse heaps are miserable.
No one throws anything away any more.  They eat everything."

"There are poorer people than you, la Vargouleme."

"Ah, that's true," replied the rag-picker, with deference,
"I have a profession."

A pause succeeded, and the rag-picker, yielding to that necessity
for boasting which lies at the bottom of man, added:--

"In the morning, on my return home, I pick over my basket, I sort
my things.  This makes heaps in my room.  I put the rags in a basket,
the cores and stalks in a bucket, the linen in my cupboard,
the woollen stuff in my commode, the old papers in the corner
of the window, the things that are good to eat in my bowl,
the bits of glass in my fireplace, the old shoes behind my door,
and the bones under my bed."

Gavroche had stopped behind her and was listening.

"Old ladies," said he, "what do you mean by talking politics?"

He was assailed by a broadside, composed of a quadruple howl.

"Here's another rascal."

"What's that he's got in his paddle?  A pistol?"

"Well, I'd like to know what sort of a beggar's brat this is?"

"That sort of animal is never easy unless he's overturning
the authorities."

Gavroche disdainfully contented himself, by way of reprisal,
with elevating the tip of his nose with his thumb and opening his
hand wide.

The rag-picker cried:--

"You malicious, bare-pawed little wretch!"

The one who answered to the name of Patagon clapped her hands
together in horror.

"There's going to be evil doings, that's certain.  The errand-boy
next door has a little pointed beard, I have seen him pass every day
with a young person in a pink bonnet on his arm; to-day I saw him pass,
and he had a gun on his arm.  Mame Bacheux says, that last week
there was a revolution at--at--at--where's the calf!--at Pontoise.
And then, there you see him, that horrid scamp, with his pistol!
It seems that the Celestins are full of pistols.  What do you suppose
the Government can do with good-for-nothings who don't know how to do
anything but contrive ways of upsetting the world, when we had just begun
to get a little quiet after all the misfortunes that have happened,
good Lord! to that poor queen whom I saw pass in the tumbril!
And all this is going to make tobacco dearer.  It's infamous!
And I shall certainly go to see him beheaded on the guillotine,
the wretch!"

"You've got the sniffles, old lady," said Gavroche.
"Blow your promontory."

And he passed on.  When he was in the Rue Pavee, the rag-picker
occurred to his mind, and he indulged in this soliloquy:--

"You're in the wrong to insult the revolutionists,
Mother Dust-Heap-Corner. This pistol is in your interests.
It's so that you may have more good things to eat in your basket."

All at once, he heard a shout behind him; it was the portress
Patagon who had followed him, and who was shaking her fist at him
in the distance and crying:--

"You're nothing but a bastard."

"Oh!  Come now," said Gavroche, "I don't care a brass farthing
for that!"

Shortly afterwards, he passed the Hotel Lamoignon.  There he uttered
this appeal:--

"Forward march to the battle!"

And he was seized with a fit of melancholy.  He gazed at his pistol
with an air of reproach which seemed an attempt to appease it:--

"I'm going off," said he, "but you won't go off!"

One dog may distract the attention from another dog.[45] A very gaunt
poodle came along at the moment.  Gavroche felt compassion for him.


[45] Chien, dog, trigger.


"My poor doggy," said he, "you must have gone and swallowed a cask,
for all the hoops are visible."

Then he directed his course towards l'Orme-Saint-Gervais.



CHAPTER III

JUST INDIGNATION OF A HAIR-DRESSER


The worthy hair-dresser who had chased from his shop the two
little fellows to whom Gavroche had opened the paternal interior
of the elephant was at that moment in his shop engaged in shaving
an old soldier of the legion who had served under the Empire.
They were talking.  The hair-dresser had, naturally, spoken to the
veteran of the riot, then of General Lamarque, and from Lamarque
they had passed to the Emperor.  Thence sprang up a conversation
between barber and soldier which Prudhomme, had he been present,
would have enriched with arabesques, and which he would have entitled:
"Dialogue between the razor and the sword."

"How did the Emperor ride, sir?" said the barber.

"Badly.  He did not know how to fall--so he never fell."

"Did he have fine horses?  He must have had fine horses!"

"On the day when he gave me my cross, I noticed his beast.
It was a racing mare, perfectly white.  Her ears were very wide apart,
her saddle deep, a fine head marked with a black star, a very long neck,
strongly articulated knees, prominent ribs, oblique shoulders and
a powerful crupper.  A little more than fifteen hands in height."

"A pretty horse," remarked the hair-dresser.

"It was His Majesty's beast."

The hair-dresser felt, that after this observation, a short silence
would be fitting, so he conformed himself to it, and then went on:--

"The Emperor was never wounded but once, was he, sir?"

The old soldier replied with the calm and sovereign tone of a man
who had been there:--

"In the heel.  At Ratisbon.  I never saw him so well dressed as on
that day.  He was as neat as a new sou."

"And you, Mr. Veteran, you must have been often wounded?"

"I?" said the soldier, "ah! not to amount to anything.  At Marengo,
I received two sabre-blows on the back of my neck, a bullet
in the right arm at Austerlitz, another in the left hip at Jena.
At Friedland, a thrust from a bayonet, there,--at the Moskowa seven
or eight lance-thrusts, no matter where, at Lutzen a splinter
of a shell crushed one of my fingers.  Ah! and then at Waterloo,
a ball from a biscaien in the thigh, that's all."

"How fine that is!" exclaimed the hair-dresser, in Pindaric accents,
"to die on the field of battle!  On my word of honor, rather than
die in bed, of an illness, slowly, a bit by bit each day,
with drugs, cataplasms, syringes, medicines, I should prefer
to receive a cannon-ball in my belly!"

"You're not over fastidious," said the soldier.

He had hardly spoken when a fearful crash shook the shop.
The show-window had suddenly been fractured.

The wig-maker turned pale.

"Ah, good God!" he exclaimed, "it's one of them!"

"What?"

"A cannon-ball."

"Here it is," said the soldier.

And he picked up something that was rolling about the floor.
It was a pebble.

The hair-dresser ran to the broken window and beheld Gavroche fleeing
at the full speed, towards the Marche Saint-Jean. As he passed the
hair-dresser's shop Gavroche, who had the two brats still in his mind,
had not been able to resist the impulse to say good day to him,
and had flung a stone through his panes.

"You see!" shrieked the hair-dresser, who from white had turned blue,
"that fellow returns and does mischief for the pure pleasure of it.
What has any one done to that gamin?"



CHAPTER IV

THE CHILD IS AMAZED AT THE OLD MAN


In the meantime, in the Marche Saint-Jean, where the post had
already been disarmed, Gavroche had just "effected a junction"
with a band led by Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Combeferre, and Feuilly.
They were armed after a fashion.  Bahorel and Jean Prouvaire had found
them and swelled the group.  Enjolras had a double-barrelled hunting-gun,
Combeferre the gun of a National Guard bearing the number of his legion,
and in his belt, two pistols which his unbuttoned coat allowed
to be seen, Jean Prouvaire an old cavalry musket, Bahorel a rifle;
Courfeyrac was brandishing an unsheathed sword-cane. Feuilly,
with a naked sword in his hand, marched at their head shouting:
"Long live Poland!"

They reached the Quai Morland.  Cravatless, hatless, breathless,
soaked by the rain, with lightning in their eyes.  Gavroche accosted
them calmly:--

"Where are we going?"

"Come along," said Courfeyrac.

Behind Feuilly marched, or rather bounded, Bahorel, who was
like a fish in water in a riot.  He wore a scarlet waistcoat,
and indulged in the sort of words which break everything.
His waistcoat astounded a passer-by, who cried in bewilderment:--

"Here are the reds!"

"The reds, the reds!" retorted Bahorel.  "A queer kind
of fear, bourgeois.  For my part I don't tremble before a poppy,
the little red hat inspires me with no alarm.  Take my advice,
bourgeois, let's leave fear of the red to horned cattle."

He caught sight of a corner of the wall on which was placarded the
most peaceable sheet of paper in the world, a permission to eat eggs,
a Lenten admonition addressed by the Archbishop of Paris to his "flock."

Bahorel exclaimed:--

"`Flock'; a polite way of saying geese."

And he tore the charge from the nail.  This conquered Gavroche.
From that instant Gavroche set himself to study Bahorel.

"Bahorel," observed Enjolras, "you are wrong.  You should have let
that charge alone, he is not the person with whom we have to deal,
you are wasting your wrath to no purpose.  Take care of your supply.
One does not fire out of the ranks with the soul any more than with
a gun."

"Each one in his own fashion, Enjolras," retorted Bahorel.
"This bishop's prose shocks me; I want to eat eggs without
being permitted.  Your style is the hot and cold; I am amusing
myself.  Besides, I'm not wasting myself, I'm getting a start;
and if I tore down that charge, Hercle! 'twas only to whet my appetite."

This word, Hercle, struck Gavroche.  He sought all occasions
for learning, and that tearer-down of posters possessed his esteem.
He inquired of him:--

"What does Hercle mean?"

Bahorel answered:--

"It means cursed name of a dog, in Latin."

Here Bahorel recognized at a window a pale young man with a black
beard who was watching them as they passed, probably a Friend
of the A B C. He shouted to him:--

"Quick, cartridges, para bellum."

"A fine man! that's true," said Gavroche, who now understood Latin.

A tumultuous retinue accompanied them,--students, artists, young men
affiliated to the Cougourde of Aix, artisans, longshoremen,
armed with clubs and bayonets; some, like Combeferre, with pistols
thrust into their trousers.

An old man, who appeared to be extremely aged, was walking in the band.

He had no arms, and he made great haste, so that he might not be
left behind, although he had a thoughtful air.

Gavroche caught sight of him:--

"Keksekca?" said he to Courfeyrac.

"He's an old duffer."

It was M. Mabeuf.



CHAPTER V

THE OLD MAN


Let us recount what had taken place.

Enjolras and his friends had been on the Boulevard Bourdon,
near the public storehouses, at the moment when the dragoons had made
their charge.  Enjolras, Courfeyrac, and Combeferre were among those
who had taken to the Rue Bassompierre, shouting:  "To the barricades!"
In the Rue Lesdiguieres they had met an old man walking along.
What had attracted their attention was that the goodman was walking
in a zig-zag, as though he were intoxicated.  Moreover, he had his
hat in his hand, although it had been raining all the morning,
and was raining pretty briskly at the very time.  Courfeyrac had
recognized Father Mabeuf.  He knew him through having many times
accompanied Marius as far as his door.  As he was acquainted with the
peaceful and more than timid habits of the old beadle-book-collector,
and was amazed at the sight of him in the midst of that uproar,
a couple of paces from the cavalry charges, almost in the midst
of a fusillade, hatless in the rain, and strolling about among
the bullets, he had accosted him, and the following dialogue
had been exchanged between the rioter of fire and the octogenarian:--

"M. Mabeuf, go to your home."

"Why?"

"There's going to be a row."

"That's well."

"Thrusts with the sword and firing, M. Mabeuf."

"That is well."

"Firing from cannon."

"That is good.  Where are the rest of you going?"

"We are going to fling the government to the earth."

"That is good."

And he had set out to follow them.  From that moment forth he
had not uttered a word.  His step had suddenly become firm;
artisans had offered him their arms; he had refused with a sign
of the head.  He advanced nearly to the front rank of the column,
with the movement of a man who is marching and the countenance
of a man who is sleeping.

"What a fierce old fellow!" muttered the students.  The rumor spread
through the troop that he was a former member of the Convention,--
an old regicide.  The mob had turned in through the Rue de la Verrerie.

Little Gavroche marched in front with that deafening song which made
of him a sort of trumpet.

He sang:
       "Voici la lune qui paratt,
        Quand irons-nous dans la foret?
        Demandait Charlot a Charlotte.

             Tou tou tou
             Pour Chatou.
        Je n'ai qu'un Dieu, qu'un roi, qu'un liard, et qu'une botte.

        "Pour avoir bu de grand matin
         La rosee a meme le thym,
         Deux moineaux etaient en ribotte.

             Zi zi zi
             Pour Passy.
        Je n'ai qu'un Dieu, qu'un roi, qu'un liard, et qu'une botte.

       "Et ces deux pauvres petits loups,
        Comme deux grives estaient souls;
        Une tigre en riait dans sa grotte.

             Don don don
             Pour Meudon.
        Je n'ai qu'un Dieu, qu'un roi, qu'un liard, et qu'une botte.

       "L'un jurait et l'autre sacrait.
        Quand irons nous dans la foret?
        Demandait Charlot a Charlotte.

             Tin tin tin
             Pour Pantin.
         Je n'ai qu'un Dieu, qu'un roi, qu'un liard, et qu'une botte."[46]

They directed their course towards Saint-Merry.


[46] Here is the morn appearing.  When shall we go to the forest,
Charlot asked Charlotte.  Tou, tou, tou, for Chatou, I have but one God,
one King, one half-farthing, and one boot.  And these two poor little
wolves were as tipsy as sparrows from having drunk dew and thyme very
early in the morning.  And these two poor little things were as drunk
as thrushes in a vineyard; a tiger laughed at them in his cave.
The one cursed, the other swore.  When shall we go to the forest?
Charlot asked Charlotte.



CHAPTER VI

RECRUITS


The band augmented every moment.  Near the Rue des Billettes,
a man of lofty stature, whose hair was turning gray, and whose bold
and daring mien was remarked by Courfeyrac, Enjolras, and Combeferre,
but whom none of them knew, joined them.  Gavroche, who was occupied
in singing, whistling, humming, running on ahead and pounding on
the shutters of the shops with the butt of his triggerless pistol;
paid no attention to this man.

It chanced that in the Rue de la Verrerie, they passed in front
of Courfeyrac's door.

"This happens just right," said Courfeyrac, "I have forgotten my purse,
and I have lost my hat."

He quitted the mob and ran up to his quarters at full speed.
He seized an old hat and his purse.

He also seized a large square coffer, of the dimensions
of a large valise, which was concealed under his soiled linen.

As he descended again at a run, the portress hailed him:--

"Monsieur de Courfeyrac!"

"What's your name, portress?"

The portress stood bewildered.

"Why, you know perfectly well, I'm the concierge; my name
is Mother Veuvain."

"Well, if you call me Monsieur de Courfeyrac again, I shall call you
Mother de Veuvain.  Now speak, what's the matter?  What do you want?"

"There is some one who wants to speak with you."

"Who is it?"

"I don't know."

"Where is he?"

"In my lodge."

"The devil!" ejaculated Courfeyrac.

"But the person has been waiting your return for over an hour,"
said the portress.

At the same time, a sort of pale, thin, small, freckled, and
youthful artisan, clad in a tattered blouse and patched trousers
of ribbed velvet, and who had rather the air of a girl accoutred
as a man than of a man, emerged from the lodge and said to Courfeyrac
in a voice which was not the least in the world like a woman's voice:--

"Monsieur Marius, if you please."

"He is not here."

"Will he return this evening?"

"I know nothing about it."

And Courfeyrac added:--

"For my part, I shall not return."

The young man gazed steadily at him and said:--

"Why not?"

"Because."

"Where are you going, then?"

"What business is that of yours?"

"Would you like to have me carry your coffer for you?"

"I am going to the barricades."

"Would you like to have me go with you?"

"If you like!" replied Courfeyrac.  "The street is free, the pavements
belong to every one."

And he made his escape at a run to join his friends.  When he
had rejoined them, he gave the coffer to one of them to carry.
It was only a quarter of an hour after this that he saw the young man,
who had actually followed them.

A mob does not go precisely where it intends.  We have explained
that a gust of wind carries it away.  They overshot Saint-Merry
and found themselves, without precisely knowing how, in the Rue
Saint-Denis.



BOOK TWELFTH.--CORINTHE



CHAPTER I

HISTORY OF CORINTHE FROM ITS FOUNDATION


The Parisians who nowadays on entering on the Rue Rambuteau at the end
near the Halles, notice on their right, opposite the Rue Mondetour,
a basket-maker's shop having for its sign a basket in the form
of Napoleon the Great with this inscription:--

                    NAPOLEON IS MADE
                    WHOLLY OF WILLOW,

have no suspicion of the terrible scenes which this very spot
witnessed hardly thirty years ago.

It was there that lay the Rue de la Chanvrerie, which ancient deeds
spell Chanverrerie, and the celebrated public-house called Corinthe.

The reader will remember all that has been said about the
barricade effected at this point, and eclipsed, by the way,
by the barricade Saint-Merry. It was on this famous barricade
of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, now fallen into profound obscurity,
that we are about to shed a little light.

May we be permitted to recur, for the sake of clearness in the recital,
to the simple means which we have already employed in the case
of Waterloo.  Persons who wish to picture to themselves in a
tolerably exact manner the constitution of the houses which stood
at that epoch near the Pointe Saint-Eustache, at the northeast
angle of the Halles of Paris, where to-day lies the embouchure
of the Rue Rambuteau, have only to imagine an N touching the Rue
Saint-Denis with its summit and the Halles with its base, and whose
two vertical bars should form the Rue de la Grande-Truanderie,
and the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and whose transverse bar should be
formed by the Rue de la Petite-Truanderie. The old Rue Mondetour
cut the three strokes of the N at the most crooked angles.
So that the labyrinthine confusion of these four streets sufficed
to form, on a space three fathoms square, between the Halles and
the Rue Saint-Denis on the one hand, and between the Rue du Cygne
and the Rue des Precheurs on the other, seven islands of houses,
oddly cut up, of varying sizes, placed crosswise and hap-hazard, and
barely separated, like the blocks of stone in a dock, by narrow crannies.

We say narrow crannies, and we can give no more just idea of those dark,
contracted, many-angled alleys, lined with eight-story buildings.
These buildings were so decrepit that, in the Rue de la Chanvrerie
and the Rue de la Petite-Truanderie, the fronts were shored up
with beams running from one house to another.  The street was narrow
and the gutter broad, the pedestrian there walked on a pavement
that was always wet, skirting little stalls resembling cellars,
big posts encircled with iron hoops, excessive heaps of refuse,
and gates armed with enormous, century-old gratings.  The Rue
Rambuteau has devastated all that.

The name of Mondetour paints marvellously well the sinuosities of
that whole set of streets.  A little further on, they are found still
better expressed by the Rue Pirouette, which ran into the Rue Mondetour.

The passer-by who got entangled from the Rue Saint-Denis in the Rue
de la Chanvrerie beheld it gradually close in before him as though
he had entered an elongated funnel.  At the end of this street,
which was very short, he found further passage barred in the direction
of the Halles by a tall row of houses, and he would have thought
himself in a blind alley, had he not perceived on the right and left
two dark cuts through which he could make his escape.  This was
the Rue Mondetour, which on one side ran into the Rue de Precheurs,
and on the other into the Rue du Cygne and the Petite-Truanderie. At
the bottom of this sort of cul-de-sac, at the angle of the cutting
on the right, there was to be seen a house which was not so tall
as the rest, and which formed a sort of cape in the street.
It is in this house, of two stories only, that an illustrious
wine-shop had been merrily installed three hundred years before.
This tavern created a joyous noise in the very spot which old
Theophilus described in the following couplet:--

               La branle le squelette horrible
               D'un pauvre amant qui se pendit.[47]


[47] There swings the horrible skeleton of a poor lover who hung himself.


The situation was good, and tavern-keepers succeeded each other there,
from father to son.

In the time of Mathurin Regnier, this cabaret was called the
Pot-aux-Roses, and as the rebus was then in fashion, it had for its
sign-board, a post (poteau) painted rose-color. In the last century,
the worthy Natoire, one of the fantastic masters nowadays despised
by the stiff school, having got drunk many times in this wine-shop
at the very table where Regnier had drunk his fill, had painted,
by way of gratitude, a bunch of Corinth grapes on the pink post.
The keeper of the cabaret, in his joy, had changed his device and had
caused to be placed in gilt letters beneath the bunch these words:
"At the Bunch of Corinth Grapes" ("Au Raisin de Corinthe"). Hence the name
of Corinthe.  Nothing is more natural to drunken men than ellipses.
The ellipsis is the zig-zag of the phrase.  Corinthe gradually
dethroned the Pot-aux-Roses. The last proprietor of the dynasty,
Father Hucheloup, no longer acquainted even with the tradition,
had the post painted blue.

A room on the ground floor, where the bar was situated, one on the
first floor containing a billiard-table, a wooden spiral staircase
piercing the ceiling, wine on the tables, smoke on the walls,
candles in broad daylight,--this was the style of this cabaret.
A staircase with a trap-door in the lower room led to the cellar.
On the second floor were the lodgings of the Hucheloup family.
They were reached by a staircase which was a ladder rather than
a staircase, and had for their entrance only a private door in the
large room on the first floor.  Under the roof, in two mansard attics,
were the nests for the servants.  The kitchen shared the ground-floor
with the tap-room.

