But Juvenal or Tacitus, like Isaiah in biblical times and Dante in the

Middle Ages, is the man; riot, and insurrection are the multitude,

which is sometimes wrong, sometimes right. In the most general cases

riot issues from a material fact, but insurrection is always a moral

phenomenon. Riot is Masaniello; insurrection is Spartacus. Insurrection

is related to the mind, riot to the stomach; Gaster is irritated, but

Gaster is certainly not always in the wrong. In questions of famine,

riot, the Buzançais one, for instance, has a true, pathetic, and just

starting point, and yet it remains a riot. Why? Because, though right

in the abstract, it is wrong in form. Ferocious though legitimate,

violent though strong, it has marched haphazard, crushing things in its

passage like a blind elephant; it has left behind it the corpses of old

men, women, and children, and has shed, without knowing why, the blood

of the unoffending and the innocent. Feeding the people is a good end,

but massacre is a bad means.

All armed protests, even the most legitimate, even August 10 and July

14, set out with the same trouble, and before right is disengaged

there are tumult and foam. At the outset an insurrection is a riot, in

the same way as the river is a torrent, and generally pours itself

into that ocean, Revolution. Sometimes, however, insurrection, which

has come from those lofty mountains which command the moral horizon,

justice, wisdom, reason, and right, and is composed of the purest snow

of the ideal, after a long fall from rock to rock, after reflecting the

sky in its transparency, and being swollen by a hundred confluents in

its majestic course, suddenly loses itself in some bourgeois bog, as

the Rhine does in the marshes. All this belongs to the past, and the

future will be different; for universal suffrage has this admirable

thing about it, that it dissolves riot in its origin, and, by giving

insurrection a vote, deprives it of the weapon. The disappearance of

war, street wars as well as frontier wars,--such is the inevitable

progress. Whatever To-day may be, peace is To-morrow. However, the

bourgeois, properly so called, makes but a slight distinction between

insurrection and riot. To him everything is sedition, pure and simple

rebellion, the revolt of the dog against the master, an attempt to

bite, which must be punished with the chain and the kennel, a barking,

until the day when the dog's head, suddenly enlarged, stands out

vaguely in the shadow with a lion's face. Then the bourgeois shouts,

"Long live the people!"

This explanation given, how does the movement of 1832 stand to

history? Is it a riot or an insurrection? It is an insurrection. It

may happen that in the course of our narrative of a formidable event

we may use the word "riot," but only to qualify surface facts, and

while still maintaining the distinction between the form riot and the

basis insurrection. The movement of 1832 had in its rapid explosion

and mournful extinction so much grandeur that even those who only see

a riot in it speak of it respectfully. To them it is like a remnant

of 1830; for, as they say, excited imaginations cannot be calmed in

a day, and a revolution does not stop short with a precipice, but

has necessarily a few undulations before it returns to a state of

peace, like a mountain in redescending to the plain. There are no Alps

without Jura, nor Pyrenees without Asturia. This pathetic crisis of

contemporary history, which the memory of the Parisians calls the "time

of the riots," is assuredly a characteristic hour among the stormy

hours of this age. One last word before we return to our story.

The facts which we are going to record belong to that dramatic and

living reality which the historian sometimes neglects through want of

time and space, but they contain--we insist upon it--life, heart-beats,

and human thrills. Small details, as we think we have said, are, so to

speak, the foliage of great events, and are lost in the distance of

history. The period called the riots abounds in details of this nature,

and the judicial inquiries, through other than historic reasons, have

not revealed everything, or perhaps studied it. We are, therefore,

going to bring into light among the peculiarities known and published,

things which are not known and facts over which the forgetfulness of

some and the death of others have passed. Most of the actors in these

gigantic scenes have disappeared. On the next day they held their

tongues, but we may say that we saw what we are about to narrate. We

will change a few names, for history recounts and does not denounce,

but we will depict true things. The nature of our book will only allow

us to display one side and one episode, assuredly the least known, of

the days of June 5 and 6, 1832; but we will do so in such a way that

the reader will be enabled to catch a glimpse of the real face of this

frightful public adventure behind the dark veil which we are about to

lift.

CHAPTER III.

A BURIAL GIVES OPPORTUNITY FOR A REVIVAL.

In the spring of 1832, although for three months cholera had chilled

minds and cast over their agitation a species of dull calm, Paris

had been for a long time ready for a commotion. As we have said,

the great city resembles a piece of artillery when it is loaded,--a

spark need only fall and the gun goes off. In June, 1832, the spark

was the death of General Lamarque. Lamarque was a man of renown and

of action, and had displayed in succession, under the Empire and the

Restoration, the two braveries necessary for the two epochs,--the

bravery of the battle-field and the bravery of the oratorical tribune.

He was eloquent as he had been valiant, and a sword was felt in his

words; like Foy, his predecessor, after holding the command erect,

he held liberty erect; he sat between the Left and the extreme Left,

beloved by the people because he accepted the chances of the future,

and beloved by the mob because he had served the Emperor well. He was

with Gérard and Drouet one of the Napoleon's marshals _in petto,_ and

the treaties of 1815 affected him like a personal insult. He hated

Wellington with a direct hatred, which pleased the multitude, and for

the last seventeen years, scarcely paying attention to intermediate

events, he had majestically nursed his grief for Waterloo. In his dying

hour he pressed to his heart a sword which the officers of the Hundred

Days had given him; and while Napoleon died uttering the word _army_,

Lamarque died pronouncing the word _country_. His death, which was

expected, was feared by the people as a loss, and by the Government as

an opportunity. This death was a mourning, and like everything which

is bitter, mourning may turn into revolt. This really happened. On the

previous evening, and on the morning of June 5th, the day fixed for the

interment of Lamarque, the Faubourg St. Antoine, close to which the

procession would pass, assumed a formidable aspect. This tumultuous

network of streets was filled with rumors, and people armed themselves

as they could. Carpenters carried off the bolts of their shop "to break

in doors with;" one of them made a dagger of a stocking-weaver's hook,

by breaking off the hook and sharpening the stump. Another in his fever

"to attack" slept for three nights in his clothes. A carpenter of the

name of Lombier met a mate, who asked him, "Where are you going?" "Why,

I have no weapon, and so I am going to my shop to fetch my compasses."

"What to do?" "I don't know," Lombier said. A porter of the name of

Jacqueline arrested any workman who happened to pass, and said, "Come

with me." He paid for a pint of wine, and asked, "Have you work?" "No."

"Go to Filspierre's, between the Montreuil and Charonne barrières,

and you will find work." At Filspierre's cartridges and arms were

distributed. Some well-known chiefs went the rounds, that is to say,

ran from one to the other to collect their followers. At Barthélemy's,

near the Barrière du Trône, and at Capel's, the Petit Chapeau, the

drinkers accosted each other with a serious air, and could be heard

saying, "Where is your pistol?" "Under my blouse; and yours?" "Under

my shirt." In the Rue Traversière, in front of Roland's workshop, and

in the yard of the Maison Bruise, before the workshop of Bernier the

tool-maker, groups stood whispering. The most ardent among them was

a certain Mavot, who never stopped longer than a week at a shop, for

his masters sent him away, "as they were obliged to quarrel with him

every day." Mavot was killed the next day on the barricade of the Rue

Ménilmontant. Pretot, who was also destined to die in the struggle,

seconded Mavot, and replied to the question "What is your object?"

"Insurrection." Workmen assembled at the corner of the Rue de Bercy,

awaiting a man of the name of Lemarin, revolutionary agent for the

Faubourg St. Marceau, and passwords were exchanged almost publicly.

On June 5, then, a day of sunshine and shower, the funeral procession

of General Lamarque passed through Paris with the official military

pomp, somewhat increased by precautions. Two battalions with covered

drums and reversed muskets, ten thousand of the National Guard with

their sabres at their side, and the batteries of the artillery of the

National Guard escorted the coffin, and the hearse was drawn by young

men. The officers of the Invalides followed immediately after, bearing

laurel branches, and then came a countless, agitated, and strange

multitude, the sectionists of the friends of the people, the school

of law, the school of medicine, refugees of all nations, Spanish,

Italian, German, Polish flags, horizontal tricolor flags, every banner

possible, children waving green branches, stone-cutters and carpenters

out of work at this very time, and printers easy to recognize by their

paper caps, marching two and two, three and three, uttering cries,

nearly all shaking sticks, and some sabres, without order, but with one

soul, at one moment a mob, at another a column. Squads selected their

chiefs, and a man armed with a brace of pistols, which were perfectly

visible, seemed to pass others in review, whose files made way for

him. On the sidewalks of the boulevards, on the branches of the trees,

in the balconies, at the windows and on the roofs, there was a dense

throng of men, women, and children, whose eyes were full of anxiety.

An armed crowd passed, and a startled crowd looked at it; on its side

Government was observing, with its hand on the sword-hilt. There might

be seen,--all ready to march, cartridge-boxes full, guns and carbines

loaded,--on the Place Louis XV., four squadrons of carbineers in the

middle, with trumpeters in front; in the Pays Latin, and at the Jardin

des Plantes, the municipal guard échelonned from street to street; at

the Halle-aux-Vins a squadron of dragoons, at the Grève one half of the

12th light Infantry, the other half at the Bastille; the 6th Dragoons

at the Célestins, and the court of the Louvre full of artillery. The

rest of the troops were confined to barracks, without counting the

regiments in the environs of Paris. The alarmed authorities held

suspended over the threatening multitude twenty-four thousand soldiers

in the city and thirty thousand in the suburbs.

Various rumors circulated in the procession, legitimist intrigues were

talked about, and they spoke about the Duke of Reichstadt, whom God was

marking for death at the very moment when the crowd designated him for

Emperor. A person who was never discovered announced that at appointed

hours two overseers, gained over, would open to the people the gates

of a small arm-factory. An enthusiasm blended with despondency was

visible in the uncovered heads of most of the persons present, and

here and there too in this multitude, suffering from so many violent

but noble emotions, might be seen criminal faces and ignoble lips,

that muttered, "Let us plunder." There are some agitations which stir

up the bottom of the marsh and bring clouds of mud to the surface of

the water; this is a phenomenon familiar to a well-constituted police

force. The procession proceeded with feverish slowness from the house

of death along the boulevards to the Bastille. It rained at intervals,

but the rain produced no effect on this crowd. Several incidents, such

as the coffin carried thrice round the Vendôme column, stones thrown

at the Duc de Fitzjames, who was noticed in a balcony with his hat on

his head, the Gallic cock torn from a popular flag and dragged in the

mud, a policeman wounded by a sword-thrust at the Porte St. Martin, an

officer of the 12th Light Infantry saying aloud, "I am a Republican,"

the Polytechnic school coming up, after forcing the gates, and the

cries of "Long live the Polytechnic School!" "Long live the Republic!"

marked the passage of the procession. At the Bastille long formidable

files of spectators, coming down from the Faubourg St. Antoine,

effected their junction with the procession, and a certain terrible

ebullition began to agitate the crowd. A man was heard saying to

another, "You see that fellow with the red beard; he will say when it

is time to fire." It seems that this red beard reappeared with the same

functions in a later riot, the Quénisset affair.