Father Hucheloup had, possibly, been born a chemist, but the fact
is that he was a cook; people did not confine themselves to drinking
alone in his wine-shop, they also ate there.  Hucheloup had invented
a capital thing which could be eaten nowhere but in his house,
stuffed carps, which he called carpes au gras.  These were eaten by
the light of a tallow candle or of a lamp of the time of Louis XVI.,
on tables to which were nailed waxed cloths in lieu of table-cloths.
People came thither from a distance.  Hucheloup, one fine morning,
had seen fit to notify passers-by of this "specialty"; he had dipped
a brush in a pot of black paint, and as he was an orthographer
on his own account, as well as a cook after his own fashion,
he had improvised on his wall this remarkable inscription:--

                    CARPES HO GRAS.


One winter, the rain-storms and the showers had taken a fancy
to obliterate the S which terminated the first word, and the G
which began the third; this is what remained:--

                      CARPE HO RAS.


Time and rain assisting, a humble gastronomical announcement had
become a profound piece of advice.

In this way it came about, that though he knew no French, Father Hucheloup
understood Latin, that he had evoked philosophy from his kitchen,
and that, desirous simply of effacing Lent, he had equalled Horace.
And the striking thing about it was, that that also meant:
"Enter my wine-shop."

Nothing of all this is in existence now.  The Mondetour labyrinth
was disembowelled and widely opened in 1847, and probably no longer
exists at the present moment.  The Rue de la Chanvrerie and Corinthe
have disappeared beneath the pavement of the Rue Rambuteau.

As we have already said, Corinthe was the meeting-place if not the
rallying-point, of Courfeyrac and his friends.  It was Grantaire
who had discovered Corinthe.  He had entered it on account of the
Carpe horas, and had returned thither on account of the Carpes
au gras.  There they drank, there they ate, there they shouted;
they did not pay much, they paid badly, they did not pay at all,
but they were always welcome.  Father Hucheloup was a jovial host.

Hucheloup, that amiable man, as was just said, was a wine-shop-keeper
with a mustache; an amusing variety.  He always had an ill-tempered air,
seemed to wish to intimidate his customers, grumbled at the people
who entered his establishment, and had rather the mien of seeking
a quarrel with them than of serving them with soup.  And yet,
we insist upon the word, people were always welcome there.  This oddity
had attracted customers to his shop, and brought him young men,
who said to each other:  "Come hear Father Hucheloup growl."  He had
been a fencing-master. All of a sudden, he would burst out laughing.
A big voice, a good fellow.  He had a comic foundation under
a tragic exterior, he asked nothing better than to frighten you,
very much like those snuff-boxes which are in the shape of a pistol.
The detonation makes one sneeze.

Mother Hucheloup, his wife, was a bearded and a very homely creature.

About 1830, Father Hucheloup died.  With him disappeared the secret
of stuffed carps.  His inconsolable widow continued to keep the
wine-shop. But the cooking deteriorated, and became execrable;
the wine, which had always been bad, became fearfully bad.
Nevertheless, Courfeyrac and his friends continued to go to Corinthe,--
out of pity, as Bossuet said.

The Widow Hucheloup was breathless and misshapen and given
to rustic recollections.  She deprived them of their flatness
by her pronunciation.  She had a way of her own of saying things,
which spiced her reminiscences of the village and of her springtime.
It had formerly been her delight, so she affirmed, to hear
the loups-de-gorge (rouges-gorges) chanter dans les ogrepines
(aubepines)--to hear the redbreasts sing in the hawthorn-trees.

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

This room, lighted by a single narrow window, and by a lamp that
was always burning, had the air of a garret.  All the four-footed
furniture comported itself as though it had but three legs--
the whitewashed walls had for their only ornament the following
quatrain in honor of Mame Hucheloup:--

          Elle etonne a dix pas, elle epouvente 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 sa bouche.[48]


[48] She astounds at ten paces, she frightens at two, a wart inhabits
her hazardous nose; you tremble every instant lest she should blow it
at you, and lest, some fine day, her nose should tumble into her mouth.


This was scrawled in charcoal on the wall.

Mame Hucheloup, a good likeness, went and came from morning till
night before this quatrain with the most perfect tranquillity.
Two serving-maids, named Matelote and Gibelotte,[49] and who had
never been known by any other names, helped Mame Hucheloup to set
on the tables the jugs of poor wine, and the various broths
which were served to the hungry patrons in earthenware bowls.
Matelote, large, plump, redhaired, and noisy, the favorite
ex-sultana of the defunct Hucheloup, was homelier than any
mythological monster, be it what it may; still, as it becomes the
servant to always keep in the rear of the mistress, she was less
homely than Mame Hucheloup.  Gibelotte, tall, delicate, white with
a lymphatic pallor, with circles round her eyes, and drooping lids,
always languid and weary, afflicted with what may be called
chronic lassitude, the first up in the house and the last in bed,
waited on every one, even the other maid, silently and gently,
smiling through her fatigue with a vague and sleepy smile.


[49] Matelote:  a culinary preparation of various fishes.
Gibelotte:  stewed rabbits.


Before entering the restaurant room, the visitor read on the door
the following line written there in chalk by Courfeyrac:--

          Regale si tu peux et mange si tu l'oses.[50]


[50] Treat if you can, and eat if you dare.



CHAPTER II

PRELIMINARY GAYETIES


Laigle de Meaux, as the reader knows, lived more with Joly
than elsewhere.  He had a lodging, as a bird has one on a branch.
The two friends lived together, ate together, slept together.
They had everything in common, even Musichetta, to some extent.
They were, what the subordinate monks who accompany monks
are called, bini.  On the morning of the 5th of June, they went to
Corinthe to breakfast.  Joly, who was all stuffed up, had a catarrh
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, when they opened the door
of Corinthe.

They ascended to the first floor.

Matelote and Gibelotte received them.

"Oysters, cheese, and ham," said Laigle.

And they seated themselves at a table.

The wine-shop was empty; there was no one there but themselves.

Gibelotte, knowing Joly and Laigle, set a bottle of wine on the table.

While they were busy with their first oysters, a head appeared
at the hatchway of the staircase, and a voice said:--

"I am passing by.  I smell from the street a delicious odor
of Brie cheese.  I enter."  It was Grantaire.

Grantaire took a stool and drew up to the table.

At the sight of Grantaire, Gibelotte placed two bottles of wine
on the table.

That made three.

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

Grantaire replied:--

"All are ingenious, thou alone art ingenuous.  Two bottles never
yet astonished a man."

The others had begun by eating, Grantaire began by drinking.
Half a bottle was rapidly gulped down.

"So you have a hole in your stomach?" began Laigle again.

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

And after having emptied his glass, he added:--

"Ah, by the way, Laigle of the funeral oration, your coat is old."

"I should hope so," retorted Laigle.  "That's why we get on
well together, my coat and I. It has acquired all my folds,
it does not bind me anywhere, it is moulded on my deformities,
it falls in with all my movements, I am only conscious of it
because it keeps me warm.  Old coats are just like old friends."

"That's true," ejaculated Joly, striking into the dialogue,
"an old goat is an old abi" (ami, friend).

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

"Grantaire," demanded Laigle, "have you just come from the boulevard?"

"No."

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

"It's a marvellous sight," said Joly.

"How quiet this street is!" exclaimed Laigle.  "Who would suspect
that Paris was turned upside down?  How plainly it is to be seen
that in former days there were nothing but convents here!
In this neighborhood!  Du Breul and Sauval give a list of them,
and so does the Abbe Lebeuf.  They were all round here, they fairly
swarmed, booted and barefooted, shaven, bearded, gray, black, white,
Franciscans, Minims, Capuchins, Carmelites, Little Augustines,
Great Augustines, old Augustines--there was no end of them."

"Don't let's talk of monks," interrupted Grantaire, "it makes
one want to scratch one's self."

Then he exclaimed:--

"Bouh!  I've just swallowed a bad oyster.  Now hypochondria is taking
possession of me again.  The oysters are spoiled, the servants are ugly.
I hate the human race.  I just passed through the Rue Richelieu,
in front of the big public library.  That pile of oyster-shells which
is called a library is disgusting even to think of.  What paper!
What ink!  What scrawling!  And all that has been written!  What rascal
was it who said that man was a featherless biped?[51] And then, I met
a pretty girl of my acquaintance, who is as beautiful as the spring,
worthy to be called Floreal, and who is delighted, enraptured,
as happy as the angels, because a wretch yesterday, a frightful
banker all spotted with small-pox, deigned to take a fancy to her!
Alas! woman keeps on the watch for a protector as much as for a lover;
cats chase mice as well as birds.  Two months ago that young woman
was virtuous in an attic, she adjusted little brass rings in the
eyelet-holes of corsets, what do you call it?  She sewed, she had
a camp bed, she dwelt beside a pot of flowers, she was contented.
Now here she is a bankeress.  This transformation took place last night.
I met the victim this morning in high spirits.  The hideous point
about it is, that the jade is as pretty to-day as she was yesterday.
Her financier did not show in her face.  Roses have this advantage
or disadvantage over women, that the traces left upon them by
caterpillars are visible.  Ah! there is no morality on earth.
I call to witness the myrtle, the symbol of love, the laurel,
the symbol of air, the olive, that ninny, the symbol of peace,
the apple-tree which came nearest rangling Adam with its pips,
and the fig-tree, the grandfather of petticoats.  As for right, do you
know what right is?  The Gauls covet Clusium, Rome protects Clusium,
and demands what wrong Clusium has done to them.  Brennus answers:
`The wrong that Alba did to you, the wrong that Fidenae did to you,
the wrong that the Eques, the Volsci, and the Sabines have done
to you.  They were your neighbors.  The Clusians are ours.
We understand neighborliness just as you do.  You have stolen Alba,
we shall take Clusium.'  Rome said:  `You shall not take Clusium.'
Brennus took Rome.  Then he cried:  `Vae victis!'  That is what right is.
Ah! what beasts of prey there are in this world!  What eagles!
It makes my flesh creep."


[51] Bipede sans plume:  biped without feathers--pen.


He held out his glass to Joly, who filled it, then he drank and
went on, having hardly been interrupted by this glass of wine,
of which no one, not even himself, had taken any notice:--

"Brennus, who takes Rome, is an eagle; the banker who takes
the grisette is an eagle.  There is no more modesty in the one
case than in the other.  So we believe in nothing.  There is but
one reality:  drink.  Whatever your opinion may be in favor of the
lean cock, like the Canton of Uri, or in favor of the fat cock,
like the Canton of Glaris, it matters little, drink.  You talk to me
of the boulevard, of that procession, et caetera, et caetera.
Come now, is there going to be another revolution?  This poverty
of means on the part of the good God astounds me.  He has to keep
greasing the groove of events every moment.  There is a hitch,
it won't work.  Quick, a revolution!  The good God has his hands
perpetually black with that cart-grease. If I were in his place,
I'd be perfectly simple about it, I would not wind up my mechanism
every minute, I'd lead the human race in a straightforward way,
I'd weave matters mesh by mesh, without breaking the thread, I would
have no provisional arrangements, I would have no extraordinary
repertory.  What the rest of you call progress advances by means
of two motors, men and events.  But, sad to say, from time to time,
the exceptional becomes necessary.  The ordinary troupe suffices
neither for event nor for men:  among men geniuses are required,
among events revolutions.  Great accidents are the law; the order
of things cannot do without them; and, judging from the apparition
of comets, one would be tempted to think that Heaven itself finds
actors needed for its performance.  At the moment when one expects
it the least, God placards a meteor on the wall of the firmament.
Some queer star turns up, underlined by an enormous tail.
And that causes the death of Caesar.  Brutus deals him a blow
with a knife, and God a blow with a comet.  Crac, and behold
an aurora borealis, behold a revolution, behold a great man;
'93 in big letters, Napoleon on guard, the comet of 1811 at the head
of the poster.  Ah! what a beautiful blue theatre all studded
with unexpected flashes!  Boum!  Boum! extraordinary show!
Raise your eyes, boobies.  Everything is in disorder, the star
as well as the drama.  Good God, it is too much and not enough.
These resources, gathered from exception, seem magnificence and poverty.
My friends, Providence has come down to expedients.  What does
a revolution prove?  That God is in a quandry.  He effects a coup
d'etat because he, God, has not been able to make both ends meet.
In fact, this confirms me in my conjectures as to Jehovah's fortune;
and when I see so much distress in heaven and on earth, from the bird
who has not a grain of millet to myself without a hundred thousand
livres of income, when I see human destiny, which is very badly worn,
and even royal destiny, which is threadbare, witness the Prince de
Conde hung, when I see winter, which is nothing but a rent in the
zenith through which the wind blows, when I see so many rags even
in the perfectly new purple of the morning on the crests of hills,
when I see the drops of dew, those mock pearls, when I see the frost,
that paste, when I see humanity ripped apart and events patched up,
and so many spots on the sun and so many holes in the moon, when I
see so much misery everywhere, I suspect that God is not rich.
The appearance exists, it is true, but I feel that he is hard up.
He gives a revolution as a tradesman whose money-box is empty
gives a ball.  God must not be judged from appearances.
Beneath the gilding of heaven I perceive a poverty-stricken universe.
Creation is bankrupt.  That is why I am discontented.  Here it
is the 4th of June, it is almost night; ever since this morning
I have been waiting for daylight to come; it has not come, and I
bet that it won't come all day.  This is the inexactness of an
ill-paid clerk.  Yes, everything is badly arranged, nothing fits
anything else, this old world is all warped, I take my stand on
the opposition, everything goes awry; the universe is a tease.
It's like children, those who want them have none, and those who don't
want them have them.  Total:  I'm vexed.  Besides, Laigle de Meaux,
that bald-head, offends my sight.  It humiliates me to think that I
am of the same age as that baldy.  However, I criticise, but I
do not insult.  The universe is what it is.  I speak here without
evil intent and to ease my conscience.  Receive, Eternal Father,
the assurance of my distinguished consideration.  Ah! by all
the saints of Olympus and by all the gods of paradise, I was not
intended to be a Parisian, that is to say, to rebound forever,
like a shuttlecock between two battledores, from the group of the
loungers to the group of the roysterers.  I was made to be a Turk,
watching oriental houris all day long, executing those exquisite
Egyptian dances, as sensuous as the dream of a chaste man, or a
Beauceron peasant, or a Venetian gentleman surrounded by gentlewoman,
or a petty German prince, furnishing the half of a foot-soldier
to the Germanic confederation, and occupying his leisure with
drying his breeches on his hedge, that is to say, his frontier.
Those are the positions for which I was born!  Yes, I have said
a Turk, and I will not retract.  I do not understand how people can
habitually take Turks in bad part; Mohammed had his good points;
respect for the inventor of seraglios with houris and paradises
with odalisques!  Let us not insult Mohammedanism, the only religion
which is ornamented with a hen-roost! Now, I insist on a drink.
The earth is a great piece of stupidity.  And it appears that they
are going to fight, all those imbeciles, and to break each other's
profiles and to massacre each other in the heart of summer, in the
month of June, when they might go off with a creature on their arm,
to breathe the immense heaps of new-mown hay in the meadows!
Really, people do commit altogether too many follies.  An old broken
lantern which I have just seen at a bric-a-brac merchant's suggests
a reflection to my mind; it is time to enlighten the human race.
Yes, behold me sad again.  That's what comes of swallowing an
oyster and a revolution the wrong way!  I am growing melancholy
once more.  Oh! frightful old world.  People strive, turn each
other out, prostitute themselves, kill each other, and get used
to it!"

And Grantaire, after this fit of eloquence, had a fit of coughing,
which was well earned.

"A propos of revolution," said Joly, "it is decidedly abberent
that Barius is in lub."

"Does any one know with whom?" demanded Laigle.

"Do."

"No?"

"Do!  I tell you."

"Marius' love affairs!" exclaimed Grantaire.  "I can imagine it.
Marius is a fog, and he must have found a vapor.  Marius is of the race
of poets.  He who says poet, says fool, madman, Tymbraeus Apollo.
Marius and his Marie, or his Marion, or his Maria, or his Mariette.
They must make a queer pair of lovers.  I know just what it is like.
Ecstasies in which they forget to kiss.  Pure on earth, but joined
in heaven.  They are souls possessed of senses.  They lie among
the stars."

Grantaire was attacking his second bottle and, possibly, his second
harangue, when a new personage emerged from the square aperture
of the stairs.  It was a boy less than ten years of age, ragged,
very small, yellow, with an odd phiz, a vivacious eye, an enormous
amount of hair drenched with rain, and wearing a contented air.

The child unhesitatingly making his choice among the three,
addressed himself to Laigle de Meaux.

"Are you Monsieur Bossuet?"

"That is my nickname," replied Laigle.  "What do you want with me?"

"This.  A tall blonde fellow on the boulevard said to me:
`Do you know Mother Hucheloup?'  I said:  `Yes, Rue Chanvrerie,
the old man's widow;' he said to me:  `Go there.  There you will find
M. Bossuet.  Tell him from me:  "A B C".' It's a joke that they're
playing on you, isn't it.  He gave me ten sous."

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

This made twenty sous, which Laigle handed to the lad.

"Thank you, sir," said the urchin.

"What is your name?" inquired Laigle.

"Navet, Gavroche's friend."

"Stay with us," said Laigle.

"Breakfast with us," said Grantaire,

The child replied:--

"I can't, I belong in the procession, I'm the one to shout `Down
with Polignac!'"

And executing a prolonged scrape of his foot behind him, which is
the most respectful of all possible salutes, he took his departure.

The child gone, Grantaire took the word:--

"That is the pure-bred gamin.  There are a great many varieties
of the gamin species.  The notary's gamin is called Skip-the-Gutter,
the cook's gamin is called a scullion, the baker's gamin is called
a mitron, the lackey's gamin is called a groom, the marine gamin is
called the cabin-boy, the soldier's gamin is called the drummer-boy,
the painter's gamin is called paint-grinder, the tradesman's gamin
is called an errand-boy, the courtesan gamin is called the minion,
the kingly gamin is called the dauphin, the god gamin is called
the bambino."

In the meantime, Laigle was engaged in reflection; he said half aloud:--

"A B C, that is to say:  the burial of Lamarque."

"The tall blonde," remarked Grantaire, "is Enjolras, who is sending
you a warning."

"Shall we go?" ejaculated Bossuet.

"It's raiding," said Joly.  "I have sworn to go through fire,
but not through water.  I don't wand to ged a gold."

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

"Conclusion:  we remain," said Laigle.  "Well, then, let us drink.
Besides, we might miss the funeral without missing the riot."

"Ah! the riot, I am with you!" cried Joly.

Laigle rubbed his hands.

"Now we're going to touch up the revolution of 1830.  As a matter
of fact, it does hurt the people along the seams."

"I don't think much of your revolution," said Grantaire.  "I don't
execrate this Government.  It is the crown tempered by the cotton
night-cap. It is a sceptre ending in an umbrella.  In fact, I think
that to-day, with the present weather, Louis Philippe might utilize
his royalty in two directions, he might extend the tip of the sceptre
end against the people, and open the umbrella end against heaven."

The room was dark, large clouds had just finished the extinction
of daylight.  There was no one in the wine-shop, or in the street,
every one having gone off "to watch events."

"Is it mid-day or midnight?" cried Bossuet.  "You can't see your
hand before your face.  Gibelotte, fetch a light."

Grantaire was drinking in a melancholy way.

"Enjolras disdains me," he muttered.  "Enjolras said:  `Joly is ill,
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 once arrived at, Bossuet, Joly, and Grantaire did
not stir from the wine-shop. By two o'clock in the afternoon,
the table at which they sat was covered with empty bottles.
Two candles were burning on it, one in a flat copper candlestick
which was perfectly green, the other in the neck of a cracked carafe.
Grantaire had seduced Joly and Bossuet to wine; Bossuet and Joly had
conducted Grantaire back towards cheerfulness.

As for Grantaire, he had got beyond wine, that merely moderate inspirer
of dreams, ever since mid-day. Wine enjoys only a conventional
popularity with serious drinkers.  There is, in fact, in the matter
of inebriety, white magic and black magic; wine is only white magic.
Grantaire was a daring drinker of dreams.  The blackness of a terrible
fit of drunkenness yawning before him, far from arresting him,
attracted him.  He had abandoned the bottle and taken to the beerglass.
The beer-glass is the abyss.  Having neither opium nor hashish
on hand, and being desirous of filling his brain with twilight,
he had had recourse to that fearful mixture of brandy, stout, absinthe,
which produces the most terrible of lethargies.  It is of these
three vapors, beer, brandy, and absinthe, that the lead of the soul
is composed.  They are three grooms; the celestial butterfly is
drowned in them; and there are formed there in a membranous smoke,
vaguely condensed into the wing of the bat, three mute furies,
Nightmare, Night, and Death, which hover about the slumbering Psyche.

Grantaire had not yet reached that lamentable phase; far from it.
He was tremendously gay, and Bossuet and Joly retorted.
They clinked glasses.  Grantaire added to the eccentric accentuation
of words and ideas, a peculiarity of gesture; he rested his left
fist on his knee with dignity, his arm forming a right angle, and,
with cravat untied, seated astride a stool, his full glass in his
right hand, he hurled solemn words at the big maid-servant Matelote:--

"Let the doors of the palace be thrown open!  Let every one be a member
of the French Academy and have the right to embrace Madame Hucheloup.
Let us drink."