The hearse passed the Bastille, followed the canal, crossed the small

bridge, and reached the esplanade of the bridge of Austerlitz, where

it halted. At this moment a bird's-eye view of the crowd would have

offered the appearance of a comet, whose head was on the esplanade,

and whose tail was prolonged upon the boulevard as far as the Porte

St. Martin. A circle was formed round the hearse, and the vast crowd

was hushed. Lafayette spoke, and bade farewell to Lamarque: it was a

touching and august moment,--all heads were uncovered, and all hearts

beat. All at once a man on horseback, dressed in black, appeared in

the middle of the group with a red flag, though others say with a pike

surmounted by a red cap. Lafayette turned his head away, and Excelmans

left the procession. This red flag aroused a storm and disappeared

in it: from the Boulevard Bourdon to the bridge of Austerlitz one of

those clamors which resemble billows stirred up the multitude, and two

prodigious cries were raised, "Lamarque to the Panthéon!"--"Lafayette

to the Hôtel de Ville!" Young men, amid the acclamations of the crowd,

began dragging Lamarque in the hearse over the bridge of Austerlitz,

and Lafayette in a hackney coach along the Quai Morland. In the crowd

that surrounded and applauded Lafayette people noticed and pointed out

to each other a German of the name of Ludwig Snyder, who has since died

a centenarian, who also went through the campaign of 1776, and had

fought at Trenton under Washington, and under Lafayette at Brandywine.

The municipal cavalry galloped along the left bank to stop the passage

of the bridge, while on the right the dragoons came out of the

Célestins and deployed along the Quai Morland. The people who were

drawing Lafayette suddenly perceived them at a turning of the quay, and

cried, "The Dragoons!" The troops advanced at a walk, silently, with

their pistols in the holsters, sabres undrawn, and musquetoons slung

with an air of gloomy expectation. Two hundred yards from the little

bridge they halted, the coach in which was Lafayette went up to them,

they opened their ranks to let it pass, and then closed up again. At

this moment the dragoons and the crowd came in contact, and women fled

in terror. What took place in this fatal minute? No one could say, for

it is the dark moment when two clouds clash together. Some state that

a bugle-call sounding the charge was heard on the side of the Arsenal,

others that a dragoon was stabbed with a knife by a lad. The truth

is, that three shots were suddenly fired, one killing Major Cholet,

the second an old deaf woman who was closing her window in the Rue

Contrescarpe, while the third grazed an officer's shoulder. A woman

cried, "They have begun too soon!" and all at once on the side opposite

the Quai Morland, a squadron of dragoons, which had been left in

barracks, was seen galloping up the Rue Bassompierre and the Boulevard

Bourdon, with naked swords, and sweeping everything before it.

Now all is said, the tempest is unchained, stones shower, the fusillade

bursts forth: many rush to the water's edge and cross the small arm of

the Seine, which is now filled up: the timber-yards on Isle Louviers,

that ready-made citadel, bristle with combatants, stakes are pulled

up, pistols are fired, a barricade is commenced, the young men, driven

back, pass over the bridge of Austerlitz with the hearse at the double,

and charge the municipal guard: the carabineers gallop up, the dragoons

sabre, the crowd disperses in all directions, a rumor of war flies to

the four corners of Paris: men cry "To arms!" and run, overthrow, fly,

and resist. Passion spreads the riot as the wind does fire.

CHAPTER IV.

THE EBULLITIONS OF OTHER DAYS.

Nothing is more extraordinary than the commencement of a riot, for

everything breaks out everywhere at once. Was it foreseen? Yes. Was

it prepared? No. Where does it issue from? From the pavement. Where

does it fall from? The clouds. At one spot the insurrection has the

character of a plot, at another of an improvisation. The first-comer

grasps a current of the mob and leads it whither he pleases. It is

a beginning full of horror, with which a sort of formidable gayety

is mingled. First there is a clamor; shops are closed, and the goods

disappear from the tradesmen's windows; then dropping shots are heard;

people fly; gateways are assailed with the butts of muskets, and

servant-maids may be heard laughing in the yards of the houses and

saying, "There's going to be a row."

A quarter of an hour had not elapsed: this is what was going on

simultaneously at twenty different points of Paris. In the Rue St.

Croix de la Bretonnerie, twenty young men, with beards and long hair,

entered a wine-shop and came out a moment after carrying a horizontal

tricolor flag covered with crape, and having at their head three men

armed, one with a sabre, the second with a gun, and the third with a

pike. In the Rue des Nonaindières, a well-dressed bourgeois, who had

a large stomach, a sonorous voice, bald head, lofty forehead, black

beard, and one of those rough moustaches which cannot be kept from

bristling, publicly offered cartridges to passers-by. In the Rue St.

Pierre Montmartre bare-armed men carried about a black flag, on which

were read these words, in white letters: "Republic or death." In the

Rue des Jeûneurs, Rue du Cadran, Rue Montorgueil, and 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 imperceptible parting line of white. A weapon factory

in the Boulevard St. Martin and three gunsmiths' shops--the first in

the Rue Beaubourg; the second, Rue Michel le Comte; and the third,

Rue du Temple--were pillaged. In a few minutes the thousand hands of

the mob seized and carried off two hundred and thirty guns nearly all

double-barrelled, sixty-four sabres, and eighty-three pistols. In

order to arm as many persons as possible, one took the musket, the

other the bayonet. Opposite the Quai de la Grève young men armed with

muskets stationed themselves in the rooms of some ladies in order to

fire; one of them had a wheel-lock gun. They rang, went in and began

making cartridges, and one of the ladies said afterwards, "I did not

know what cartridges were till my husband told me." A crowd broke into

a curiosity-shop on the Rue des Vieilles-Haudriettes, and took from

it yataghans and Turkish weapons. The corpse of a mason killed by a

bullet lay in the Rue de la Perle. And then, on the right bank and the

left bank, on the quays, on the boulevards, in the Quartier Latin, and

on the Quartier of the Halles, panting men, workmen, students, and

sectionists read proclamations, shouted "To arms!" broke the lanterns,

unharnessed vehicles, tore up the pavement, broke in the doors of

houses, uprooted trees, searched cellars, rolled up barrels, heaped up

paving-stones, furniture, and planks, and formed barricades.

Citizens were forced to lend a hand; the rioters went to the wives,

compelled them to surrender the sabre and musket of their absent

husbands, and then wrote on the door in chalk, "The arms are given up."

Some signed with their own names receipts for musket and sabre, and

said, "Send for them to-morrow at the Mayoralty." Isolated sentries and

National Guards proceeding to their gathering-place were disarmed in

the streets. Epaulettes were torn from the officers, and in the Rue du

Cimetière St. Nicolas an officer of the National Guard, pursued by a

party armed with sticks and foils, found refuge with great difficulty

in a house, where he was compelled to remain till night, and then went

away in disguise. In the Quartier St. Jacques the students came out of

their lodging-houses in swarms, and went up the Rue Sainte Hyacinthe

to the Café du Progrès, or down to the Café des Sept Billards in the

Rue des Mathurins; there the young men stood on benches and distributed

arms; and the timber-yard in the Rue Transnonain was pillaged to make

barricades. Only at one spot did the inhabitants offer resistance,--at

the corner of the Rue Sainte Avoye and Simon le Franc, where they

themselves destroyed the barricade. Only at one point too did the

insurgents give way; they abandoned a barricade begun in the Rue du

Temple, after firing at a detachment of the National Guard, and fled

along the Rue de la Corderie. The detachment picked up on the barricade

a red flag, a packet of cartridges, and three hundred pistol bullets;

the National Guards tore up the flag, and carried off the strips on the

point of their bayonets. All this which we are describing here slowly

and successively was going on simultaneously at all parts of the city,

in the midst of a vast tumult, like a number of lightning flashes in a

single peal of thunder.

In less than an hour twenty-seven barricades issued from the ground

in the single quarter of the Halles; in the centre was that famous

house No. 50, which was the fortress of Jeanne and her hundred-and-six

companions, and which, flanked on one side by a barricade at St.

Merry, and on the other by a barricade in the Rue Maubuée, commanded

the three streets, Des Arcis, St. Martin, and Aubry le Boucher, the

last of which it faced. Two square barricades retreated, the one from

the Rue Montorgueil into la Grande Truanderie, the other from the Rue

Geoffroy Langevin into the Rue Sainte Avoye. This is without counting

innumerable barricades in twenty other districts of Paris, as the

Marais and the Montagne Sainte Geneviève; one in the Rue Ménilmontant,

in which a gate could be seen torn off its hinges; and another near

the little bridge of the Hôtel Dieu, made of an overthrown vehicle.

Three hundred yards from the Préfecture of Police, at the barricade

in the Rue des Ménétriers, a well-dressed man distributed money to

the artisans; at the barricade in the Rue Grenetat a horseman rode up

and handed to the man who seemed to be the chief of the barricade a

roll, which looked like money. "Here," he said, "is something to pay

the expenses,--the wine, etc." A light-haired young man, without a

cravat, went from one barricade to another, carrying the passwords; and

another, with drawn sabre and a blue forage-cap on his head, stationed

sentries. In the interior, within the barricades, the wine-shops and

cabarets were converted into guard-rooms, and the riot was managed

in accordance with the most skilful military tactics. The narrow,

uneven, winding streets, full of corners and turnings, were admirably

selected,--the vicinity of the Halles more especially, a network of

streets more tangled than a forest. The society of the Friends of the

People had, it was said, taken the direction of the insurrection in the

Sainte Avoye district, and a plan of Paris was found on the body of a

man killed in the Rue du Ponceau.

What had really assumed the direction of the insurrection was a sort

of unknown impetuosity that was in the atmosphere. The insurrection

had suddenly built barricades with one hand, and with the other seized

nearly all the garrison posts. In less than three hours the insurgents,

like a powder-train fired, had seized and occupied on the right bank

the Arsenal, the Mayoralty of the Place Royale, all the Marais, the

Popincourt arms-factory, the Galiote the Château d'Eau, and all the

streets near the Halles; on the left bank the Veterans' barracks,

Sainte Pélagie, the Place Maubert, the powder manufactory of the Deux

Moulins, and all the barrières. At five in the evening they were

masters of the Bastille, the Lingerie, and the Blancs-Manteaux; while

their scouts were close to the Place des Victoires and menaced the

Bank, the barracks of the Petits-Pères and the Post-office. One third

of Paris was in the hands of the revolt. On all points the struggle

had begun on a gigantic scale, and the result of the disarmaments,

the domiciliary visits, and the attack on the gunsmiths' shops, was

that the fight which had begun with stone-throwing was continued with

musket-shots.