And turning to Madame Hucheloup, he added:--

"Woman ancient and consecrated by use, draw near that I may
contemplate thee!"

And Joly exclaimed:--

"Matelote and Gibelotte, dod't gib Grantaire anything more to drink.
He has already devoured, since this bording, in wild prodigality,
two francs and ninety-five centibes."

And Grantaire began again:--

"Who has been unhooking the stars without my permission, and putting
them on the table in the guise of candles?"

Bossuet, though very drunk, preserved his equanimity.

He was seated on the sill of the open window, wetting his back
in the falling rain, and gazing at his two friends.

All at once, he heard a tumult behind him, hurried footsteps,
cries of "To arms!"  He turned round and saw in the Rue Saint-Denis,
at the end of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, Enjolras passing,
gun in hand, and Gavroche with his pistol, Feuilly with his sword,
Courfeyrac with his sword, and Jean Prouvaire with his blunderbuss,
Combeferre with his gun, Bahorel with his gun, and the whole armed
and stormy rabble which was following them.

The Rue de la Chanvrerie was not more than a gunshot long.
Bossuet improvised a speaking-trumpet from his two hands placed
around his mouth, and shouted:--

"Courfeyrac!  Courfeyrac!  Hohee!"

Courfeyrac heard the shout, caught sight of Bossuet, and advanced a few
paces into the Rue de la Chanvrerie, shouting:  "What do you want?"
which crossed a "Where are you going?"

"To make a barricade," replied Courfeyrac.

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

"That's true, Aigle," said Courfeyrac.

And at a signal from Courfeyrac, the mob flung themselves into
the Rue de la Chanvrerie.



CHAPTER III

NIGHT BEGINS TO DESCEND UPON GRANTAIRE


The spot was, in fact, admirably adapted, the entrance to the street
widened out, the other extremity narrowed together into a pocket
without exit.  Corinthe created an obstacle, the Rue Mondetour was
easily barricaded on the right and the left, no attack was possible
except from the Rue Saint-Denis, that is to say, in front, and in
full sight.  Bossuet had the comprehensive glance of a fasting Hannibal.

Terror had seized on the whole street at the irruption of the mob.
There was not a passer-by who did not get out of sight.  In the
space of a flash of lightning, in the rear, to right and left,
shops, stables, area-doors, windows, blinds, attic skylights,
shutters of every description were closed, from the ground floor
to the roof.  A terrified old woman fixed a mattress in front
of her window on two clothes-poles for drying linen, in order to
deaden the effect of musketry.  The wine-shop alone remained open;
and that for a very good reason, that the mob had rushed into
it.--"Ah my God!  Ah my God!" sighed Mame Hucheloup.

Bossuet had gone down to meet Courfeyrac.

Joly, who had placed himself at the window, exclaimed:--

"Courfeyrac, you ought to have brought an umbrella.  You will
gatch gold."

In the meantime, in the space of a few minutes, twenty iron bars
had been wrenched from the grated front of the wine-shop, ten fathoms
of street had been unpaved; Gavroche and Bahorel had seized in
its passage, and overturned, the dray of a lime-dealer named Anceau;
this dray contained three barrels of lime, which they placed beneath
the piles of paving-stones: Enjolras raised the cellar trap,
and all the widow Hucheloup's empty casks were used to flank
the barrels of lime; Feuilly, with his fingers skilled in painting
the delicate sticks of fans, had backed up the barrels and the dray
with two massive heaps of blocks of rough stone.  Blocks which
were improvised like the rest and procured no one knows where.
The beams which served as props were torn from the neighboring
house-fronts and laid on the casks.  When Bossuet and Courfeyrac
turned round, half the street was already barred with a rampart
higher than a man.  There is nothing like the hand of the populace
for building everything that is built by demolishing.

Matelote and Gibelotte had mingled with the workers.  Gibelotte went
and came loaded with rubbish.  Her lassitude helped on the barricade.
She served the barricade as she would have served wine, with a
sleepy air.

An omnibus with two white horses passed the end of the street.

Bossuet strode over the paving-stones, ran to it, stopped the driver,
made the passengers alight, offered his hand to "the ladies,"
dismissed the conductor, and returned, leading the vehicle and the
horses by the bridle.

"Omnibuses," said he, "do not pass the Corinthe.  Non licet omnibus
adire Corinthum."

An instant later, the horses were unharnessed and went off at
their will, through the Rue Mondetour, and the omnibus lying
on its side completed the bar across the street.

Mame Hucheloup, quite upset, had taken refuge in the first story.

Her eyes were vague, and stared without seeing anything, and she
cried in a low tone.  Her terrified shrieks did not dare to emerge
from her throat.

"The end of the world has come," she muttered.

Joly deposited a kiss on Mame Hucheloup's fat, red, wrinkled neck,
and said to Grantaire:  "My dear fellow, I have always regarded
a woman's neck as an infinitely delicate thing."

But Grantaire attained to the highest regions of dithryamb.
Matelote had mounted to the first floor once more, Grantaire seized
her round her waist, and gave vent to long bursts of laughter at
the window.

"Matelote is homely!" he cried:  "Matelote is of a dream of ugliness!
Matelote is a chimaera.  This is the secret of her birth:
a Gothic Pygmalion, who was making gargoyles for cathedrals,
fell in love with one of them, the most horrible, one fine morning.
He besought Love to give it life, and this produced Matelote.
Look at her, citizens!  She has chromate-of-lead-colored hair,
like Titian's mistress, and she is a good girl.  I guarantee that
she will fight well.  Every good girl contains a hero.  As for
Mother Hucheloup, she's an old warrior.  Look at her moustaches!
She inherited them from her husband.  A hussar indeed!  She will
fight too.  These two alone will strike terror to the heart of
the banlieue.  Comrades, we shall overthrow the government as true
as there are fifteen intermediary acids between margaric acid
and formic acid; however, that is a matter of perfect indifference
to me.  Gentlemen, my father always detested me because I could
not understand mathematics.  I understand only love and liberty.
I am Grantaire, the good fellow.  Having never had any money,
I never acquired the habit of it, and the result is that I have
never lacked it; but, if I had been rich, there would have been
no more poor people!  You would have seen!  Oh, if the kind hearts
only had fat purses, how much better things would go!  I picture
myself Jesus Christ with Rothschild's fortune!  How much good he
would do!  Matelote, embrace me!  You are voluptuous and timid!
You have cheeks which invite the kiss of a sister, and lips which claim
the kiss of a lover."

"Hold your tongue, you cask!" said Courfeyrac.

Grantaire retorted:--

"I am the capitoul[52] and the master of the floral games!"


[52] Municipal officer of Toulouse.


Enjolras, who was standing on the crest of the barricade, gun in hand,
raised his beautiful, austere face.  Enjolras, as the reader knows,
had something of the Spartan and of the Puritan in his composition.
He would have perished at Thermopylae with Leonidas, and burned at
Drogheda with Cromwell.

"Grantaire," he shouted, "go get rid of the fumes of your wine
somewhere else than here.  This is the place for enthusiasm,
not for drunkenness.  Don't disgrace the barricade!"

This angry speech produced a singular effect on Grantaire.  One would
have said that he had had a glass of cold water flung in his face.
He seemed to be rendered suddenly sober.

He sat down, put his elbows on a table near the window, looked at
Enjolras with indescribable gentleness, and said to him:--

"Let me sleep here."

"Go and sleep somewhere else," cried Enjolras.

But Grantaire, still keeping his tender and troubled eyes fixed
on him, replied:--

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

Enjolras regarded him with disdainful eyes:--

"Grantaire, you are incapable of believing, of thinking, of willing,
of living, and of dying."

Grantaire replied in a grave tone:--

"You will see."

He stammered a few more unintelligible words, then his head fell
heavily on the table, and, as is the usual effect of the second
period of inebriety, into which Enjolras had roughly and abruptly
thrust him, an instant later he had fallen asleep.



CHAPTER IV

AN ATTEMPT TO CONSOLE THE WIDOW HUCHELOUP


Bahorel, in ecstasies over the barricade, shouted:--

"Here's the street in its low-necked dress!  How well it looks!"

Courfeyrac, as he demolished the wine-shop to some extent,
sought to console the widowed proprietress.

"Mother Hucheloup, weren't you complaining the other day because
you had had a notice served on you for infringing the law,
because Gibelotte shook a counterpane out of your window?"

"Yes, my good Monsieur Courfeyrac.  Ah! good Heavens, are you
going to put that table of mine in your horror, too?  And it was
for the counterpane, and also for a pot of flowers which fell from
the attic window into the street, that the government collected
a fine of a hundred francs.  If that isn't an abomination, what is!"

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

Mother Hucheloup did not appear to understand very clearly
the benefit which she was to derive from these reprisals made
on her account.  She was satisfied after the manner of that
Arab woman, who, having received a box on the ear from her husband,
went to complain to her father, and cried for vengeance, saying:
"Father, you owe my husband affront for affront."  The father asked:
"On which cheek did you receive the blow?"  "On the left cheek."
The father slapped her right cheek and said:  "Now you are satisfied.
Go tell your husband that he boxed my daughter's ears, and that I
have accordingly boxed his wife's."

The rain had ceased.  Recruits had arrived.  Workmen had brought
under their blouses a barrel of powder, a basket containing
bottles of vitriol, two or three carnival torches, and a basket
filled with fire-pots, "left over from the King's festival."
This festival was very recent, having taken place on the 1st of May.
It was said that these munitions came from a grocer in the Faubourg
Saint-Antoine named Pepin.  They smashed the only street lantern
in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, the lantern corresponding to one in the
Rue Saint-Denis, and all the lanterns in the surrounding streets,
de Mondetour, du Cygne, des Precheurs, and de la Grande and de la
Petite-Truanderie.

Enjolras, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac directed everything.  Two barricades
were now in process of construction at once, both of them resting
on the Corinthe house and forming a right angle; the larger shut
off the Rue de la Chanvrerie, the other closed the Rue Mondetour,
on the side of the Rue de Cygne.  This last barricade, which was
very narrow, was constructed only of casks and paving-stones. There
were about fifty workers on it; thirty were armed with guns; for,
on their way, they had effected a wholesale loan from an armorer's shop.

Nothing could be more bizarre and at the same time more motley
than this troop.  One had a round-jacket, a cavalry sabre, and two
holster-pistols, another was in his shirt-sleeves, with a round hat,
and a powder-horn slung at his side, a third wore a plastron
of nine sheets of gray paper and was armed with a saddler's awl.
There was one who was shouting:  "Let us exterminate them to the last
man and die at the point of our bayonet."  This man had no bayonet.
Another spread out over his coat the cross-belt and cartridge-box
of a National Guardsman, the cover of the cartridge-box being
ornamented with this inscription in red worsted:  Public Order.
There were a great many guns bearing the numbers of the legions,
few hats, no cravats, many bare arms, some pikes.  Add to this,
all ages, all sorts of faces, small, pale young men, and bronzed
longshoremen.  All were in haste; and as they helped each other,
they discussed the possible chances.  That they would receive
succor about three o'clock in the morning--that they were sure
of one regiment, that Paris would rise.  Terrible sayings with
which was mingled a sort of cordial joviality.  One would have
pronounced them brothers, but they did not know each other's names.
Great perils have this fine characteristic, that they bring to light
the fraternity of strangers.  A fire had been lighted in the kitchen,
and there they were engaged in moulding into bullets, pewter mugs,
spoons, forks, and all the brass table-ware of the establishment.
In the midst of it all, they drank.  Caps and buckshot were mixed
pell-mell on the tables with glasses of wine.  In the billiard-hall,
Mame Hucheloup, Matelote, and Gibelotte, variously modified by terror,
which had stupefied one, rendered another breathless, and roused
the third, were tearing up old dish-cloths and making lint;
three insurgents were assisting them, three bushy-haired, jolly
blades with beards and moustaches, who plucked away at the linen
with the fingers of seamstresses and who made them tremble.

The man of lofty stature whom Courfeyrac, Combeferre, and Enjolras
had observed at the moment when he joined the mob at the corner
of the Rue des Billettes, was at work on the smaller barricade
and was making himself useful there.  Gavroche was working on
the larger one.  As for the young man who had been waiting for
Courfeyrac at his lodgings, and who had inquired for M. Marius,
he had disappeared at about the time when the omnibus had been overturned.

Gavroche, completely carried away and radiant, had undertaken
to get everything in readiness.  He went, came, mounted, descended,
re-mounted, whistled, and sparkled.  He seemed to be there for
the encouragement of all.  Had he any incentive?  Yes, certainly,
his poverty; had he wings? yes, certainly, his joy.  Gavroche was
a whirlwind.  He was constantly visible, he was incessantly audible.
He filled the air, as he was everywhere at once.  He was a sort
of almost irritating ubiquity; no halt was possible with him.
The enormous barricade felt him on its haunches.  He troubled
the loungers, he excited the idle, he reanimated the weary,
he grew impatient over the thoughtful, he inspired gayety in some,
and breath in others, wrath in others, movement in all, now pricking
a student, now biting an artisan; he alighted, paused, flew off again,
hovered over the tumult, and the effort, sprang from one party
to another, murmuring and humming, and harassed the whole company;
a fly on the immense revolutionary coach.

Perpetual motion was in his little arms and perpetual clamor
in his little lungs.

"Courage! more paving-stones! more casks! more machines!
Where are you now?  A hod of plaster for me to stop this hole with!
Your barricade is very small.  It must be carried up.  Put everything
on it, fling everything there, stick it all in.  Break down the house.
A barricade is Mother Gibou's tea.  Hullo, here's a glass door."

This elicited an exclamation from the workers.

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

"Hercules yourselves!" retorted Gavroche.  "A glass door is an
excellent thing in a barricade.  It does not prevent an attack,
but it prevents the enemy taking it.  So you've never prigged apples
over a wall where there were broken bottles?  A glass door cuts the
corns of the National Guard when they try to mount on the barricade.
Pardi! glass is a treacherous thing.  Well, you haven't a very
wildly lively imagination, comrades."

However, he was furious over his triggerless pistol.  He went
from one to another, demanding:  "A gun, I want a gun!  Why don't
you give me a gun?"

"Give you a gun!" said Combeferre.

"Come now!" said Gavroche, "why not?  I had one in 1830 when we
had a dispute with Charles X."

Enjolras shrugged his shoulders.

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

Gavroche wheeled round haughtily, and answered:--

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

"Gamin!" said Enjolras.

"Greenhorn!" said Gavroche.

A dandy who had lost his way and who lounged past the end of the
street created a diversion!  Gavroche shouted to him:--

"Come with us, young fellow! well now, don't we do anything for this
old country of ours?"

The dandy fled.


CHAPTER V

PREPARATIONS


The journals of the day which said that that nearly impregnable structure,
of the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, as they call it,
reached to the level of the first floor, 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 their will,
either disappear behind it or dominate the barrier and even scale
its crest by means of a quadruple row of paving-stones placed on top
of each other and arranged as steps in the interior.  On the outside,
the front of the barricade, composed of piles of paving-stones
and casks bound together by beams and planks, which were entangled
in the wheels of Anceau's dray and of the overturned omnibus,
had a bristling and inextricable aspect.

An aperture large enough to allow a man to pass through had been
made between the wall of the houses and the extremity of the
barricade which was furthest from the wine-shop, so that an exit
was possible at this point.  The pole of the omnibus was placed
upright and held up with ropes, and a red flag, fastened to this pole,
floated over the barricade.

The little Mondetour barricade, hidden behind the wine-shop building,
was not visible.  The two barricades united formed a veritable redoubt.
Enjolras and Courfeyrac had not thought fit to barricade the other
fragment of the Rue Mondetour which opens through the Rue des
Precheurs an issue into the Halles, wishing, no doubt, to preserve
a possible communication with the outside, and not entertaining
much fear of an attack through the dangerous and difficult street
of the Rue des Precheurs.

With the exception of this issue which was left free, and which
constituted what Folard in his strategical style would have termed
a branch and taking into account, also, the narrow cutting arranged
on the Rue de la Chanvrerie, the interior of the barricade, where the
wine-shop formed a salient angle, presented an irregular square,
closed on all sides.  There existed an interval of twenty paces
between the grand barrier and the lofty houses which formed the
background of the street, so that one might say that the barricade
rested on these houses, all inhabited, but closed from top to bottom.

All this work was performed without any hindrance, in less than
an hour, and without this handful of bold men seeing a single
bear-skin cap or a single bayonet make their appearance.
The very bourgeois who still ventured at this hour of riot to enter
the Rue Saint-Denis cast a glance at the Rue de la Chanvrerie,
caught sight of the barricade, and redoubled their pace.

The two barricades being finished, and the flag run up, a table was
dragged out of the wine-shop; and Courfeyrac mounted on the table.
Enjolras brought the square coffer, and Courfeyrac opened it.
This coffer was filled with cartridges.  When the mob saw the cartridges,
a tremor ran through the bravest, and a momentary silence ensued.

Courfeyrac distributed them with a smile.

Each one received thirty cartridges.  Many had powder, and set
about making others with the bullets which they had run.
As for the barrel of powder, it stood on a table on one side,
near the door, and was held in reserve.

The alarm beat which ran through all Paris, did not cease, but it
had finally come to be nothing more than a monotonous noise to which
they no longer paid any attention.  This noise retreated at times,
and again drew near, with melancholy undulations.

They loaded the guns and carbines, all together, without haste,
with solemn gravity.  Enjolras went and stationed 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 the Rue de la
Petite Truanderie.

Then, the barricades having been built, the posts assigned,
the guns loaded, the sentinels stationed, they waited, alone in
those redoubtable streets through which no one passed any longer,
surrounded by those dumb houses which seemed dead and in which no human
movement palpitated, enveloped in the deepening shades of twilight
which was drawing on, in the midst of that silence through which
something could be felt advancing, and which had about it something
tragic and terrifying, isolated, armed, determined, and tranquil.



CHAPTER VI

WAITING


During those hours of waiting, what did they do?

We must needs tell, since this is a matter of history.

While the men made bullets and the women lint, while a large saucepan
of melted brass and lead, destined to the bullet-mould smoked over
a glowing brazier, while the sentinels watched, weapon in hand,
on the barricade, while Enjolras, whom it was impossible to divert,
kept an eye on the sentinels, Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Jean Prouvaire,
Feuilly, Bossuet, Joly, Bahorel, and some others, sought each other
out and united as in the most peaceful days of their conversations
in their student life, and, in one corner of this wine-shop which
had been converted into a casement, a couple of paces distant
from the redoubt which they had built, with their carbines loaded
and primed resting against the backs of their chairs, these fine
young fellows, so close to a supreme hour, began to recite love verses.

What verses?  These:--

               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 crovaient 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 ton 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 jeune front a ton vieux miroir.

               Et qui done pourrait perde 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 le tasse en japon.

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

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

               Te rappelles-tu nos bonheurs sans nombre,
                 Et tous ces fichus changes en chiffons?
               Oh que de soupirs, de nos coeurs pleins d'ombre,
                 Se sont envoles dans les cieux profonds![53]


[53] Do you remember our sweet life, when we were both so young,
and when we had no other desire in our hearts than to be well
dressed and in love?  When, by adding your age to my age,
we could not count forty years between us, and when, in our humble
and tiny household, everything was spring to us even in winter.
Fair days!  Manuel was proud and wise, Paris sat at sacred banquets,
Foy launched thunderbolts, and your corsage had a pin on which I
pricked myself.  Everything gazed upon you.  A briefless lawyer,
when I took you to the Prado to dine, you were so beautiful
that the roses seemed to me to turn round, and I heard them say:
Is she not beautiful!  How good she smells!  What billowing hair!
Beneath her mantle she hides a wing.  Her charming bonnet is
hardly unfolded.  I wandered with thee, pressing thy supple arm.
The passers-by thought that love bewitched had wedded, in our
happy couple, the gentle month of April to the fair month of May.
We lived concealed, content, with closed doors, devouring love,
that sweet forbidden fruit.  My mouth had not uttered a thing
when thy heart had already responded.  The Sorbonne was the bucolic
spot where I adored thee from eve till morn.  'Tis thus that an
amorous soul applies the chart of the Tender to the Latin country.
O Place Maubert!  O Place Dauphine!  When in the fresh spring-like
hut thou didst draw thy stocking on thy delicate leg, I saw a star
in the depths of the garret.  I have read a great deal of Plato,
but nothing of it remains by me; better than Malebranche and then
Lamennais thou didst demonstrate to me celestial goodness with a flower
which thou gavest to me, I obeyed thee, thou didst submit to me;
oh gilded garret! to lace thee! to behold thee going and coming from
dawn in thy chemise, gazing at thy young brow in thine ancient mirror!
And who, then, would forego the memory of those days of aurora
and the firmament, of flowers, of gauze and of moire, when love
stammers a charming slang?  Our gardens consisted of a pot of tulips;
thou didst mask the window with thy petticoat; I took the earthenware
bowl and I gave thee the Japanese cup.  And those great misfortunes
which made us laugh!  Thy cuff scorched, thy boa lost!  And that
dear portrait of the divine Shakespeare which we sold one evening
that we might sup!  I was a beggar and thou wert charitable.
I kissed thy fresh round arms in haste.  A folio Dante served us
as a table on which to eat merrily a centime's worth of chestnuts.
The first time that, in my joyous den, I snatched a kiss from thy
fiery lip, when thou wentest forth, dishevelled and blushing,
I turned deathly pale and I believed in God.  Dost thou recall our
innumerable joys, and all those fichus changed to rags?  Oh! what
sighs from our hearts full of gloom fluttered forth to the heavenly
depths!


The hour, the spot, these souvenirs of youth recalled, a few stars
which began to twinkle in the sky, the funeral repose of those
deserted streets, the imminence of the inexorable adventure,
which was in preparation, gave a pathetic charm to these verses
murmured in a low tone in the dusk by Jean Prouvaire, who, as we
have said, was a gentle poet.

In the meantime, a lamp had been lighted in the small barricade,
and in the large one, one of those wax torches such as are to be
met with on Shrove-Tuesday in front of vehicles loaded with masks,
on their way to la Courtille.  These torches, as the reader has seen,
came from the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.

The torch had been placed in a sort of cage of paving-stones closed
on three sides to shelter it from the wind, and disposed in such
a fashion that all the light fell on the flag.  The street and the
barricade remained sunk in gloom, and nothing was to be seen except
the red flag formidably illuminated as by an enormous dark-lantern.

This light enhanced the scarlet of the flag, with an indescribable
and terrible purple.



CHAPTER VII

THE MAN RECRUITED IN THE RUE DES BILLETTES


Night was fully come, nothing made its appearance.  All that they heard
was confused noises, and at intervals, fusillades; but these were rare,
badly sustained and distant.  This respite, which was thus prolonged,
was a sign that the Government was taking its time, and collecting
its forces.  These fifty men were waiting for sixty thousand.

Enjolras felt attacked by that impatience which seizes on strong souls
on the threshold of redoubtable events.  He went in search of Gavroche,
who had set to making cartridges in the tap-room, by the dubious
light of two candles placed on the counter by way of precaution,
on account of the powder which was scattered on the tables.
These two candles cast no gleam outside.  The insurgents had,
moreover, taken pains not to have any light in the upper stories.

Gavroche was deeply preoccupied at that moment, but not precisely
with his cartridges.  The man of the Rue des Billettes had just
entered the tap-room and had seated himself at the table which was
the least lighted.  A musket of large model had fallen to his share,
and he held it between his legs.  Gavroche, who had been,
up to that moment, distracted by a hundred "amusing" things,
had not even seen this man.

When he entered, Gavroche followed him mechanically with his eyes,
admiring his gun; then, all at once, when the man was seated,
the street urchin sprang to his feet.  Any one who had spied upon
that man up to that moment, would have seen that he was observing
everything in the barricade and in the band of insurgents,
with singular attention; but, from the moment when he had entered
this room, he had fallen into a sort of brown study, and no longer
seemed to see anything that was going on.  The gamin approached
this pensive personage, and began to step around him on tiptoe,
as one walks in the vicinity of a person whom one is afraid of waking.
At the same time, over his childish countenance which was, at once
so impudent and so serious, so giddy and so profound, so gay and so
heart-breaking, passed all those grimaces of an old man which signify:
Ah bah! impossible!  My sight is bad!  I am dreaming! can this be? no,
it is not! but yes! why, no! etc.  Gavroche balanced on his heels,
clenched both fists in his pockets, moved his neck around like a bird,
expended in a gigantic pout all the sagacity of his lower lip.
He was astounded, uncertain, incredulous, convinced, dazzled.
He had the mien of the chief of the eunuchs in the slave mart,
discovering a Venus among the blowsy females, and the air of an
amateur recognizing a Raphael in a heap of daubs.  His whole being
was at work, the instinct which scents out, and the intelligence
which combines.  It was evident that a great event had happened in
Gavroche's life.

It was at the most intense point of this preoccupation that Enjolras
accosted him.

"You are small," said Enjolras, "you will not be seen.  Go out
of the barricade, slip along close to the houses, skirmish about
a bit in the streets, and come back and tell me what is going on."

Gavroche raised himself on his haunches.

"So the little chaps are good for something! that's very lucky!
I'll go!  In the meanwhile, trust to the little fellows, and distrust
the big ones."  And Gavroche, raising his head and lowering
his voice, added, as he indicated the man of the Rue des Billettes:
"Do you see that big fellow there?"

"Well?"

"He's a police spy."

"Are you sure of it?"

"It isn't two weeks since he pulled me off the cornice of the
Port Royal, where I was taking the air, by my ear."

Enjolras hastily quitted the urchin and murmured a few words
in a very low tone to a longshoreman from the winedocks who
chanced to be at hand.  The man left the room, and returned
almost immediately, accompanied by three others.  The four men,
four porters with broad shoulders, went and placed themselves
without doing anything to attract his attention, behind the table on
which the man of the Rue des Billettes was leaning with his elbows.
They were evidently ready to hurl themselves upon him.

Then Enjolras approached the man and demanded of him:--

"Who are you?"

At this abrupt query, the man started.  He plunged his gaze deep
into Enjolras' clear eyes and appeared to grasp the latter's meaning.
He smiled with a smile than which nothing more disdainful,
more energetic, and more resolute could be seen in the world,
and replied with haughty gravity:--

"I see what it is.  Well, yes!"

"You are a police spy?"

"I am an agent of the authorities."

"And your name?"

"Javert."

Enjolras made a sign to the four men.  In the twinkling of an eye,
before Javert had time to turn round, he was collared, thrown down,
pinioned and searched.

They found on him a little round card pasted between two pieces of glass,
and bearing on one side the arms of France, engraved, and with
this motto:  Supervision and vigilance, and on the other this note:
"JAVERT, inspector of police, aged fifty-two," and the signature
of the Prefect of Police of that day, M. Gisquet.

Besides this, he had his watch and his purse, which contained several
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 unfolded, and on which he read these five lines,
written in the very hand of the Prefect of Police:--

"As soon as his political mission is accomplished, Inspector Javert
will make sure, by special supervision, whether it is true that the
malefactors have instituted intrigues on the right bank of the Seine,
near the Jena bridge."

The search ended, they lifted Javert to his feet, bound his arms
behind his back, and fastened him to that celebrated post in the
middle of the room which had formerly given the wine-shop its name.

Gavroche, who had looked on at the whole of this scene and had
approved of everything with a silent toss of his head, stepped up
to Javert and said to him:--

"It's the mouse who has caught the cat."

All this was so rapidly executed, that it was all over when those
about the wine-shop noticed it.

Javert had not uttered a single cry.

At the sight of Javert bound to the post, Courfeyrac, Bossuet, Joly,
Combeferre, and the men scattered over the two barricades came running up.

Javert, with his back to the post, and so surrounded with ropes
that he could not make a movement, raised his head with the intrepid
serenity of the man who has never lied.

"He is a police spy," said Enjolras.

And turning to Javert:  "You will be shot ten minutes before
the barricade is taken."

Javert replied in his most imperious tone:--

"Why not at once?"

"We are saving our powder."

"Then finish the business with a blow from a knife."

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

Then he called Gavroche:--

"Here you! go about your business!  Do what I told you!"

"I'm going!" cried Gavroche.

And halting as he was on the point of setting out:--

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

The gamin made the military salute and passed gayly through
the opening in the large barricade.



CHAPTER VIII

MANY INTERROGATION POINTS WITH REGARD TO A CERTAIN LE CABUC WHOSE
NAME MAY NOT HAVE BEEN LE CABUC


The tragic picture which we have undertaken would not be complete,
the reader would not see those grand moments of social birth-pangs
in a revolutionary birth, which contain convulsion mingled with effort,
in their exact and real relief, were we to omit, in the sketch
here outlined, an incident full of epic and savage horror which
occurred almost immediately after Gavroche's departure.

Mobs, as the reader knows, are like a snowball, and collect
as they roll along, a throng of tumultuous men.  These men do not
ask each other whence they come.  Among the passers-by who had
joined the rabble led by Enjolras, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac,
there had been a person wearing the jacket of a street porter,
which was very threadbare on the shoulders, who gesticulated
and vociferated, and who had the look of a drunken savage.  This man,
whose name or nickname was Le Cabuc, and who was, moreover, an utter
stranger to those who pretended to know him, was very drunk,
or assumed the appearance of being so, and had seated himself
with several others at a table which they had dragged outside
of the wine-shop. This Cabuc, while making those who vied with him
drunk seemed to be examining with a thoughtful air the large house
at the extremity of the barricade, whose five stories commanded
the whole street and faced the Rue Saint-Denis. All at once he exclaimed:--

"Do you know, comrades, it is from that house yonder that we must fire.
When we are at the windows, the deuce is in it if any one can
advance into the street!"

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

"Let us knock!"

"They will not open."

"Let us break in the door!"

Le Cabuc runs to the door, which had a very massive knocker, and knocks.
The door opens not.  He strikes a second blow.  No one answers.
A third stroke.  The same silence.

"Is there any one here?" shouts Cabuc.

Nothing stirs.

Then he seizes a gun and begins to batter the door with the butt end.

It was an ancient alley door, low, vaulted, narrow, solid, entirely
of oak, lined on the inside with a sheet of iron and iron stays,
a genuine prison postern.  The blows from the butt end of the gun
made the house tremble, but did not shake the door.

Nevertheless, it is probable that the inhabitants were disturbed,
for a tiny, square window was finally seen to open on the third story,
and at this aperture appeared the reverend and terrified face of a
gray-haired old man, who was the porter, and who held a candle.

The man who was knocking paused.

"Gentlemen," said the porter, "what do you want?"

"Open!" said Cabuc.

"That cannot be, gentlemen."

"Open, nevertheless."

"Impossible, gentlemen."

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

"Will you open, yes or no?"

"No, gentlemen."

"Do you say no?"

"I say no, my goo--"

The porter did not finish.  The shot was fired; the ball entered
under his chin and came out at the nape of his neck, after traversing
the jugular vein.

The old man fell back without a sigh.  The candle fell
and was extinguished, and nothing more was to be seen except
a motionless head lying on the sill of the small window,
and a little whitish smoke which floated off towards the roof.

"There!" said Le Cabuc, dropping the butt end of his gun to the pavement.

He had hardly uttered this word, when he felt a hand laid on his
shoulder with the weight of an eagle's talon, and he heard a voice
saying to him:--

"On your knees."

The murderer turned round and saw before him Enjolras' cold, white face.

Enjolras held a pistol in his hand.

He had hastened up at the sound of the discharge.

He had seized Cabuc's collar, blouse, shirt, and suspender with
his left hand.

"On your knees!" he repeated.

And, with an imperious motion, the frail young man of twenty years
bent the thickset and sturdy porter like a reed, and brought him
to his knees in the mire.

Le Cabuc attempted to resist, but he seemed to have been seized
by a superhuman hand.

Enjolras, pale, with bare neck and dishevelled hair, and his woman's face,
had about him at that moment something of the antique Themis.
His dilated nostrils, his downcast eyes, gave to his implacable Greek
profile that expression of wrath and that expression of Chastity which,
as the ancient world viewed the matter, befit Justice.

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

Le Cabuc, vanquished, no longer tried to struggle, and trembled
in every limb.

Enjolras released him and drew out his watch.

"Collect yourself," said he.  "Think or pray.  You have one minute."

"Mercy!" murmured the murderer; then he dropped his head
and stammered a few inarticulate oaths.

Enjolras never took his eyes off of him:  he allowed a minute to pass,
then he replaced his watch in his fob.  That done, he grasped Le
Cabuc by the hair, as the latter coiled himself into a ball at his
knees and shrieked, and placed the muzzle of the pistol to his ear.
Many of those intrepid men, who had so tranquilly entered upon the
most terrible of adventures, turned aside their heads.

An explosion was heard, the assassin fell to the pavement face downwards.

Enjolras straightened himself up, and cast a convinced and severe
glance around him.  Then he spurned the corpse with his foot and said:--

"Throw that outside."

Three men raised the body of the unhappy wretch, which was still
agitated by the last mechanical convulsions of the life that had fled,
and flung it over the little barricade into the Rue Mondetour.

Enjolras was thoughtful.  It is impossible to say what grandiose
shadows slowly spread over his redoubtable serenity.  All at once
he raised his voice.

A silence fell upon them.

"Citizens," said Enjolras, "what that man did is frightful,
what I have done is horrible.  He killed, therefore I killed him.
I had to do it, because insurrection must have its discipline.
Assassination is even more of a crime here than elsewhere; we are under
the eyes of the Revolution, we are the priests of the Republic, we are
the victims of duty, and must not be possible to slander our combat.
I have, therefore, tried that man, and condemned him to death.
As for myself, constrained as I am to do what I have done, and yet
abhorring it, I have judged myself also, and you shall soon see to
what I have condemned myself."

Those who listened to him shuddered.

"We will share thy fate," cried Combeferre.

"So be it," replied Enjolras.  "One word more.  In executing
this man, I have obeyed necessity; but necessity is a monster
of the old world, necessity's name is Fatality.  Now, the law
of progress is, that monsters shall disappear before the angels,
and that Fatality shall vanish before Fraternity.  It is a bad
moment to pronounce the word love.  No matter, I do pronounce it.
And I glorify it.  Love, the future is thine.  Death, I make use
of thee, but I hate thee.  Citizens, in the future there will be
neither darkness nor thunderbolts; neither ferocious ignorance,
nor bloody retaliation.  As there will be no more Satan, there will
be no more Michael.  In the future no one will kill any one else,
the earth will beam with radiance, the human race will love.
The day will come, citizens, when all will be concord, harmony, light,
joy and life; it will come, and it is in order that it may come
that we are about to die."

Enjolras ceased.  His virgin lips closed; and he remained for some time
standing on the spot where he had shed blood, in marble immobility.
His staring eye caused those about him to speak in low tones.

Jean Prouvaire and Combeferre pressed each other's hands silently,
and, leaning against each other in an angle of the barricade,
they watched with an admiration in which there was some compassion,
that grave young man, executioner and priest, composed of light,
like crystal, and also of rock.

Let us say at once that later on, after the action, when the bodies
were taken to the morgue and searched, a police agent's card was found
on Le Cabuc.  The author of this book had in his hands, in 1848,
the special report on this subject made to the Prefect of Police
in 1832.

We will add, that if we are to believe a tradition of the police,
which is strange but probably well founded, Le Cabuc was Claquesous.
The fact is, that dating from the death of Le Cabuc, there was no
longer any question of Claquesous.  Claquesous had nowhere left
any trace of his disappearance; he would seem to have amalgamated
himself with the invisible.  His life had been all shadows, his end
was night.

The whole insurgent group was still under the influence of the
emotion of that tragic case which had been so quickly tried and so
quickly terminated, when Courfeyrac again beheld on the barricade,
the small young man who had inquired of him that morning for Marius.

This lad, who had a bold and reckless air, had come by night to join
the insurgents.



BOOK THIRTEENTH.--MARIUS ENTERS THE SHADOW



CHAPTER I

FROM THE RUE PLUMET TO THE QUARTIER SAINT-DENIS


The voice which had summoned Marius through the twilight to the
barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, had produced on him the
effect of the voice of destiny.  He wished to die; the opportunity
presented itself; he knocked at the door of the tomb, a hand
in the darkness offered him the key.  These melancholy openings
which take place in the gloom before despair, are tempting.
Marius thrust aside the bar which had so often allowed him to pass,
emerged from the garden, and said:  "I will go."

Mad with grief, no longer conscious of anything fixed or solid
in his brain, incapable of accepting anything thenceforth of fate
after those two months passed in the intoxication of youth and love,
overwhelmed at once by all the reveries of despair, he had but one
desire remaining, to make a speedy end of all.

He set out at rapid pace.  He found himself most opportunely armed,
as he had Javert's pistols with him.

The young man of whom he thought that he had caught a glimpse,
had vanished from his sight in the street.

Marius, who had emerged from the Rue Plumet by the boulevard,
traversed the Esplanade and the bridge of the Invalides, the Champs
Elysees, the Place Louis XV., and reached the Rue de Rivoli.
The shops were open there, the gas was burning under the arcades,
women were making their purchases in the stalls, people were eating
ices in the Cafe Laiter, and nibbling small cakes at the English
pastry-cook's shop.  Only a few posting-chaises were setting out
at a gallop from the Hotel des Princes and the Hotel Meurice.

Marius entered the Rue Saint-Honore through the Passage Delorme.
There the shops were closed, the merchants were chatting in front
of their half-open doors, people were walking about, the street
lanterns were lighted, beginning with the first floor, all the
windows were lighted as usual.  There was cavalry on the Place du
Palais-Royal.

Marius followed the Rue Saint-Honore. In proportion as he left
the Palais-Royal behind him, there were fewer lighted windows,
the shops were fast shut, no one was chatting on the thresholds,
the street grew sombre, and, at the same time, the crowd increased
in density.  For the passers-by now amounted to a crowd.  No one could
be seen to speak in this throng, and yet there arose from it a dull,
deep murmur.

Near the fountain of the Arbre-Sec, there were "assemblages",
motionless and gloomy groups which were to those who went and came
as stones in the midst of running water.

At the entrance to the Rue des Prouvaires, the crowd no longer walked.
It formed a resisting, massive, solid, compact, almost impenetrable
block of people who were huddled together, and conversing in
low tones.  There were hardly any black coats or round hats now,
but smock frocks, blouses, caps, and bristling and cadaverous heads.
This multitude undulated confusedly in the nocturnal gloom.
Its whisperings had the hoarse accent of a vibration.  Although not
one of them was walking, a dull trampling was audible in the mire.
Beyond this dense portion of the throng, in the Rue du Roule, in the
Rue des Prouvaires, and in the extension of the Rue Saint-Honore,
there was no longer a single window in which a candle was burning.
Only the solitary and diminishing rows of lanterns could be seen
vanishing into the street in the distance.  The lanterns of that
date resembled large red stars, hanging to ropes, and shed upon
the pavement a shadow which had the form of a huge spider.
These streets were not deserted.  There could be descried piles of guns,
moving bayonets, and troops bivouacking.  No curious observer passed
that limit.  There circulation ceased.  There the rabble ended and
the army began.

Marius willed with the will of a man who hopes no more.  He had
been summoned, he must go.  He found a means to traverse the throng
and to pass the bivouac of the troops, he shunned the patrols,
he avoided the sentinels.  He made a circuit, reached the Rue
de Bethisy, and directed his course towards the Halles.  At the
corner of the Rue des Bourdonnais, there were no longer any lanterns.

After having passed the zone of the crowd, he had passed the limits
of the troops; he found himself in something startling.  There was
no longer a passer-by, no longer a soldier, no longer a light,
there was no one; solitude, silence, night, I know not what chill
which seized hold upon one.  Entering a street was like entering
a cellar.

He continued to advance.

He took a few steps.  Some one passed close to him at a run.  Was it
a man?  Or a woman?  Were there many of them? he could not have told.
It had passed and vanished.

Proceeding from circuit to circuit, he reached a lane which he
judged to be the Rue de la Poterie; near the middle of this street,
he came in contact with an obstacle.  He extended his hands.
It was an overturned wagon; his foot recognized pools
of water, gullies, and paving-stones scattered and piled up.
A barricade had been begun there and abandoned.  He climbed over
the stones and found himself on the other side of the barrier.
He walked very near the street-posts, and guided himself along
the walls of the houses.  A little beyond the barricade, it seemed
to him that he could make out something white in front of him.
He approached, it took on a form.  It was two white horses;
the horses of the omnibus harnessed by Bossuet in the morning,
who had been straying at random all day from street to street,
and had finally halted there, with the weary patience of brutes
who no more understand the actions of men, than man understands the
actions of Providence.

Marius left the horses behind him.  As he was approaching
a street which seemed to him to be the Rue du Contrat-Social,
a shot coming no one knows whence, and traversing the darkness
at random, whistled close by him, and the bullet pierced a brass
shaving-dish suspended above his head over a hairdresser's shop.
This pierced shaving-dish was still to be seen in 1848, in the
Rue du Contrat-Social, at the corner of the pillars of the market.

This shot still betokened life.  From that instant forth he
encountered nothing more.

The whole of this itinerary resembled a descent of black steps.

Nevertheless, Marius pressed forward.



CHAPTER II

AN OWL'S VIEW OF PARIS


A being who could have hovered over Paris that night with the wing
of the bat or the owl would have had beneath his eyes a gloomy spectacle.