About six in the evening the Passage du Saumon became the battle-field;

the rioters were at one end and the troops at the other, and they fired

from one gate at the other. An observer, a dreamer, the author of this

book, who had gone to have a near look at the volcano, found himself

caught between two fires in the passage, and had nothing to protect him

from the bullets but the projecting semi-columns which used to separate

the shops; he was nearly half an hour in this delicate position. In

the mean while the tattoo was beaten, the National Guards hurriedly

dressed and armed themselves, the legions issued from the Mayoralty,

and the regiments from the barracks. Opposite the Passage de l'Ancre

a drummer was stabbed; another was attacked in the Rue du Cygne by

thirty young men, who ripped up his drum and took his sabre, while

a third was killed in the Rue Grenier St. Lazare. In the Rue Michel

le Comte three officers fell dead one after the other, and several

municipal guards, wounded in the Rue des Lombards, recoiled. In front

of the Cour Batave, a detachment of National Guards found a red flag,

bearing this inscription, "Republican Revolution, No. 127." Was it

really a revolution? The insurrection had made of the heart of Paris

a sort of inextricable, tortuous, and colossal citadel; there was the

nucleus, there the question would be solved; all the rest was merely

skirmishing. The proof that all would be decided there lay in the fact

that fighting had not yet begun there.

In some regiments the troops were uncertain, which added to the

startling obscurity of the crisis; and they remembered the popular

ovation which, in July, 1830, greeted the neutrality of the 53d line.

Two intrepid men, tried by the great wars, Marshal de Lobau and General

Bugeaud, commanded,--Bugeaud under Lobau. Enormous patrols, composed

of battalions of the line enclosed in entire companies of the National

Guard, and preceded by the Police Commissary in his scarf, went to

reconnoitre the insurgent streets. On their side, the insurgents

posted-vedettes at the corner of the streets, and audaciously sent

patrols beyond the barricades. Both sides were observing each other;

the Government, with an army in its hand, hesitated, night was setting

in, and the tocsin of St. Mary was beginning to be heard. Marshal

Soult, the Minister of War at that day, who had seen Austerlitz,

looked at all this with a gloomy air. These old sailors, habituated

to correct manœuvres, and having no other resource and guide but

tactics, the compass of battles, are completely thrown out when in the

presence of that immense foam which is called the public anger. The

wind of revolutions is not favorable for sailing. The National Guards

of the suburbs ran up hastily and disorderly; a battalion of the 12th

Light Infantry came at the double from St. Denis; the 14th line arrived

from Courbevoie, the batteries of the military school had taken up

position at the Carrousel, and guns were brought in from Vincennes.

Solitude set in at the Tuileries. Louis Philippe was full of serenity.

CHAPTER V.

ORIGINALITY OF PARIS.

During the two past years Paris, as we said, had seen more than one

insurrection. With the exception of the insurgent districts, as a rule,

nothing is more strangely calm than the physiognomy of Paris during

a riot. Paris very soon grows accustomed to everything--it is only a

riot; and Paris has so much to do that it does not put itself out of

the way for such a trifle. These colossal cities alone can offer such

spectacles. These immense enclosures alone can contain simultaneously

civil war and a strange tranquillity. Usually, when the insurrection

begins, when the drum, the tattoo, and the assembly are heard, the

shopkeeper confines himself to saying:

"Ah, there seems to be a row in the Rue St. Martin."

Or,--

"The Faubourg St. Antoine."

And he often adds, negligently,--

"Somewhere over that way."

At a later date, when the heart-rending and mournful sound of musketry

and platoon fire can be distinguished, the shopkeeper says,--

"Bless me, it is growing hot!"

A moment later, if the riot approaches and spreads, he precipitately

closes his shop and puts on his uniform; that is to say, places his

wares in safety, and risks his person. Men shoot themselves on a

square, in a passage, or a blind alley; barricades are taken, lost,

and retaken, blood flows, the grape-shot pockmark the fronts of the

houses, bullets kill people in their beds, and corpses encumber the

pavement. A few yards off you hear the click of the billiard-balls

in the coffee-houses. The theatres open their doors and play farces;

and gossips talk and laugh two yards from these streets full of war.

Hackney coaches roll along, and their fares are going to dine out,

sometimes in the very district where the fighting is. In 1831 a

fusillade was interrupted in order to let a wedding pass. During the

insurrection of May 12, 1839, in the Rue St. Martin, a little old

infirm man, dragging a hand-truck surmounted by a tricolor rag, and

carrying bottles full of some fluid, came and went from the barricade

to the troops, and from the troops to the barricade, impartially

offering glasses of cocoa, first to the Government and then to anarchy.

Nothing can be stranger; and this is the peculiar character of Parisian

riots, which is not found in any other capital, as two things are

required for it,--the grandeur of Paris and its gayety, the city of

Voltaire and of Napoleon. This time, however, in the insurrection of

June 5, 1832, the great city felt something which was perhaps stronger

than itself, and was frightened. Everywhere, in the most remote and

disinterested districts, doors, windows, and shutters were closed in

broad daylight. The courageous armed, the cowardly hid themselves,

and the careless and busy passengers disappeared. Many streets were as

empty as at four in the morning. Alarming details were hawked about,

and fatal news spread,--that _they_ were masters of the Bank; that at

the cloisters of St. Merry alone they were six hundred, intrenched

with loopholes in a church; that the line was not sure; that Armand

Carrel had been to see Marshal Clausel, and the latter said to him,

"Have a regiment first;" that Lafayette, though ill, had said to them,

"I am with you, and will follow you where-ever there is room for a

chair;" that people must be on their guard, for at night burglars

would plunder isolated houses in the deserted corners of Paris (in

this could be recognized the imagination of the police, that Anne

Radcliffe blended with government); that a battery had been established

in the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher; that Lobau and Bugeaud were agreed, and

that at midnight, or at daybreak at the latest, four columns would

march together on the centre of the revolt, the first coming from the

Bastille, the second from the Porte St. Martin, the third from the

Grève, and the fourth from the Halles that perhaps, too, the troops

would evacuate Paris, and retire on the Champ de Mars; that no one knew

what would happen, but this time it was certainly very serious. People

were alarmed too by the hesitation of Marshal Soult; why did he not

attack at once? It is certain that he was greatly absorbed, and the old

lion seemed to scent an unknown monster in the darkness.