All that old quarter of the Halles, which is like a city within
a city, through which run the Rues Saint-Denis and Saint-Martin,
where a thousand lanes cross, and of which the insurgents had made
their redoubt and their stronghold, would have appeared to him like
a dark and enormous cavity hollowed out in the centre of Paris.
There the glance fell into an abyss.  Thanks to the broken lanterns,
thanks to the closed windows, there all radiance, all life,
all sound, all movement ceased.  The invisible police of the
insurrection were on the watch everywhere, and maintained order,
that is to say, night.  The necessary tactics of insurrection
are to drown small numbers in a vast obscurity, to multiply every
combatant by the possibilities which that obscurity contains.
At dusk, every window where a candle was burning received a shot.
The light was extinguished, sometimes the inhabitant was killed.
Hence nothing was stirring.  There was nothing but fright, mourning,
stupor in the houses; and in the streets, a sort of sacred horror.
Not even the long rows of windows and stores, the indentations
of the chimneys, and the roofs, and the vague reflections which
are cast back by the wet and muddy pavements, were visible.
An eye cast upward at that mass of shadows might, perhaps,
have caught a glimpse here and there, at intervals, of indistinct
gleams which brought out broken and eccentric lines, and profiles
of singular buildings, something like the lights which go and come
in ruins; it was at such points that the barricades were situated.
The rest was a lake of obscurity, foggy, heavy, and funereal,
above which, in motionless and melancholy outlines, rose the tower
of Saint-Jacques, the church of Saint-Merry, and two or three more
of those grand edifices of which man makes giants and the night
makes phantoms.

All around this deserted and disquieting labyrinth, in the
quarters where the Parisian circulation had not been annihilated,
and where a few street lanterns still burned, the aerial observer
might have distinguished the metallic gleam of swords and bayonets,
the dull rumble of artillery, and the swarming of silent battalions
whose ranks were swelling from minute to minute; a formidable
girdle which was slowly drawing in and around the insurrection.

The invested quarter was no longer anything more than a monstrous cavern;
everything there appeared to be asleep or motionless, and, as we
have just seen, any street which one might come to offered nothing
but darkness.

A wild darkness, full of traps, full of unseen and formidable shocks,
into which it was alarming to penetrate, and in which it was terrible
to remain, where those who entered shivered before those whom they
awaited, where those who waited shuddered before those who were coming.
Invisible combatants were entrenched at every corner of the street;
snares of the sepulchre concealed in the density of night.
All was over.  No more light was to be hoped for, henceforth,
except the lightning of guns, no further encounter except the abrupt
and rapid apparition of death.  Where?  How?  When?  No one knew,
but it was certain and inevitable.  In this place which had been
marked out for the struggle, the Government and the insurrection,
the National Guard, and popular societies, the bourgeois and
the uprising, groping their way, were about to come into contact.
The necessity was the same for both.  The only possible issue
thenceforth was to emerge thence killed or conquerors.  A situation
so extreme, an obscurity so powerful, that the most timid felt
themselves seized with resolution, and the most daring with terror.

Moreover, on both sides, the fury, the rage, and the determination
were equal.  For the one party, to advance meant death, and no
one dreamed of retreating; for the other, to remain meant death,
and no one dreamed of flight.

It was indispensable that all should be ended on the following day,
that triumph should rest either here or there, that the insurrection
should prove itself a revolution or a skirmish.  The Government understood
this as well as the parties; the most insignificant bourgeois felt it.
Hence a thought of anguish which mingled with the impenetrable
gloom of this quarter where all was at the point of being decided;
hence a redoubled anxiety around that silence whence a catastrophe
was on the point of emerging.  Here only one sound was audible, a sound
as heart-rending as the death rattle, as menacing as a malediction,
the tocsin of Saint-Merry. Nothing could be more blood-curdling than
the clamor of that wild and desperate bell, wailing amid the shadows.

As it often happens, nature seemed to have fallen into accord
with what men were about to do.  Nothing disturbed the harmony
of the whole effect.  The stars had disappeared, heavy clouds
filled the horizon with their melancholy folds.  A black sky
rested on these dead streets, as though an immense winding-sheet
were being outspread over this immense tomb.

While a battle that was still wholly political was in preparation
in the same locality which had already witnessed so many
revolutionary events, while youth, the secret associations,
the schools, in the name of principles, and the middle classes,
in the name of interests, were approaching preparatory to dashing
themselves together, clasping and throwing each other, while each
one hastened and invited the last and decisive hour of the crisis,
far away and quite outside of this fatal quarter, in the most profound
depths of the unfathomable cavities of that wretched old Paris which
disappears under the splendor of happy and opulent Paris, the sombre
voice of the people could be heard giving utterance to a dull roar.

A fearful and sacred voice which is composed of the roar of the brute
and of the word of God, which terrifies the weak and which warns
the wise, which comes both from below like the voice of the lion,
and from on high like the voice of the thunder.



CHAPTER III

THE EXTREME EDGE


Marius had reached the Halles.

There everything was still calmer, more obscure and more motionless
than in the neighboring streets.  One would have said that the
glacial peace of the sepulchre had sprung forth from the earth
and had spread over the heavens.

Nevertheless, a red glow brought out against this black background
the lofty roofs of the houses which barred the Rue de la Chanvrerie
on the Saint-Eustache side.  It was the reflection of the torch which
was burning in the Corinthe barricade.  Marius directed his steps
towards that red light.  It had drawn him to the Marche-aux-Poirees,
and he caught a glimpse of the dark mouth of the Rue des Precheurs.
He entered it.  The insurgents' sentinel, who was guarding
the other end, did not see him.  He felt that he was very close
to that which he had come in search of, and he walked on tiptoe.
In this manner he reached the elbow of that short section of the
Rue Mondetour which was, as the reader will remember, the only
communication which Enjolras had preserved with the outside world.
At the corner of the last house, on his left, he thrust his
head forward, and looked into the fragment of the Rue Mondetour.

A little beyond the angle of the lane and the Rue de la Chanvrerie
which cast a broad curtain of shadow, in which he was himself engulfed,
he perceived some light on the pavement, a bit of the wine-shop,
and beyond, a flickering lamp within a sort of shapeless wall,
and men crouching down with guns on their knees.  All this was ten
fathoms distant from him.  It was the interior of the barricade.

The houses which bordered the lane on the right concealed the rest
of the wine-shop, the large barricade, and the flag from him.

Marius had but a step more to take.

Then the unhappy young man seated himself on a post, folded his arms,
and fell to thinking about his father.

He thought of that heroic Colonel Pontmercy, who had been so proud
a soldier, who had guarded the frontier of France under the Republic,
and had touched the frontier of Asia under Napoleon, who had beheld Genoa,
Alexandria, Milan, Turin, Madrid, Vienna, Dresden, Berlin, Moscow,
who had left on all the victorious battle-fields of Europe drops
of that same blood, which he, Marius, had in his veins, who had
grown gray before his time in discipline and command, who had lived
with his sword-belt buckled, his epaulets falling on his breast,
his cockade blackened with powder, his brow furrowed with his helmet,
in barracks, in camp, in the bivouac, in ambulances, and who,
at the expiration of twenty years, had returned from the great wars
with a scarred cheek, a smiling countenance, tranquil, admirable, pure
as a child, having done everything for France and nothing against her.

He said to himself that his day had also come now, that his hour
had struck, that following his father, he too was about to show himself
brave, intrepid, bold, to run to meet the bullets, to offer his breast
to bayonets, to shed his blood, to seek the enemy, to seek death, that he
was about to wage war in his turn and descend to the field of battle,
and that the field of battle upon which he was to descend was the
street, and that the war in which he was about to engage was civil war!

He beheld civil war laid open like a gulf before him, and into this
he was about to fall.  Then he shuddered.

He thought of his father's sword, which his grandfather had sold
to a second-hand dealer, and which he had so mournfully regretted.
He said to himself that that chaste and valiant sword had done
well to escape from him, and to depart in wrath into the gloom;
that if it had thus fled, it was because it was intelligent and
because it had foreseen the future; that it had had a presentiment
of this rebellion, the war of the gutters, the war of the pavements,
fusillades through cellar-windows, blows given and received in the rear;
it was because, coming from Marengo and Friedland, it did not wish
to go to the Rue de la Chanvrerie; it was because, after what it
had done with the father, it did not wish to do this for the son!
He told himself that if that sword were there, if after taking
possession of it at his father's pillow, he had dared to take it
and carry it off for this combat of darkness between Frenchmen
in the streets, it would assuredly have scorched his hands and
burst out aflame before his eyes, like the sword of the angel!
He told himself that it was fortunate that it was not there and
that it had disappeared, that that was well, that that was just,
that his grandfather had been the true guardian of his father's glory,
and that it was far better that the colonel's sword should be sold
at auction, sold to the old-clothes man, thrown among the old junk,
than that it should, to-day, wound the side of his country.

And then he fell to weeping bitterly.

This was horrible.  But what was he to do?  Live without Cosette he
could not.  Since she was gone, he must needs die.  Had he not given
her his word of honor that he would die?  She had gone knowing that;
this meant that it pleased her that Marius should die.  And then,
it was clear that she no longer loved him, since she had departed thus
without warning, without a word, without a letter, although she knew
his address!  What was the good of living, and why should he live now?
And then, what! should he retreat after going so far? should he
flee from danger after having approached it? should he slip away
after having come and peeped into the barricade? slip away, all in
a tremble, saying:  "After all, I have had enough of it as it is.
I have seen it, that suffices, this is civil war, and I shall take
my leave!"  Should he abandon his friends who were expecting him?
Who were in need of him possibly! who were a mere handful against
an army!  Should he be untrue at once to his love, to country,
to his word?  Should he give to his cowardice the pretext of patriotism?
But this was impossible, and if the phantom of his father was there
in the gloom, and beheld him retreating, he would beat him on the
loins with the flat of his sword, and shout to him:  "March on,
you poltroon!"

Thus a prey to the conflicting movements of his thoughts, he dropped
his head.

All at once he raised it.  A sort of splendid rectification
had just been effected in his mind.  There is a widening of the
sphere of thought which is peculiar to the vicinity of the grave;
it makes one see clearly to be near death.  The vision of the action
into which he felt that he was, perhaps, on the point of entering,
appeared to him no more as lamentable, but as superb.  The war
of the street was suddenly transfigured by some unfathomable
inward working of his soul, before the eye of his thought.
All the tumultuous interrogation points of revery recurred to him
in throngs, but without troubling him.  He left none of them unanswered.

Let us see, why should his father be indignant?  Are there
not cases where insurrection rises to the dignity of duty?
What was there that was degrading for the son of Colonel Pontmercy
in the combat which was about to begin?  It is no longer Montmirail
nor Champaubert; it is something quite different.  The question
is no longer one of sacred territory,--but of a holy idea.
The country wails, that may be, but humanity applauds.  But is it
true that the country does wail?  France bleeds, but liberty smiles;
and in the presence of liberty's smile, France forgets her wound.
And then if we look at things from a still more lofty point of view,
why do we speak of civil war?

Civil war--what does that mean?  Is there a foreign war?
Is not all war between men war between brothers?  War is qualified
only by its object.  There is no such thing as foreign or civil war;
there is only just and unjust war.  Until that day when the grand
human agreement is concluded, war, that at least which is the effort
of the future, which is hastening on against the past, which is
lagging in the rear, may be necessary.  What have we to reproach
that war with?  War does not become a disgrace, the sword does
not become a disgrace, except when it is used for assassinating
the right, progress, reason, civilization, truth.  Then war,
whether foreign or civil, is iniquitous; it is called crime.
Outside the pale of that holy thing, justice, by what right does
one form of man despise another?  By what right should the sword
of Washington disown the pike of Camille Desmoulins?  Leonidas against
the stranger, Timoleon against the tyrant, which is the greater?
the one is the defender, the other the liberator.  Shall we brand
every appeal to arms within a city's limits without taking the object
into a consideration?  Then note the infamy of Brutus, Marcel,
Arnould von Blankenheim, Coligny, Hedgerow war?  War of the streets?
Why not?  That was the war of Ambiorix, of Artevelde, of Marnix,
of Pelagius.  But Ambiorix fought against Rome, Artevelde against France,
Marnix against Spain, Pelagius against the Moors; all against
the foreigner.  Well, the monarchy is a foreigner; oppression is
a stranger; the right divine is a stranger.  Despotism violates
the moral frontier, an invasion violates the geographical frontier.
Driving out the tyrant or driving out the English, in both cases,
regaining possession of one's own territory.  There comes an hour when
protestation no longer suffices; after philosophy, action is required;
live force finishes what the idea has sketched out; Prometheus chained
begins, Arostogeiton ends; the encyclopedia enlightens souls,
the 10th of August electrifies them.  After AEschylus, Thrasybulus;
after Diderot, Danton.  Multitudes have a tendency to accept the master.
Their mass bears witness to apathy.  A crowd is easily led as a whole
to obedience.  Men must be stirred up, pushed on, treated roughly
by the very benefit of their deliverance, their eyes must be wounded
by the true, light must be hurled at them in terrible handfuls.
They must be a little thunderstruck themselves at their own well-being;
this dazzling awakens them.  Hence the necessity of tocsins and wars.
Great combatants must rise, must enlighten nations with audacity,
and shake up that sad humanity which is covered with gloom by the
right divine, Caesarian glory, force, fanaticism, irresponsible power,
and absolute majesty; a rabble stupidly occupied in the contemplation,
in their twilight splendor, of these sombre triumphs of the night.
Down with the tyrant!  Of whom are you speaking?  Do you call
Louis Philippe the tyrant?  No; no more than Louis XVI.
Both of them are what history is in the habit of calling good kings;
but principles are not to be parcelled out, the logic of the true
is rectilinear, the peculiarity of truth is that it lacks complaisance;
no concessions, then; all encroachments on man should be repressed.
There is a divine right in Louis XVI., there is because a Bourbon
in Louis Philippe; both represent in a certain measure the confiscation
of right, and, in order to clear away universal insurrection, they must
be combated; it must be done, France being always the one to begin.
When the master falls in France, he falls everywhere.  In short,
what cause is more just, and consequently, what war is greater, than that
which re-establishes social truth, restores her throne to liberty,
restores the people to the people, restores sovereignty to man,
replaces the purple on the head of France, restores equity and reason
in their plenitude, suppresses every germ of antagonism by restoring
each one to himself, annihilates the obstacle which royalty presents
to the whole immense universal concord, and places the human race
once more on a level with the right?  These wars build up peace.
An enormous fortress of prejudices, privileges, superstitions,
lies, exactions, abuses, violences, iniquities, and darkness
still stands erect in this world, with its towers of hatred.
It must be cast down.  This monstrous mass must be made to crumble.
To conquer at Austerlitz is grand; to take the Bastille is immense.

There is no one who has not noticed it in his own case--the soul,--
and therein lies the marvel of its unity complicated with ubiquity,
has a strange aptitude for reasoning almost coldly in the most
violent extremities, and it often happens that heartbroken passion
and profound despair in the very agony of their blackest monologues,
treat subjects and discuss theses.  Logic is mingled with convulsion,
and the thread of the syllogism floats, without breaking, in the
mournful storm of thought.  This was the situation of Marius' mind.

As he meditated thus, dejected but resolute, hesitating in
every direction, and, in short, shuddering at what he was about
to do, his glance strayed to the interior of the barricade.
The insurgents were here conversing in a low voice, without moving,
and there was perceptible that quasi-silence which marks the last
stage of expectation.  Overhead, at the small window in the third
story Marius descried a sort of spectator who appeared to him to
be singularly attentive.  This was the porter who had been killed
by Le Cabuc.  Below, by the lights of the torch, which was thrust
between the paving-stones, this head could be vaguely distinguished.
Nothing could be stranger, in that sombre and uncertain gleam,
than that livid, motionless, astonished face, with its bristling hair,
its eyes fixed and staring, and its yawning mouth, bent over
the street in an attitude of curiosity.  One would have said that
the man who was dead was surveying those who were about to die.
A long trail of blood which had flowed from that head, descended in
reddish threads from the window to the height of the first floor,
where it stopped.



BOOK FOURTEENTH.--THE GRANDEURS OF DESPAIR



CHAPTER I

THE FLAG:  ACT FIRST


As yet, nothing had come.  Ten o'clock had sounded from Saint-Merry.
Enjolras and Combeferre had gone and seated themselves,
carbines in hand, near the outlet of the grand barricade.
They no longer addressed each other, they listened,
seeking to catch even the faintest and most distant sound of marching.

Suddenly, in the midst of the dismal calm, a clear, gay, young voice,
which seemed to come from the Rue Saint-Denis, rose and began to
sing distinctly, to the old popular air of "By the Light of the Moon,"
this bit of poetry, terminated by a cry like the crow of a cock:--

               Mon nez est en larmes,
               Mon ami Bugeaud,
               Prete moi tes gendarmes
               Pour leur dire un mot.

                  En capote bleue,
                  La poule au shako,
                  Voici la banlieue!
                  Co-cocorico![54]


[54] My nose is in tears, my friend Bugeaud, lend me thy gendarmes
that I may say a word to them.  With a blue capote and a chicken
in his shako, here's the banlieue, co-cocorico.


They pressed each other's hands.

"That is Gavroche," said Enjolras.

"He is warning us," said Combeferre.

A hasty rush troubled the deserted street; they beheld a being
more agile than a clown climb over the omnibus, and Gavroche
bounded into the barricade, all breathless, saying:--

"My gun!  Here they are!"

An electric quiver shot through the whole barricade, and the sound
of hands seeking their guns became audible.

"Would you like my carbine?" said Enjolras to the lad.

"I want a big gun," replied Gavroche.

And he seized Javert's gun.

Two sentinels had fallen back, and had come in almost at the
same moment as Gavroche.  They were the sentinels from the end
of the street, and the vidette of the Rue de la Petite-Truanderie.
The vidette of the Lane des Precheurs had remained at his post,
which indicated that nothing was approaching from the direction
of the bridges and Halles.

The Rue de la Chanvrerie, of which a few paving-stones alone were
dimly visible in the reflection of the light projected on the flag,
offered to the insurgents the aspect of a vast black door vaguely
opened into a smoke.

Each man had taken up his position for the conflict.

Forty-three insurgents, among whom were Enjolras, Combeferre,
Courfeyrac, Bossuet, Joly, Bahorel, and Gavroche, were kneeling inside
the large barricade, with their heads on a level with the crest
of the barrier, the barrels of their guns and carbines aimed on the
stones as though at loop-holes, attentive, mute, ready to fire.  Six,
commanded by Feuilly, had installed themselves, with their guns levelled
at their shoulders, at the windows of the two stories of Corinthe.

Several minutes passed thus, then a sound of footsteps,
measured, heavy, and numerous, became distinctly audible in the
direction of Saint-Leu. This sound, faint at first, then precise,
then heavy and sonorous, approached slowly, without halt,
without intermission, with a tranquil and terrible continuity.
Nothing was to be heard but this.  It was that combined silence
and sound, of the statue of the commander, but this stony step had
something indescribably enormous and multiple about it which awakened
the idea of a throng, and, at the same time, the idea of a spectre.
One thought one heard the terrible statue Legion marching onward.
This tread drew near; it drew still nearer, and stopped.  It seemed
as though the breathing of many men could be heard at the end
of the street.  Nothing was to be seen, however, but at the bottom
of that dense obscurity there could be distinguished a multitude
of metallic threads, as fine as needles and almost imperceptible,
which moved about like those indescribable phosphoric networks which one
sees beneath one's closed eyelids, in the first mists of slumber at
the moment when one is dropping off to sleep.  These were bayonets and
gun-barrels confusedly illuminated by the distant reflection of the torch.

A pause ensued, as though both sides were waiting.  All at once,
from the depths of this darkness, a voice, which was all the
more sinister, since no one was visible, and which appeared
to be the gloom itself speaking, shouted:--

"Who goes there?"

At the same time, the click of guns, as they were lowered into position,
was heard.

Enjolras replied in a haughty and vibrating tone:--

"The French Revolution!"

"Fire!" shouted the voice.

A flash empurpled all the facades in the street as though the door
of a furnace had been flung open, and hastily closed again.

A fearful detonation burst forth on the barricade.  The red flag fell.
The discharge had been so violent and so dense that it had cut
the staff, that is to say, the very tip of the omnibus pole.

Bullets which had rebounded from the cornices of the houses
penetrated the barricade and wounded several men.

The impression produced by this first discharge was freezing.
The attack had been rough, and of a nature to inspire reflection
in the boldest.  It was evident that they had to deal with an entire
regiment at the very least.

"Comrades!" shouted Courfeyrac, "let us not waste our powder.
Let us wait until they are in the street before replying."

"And, above all," said Enjolras, "let us raise the flag again."

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

Outside, the clatter of the ramrods in the guns could be heard;
the troops were re-loading their arms.

Enjolras went on:--

"Who is there here with a bold heart?  Who will plant the flag
on the barricade again?"

Not a man responded.  To mount on the barricade at the very
moment when, without any doubt, it was again the object of
their aim, was simply death.  The bravest hesitated to pronounce
his own condemnation.  Enjolras himself felt a thrill.  He repeated:--

"Does no one volunteer?"



CHAPTER II

THE FLAG:  ACT SECOND


Since they had arrived at Corinthe, and had begun the construction
of the barricade, no attention had been paid to Father Mabeuf.
M. Mabeuf had not quitted the mob, however; he had entered
the ground-floor of the wine-shop and had seated himself behind
the counter.  There he had, so to speak, retreated into himself.
He no longer seemed to look or to think.  Courfeyrac and others
had accosted him two or three times, warning him of his peril,
beseeching him to withdraw, but he did not hear them.  When they
were not speaking to him, his mouth moved as though he were replying
to some one, and as soon as he was addressed, his lips became
motionless and his eyes no longer had the appearance of being alive.

Several hours before the barricade was attacked, he had assumed an
attitude which he did not afterwards abandon, with both fists planted
on his knees and his head thrust forward as though he were gazing over
a precipice.  Nothing had been able to move him from this attitude;
it did not seem as though his mind were in the barricade.
When each had gone to take up his position for the combat,
there remained in the tap-room where Javert was bound to the post,
only a single insurgent with a naked sword, watching over Javert,
and himself, Mabeuf.  At the moment of the attack, at the detonation,
the physical shock had reached him and had, as it were, awakened him;
he started up abruptly, crossed the room, and at the instant when
Enjolras repeated his appeal:  "Does no one volunteer?" the old man
was seen to make his appearance on the threshold of the wine-shop.
His presence produced a sort of commotion in the different groups.
A shout went up:--

"It is the voter!  It is the member of the Convention!
It is the representative of the people!"

It is probable that he did not hear them.

He strode straight up to Enjolras, the insurgents withdrawing
before him with a religious fear; he tore the flag from Enjolras,
who recoiled in amazement and then, since no one dared to stop or to
assist him, this old man of eighty, with shaking head but firm foot,
began slowly to ascend the staircase of paving-stones arranged in
the barricade.  This was so melancholy and so grand that all around
him cried:  "Off with your hats!"  At every step that he mounted,
it was a frightful spectacle; his white locks, his decrepit face,
his lofty, bald, and wrinkled brow, his amazed and open mouth,
his aged arm upholding the red banner, rose through the gloom and
were enlarged in the bloody light of the torch, and the bystanders
thought that they beheld the spectre of '93 emerging from the earth,
with the flag of terror in his hand.

When he had reached the last step, when this trembling and
terrible phantom, erect on that pile of rubbish in the presence
of twelve hundred invisible guns, drew himself up in the face
of death and as though he were more powerful than it, the whole
barricade assumed amid the darkness, a supernatural and colossal form.

There ensued 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 shouted:--

"Long live the Revolution!  Long live the Republic!  Fraternity!
Equality! and Death!"

Those in the barricade heard a low and rapid whisper, like the
murmur of a priest who is despatching a prayer in haste.
It was probably the commissary of police who was making the legal
summons at the other end of the street.

Then the same piercing voice which had shouted:  "Who goes there?"
shouted:--

"Retire!"

M. Mabeuf, pale, haggard, his eyes lighted up with the mournful
flame of aberration, raised the flag above his head and repeated:--

"Long live the Republic!"

"Fire!" said the voice.

A second discharge, similar to the first, rained down upon the barricade.

The old man fell on his knees, then rose again, dropped the flag
and fell backwards on the pavement, like a log, at full length,
with outstretched arms.

Rivulets of blood flowed beneath him.  His aged head, pale and sad,
seemed to be gazing at the sky.

One of those emotions which are superior to man, which make
him forget even to defend himself, seized upon the insurgents,
and they approached the body with respectful awe.

"What men these regicides were!" said Enjolras.

Courfeyrac bent down to Enjolras' ear:--

"This is for yourself alone, I do not wish to dampen the enthusiasm.
But this man was anything rather than a regicide.  I knew him.
His name was Father Mabeuf.  I do not know what was the matter
with him to-day. But he was a brave blockhead.  Just look at
his head."

"The head of a blockhead and the heart of a Brutus," replied Enjolras.

Then he raised his voice:--

"Citizens!  This is the example which the old give to the young.
We hesitated, he came!  We were drawing back, he advanced!  This is
what those who are trembling with age teach to those who tremble
with fear!  This aged man is august in the eyes of his country.
He has had a long life and a magnificent death!  Now, let us place
the body under cover, that each one of us may defend this old man
dead as he would his father living, and may his presence in our midst
render the barricade impregnable!"

A murmur of gloomy and energetic assent followed these words.

Enjolras bent down, raised the old man's head, and fierce as he was,
he kissed him on the brow, then, throwing wide his arms, and handling
this dead man with tender precaution, as though he feared to hurt it,
he removed his coat, showed the bloody holes in it to all,
and said:--

"This is our flag now."



CHAPTER III

GAVROCHE WOULD HAVE DONE BETTER TO ACCEPT ENJOLRAS' CARBINE


They threw a long black shawl of Widow Hucheloup's over Father Mabeuf.
Six men made a litter of their guns; on this they laid the body,
and bore it, with bared heads, with solemn slowness, to the large
table in the tap-room.

These men, wholly absorbed in the grave and sacred task in which
they were engaged, thought no more of the perilous situation
in which they stood.

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

"It will be your turn presently!"

During all this time, Little Gavroche, who alone had not quitted
his post, but had remained on guard, thought he espied some men
stealthily approaching the barricade.  All at once he shouted:--

"Look out!"

Courfeyrac, Enjolras, Jean Prouvaire, Combeferre, Joly, Bahorel, Bossuet,
and all the rest ran tumultuously from the wine-shop. It was almost
too late.  They saw a glistening density of bayonets undulating
above the barricade.  Municipal guards of lofty stature were making
their way in, some striding over the omnibus, others through the cut,
thrusting before them the urchin, who retreated, but did not flee.

The moment was critical.  It was that first, redoubtable moment
of inundation, when the stream rises to the level of the levee
and when the water begins to filter through the fissures of dike.
A second more and the barricade would have been taken.

Bahorel dashed upon the first municipal guard who was entering,
and killed him on the spot with a blow from his gun; the second
killed Bahorel with a blow from his bayonet.  Another had already
overthrown Courfeyrac, who was shouting:  "Follow me!"  The largest
of all, a sort of colossus, marched on Gavroche with his bayonet fixed.
The urchin took in his arms Javert's immense gun, levelled it
resolutely at the giant, and fired.  No discharge followed.
Javert's gun was not loaded.  The municipal guard burst into a laugh
and raised his bayonet at the child.

Before the bayonet had touched Gavroche, the gun slipped from
the soldier's grasp, a bullet had struck the municipal guardsman
in the centre of the forehead, and he fell over on his back.
A second bullet struck the other guard, who had assaulted Courfeyrac
in the breast, and laid him low on the pavement.

This was the work of Marius, who had just entered the barricade.



CHAPTER IV

THE BARREL OF POWDER


Marius, still concealed in the turn of the Rue Mondetour, had witnessed,
shuddering and irresolute, the first phase of the combat.  But he
had not long been able to resist that mysterious and sovereign vertigo
which may be designated as the call of the abyss.  In the presence
of the imminence of the peril, in the presence of the death of
M. Mabeuf, that melancholy enigma, in the presence of Bahorel killed,
and Courfeyrac shouting:  "Follow me!" of that child threatened,
of his friends to succor or to avenge, all hesitation had vanished,
and he had flung himself into the conflict, his two pistols in hand.
With his first shot he had saved Gavroche, and with the second
delivered Courfeyrac.

Amid the sound of the shots, amid the cries of the assaulted guards,
the assailants had climbed the entrenchment, on whose summit
Municipal Guards, soldiers of the line and National Guards from
the suburbs could now be seen, gun in hand, rearing themselves
to more than half the height of their bodies.

They already covered more than two-thirds of the barrier, but they
did not leap into the enclosure, as though wavering in the fear of
some trap.  They gazed into the dark barricade as one would gaze into
a lion's den.  The light of the torch illuminated only their bayonets,
their bear-skin caps, and the upper part of their uneasy and angry faces.

Marius had no longer any weapons; he had flung away his discharged
pistols after firing them; but he had caught sight of the barrel
of powder in the tap-room, near the door.

As he turned half round, gazing in that direction, a soldier took
aim at him.  At the moment when the soldier was sighting Marius,
a hand was laid on the muzzle of the gun and obstructed it.
This was done by some one who had darted forward,--the young workman
in velvet trousers.  The shot sped, traversed the hand and possibly,
also, the workman, since he fell, but the ball did not strike Marius.
All this, which was rather to be apprehended than seen through
the smoke, Marius, who was entering the tap-room, hardly noticed.
Still, he had, in a confused way, perceived that gun-barrel aimed at him,
and the hand which had blocked it, and he had heard the discharge.
But in moments like this, the things which one sees vacillate and
are precipitated, and one pauses for nothing.  One feels obscurely
impelled towards more darkness still, and all is cloud.

The insurgents, surprised but not terrified, had rallied.
Enjolras had shouted:  "Wait!  Don't fire at random!"
In the first confusion, they might, in fact, wound each other.
The majority of them had ascended to the window on the first story
and to the attic windows, whence they commanded the assailants.

The most determined, with Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Jean Prouvaire,
and Combeferre, had proudly placed themselves with their backs
against the houses at the rear, unsheltered and facing the ranks
of soldiers and guards who crowned the barricade.

All this was accomplished without haste, with that strange and
threatening gravity which precedes engagements.  They took aim,
point blank, on both sides:  they were so close that they could
talk together without raising their voices.

When they had reached this point where the spark is on the brink
of darting forth, an officer in a gorget extended his sword and said:--

"Lay down your arms!"

"Fire!" replied Enjolras.

The two discharges took place at the same moment, and all disappeared
in smoke.

An acrid and stifling smoke in which dying and wounded lay with weak, dull
groans.  When the smoke cleared away, the combatants on both sides could
be seen to be thinned out, but still in the same positions, reloading
in silence.  All at once, a thundering voice was heard, shouting:--

"Be off with you, or I'll blow up the barricade!"

All turned in the direction whence the voice proceeded.

Marius had entered the tap-room, and had seized the barrel of powder,
then he had taken advantage of the smoke, and the sort of obscure mist
which filled the entrenched enclosure, to glide along the barricade
as far as that cage of paving-stones where the torch was fixed.
To tear it from the torch, to replace it by the barrel of powder,
to thrust the pile of stones under the barrel, which was instantly
staved in, with a sort of horrible obedience,--all this had cost
Marius but the time necessary to stoop and rise again; and now all,
National Guards, Municipal Guards, officers, soldiers, huddled at
the other extremity of the barricade, gazed stupidly at him,
as he stood with his foot on the stones, his torch in his hand,
his haughty face illuminated by a fatal resolution, drooping the
flame of the torch towards that redoubtable pile where they could
make out the broken barrel of powder, and giving vent to that
startling cry:--

"Be off with you, or I'll blow up the barricade!"

Marius on that 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 with it!"

Marius retorted:  "And myself also."

And he dropped the torch towards the barrel of powder.

But there was no longer any one on the barrier.  The assailants,
abandoning their dead and wounded, flowed back pell-mell and in
disorder towards the extremity of the street, and there were again
lost in the night.  It was a headlong flight.

The barricade was free.



CHAPTER V

END OF THE VERSES OF JEAN PROUVAIRE


All flocked around Marius.  Courfeyrac flung himself on his neck.

"Here you are!"

"What luck!" said Combeferre.

"You came in opportunely!" ejaculated Bossuet.

"If it had not been for you, I should have been dead!"
began Courfeyrac again.

"If it had not been for you, I should have been gobbled up!"
added Gavroche.

Marius asked:--

"Where is the chief?"

"You are he!" said Enjolras.

Marius had had a furnace in his brain all day long; now it was
a whirlwind.  This whirlwind which was within him, produced on
him the effect of being outside of him and of bearing him away.
It seemed to him that he was already at an immense distance from life.
His two luminous months of joy and love, ending abruptly at that frightful
precipice, Cosette lost to him, that barricade, M. Mabeuf getting
himself killed for the Republic, himself the leader of the insurgents,--
all these things appeared to him like a tremendous nightmare.
He was obliged to make a mental effort to recall the fact that all
that surrounded him was real.  Marius had already seen too much of
life not to know that nothing is more imminent than the impossible,
and that what it is always necessary to foresee is the unforeseen.  He
had looked on at his own drama as a piece which one does not understand.

In the mists which enveloped his thoughts, he did not recognize
Javert, who, bound to his post, had not so much as moved his head
during the whole of the attack on the barricade, and who had
gazed on the revolt seething around him with the resignation
of a martyr and the majesty of a judge.  Marius had not even seen him.

In the meanwhile, the assailants did not stir, they could be heard
marching and swarming through at the end of the street but they
did not venture into it, either because they were awaiting orders
or because they were awaiting reinforcements before hurling
themselves afresh on this impregnable redoubt.  The insurgents
had posted sentinels, and some of them, who were medical students,
set about caring for the wounded.

They had thrown the tables out of the wine-shop, with the exception
of the two tables reserved for lint and cartridges, and of the one
on which lay Father Mabeuf; they had added them to the barricade,
and had replaced them in the tap-room with mattresses from the bed
of the widow Hucheloup and her servants.  On these mattresses
they had laid the wounded.  As for the three poor creatures
who inhabited Corinthe, no one knew what had become of them.
They were finally found, however, hidden in the cellar.

A poignant emotion clouded the joy of the disencumbered barricade.

The roll was called.  One of the insurgents was missing.  And who was it?
One of the dearest.  One of the most valiant.  Jean Prouvaire.
He was sought among the wounded, he was not there.  He was sought
among the dead, he was not there.  He was evidently a prisoner.
Combeferre said to Enjolras:--

"They have our friend; we have their agent.  Are you set
on the death of that spy?"

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

This took place in the tap-room near Javert's post.

"Well," resumed Combeferre, "I am going to fasten my handkerchief
to my cane, and go as a flag of truce, to offer to exchange our man
for theirs."

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

At the end of the street there was a significant clash of arms.

They heard a manly voice shout:--

"Vive la France!  Long live France!  Long live the future!"

They recognized the voice of Prouvaire.

A flash passed, a report rang out.

Silence fell again.

"They have killed him," exclaimed Combeferre.

Enjolras glanced at Javert, and said to him:--

"Your friends have just shot you."



CHAPTER VI

THE AGONY OF DEATH AFTER THE AGONY OF LIFE


A peculiarity of this species of war is, that the attack of the
barricades is almost always made from the front, and that the assailants
generally abstain from turning the position, either because they
fear ambushes, or because they are afraid of getting entangled in the
tortuous streets.  The insurgents' whole attention had been directed,
therefore, to the grand barricade, which was, evidently, the spot
always menaced, and there the struggle would infallibly recommence.
But Marius thought of the little barricade, and went thither.
It was deserted and guarded only by the fire-pot which trembled between
the paving-stones. Moreover, the Mondetour alley, and the branches of
the Rue de la Petite Truanderie and the Rue du Cygne were profoundly calm.

As Marius was withdrawing, after concluding his inspection,
he heard his name pronounced feebly in the darkness.

"Monsieur Marius!"

He started, for he recognized the voice which had called to him
two hours before through the gate in the Rue Plumet.

Only, the voice now seemed to be nothing more than a breath.

He looked about him, but saw no one.

Marius thought he had been mistaken, that it was an illusion added
by his mind to the extraordinary realities which were clashing
around him.  He advanced a step, in order to quit the distant
recess where the barricade lay.

"Monsieur Marius!" repeated the voice.

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

"At your feet," said the voice.

He bent down, and saw in the darkness a form which was dragging
itself towards him.

It was crawling along the pavement.  It was this that had spoken
to him.

The fire-pot allowed him to distinguish a blouse, torn trousers
of coarse velvet, bare feet, and something which resembled a pool
of blood.  Marius indistinctly made out a pale head which was lifted
towards him and which was saying to him:--

"You do not recognize me?"

"No."

"Eponine."

Marius bent hastily down.  It was, in fact, that unhappy child.
She was dressed in men's clothes.

"How come you here?  What are you doing here?"

"I am dying," said she.

There are words and incidents which arouse dejected beings.
Marius cried out with a start:--

"You are wounded!  Wait, I will carry you into the room!  They will
attend to you there.  Is it serious?  How must I take hold of you
in order not to hurt you?  Where do you suffer?  Help!  My God!
But why did you come hither?"

And he tried to pass his arm under her, in order to raise her.

She uttered a feeble cry.

"Have I hurt you?" asked Marius.

"A little."

"But I only touched your hand."

She raised her hand to Marius, and in the middle of that hand
Marius saw a black hole.

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

"It is pierced."

"Pierced?"

"Yes."

"What with?"

"A bullet."

"How?"

"Did you see a gun aimed at you?"

"Yes, and a hand stopping it."

"It was mine."

Marius was seized with a shudder.

"What madness!  Poor child!  But so much the better, if that is all,
it is nothing, let me carry you to a bed.  They will dress your wound;
one does not die of a pierced hand."

She murmured:--

"The bullet traversed my hand, but it came out through my back.
It is useless to remove me from this spot.  I will tell you how you
can care for me better than any surgeon.  Sit down near me on
this stone."

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

"Oh!  How good this is!  How comfortable this is!  There; I no
longer suffer."

She remained silent for a moment, then she turned her face with
an effort, and looked at Marius.

"Do you know what, Monsieur Marius?  It puzzled me because you
entered that garden; it was stupid, because it was I who showed you
that house; and then, I ought to have said to myself that a young
man like you--"

She paused, and overstepping the sombre transitions that undoubtedly
existed in her mind, she resumed with a heartrending smile:--

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

She continued:--

"You see, you are lost!  Now, no one can get out of the barricade.
It was I who led you here, by the way!  You are going to die,
I count upon that.  And yet, when I saw them taking aim at you,
I put my hand on the muzzle of the gun.  How queer it is!  But it
was because I wanted to die before you.  When I received that bullet,
I dragged myself here, no one saw me, no one picked me up,
I was waiting for you, I said:  `So he is not coming!'  Oh, if you
only knew.  I bit my blouse, I suffered so!  Now I am well.
Do you remember the day I entered your chamber and when I looked
at myself in your mirror, and the day when I came to you on the
boulevard near the washerwomen?  How the birds sang!  That was
a long time ago.  You gave me a hundred sous, and I said to you:
`I don't want your money.'  I hope you picked up your coin?
You are not rich.  I did not think to tell you to pick it up.
The sun was shining bright, and it was not cold.  Do you remember,
Monsieur Marius?  Oh!  How happy I am!  Every one is going
to die."

She had a mad, grave, and heart-breaking air.  Her torn blouse
disclosed her bare throat.

As she talked, she pressed her pierced hand to her breast, where there
was another hole, and whence there spurted from moment to moment
a stream of blood, like a jet of wine from an open bung-hole.

Marius gazed at this unfortunate creature with profound compassion.

"Oh!" she resumed, "it is coming again, I am stifling!"

She caught up her blouse and bit it, and her limbs stiffened
on the pavement.

At that moment the young cock's crow executed by little Gavroche
resounded through the barricade.

The child had mounted a table to load his gun, and was singing
gayly the song then so popular:--


"En voyant Lafayette, "On beholding Lafayette,
 Le gendarme repete:--             The gendarme repeats:--
 Sauvons nous! sauvons nous!       Let us flee! let us flee!
       sauvons nous!"                     let us flee!


Eponine raised herself and listened; then she murmured:--

"It is he."

And turning to Marius:--

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

"Your brother?" inquired Marius, who was meditating in the most bitter
and sorrowful depths of his heart on the duties to the Thenardiers
which his father had bequeathed to him; "who is your brother?"

"That little fellow."

"The one who is singing?"

"Yes."

Marius made a movement.

"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 put her face
as near that of Marius as possible.  She added with a strange expression:--

"Listen, I do not wish to play you a trick.  I have a letter in my
pocket for you.  I was told to put it in the post.  I kept it.
I did not want to have it reach you.  But perhaps you will be angry
with me for it when we meet again presently?  Take your letter."

She grasped Marius' hand convulsively with her pierced hand,
but she no longer seemed to feel her sufferings.  She put Marius'
hand in the pocket of her blouse.  There, in fact, Marius felt
a paper.

"Take it," said she.

Marius took the letter.

She made a sign of satisfaction and contentment.

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

And she stopped.

"What?" asked Marius.

"Promise me!"

"I promise."

"Promise to give me a kiss on my brow when I am dead.--I shall
feel it."

She dropped her head again on Marius' knees, and her eyelids closed.
He thought the poor soul had departed.  Eponine remained motionless.
All at once, at the very moment when Marius fancied her asleep forever,
she slowly opened her eyes in which appeared the sombre profundity
of death, and said to him in a tone whose sweetness seemed already
to proceed from another world:--

"And by the way, Monsieur Marius, I believe that I was a little
bit in love with you."

She tried to smile once more and expired.