Night came, and the theatres were not opened, the patrols went

their rounds with an air of irritation, passers-by were searched,

and suspected persons arrested. At nine o'clock there were more

than eight hundred persons taken up, and the Préfecture of Police,

the Conciergerie, and La Force were crowded. At the Conciergerie,

especially, the long vault called the Rue de Paris was strewn with

trusses of straw, on which lay a pile of prisoners, whom Lagrange, the

man of Lyons, valiantly harangued. All this straw, moved by all these

men, produced the sound of a shower. Elsewhere the prisoners slept in

the open air on lawns; there was anxiety everywhere, and a certain

trembling, not at all usual to Paris. People barricaded themselves in

the houses; wives and mothers were alarmed, and nothing else but this

was heard, "Oh heavens! he has not come in!" Only the rolling of a few

vehicles could be heard in the distance, and people listened in the

doorways to the noises, cries, tumults, and dull, indistinct sounds,

of which they said, "That is the cavalry," or, "It is the galloping of

tumbrils;" to the bugles, the drums, the firing, and before all to the

lamentable tocsin of St. Merry. They waited for the first artillery

round, and men rose at the corner of the streets and disappeared, after

shouting, "Go in." And they hastened to bolt their doors, saying, "How

will it all end?" From moment to moment, as the night became darker,

Paris seemed to be more lugubriously colored by the formidable flashes

of the revolt.

BOOK XI.

THE ATOM FRATERNIZES WITH HURRICANE.

CHAPTER I.

THE ORIGIN OF THE POETRY OF GAVROCHE

AND THE INFLUENCE OF AN ACADEMICIAN UPON IT.

At the moment when the insurrection, breaking out through the collision

between the people and the troops in front of the Arsenal, produced

a retrograde movement in the multitude that followed the hearse, and

which pressed with the whole length of the boulevards upon the head of

the procession, there was a frightful reflux. The ranks were broken,

and all ran or escaped, some with cries of attack, others with the

pallor of flight. The great stream which covered the boulevards divided

in a second, overflowed on the right and left, and spread in torrents

over two hundred streets at once, as if a dyke had burst. At this

moment a ragged lad who was coming down the Rue Ménilmontant, holding

in his hand a branch of flowering laburnum which he had picked on the

heights of Belleville, noticed in the shop of a dealer in bric-à-brac

an old hostler pistol. He threw his branch on the pavement, and

cried,--

"Mother What's-your-name, I'll borrow your machine."

And he ran off with the pistol. Two minutes after, a crowd of

frightened cits, flying through the Rue Amelot and the Rue Basse, met

the lad, who was brandishing his pistol and singing,--

"La nuit on ne voit rien,

Le jour on voit très bien,

D'un écrit apocryphe

Le bourgeois s'ébouriffe,

Pratiquez la vertu,

Tutu, chapeau pointu!"

It was little Gavroche going to the wars; on the boulevard he noticed

that his pistol had no hammer. Who was the composer of this couplet

which served to punctuate his march, and all the other songs which

he was fond of singing when he had a chance? Who knows? Himself,

perhaps. Besides, Gavroche was acquainted with all the popular tunes

in circulation, and mingled with them his own chirping, and, as a

young vagabond, he made a _pot-pourri_ of the voices of nature and

the voices of Paris. He combined, the repertoire of the birds with

that of the studios, and he was acquainted with artists' students, a

tribe contiguous to his own. He had been for three months, it appears,

apprenticed to a painter, and had one day delivered a message for M.

Baour Lormian, one of the Forty; Gavroche was a gamin of letters.

Gavroche did not suspect, by the way, that on that wretched rainy

night, when he offered the hospitality of his elephant to the two boys,

he was performing the offices of Providence to his two brothers. His

brothers in the evening, his father in the morning,--such had been his

night. On leaving the Rue des Ballets at dawn, he hurried back to the

elephant, artistically extracted the two boys, shared with them the

sort of breakfast which he had invented, and then went away, confiding

them to that good mother, the street, who had almost brought himself

up. On leaving them he appointed to meet them on the same spot at

night, and left them this speech as farewell,--"I am going to cut my

stick, otherwise to say, I intend to bolt, or as they say at court, I

shall make myself scarce. My brats, if you do not find papa and mamma,

come here again to-night. I will give you your supper and put you to

bed." The two lads, picked up by some policeman and placed at the

station, or stolen by some mountebank, or simply lost in that Chinese

puzzle, Paris, did not return. The substrata of the existing social

world are full of such lost traces. Gavroche had not seen them again,

and ten or twelve weeks had elapsed since that night. More than once he

had scratched his head and asked himself, "Where the deuce are my two

children?"

He reached the Rue du Pont aux Choux, and noticed that there was only

one shop still open in that street, and it was worthy of reflection

that it was a confectioner's. It was a providential opportunity to eat

one more apple-puff before entering the unknown. Gavroche stopped, felt

in his pockets, turned them inside out, found nothing, not even a sou,

and began shouting, "Help!" It is hard to go without the last cake,

but for all that Gavroche went on his way. Two minutes after he was in

the Rue St. Louis, and on crossing the Rue du Parc Royal he felt the

necessity of compensating himself for the impossible apple-puff, and

gave himself the immense treat of tearing down in open daylight the

play-bills. A little farther on, seeing a party of stout gentry who

appeared to him to be retired from business, he shrugged his shoulders

and spat out this mouthful of philosophic bile,--

"How fat annuitants are! they wallow in good dinners. Ask them what

they do with their money, and they don't know. They eat it, eat their

bellyful."

CHAPTER II.

GAVROCHE ON THE MARCH.

Holding a pistol without a cock in the streets is such a public

function, that Gavroche felt his humor increase at every step. He cried

between the scraps of the Marseillaise which he sang,--

"All goes well. I suffer considerably in my left paw. I have broken my

rheumatism, but I am happy, citizens. The bourgeois have only to hold

firm, and I am going to sing them some subversive couplets. What are

the police? Dogs. Holy Moses! we must not lack respect for the dogs.

Besides, I should be quite willing to have one[1] for my pistol. I have

just come from the boulevard, my friends, where it's getting warm, and

the soup is simmering; it is time to skim the pot. Forward, my men,

and let an impure blood inundate the furrows! I give my days for my

country. I shall not see my concubine again; it's all over. Well, no

matter! Long live joy! Let us fight, crebleu! I have had enough of

despotism!"

At this moment the horse of a lancer in the National Guard, who was

passing, fell. Gavroche laid his pistol on the pavement, helped the

man up, and then helped to raise the horse, after which he picked

up his pistol and went his way again. In the Rue de Thorigny all was

peace and silence; and this apathy, peculiar to the Marais, contrasted

with the vast surrounding turmoil. Four gossips were conversing on

the step of a door; Scotland has trios of witches, but Paris has

quartettes of gossips, and the "Thou shalt be king" would be as

lugubriously cast at Bonaparte at the Baudoyer crossway, as to Macbeth

on the Highland heath,--it would be much the same croak. The gossips

in the Rue Thorigny only troubled themselves about their own affairs;

they were three portresses, and a rag-picker with her dorser and her

hook. They seemed to be standing all four at the four corners of old

age, which are decay, decrepitude, ruin, and sorrow. The rag-picker

was humble, for in this open-air world the rag-picker bows, and the

portress protects. The things thrown into the street are fat and lean,

according to the fancy of the person who makes the pile, and there

may be kindness in the broom. This rag-picker was grateful, and she

smiled,--what a smile!--at the three portresses. They were making

remarks like the following,--

"So your cat is as ill-tempered as ever?"

"Well, good gracious! you know that cats are naturally the enemy of

dogs. It's the dogs that complain."

"And people too."

"And yet cats' fleas do not run after people."

"Dogs are really dangerous. I remember one year when there were so many

dogs that they were obliged to put it in the papers. It was at that

time when there were large sheep at the Tuileries to drag the little

carriage of the King of Rome. Do you remember the King of Rome?"

"I preferred the Duc de Bordeaux."

"Well, I know Louis XVII., and I prefer him."

"How dear meat is, Mame Patagon!"

"Oh, dont talk about it! Butcher's meat is a horror,--a horrible

horror. It is only possible to buy bones now."

Here the rag-picker interposed,--

"Ladies, trade does not go on well at all, and the rubbish is

abominable. People do not throw away anything now, but eat it all."

"There are poorer folk than you, Vargoulême."

"Ah, that's true," the rag-picker replied deferentially, "for I have a

profession."

There was a pause, and the rag-picker, yielding to that need of display

which is at the bottom of the human heart, added,--

"When I go home in the morning I empty out my basket and sort the

articles; that makes piles in my room. I put the rags in a box, the

cabbage-stalks in a tub, the pieces of linen in my cupboard, the

woollen rags in my chest of drawers, old papers on the corner of the

window, things good to eat in my porringer, pieces of glass in the

fire-place, old shoes behind the door, and bones under my bed."

Gavroche had stopped, and was listening.

"Aged dames," he said, "what right have you to talk politics?"

A broadside, composed of a quadruple yell, assailed him.

"There's another of the villains."

"What's that he has in his hand,--a pistol?"

"Just think, that rogue of a boy!"

"They are never quiet unless when they are overthrowing the

authorities."

Gavroche disdainfully limited his reprisals to lifting the tip of his

nose with his thumb, and opening his hand to the full extent. The

rag-picker exclaimed,--

"The barefooted scamp!"

The one who answered to the name of Mame Patagon struck her hands

together with scandal.

"There are going to be misfortunes, that's sure. The young fellow

with the beard round the corner, I used to see him pass every morning

with a girl in a pink bonnet on his arm; but this morning I saw him

pass, and he was giving his arm to a gun. Mame Bacheux says there

was a revolution last week at, at, at, at,--where do the calves come

from?--at Pontoise. And then, just look at this atrocious young

villain's pistol. It seems that the Célestins are full of cannon. What

would you have the Government do with these vagabonds who can only

invent ways to upset the world, after we were beginning to get over all

the misfortunes which fell--good gracious!--on that poor Queen whom I

saw pass in a cart! And all this will raise the price of snuff. It is

infamous, and I will certainly go and see you guillotined, malefactor."

"You snuffle, my aged friend," said Gavroche; "blow your promontory."

And he passed on. When he was in the Rue Pavée his thoughts reverted

to the rag-picker, and he had this soliloquy,--

"You are wrong to insult the revolutionists, Mother Cornerpost. This

pistol is on your behalf, and it is for you to have in your baskets

more things good to eat."