CHAPTER VII

GAVROCHE AS A PROFOUND CALCULATOR OF DISTANCES


Marius kept his promise.  He dropped a kiss on that livid brow,
where the icy perspiration stood in beads.

This was no infidelity to Cosette; it was a gentle and pensive
farewell to an unhappy soul.

It was not without a tremor that he had taken the letter
which Eponine had given him.  He had immediately felt that
it was an event of weight.  He was impatient to read it.
The heart of man is so constituted that the unhappy child had
hardly closed her eyes when Marius began to think of unfolding this paper.

He laid her gently on the ground, and went away.  Something told him
that he could not peruse that letter in the presence of that body.

He drew near to a candle in the tap-room. It was a small note,
folded and sealed with a woman's elegant care.  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 dearest, alas! my father insists on our setting out immediately.
We shall be this evening 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 their love that Marius was not even
acquainted with Cosette's handwriting.

What had taken place may be related in a few words.  Eponine had
been the cause of everything.  After the evening of the 3d
of June she had cherished a double idea, to defeat the projects
of her father and the ruffians on the house of the Rue Plumet,
and to separate Marius and Cosette.  She had exchanged rags with
the first young scamp she came across who had thought it amusing
to dress like a woman, while Eponine disguised herself like a man.
It was she who had conveyed to Jean Valjean in the Champ de Mars
the expressive warning:  "Leave your house."  Jean Valjean had,
in fact, returned home, and had said to Cosette:  "We set out this
evening and we go to the Rue de l'Homme Arme with Toussaint.
Next week, we shall be in London."  Cosette, utterly overwhelmed
by this unexpected blow, had hastily penned a couple of lines
to Marius.  But how was she to get the letter to the post?
She never went out alone, and Toussaint, surprised at such
a commission, would certainly show the letter to M. Fauchelevent.
In this dilemma, Cosette had caught sight through the fence of Eponine
in man's clothes, who now prowled incessantly around the garden.
Cosette had called to "this young workman" and had handed him five
francs and the letter, saying:  "Carry this letter immediately to
its address."  Eponine had put the letter in her pocket.  The next day,
on the 5th of June, she went to Courfeyrac's quarters to inquire
for Marius, not for the purpose of delivering the letter, but,--a thing
which every jealous and loving soul will comprehend,--"to see."
There she had waited for Marius, or at least for Courfeyrac,
still for the purpose of seeing.  When Courfeyrac had told her:
"We are going to the barricades," an idea flashed through her mind,
to fling herself into that death, as she would have done into any other,
and to thrust Marius into it also.  She had followed Courfeyrac,
had made sure of the locality where the barricade was in process
of construction; and, quite certain, since Marius had received
no warning, and since she had intercepted the letter, that he
would go at dusk to his trysting place for every evening, she had
betaken herself to the Rue Plumet, had there awaited Marius,
and had sent him, in the name of his friends, the appeal which would,
she thought, lead him to the barricade.  She reckoned on Marius'
despair when he should fail to find Cosette; she was not mistaken.
She had returned to the Rue de la Chanvrerie herself.  What she did
there the reader has just seen.  She died with the tragic joy of jealous
hearts who drag the beloved being into their own death, and who say:
"No one shall have him!"

Marius covered Cosette's letter with kisses.  So she loved him!
For one moment the idea occurred to him that he ought not to die now.
Then he said to himself:  "She is going away.  Her father is taking
her to England, and my grandfather refuses his consent to the marriage.
Nothing is changed in our fates."  Dreamers like Marius are subject
to supreme attacks of dejection, and desperate resolves are the result.
The fatigue of living is insupportable; death is sooner over with.
Then he reflected that he had still two duties to fulfil:  to inform
Cosette of his death and send her a final farewell, and to save from
the impending catastrophe which was in preparation, that poor child,
Eponine's brother and Thenardier's son.

He had a pocket-book about him; the same one which had contained
the note-book in which he had inscribed so many thoughts of love
for Cosette.  He tore out a leaf and wrote on it a few lines
in pencil:--

"Our marriage was impossible.  I asked my grandfather, he refused;
I have no fortune, neither hast thou.  I hastened to thee, thou wert
no longer there.  Thou knowest the promise that I gave thee,
I shall keep it.  I die.  I love thee.  When thou readest this,
my soul will be near thee, and thou wilt smile."

Having nothing wherewith to seal this letter, he contented himself
with folding the paper in four, and added the address:--

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

Having folded the letter, he stood in thought for a moment, drew out
his pocket-book again, opened it, and wrote, with the same pencil,
these four lines on the first page:--

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

He put his pocketbook back in his pocket, then he called Gavroche.

The gamin, at the sound of Marius' voice, ran up to him with his
merry and devoted air.

"Will you do something for me?"

"Anything," said Gavroche.  "Good God! if it had not been for you,
I should have been done for."

"Do you see this letter?"

"Yes."

"Take it.  Leave the barricade instantly" (Gavroche began to scratch
his ear uneasily) "and to-morrow morning, you will deliver it
at its address to Mademoiselle Cosette, at M. Fauchelevent's,
Rue de l'Homme Arme, No. 7."

The heroic child replied

"Well, but! in the meanwhile the barricade will be taken, and I
shall not be there."

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

The fresh respite which the assailants were granting to the
barricade had, in fact, been prolonged.  It was one of those
intermissions which frequently occur in nocturnal combats,
which are always followed by an increase of rage.

"Well," said Gavroche, "what if I were to go and carry your
letter to-morrow?"

"It will be too late.  The barricade will probably be blockaded,
all the streets will be guarded, and you will not be able to get out.
Go at once."

Gavroche could think of no reply to this, and stood there in indecision,
scratching his ear sadly.

All at once, he took the letter with one of those birdlike movements
which were common with him.

"All right," said he.

And he started off at a run through Mondetour lane.

An idea had occurred to Gavroche which had brought him to a decision,
but he had not mentioned it for fear that Marius might offer some
objection to it.

This was the idea:--

"It is barely midnight, the Rue de l'Homme Arme is not far off;
I will go and deliver the letter at once, and I shall get back
in time."



BOOK FIFTEENTH.--THE RUE DE L'HOMME ARME



CHAPTER I

A DRINKER IS A BABBLER


What are the convulsions of a city in comparison with the insurrections
of the soul?  Man is a depth still greater than the people.
Jean Valjean at that very moment was the prey of a terrible upheaval.
Every sort of gulf had opened again within him.  He also was trembling,
like Paris, on the brink of an obscure and formidable revolution.
A few hours had sufficed to bring this about.  His destiny and his
conscience had suddenly been covered with gloom.  Of him also,
as well as of Paris, it might have been said:  "Two principles are
face to face.  The white angel and the black angel are about to seize
each other on the bridge of the abyss.  Which of the two will hurl
the other over?  Who will carry the day?"

On the evening preceding this same 5th of June, Jean Valjean,
accompanied by Cosette and Toussaint had installed himself in the Rue
de l'Homme Arme.  A change awaited him there.

Cosette had not quitted the Rue Plumet without making an effort
at resistance.  For the first time since they had lived side by side,
Cosette's will and the will of Jean Valjean had proved to be distinct,
and had been in opposition, at least, if they had not clashed.
There had been objections on one side and inflexibility on the other.
The abrupt advice:  "Leave your house," hurled at Jean Valjean by
a stranger, had alarmed him to the extent of rendering him peremptory.
He thought that he had been traced and followed.  Cosette had been
obliged to give way.

Both had arrived in the Rue de l'Homme Arme without opening their lips,
and without uttering a word, each being absorbed in his own personal
preoccupation; Jean Valjean so uneasy that he did not notice Cosette's
sadness, Cosette so sad that she did not notice Jean Valjean's uneasiness.

Jean Valjean had taken Toussaint with him, a thing which he had
never done in his previous absences.  He perceived the possibility
of not returning to the Rue Plumet, and he could neither leave
Toussaint behind nor confide his secret to her.  Besides, he felt
that she was devoted and trustworthy.  Treachery between master
and servant begins in curiosity.  Now Toussaint, as though she
had been destined to be Jean Valjean's servant, was not curious.
She stammered in her peasant dialect of Barneville:  "I am made so;
I do my work; the rest is no affair of mine."

In this departure from the Rue Plumet, which had been almost
a flight, Jean Valjean had carried away nothing but the little
embalmed valise, baptized by Cosette "the inseparable."
Full trunks would have required porters, and porters are witnesses.
A fiacre had been summoned to the door on the Rue de Babylone,
and they had taken their departure.

It was with difficulty that Toussaint had obtained permission
to pack up a little linen and clothes and a few toilet articles.
Cosette had taken only her portfolio and her blotting-book.

Jean Valjean, with a view to augmenting the solitude and the mystery
of this departure, had arranged to quit the pavilion of the Rue Plumet
only at dusk, which had allowed Cosette time to write her note to Marius.
They had arrived in the Rue de l'Homme Arme after night had fully fallen.

They had gone to bed in silence.

The lodgings in the Rue de l'Homme Arme were situated on a back court,
on the second floor, and were composed of two sleeping-rooms, a
dining-room and a kitchen adjoining the dining-room, with a garret
where there was a folding-bed, and which fell to Toussaint's share.
The dining-room was an antechamber as well, and separated the
two bedrooms.  The apartment was provided with all necessary utensils.

People re-acquire confidence as foolishly as they lose it; human nature
is so constituted.  Hardly had Jean Valjean reached the Rue de l'Homme
Arme when his anxiety was lightened and by degrees dissipated.
There are soothing spots which act in some sort mechanically on
the mind.  An obscure street, peaceable inhabitants.  Jean Valjean
experienced an indescribable contagion of tranquillity in that alley
of ancient Paris, which is so narrow that it is barred against carriages
by a transverse beam placed on two posts, which is deaf and dumb
in the midst of the clamorous city, dimly lighted at mid-day, and is,
so to speak, incapable of emotions between two rows of lofty houses
centuries old, which hold their peace like ancients as they are.
There was a touch of stagnant oblivion in that street.  Jean Valjean
drew his breath once more there.  How could he be found there?

His first care was to place the inseparable beside him.

He slept well.  Night brings wisdom; we may add, night soothes.
On the following morning he awoke in a mood that was almost gay.
He thought the dining-room charming, though it was hideous,
furnished with an old round table, a long sideboard surmounted
by a slanting mirror, a dilapidated arm-chair, and several plain
chairs which were encumbered with Toussaint's packages.  In one of
these packages Jean Valjean's uniform of a National Guard was visible
through a rent.

As for Cosette, she had had Toussaint take some broth to her room,
and did not make her appearance until evening.

About five o'clock, Toussaint, who was going and coming and busying
herself with the tiny establishment, set on the table a cold chicken,
which Cosette, out of deference to her father, consented to glance at.

That done, Cosette, under the pretext of an obstinate sick headache,
had bade Jean Valjean good night and had shut herself up in her chamber.
Jean Valjean had eaten a wing of the chicken with a good appetite,
and with his elbows on the table, having gradually recovered
his serenity, had regained possession of his sense of security.

While he was discussing this modest dinner, he had, twice or thrice,
noticed in a confused way, Toussaint's stammering words as she said
to him:  "Monsieur, there is something going on, they are fighting
in Paris."  But absorbed in a throng of inward calculations,
he had paid no heed to it.  To tell the truth, he had not heard her.
He rose and began to pace from the door to the window and from the
window to the door, growing ever more serene.

With this calm, Cosette, his sole anxiety, recurred to his thoughts.
Not that he was troubled by this headache, a little nervous crisis,
a young girl's fit of sulks, the cloud of a moment, there would be
nothing left of it in a day or two; but he meditated on the future,
and, as was his habit, he thought of it with pleasure.  After all,
he saw no obstacle to their happy life resuming its course.
At certain hours, everything seems impossible, at others everything
appears easy; Jean Valjean was in the midst of one of these good hours.
They generally succeed the bad ones, as day follows night, by virtue
of that law of succession and of contrast which lies at the very
foundation of nature, and which superficial minds call antithesis.
In this peaceful street where he had taken refuge, Jean Valjean
got rid of all that had been troubling him for some time past.
This very fact, that he had seen many shadows, made him begin
to perceive a little azure.  To have quitted the Rue Plumet without
complications or incidents was one good step already accomplished.
Perhaps it would be wise to go abroad, if only for a few months,
and to set out for London.  Well, they would go.  What difference did
it make to him whether he was in France or in England, provided he
had Cosette beside him?  Cosette was his nation.  Cosette sufficed
for his happiness; the idea that he, perhaps, did not suffice for
Cosette's happiness, that idea which had formerly been the cause of his
fever and sleeplessness, did not even present itself to his mind.
He was in a state of collapse from all his past sufferings, and he
was fully entered on optimism.  Cosette was by his side, she seemed
to be his; an optical illusion which every one has experienced.
He arranged in his own mind, with all sorts of felicitous devices,
his departure for England with Cosette, and he beheld his felicity
reconstituted wherever he pleased, in the perspective of his revery.

As he paced to and fro with long strides, his glance suddenly
encountered something strange.

In the inclined mirror facing him which surmounted the sideboard,
he saw the four lines which follow:--

"My dearest, alas! my father insists on our setting out immediately.
We shall be this evening in the Rue de l'Homme Arme, No. 7.
In a week we shall be in England.  COSETTE.  June 4th."

Jean Valjean halted, perfectly haggard.

Cosette on her arrival had placed her blotting-book on the sideboard
in front of the mirror, and, utterly absorbed in her agony of grief,
had forgotten it and left it there, without even observing that she
had left it wide open, and open at precisely the page on which she
had laid to dry the four lines which she had penned, and which she
had given in charge of the young workman in the Rue Plumet.
The writing had been printed off on the blotter.

The mirror reflected the writing.

The result was, what is called in geometry, the symmetrical image;
so that the writing, reversed on the blotter, was righted in the
mirror and presented its natural appearance; and Jean Valjean
had beneath his eyes the letter written by Cosette to Marius
on the preceding evening.

It was simple and withering.

Jean Valjean stepped up to the mirror.  He read the four lines again,
but he did not believe them.  They produced on him the effect
of appearing in a flash of lightning.  It was a hallucination,
it was impossible.  It was not so.

Little by little, his perceptions became more precise; he looked
at Cosette's blotting-book, and the consciousness of the reality
returned to him.  He caught up the blotter and said:  "It comes
from there."  He feverishly examined the four lines imprinted
on the blotter, the reversal of the letters converted into an
odd scrawl, and he saw no sense in it.  Then he said to himself:
"But this signifies nothing; there is nothing written here."
And he drew a long breath with inexpressible relief.  Who has not
experienced those foolish joys in horrible instants?  The soul does
not surrender to despair until it has exhausted all illusions.

He held the blotter in his hand and contemplated it in stupid delight,
almost ready to laugh at the hallucination of which he had been
the dupe.  All at once his eyes fell upon the mirror again,
and again he beheld the vision.  There were the four lines
outlined with inexorable clearness.  This time it was no mirage.
The recurrence of a vision is a reality; it was palpable, it was
the writing restored in the mirror.  He understood.

Jean Valjean tottered, dropped the blotter, and fell into the old
arm-chair beside the buffet, with drooping head, and glassy eyes,
in utter bewilderment.  He told himself that it was plain, that the
light of the world had been eclipsed forever, and that Cosette
had written that to some one.  Then he heard his soul, which had
become terrible once more, give vent to a dull roar in the gloom.
Try then the effect of taking from the lion the dog which he has
in his cage!

Strange and sad to say, at that very moment, Marius had not yet
received Cosette's letter; chance had treacherously carried it
to Jean Valjean before delivering it to Marius.  Up to that day,
Jean Valjean had not been vanquished by trial.  He had been subjected
to fearful proofs; no violence of bad fortune had been spared him;
the ferocity of fate, armed with all vindictiveness and all
social scorn, had taken him for her prey and had raged against him.
He had accepted every extremity when it had been necessary;
he had sacrificed his inviolability as a reformed man, had yielded up
his liberty, risked his head, lost everything, suffered everything,
and he had remained disinterested and stoical to such a point that he
might have been thought to be absent from himself like a martyr.
His conscience inured to every assault of destiny, might have
appeared to be forever impregnable.  Well, any one who had beheld
his spiritual self would have been obliged to concede that it weakened
at that moment.  It was because, of all the tortures which he had
undergone in the course of this long inquisition to which destiny
had doomed him, this was the most terrible.  Never had such pincers
seized him hitherto.  He felt the mysterious stirring of all his
latent sensibilities.  He felt the plucking at the strange chord.
Alas! the supreme trial, let us say rather, the only trial,
is the loss of the beloved being.

Poor old Jean Valjean certainly did not love Cosette otherwise than as
a father; but we have already remarked, above, that into this paternity
the widowhood of his life had introduced all the shades of love;
he loved Cosette as his daughter, and he loved her as his mother,
and he loved her as his sister; and, as he had never had either
a woman to love or a wife, as nature is a creditor who accepts
no protest, that sentiment also, the most impossible to lose,
was mingled with the rest, vague, ignorant, pure with the purity
of blindness, unconscious, celestial, angelic, divine; less like
a sentiment than like an instinct, less like an instinct than
like an imperceptible and invisible but real attraction; and love,
properly speaking, was, in his immense tenderness for Cosette,
like the thread of gold in the mountain, concealed and virgin.

Let the reader recall the situation of heart which we have
already indicated.  No marriage was possible between them;
not even that of souls; and yet, it is certain that their destinies
were wedded.  With the exception of Cosette, that is to say,
with the exception of a childhood, Jean Valjean had never, in the
whole of his long life, known anything of that which may be loved.
The passions and loves which succeed each other had not produced
in him those successive green growths, tender green or dark green,
which can be seen in foliage which passes through the winter and in men
who pass fifty.  In short, and we have insisted on it more than once,
all this interior fusion, all this whole, of which the sum total was
a lofty virtue, ended in rendering Jean Valjean a father to Cosette.
A strange father, forged from the grandfather, the son, the brother,
and the husband, that existed in Jean Valjean; a father in whom
there was included even a mother; a father who loved Cosette
and adored her, and who held that child as his light, his home,
his family, his country, his paradise.

Thus when he saw that the end had absolutely come, that she was
escaping from him, that she was slipping from his hands, that she
was gliding from him, like a cloud, like water, when he had before
his eyes this crushing proof:  "another is the goal of her heart,
another is the wish of her life; there is a dearest one, I am no
longer anything but her father, I no longer exist"; when he could no
longer doubt, when he said to himself:  "She is going away from me!"
the grief which he felt surpassed the bounds of possibility.
To have done all that he had done for the purpose of ending like this!
And the very idea of being nothing!  Then, as we have just said,
a quiver of revolt ran through him from head to foot.  He felt,
even in the very roots of his hair, the immense reawakening of egotism,
and the _I_ in this man's abyss howled.

There is such a thing as the sudden giving way of the inward subsoil.
A despairing certainty does not make its way into a man without
thrusting aside and breaking certain profound elements which,
in some cases, are the very man himself.  Grief, when it attains
this shape, is a headlong flight of all the forces of the conscience.
These are fatal crises.  Few among us emerge from them still
like ourselves and firm in duty.  When the limit of endurance
is overstepped, the most imperturbable virtue is disconcerted.
Jean Valjean took the blotter again, and convinced himself afresh;
he remained bowed and as though petrified and with staring eyes,
over those four unobjectionable lines; and there arose within him such
a cloud that one might have thought that everything in this soul was
crumbling away.

He examined this revelation, athwart the exaggerations of revery,
with an apparent and terrifying calmness, for it is a fearful thing
when a man's calmness reaches the coldness of the statue.

He measured the terrible step which his destiny had taken without
his having a suspicion of the fact; he recalled his fears of the
preceding summer, so foolishly dissipated; he recognized the precipice,
it was still the same; only, Jean Valjean was no longer on the brink,
he was at the bottom of it.

The unprecedented and heart-rending thing about it was that he had
fallen without perceiving it.  All the light of his life had departed,
while he still fancied that he beheld the sun.

His instinct did not hesitate.  He put together certain circumstances,
certain dates, certain blushes and certain pallors on Cosette's part,
and he said to himself:  "It is he."

The divination of despair is a sort of mysterious bow which never
misses its aim.  He struck Marius with his first conjecture.
He did not know the name, but he found the man instantly.
He distinctly perceived, in the background of the implacable
conjuration of his memories, the unknown prowler of the Luxembourg,
that wretched seeker of love adventures, that idler of romance,
that idiot, that coward, for it is cowardly to come and make eyes at
young girls who have beside them a father who loves them.

After he had thoroughly verified the fact that this young man
was at the bottom of this situation, and that everything proceeded
from that quarter, he, Jean Valjean, the regenerated man, the man
who had so labored over his soul, the man who had made so many efforts
to resolve all life, all misery, and all unhappiness into love,
looked into his own breast and there beheld a spectre, Hate.

Great griefs contain something of dejection.  They discourage one
with existence.  The man into whom they enter feels something within
him withdraw from him.  In his youth, their visits are lugubrious;
later on they are sinister.  Alas, if despair is a fearful thing
when the blood is hot, when the hair is black, when the head is erect
on the body like the flame on the torch, when the roll of destiny still
retains its full thickness, when the heart, full of desirable love,
still possesses beats which can be returned to it, when one has time
for redress, when all women and all smiles and all the future and
all the horizon are before one, when the force of life is complete,
what is it in old age, when the years hasten on, growing ever paler,
to that twilight hour when one begins to behold the stars of the tomb?

While he was meditating, Toussaint entered.  Jean Valjean rose
and asked her:--

"In what quarter is it?  Do you know?"

Toussaint was struck dumb, and could only answer him:--

"What is it, sir?"

Jean Valjean began again:  "Did you not tell me that just now
that there is fighting going on?"

"Ah! yes, sir," replied Toussaint.  "It is in the direction
of Saint-Merry."

There is a mechanical movement which comes to us, unconsciously,
from the most profound depths of our thought.  It was, no doubt,
under the impulse of a movement of this sort, and of which he
was hardly conscious, that Jean Valjean, five minutes later,
found himself in the street.

Bareheaded, he sat upon the stone post at the door of his house.
He seemed to be listening.

Night had come.



CHAPTER II

THE STREET URCHIN AN ENEMY OF LIGHT


How long did he remain thus?  What was the ebb and flow of this
tragic meditation?  Did he straighten up?  Did he remain bowed?
Had he been bent to breaking?  Could he still rise and regain his
footing in his conscience upon something solid?  He probably would
not have been able to tell himself.

The street was deserted.  A few uneasy bourgeois, who were rapidly
returning home, hardly saw him.  Each one for himself in times
of peril.  The lamp-lighter came as usual to light the lantern
which was situated precisely opposite the door of No. 7,
and then went away.  Jean Valjean would not have appeared like
a living man to any one who had examined him in that shadow.
He sat there on the post of his door, motionless as a form of ice.
There is congealment in despair.  The alarm bells and a vague and
stormy uproar were audible.  In the midst of all these convulsions
of the bell mingled with the revolt, the clock of Saint-Paul
struck eleven, gravely and without haste; for the tocsin is man;
the hour is God.  The passage of the hour produced no effect on
Jean Valjean; Jean Valjean did not stir.  Still, at about that moment,
a brusque report burst forth in the direction of the Halles,
a second yet more violent followed; it was probably that attack
on the barricade in the Rue de la Chanvrerie which we have just
seen repulsed by Marius.  At this double discharge, whose fury
seemed augmented by the stupor of the night, Jean Valjean started;
he rose, turning towards the quarter whence the noise proceeded;
then he fell back upon the post again, folded his arms, and his head
slowly sank on his bosom again.

He resumed his gloomy dialogue with himself.

All at once, he raised his eyes; some one was walking in the street,
he heard steps near him.  He looked, and by the light of the lanterns,
in the direction of the street which ran into the Rue-aux-Archives,
he perceived a young, livid, and beaming face.

Gavroche had just arrived in the Rue l'Homme Arme.

Gavroche was staring into the air, apparently in search of something.
He saw Jean Valjean perfectly well but he took no notice of him.

Gavroche after staring into the air, stared below; he raised himself
on tiptoe, and felt of the doors and windows of the ground floor;
they were all shut, bolted, and padlocked.  After having authenticated
the fronts of five or six barricaded houses in this manner, the urchin
shrugged his shoulders, and took himself to task in these terms:--

"Pardi!"

Then he began to stare into the air again.

Jean Valjean, who, an instant previously, in his then state of mind,
would not have spoken to or even answered any one, felt irresistibly
impelled to accost that child.

"What is the matter with you, my little fellow?" he said.

"The matter with me is that I am hungry," replied Gavroche frankly.
And he added:  "Little fellow yourself."

Jean Valjean fumbled in his fob and pulled out a five-franc piece.

But Gavroche, who was of the wagtail species, and who skipped
vivaciously from one gesture to another, had just picked up a stone.
He had caught sight of the lantern.

"See here," said he, "you still have your lanterns here.
You are disobeying the regulations, my friend.  This is disorderly.
Smash that for me."

And he flung the stone at the lantern, whose broken glass fell with
such a clatter that the bourgeois in hiding behind their curtains
in the opposite house cried:  "There is `Ninety-three' come again."

The lantern oscillated violently, and went out.  The street had
suddenly become black.

"That's right, old street," ejaculated Gavroche, "put on your night-cap."

And turning to Jean Valjean:--

"What do you call that gigantic monument that you have there at the
end of the street?  It's the Archives, isn't it?  I must crumble up
those big stupids of pillars a bit and make a nice barricade out of them."

Jean Valjean stepped up to Gavroche.

"Poor creature," he said in a low tone, and speaking to himself,
"he is hungry."

And he laid the hundred-sou piece in his hand.

Gavroche raised his face, astonished at the size of this sou;
he stared at it in the darkness, and the whiteness of the big sou
dazzled him.  He knew five-franc pieces by hearsay; their reputation
was agreeable to him; he was delighted to see one close to.
He said:--

"Let us contemplate the tiger."

He gazed at it for several minutes in ecstasy; then, turning to
Jean Valjean, he held out the coin to him, and said majestically
to him:--

"Bourgeois, I prefer to smash lanterns.  Take back your ferocious beast.
You can't bribe me.  That has got five claws; but it doesn't scratch me."

"Have you a mother?" asked Jean Valjean.

Gavroche replied:--

"More than you have, perhaps."

"Well," returned Jean Valjean, "keep the money for your mother!"

Gavroche was touched.  Moreover, he had just noticed that the man
who was addressing him had no hat, and this inspired him with confidence.

"Truly," said he, "so it wasn't to keep me from breaking the lanterns?"

"Break whatever you please."

"You're a fine man," said Gavroche.

And he put the five-franc piece into one of his pockets.

His confidence having increased, he added:--

"Do you belong in this street?"

"Yes, why?"

"Can you tell me where No. 7 is?"

"What do you want with No. 7?"

Here the child paused, he feared that he had said too much;
he thrust his nails energetically into his hair and contented
himself with replying:--

"Ah!  Here it is."

An idea flashed through Jean Valjean's mind.  Anguish does have
these gleams.  He said to the lad:--

"Are you the person who is bringing a letter that I am expecting?"

"You?" said Gavroche.  "You are not a woman."

"The letter is for Mademoiselle Cosette, is it not?"

"Cosette," muttered Gavroche.  "Yes, I believe that is the queer name."

"Well," resumed Jean Valjean, "I am the person to whom you are
to deliver the letter.  Give it here."

"In that case, you must know that I was sent from the barricade."

"Of course," said Jean Valjean.

Gavroche engulfed his hand in another of his pockets and drew
out a paper folded in four.

Then he made the military salute.

"Respect
for despatches," said he.  "It comes from the Provisional Government."

"Give it to me," said Jean Valjean.

Gavroche held the paper elevated above his head.

"Don't go and fancy it's a love letter.  It is for a woman,
but it's for the people.  We men fight and we respect the fair sex.
We are not as they are in fine society, where there are lions who send
chickens[55] to camels."


[55] Love letters.


"Give it to me."

"After all," continued Gavroche, "you have the air of an honest man."

"Give it to me quick."

"Catch hold of it."

And he handed the paper to Jean Valjean.

"And make haste, Monsieur What's-your-name, for Mamselle Cosette
is waiting."

Gavroche was satisfied with himself for having produced this remark.

Jean Valjean began again:--

"Is it to Saint-Merry that the answer is to be sent?"

"There you are making some of those bits of pastry vulgarly called
brioches [blunders]. This letter comes from the barricade of the Rue
de la Chanvrerie, and I'm going back there.  Good evening, citizen."

That said, Gavroche took himself off, or, to describe it more exactly,
fluttered away in the direction whence he had come with a flight
like that of an escaped bird.  He plunged back into the gloom as
though he made a hole in it, with the rigid rapidity of a projectile;
the alley of l'Homme Arme became silent and solitary once more;
in a twinkling, that strange child, who had about him something
of the shadow and of the dream, had buried himself in the mists of
the rows of black houses, and was lost there, like smoke in the dark;
and one might have thought that he had dissipated and vanished,
had there not taken place, a few minutes after his disappearance,
a startling shiver of glass, and had not the magnificent crash of a
lantern rattling down on the pavement once more abruptly awakened
the indignant bourgeois.  It was Gavroche upon his way through the Rue
du Chaume.



CHAPTER III

WHILE COSETTE AND TOUSSAINT ARE ASLEEP


Jean Valjean went into the house with Marius' letter.

He groped his way up the stairs, as pleased with the darkness
as an owl who grips his prey, opened and shut his door softly,
listened to see whether he could hear any noise,--made sure that,
to all appearances, Cosette and Toussaint were asleep, and plunged
three or four matches into the bottle of the Fumade lighter
before he could evoke a spark, so greatly did his hand tremble.
What he had just done smacked of theft.  At last the candle
was lighted; he leaned his elbows on the table, unfolded the paper,
and read.

In violent emotions, one does not read, one flings to the earth,
so to speak, the paper which one holds, one clutches it like a victim,
one crushes it, one digs into it the nails of one's wrath,
or of one's joy; one hastens to the end, one leaps to the beginning;
attention is at fever heat; it takes up in the gross, as it were,
the essential points; it seizes on one point, and the rest disappears.
In Marius' note to Cosette, Jean Valjean saw only these words:--

"I die.  When thou readest this, my soul will be near thee."

In the presence of these two lines, he was horribly dazzled;
he remained for a moment, crushed, as it were, by the change
of emotion which was taking place within him, he stared at Marius'
note with a sort of intoxicated amazement, he had before his eyes
that splendor, the death of a hated individual.

He uttered a frightful cry of inward joy.  So it was all over.
The catastrophe had arrived sooner than he had dared to hope.
The being who obstructed his destiny was disappearing.  That man
had taken himself off of his own accord, freely, willingly.  This man
was going to his death, and he, Jean Valjean, had had no hand
in the matter, and it was through no fault of his.  Perhaps, even,
he is already dead.  Here his fever entered into calculations.
No, he is not dead yet.  The letter had evidently been intended
for Cosette to read on the following morning; after the two
discharges that were heard between eleven o'clock and midnight,
nothing more has taken place; the barricade will not be attacked
seriously until daybreak; but that makes no difference, from the
moment when "that man" is concerned in this war, he is lost;
he is caught in the gearing.  Jean Valjean felt himself delivered.
So he was about to find himself alone with Cosette once more.
The rivalry would cease; the future was beginning again.  He had
but to keep this note in his pocket.  Cosette would never know
what had become of that man.  All that there requires to be done
is to let things take their own course.  This man cannot escape.
If he is not already dead, it is certain that he is about to die.
What good fortune!

Having said all this to himself, he became gloomy.

Then he went down stairs and woke up the porter.

About an hour later, Jean Valjean went out in the complete costume
of a National Guard, and with his arms.  The porter had easily found
in the neighborhood the wherewithal to complete his equipment.
He had a loaded gun and a cartridge-box filled with cartridges.

He strode off in the direction of the markets.



CHAPTER IV

GAVROCHE'S EXCESS OF ZEAL


In the meantime, Gavroche had had an adventure.

Gavroche, after having conscientiously stoned the lantern in the Rue
du Chaume, entered the Rue des Vielles-Haudriettes, and not seeing
"even a cat" there, he thought the opportunity a good one to strike
up all the song of which he was capable.  His march, far from being
retarded by his singing, was accelerated by it.  He began to sow
along the sleeping or terrified houses these incendiary couplets:--

               "L'oiseau medit dans les charmilles,
               Et pretend qu'hier Atala
               Avec un Russe s'en alla.
                    Ou vont les belles filles,
                         Lon la.

               "Mon ami Pierrot, tu babilles,
               Parce que l'autre jour Mila
               Cogna sa vitre et m'appela,
                    Ou vont les belles filles,
                         Lon la.

               "Les drolesses sont fort gentilles,
               Leur poison qui m'ensorcela
               Griserait Monsieur Orfila.
                    Ou vont les belles filles,
                         Lon la.

               "J'aime l'amour et les bisbilles,
               J'aime Agnes, j'aime Pamela,
               Lisa en m'allumant se brula.
                    Ou vont les belles filles,
                         Lon la.

               "Jadis, quand je vis les mantilles
               De Suzette et de Zeila,
               Mon ame aleurs plis se mela,
                    Ou vont les belles filles,
                         Lon la.

               "Amour, quand dans l'ombre ou tu brilles,
                Tu coiffes de roses Lola,
               Je me damnerais pour cela.
                    Ou vont les belles filles,
                         Lon la.

               "Jeanne a ton miroir tu t'habilles!
               Mon coeur un beau jour s'envola.
               Je crois que c'est Jeanne qui l'a.
                    Ou vont les belles filles,
                         Lon la.

               "Le soir, en sortant des quadrilles,
               Je montre aux etoiles Stella,
               Et je leur dis: 'Regardez-la.'
                    Ou vont les belles filles,
                         Lon la."[56]


            [56]"The bird slanders in the elms,
                And pretends that yesterday, Atala
                Went off with a Russian,
                    Where fair maids go.
                         Lon la.


My friend Pierrot, thou pratest, because Mila knocked at her
pane the other day and called me.  The jades are very charming,
their poison which bewitched me would intoxicate Monsieur Orfila.
I'm fond of love and its bickerings, I love Agnes, I love Pamela,
Lise burned herself in setting me aflame.  In former days when I
saw the mantillas of Suzette and of Zeila, my soul mingled with
their folds.  Love, when thou gleamest in the dark thou crownest
Lola with roses, I would lose my soul for that.  Jeanne, at thy
mirror thou deckest thyself!  One fine day, my heart flew forth.
I think that it is Jeanne who has it.  At night, when I come from
the quadrilles, I show Stella to the stars, and I say to them:
"Behold her."  Where fair maids go, lon la.


Gavroche, as he sang, was lavish of his pantomime.  Gesture is the strong
point of the refrain.  His face, an inexhaustible repertory of masks,
produced grimaces more convulsing and more fantastic than the rents
of a cloth torn in a high gale.  Unfortunately, as he was alone,
and as it was night, this was neither seen nor even visible.
Such wastes of riches do occur.

All at once, he stopped short.

"Let us interrupt the romance," said he.

His feline eye had just descried, in the recess of a carriage door,
what is called in painting, an ensemble, that is to say, a person
and a thing; the thing was a hand-cart, the person was a man from
Auvergene who was sleeping therein.

The shafts of the cart rested on the pavement, and the Auvergnat's
head was supported against the front of the cart.  His body was
coiled up on this inclined plane and his feet touched the ground.

Gavroche, with his experience of the things of this world,
recognized a drunken man.  He was some corner errand-man who had
drunk too much and was sleeping too much.

"There now," thought Gavroche, "that's what the summer nights
are good for.  We'll take the cart for the Republic, and leave
the Auvergnat for the Monarchy."

His mind had just been illuminated by this flash of light:--

"How bully that cart would look on our barricade!"

The Auvergnat was snoring.

Gavroche gently tugged at the cart from behind, and at the Auvergnat
from the front, that is to say, by the feet, and at the expiration
of another minute the imperturbable Auvergnat was reposing flat
on the pavement.

The cart was free.

Gavroche, habituated to facing the unexpected in all quarters,
had everything about him.  He fumbled in one of his pockets,
and pulled from it a scrap of paper and a bit of red pencil filched
from some carpenter.

He wrote:--

                         "French Republic."


"Received thy cart."

And he signed it:  "GAVROCHE."

That done, he put the paper in the pocket of the still snoring
Auvergnat's velvet vest, seized the cart shafts in both hands,
and set off in the direction of the Halles, pushing the cart before
him at a hard gallop with a glorious and triumphant uproar.

This was perilous.  There was a post at the Royal Printing Establishment.
Gavroche did not think of this.  This post was occupied by the
National Guards of the suburbs.  The squad began to wake up,
and heads were raised from camp beds.  Two street lanterns
broken in succession, that ditty sung at the top of the lungs.
This was a great deal for those cowardly streets, which desire
to go to sleep at sunset, and which put the extinguisher on their
candles at such an early hour.  For the last hour, that boy had been
creating an uproar in that peaceable arrondissement, the uproar
of a fly in a bottle.  The sergeant of the banlieue lent an ear.
He waited.  He was a prudent man.

The mad rattle of the cart, filled to overflowing the possible
measure of waiting, and decided the sergeant to make a reconnaisance.

"There's a whole band of them there!" said he, "let us proceed gently."

It was clear that the hydra of anarchy had emerged from its box
and that it was stalking abroad through the quarter.

And the sergeant ventured out of the post with cautious tread.

All at once, Gavroche, pushing his cart in front of him,
and at the very moment when he was about to turn into the Rue des
Vielles-Haudriettes, found himself face to face with a uniform,
a shako, a plume, and a gun.

For the second time, he stopped short.

"Hullo," said he, "it's him.  Good day, public order."

Gavroche's amazement was always brief and speedily thawed.

"Where are you going, you rascal?" shouted the sergeant.

"Citizen," retorted Gavroche, "I haven't called you `bourgeois' yet.
Why do you insult me?"

"Where are you going, you rogue?"

"Monsieur," retorted Gavroche, "perhaps you were a man of wit yesterday,
but you have degenerated this morning."

"I ask you where are you going, you villain?"

Gavroche replied:--

"You speak prettily.  Really, no one would suppose you as old as
you are.  You ought to sell all your hair at a hundred francs apiece.
That would yield you five hundred francs."

"Where are you going?  Where are you going?  Where are you going, bandit?"

Gavroche retorted again:--

"What villainous words!  You must wipe your mouth better the first
time that they give you suck."

The sergeant lowered his bayonet.

"Will you tell me where you are going, you wretch?"

"General," said Gavroche "I'm on my way to look for a doctor
for my wife who is in labor."

"To arms!" shouted the sergeant.

The master-stroke of strong men consists in saving themselves
by the very means that have ruined them; Gavroche took in the whole
situation at a glance.  It was the cart which had told against him,
it was the cart's place to protect him.

At the moment when the sergeant was on the point of making his descent
on Gavroche, the cart, converted into a projectile and launched
with all the latter's might, rolled down upon him furiously,
and the sergeant, struck full in the stomach, tumbled over backwards
into the gutter while his gun went off in the air.

The men of the post had rushed out pell-mell at the sergeant's shout;
the shot brought on a general random discharge, after which they
reloaded their weapons and began again.

This blind-man's-buff musketry lasted for a quarter of an hour
and killed several panes of glass.

In the meanwhile, Gavroche, who had retraced his steps at full speed,
halted five or six streets distant and seated himself, panting,
on the stone post which forms the corner of the Enfants-Rouges.

He listened.

After panting for a few minutes, he turned in the direction
where the fusillade was raging, lifted his left hand to a level
with his nose and thrust it forward three times, as he slapped
the back of his head with his right hand; an imperious gesture
in which Parisian street-urchindom has condensed French irony,
and which is evidently efficacious, since it has already lasted
half a century.

This gayety was troubled by one bitter reflection.

"Yes," said he, "I'm splitting with laughter, I'm twisting
with delight, I abound in joy, but I'm losing my way, I shall have
to take a roundabout way.  If I only reach the barricade in season!"

Thereupon he set out again on a run.

And as he ran:--

"Ah, by the way, where was I?" said he.

And he resumed his ditty, as he plunged rapidly through the streets,
and this is what died away in the gloom:--

               "Mais il reste encore des bastilles,
               Et je vais mettre le hola
               Dans l'orde public que voila.
                    Ou vont les belles filles,
                         Lon la.

               "Quelqu'un veut-il jouer aux quilles?
               Tout l'ancien monde s'ecroula
               Quand la grosse boule roula.
                    Ou vont les belles filles,
                         Lon la.

               "Vieux bon peuple, a coups de bequilles,
               Cassons ce Louvre ou s'etala
               La monarchie en falbala.
                    Ou vont les belles filles,
                         Lon la.

               "Nous en avons force les grilles,
               Le roi Charles-Dix ce jour la,
               Tenait mal et se decolla.
                    Ou vont les belles filles,
                         Lon la."[57]


[57] But some prisons still remain, and I am going to put a stop
to this sort of public order.  Does any one wish to play at skittles?
The whole ancient world fell in ruin, when the big ball rolled.
Good old folks, let us smash with our crutches that Louvre where the
monarchy displayed itself in furbelows.  We have forced its gates.
On that day, King Charles X. did not stick well and came unglued.


The post's recourse to arms was not without result.  The cart
was conquered, the drunken man was taken prisoner.  The first
was put in the pound, the second was later on somewhat harassed
before the councils of war as an accomplice.  The public ministry
of the day proved its indefatigable zeal in the defence of society,
in this instance.

Gavroche's adventure, which has lingered as a tradition in the quarters
of the Temple, is one of the most terrible souvenirs of the elderly
bourgeois of the Marais, and is entitled in their memories:
"The nocturnal attack by the post of the Royal Printing Establishment."


[The end of Volume IV.  "Saint Denis"]