All at once he heard a noise behind; it was the portress Patagon, who

had followed him, and now shook her fist at him, crying,--

"You are nothing but a bastard."

"At that I scoff with all my heart," said Gavroche.

A little later he passed the Hôtel Lamoignon, where he burst into this

appeal,--

"Go on to the battle."

And he was attacked by a fit of melancholy; he regarded his pistol

reproachfully, and said to it,--

"I am going off, but you will not go off."

One dog may distract another;[2] a very thin whelp passed, and Gavroche

felt pity for it.

"My poor little creature," he said to it, "you must have swallowed a

barrel, as you show all the hoops."

Then he proceeded toward the Orme St. Gervais.

[1] The hammer of a pistol is called a dog in France.

[2] Another allusion to the hammer (chien) of the pistol.

CHAPTER III.

JUST INDIGNATION OF A BARBER.

The worthy barber who had turned out the two children for whom Gavroche

had opened the elephant's paternal intestines, was at this moment in

his shop, engaged in shaving an old legionary who had served under

the Empire. The barber had naturally spoken to the veteran about the

riot, then about General Lamarque, and from Lamarque they had come to

the Emperor. Hence arose a conversation between the barber and the

soldier which Prudhomme, had he been present, would have enriched with

arabesques, and entitled, "A dialogue between a razor and a sabre."

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

"Badly. He did not know how to fall off, and so he never fell off."

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

"On the day when he gave me the cross I noticed his beast. It was a

white mare. It had its ears very far apart, a deep saddle, a fine head

marked with a black star, a very long neck, prominent knees, projecting

flanks, oblique shoulders, and a strong crupper. It was a little above

fifteen hands high."

"A fine horse," said the barber.

"It was His Majesty's beast."

The barber felt that after this remark a little silence was befitting;

then he went on,--

"The Emperor was wounded only once, I believe, sir?"

The old soldier replied, with the calm and sovereign accent of the man

who has felt wounds,--

"In the heel, at Ratisbon. I never saw him so well dressed as on that

day. He was as clean as a halfpenny."

"And you, sir, I suppose, have received sword-wounds?"

"I," said the soldier; "oh, a mere flea-bite. I received two sabre-cuts

on my neck at Marengo; I got a bullet in my right arm at Jena, another

in the left hip at Jena; at Friedland a bayonet-thrust,--there; at the

Muskowa seven or eight lance-prods, never mind where; at Lützen, a

piece of shell carried off a finger, and--oh, yes! at Waterloo a bullet

from a case-shot in my thigh. That's all."

"How glorious it is," the barber exclaimed, with a Pindaric accent, "to

die on the battle-field! On my word of honor, sooner than die on a bed

of disease, slowly, a bit every day, with drugs, cataplasms, clysters,

and medicine, I would sooner have a cannon-ball in my stomach!"

"And you're right," said the soldier. He had scarce ended ere a

frightful noise shook the shop; a great pane of glass was suddenly

smashed, and the barber turned livid.

"Good Lord!" he cried, "it is one."

"What?"

"A cannon-ball."

"Here it is."

And he picked up something which was rolling on the ground; it was a

pebble. The barber ran to his broken pane, and saw Gavroche flying

at full speed towards the Marché St. Jean. On passing the barber's

shop Gavroche, who had the two lads at his heart, could not resist

the desire of wishing him good-evening, and threw a stone through his

window.

"Just look," the barber yelled, who had become blue instead of livid,

"he does harm for harm's sake. What had I done to that villain?"

CHAPTER IV.

THE CHILD ASTONISHES THE OLD MAN.

On reaching St. Jean market, the post at which had been disarmed

already, Gavroche proceeded "to effect his junction" with a band led

by Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Combeferre, and Feuilly. They were all more

or less armed, and Bahorel and Prouvaire had joined them, and swelled

the group. Enjolras had a double-barrelled fowling-piece, Combeferre

a National Guard's musket bearing the number of a legion, and in his

waist-belt two pistols, which his unbuttoned coat allowed to be seen;

Jean Prouvaire an old cavalry carbine, and Bahorel a rifle; Courfeyrac

brandished a sword drawn from a cane, while Feuilly with a naked sabre

in his hand walked along shouting. "Long live Poland! They reached the

Quai Morland without neck-cloths or hats, panting for breath, drenched

with rain, but with lightning in their eyes. Gavroche calmly approached

them,--

"Where are we going?"

"Come," said Courfeyrac.

Behind Feuilly marched or rather bounded Bahorel, a fish in the water

of revolt. He had a crimson waistcoat, and uttered words which smash

everything. His waistcoat upset a passer-by, who cried wildly, "Here

are the reds!"

"The reds, the reds!" Bahorel answered; "that's a funny fear, citizen.

For my part, I do not tremble at a poppy, and the little red cap does

not inspire me with any terror. Citizen, believe me, we had better

leave a fear of the red to horned cattle."

He noticed a corner wall, on which was placarded the most peaceful

piece of paper in the world, a permission to eat eggs, a Lent

mandamus addressed by the Archbishop of Paris to his "flock." Bahorel

exclaimed,--

"A flock! a polite way of saying geese." And he tore the paper down.

This conquered Gavroche, and from this moment he began studying Bahorel.

"Bahorel," Enjolras observed, "you are wrong; you should have left

that order alone, for we have nothing to do with it, and you uselessly

expended your anger. Keep your stock by you; a man does not fire out of

the ranks any more with his mind than with his gun."

"Every man has his own way, Enjolras," Bahorel replied; "the bishop's

prose offends me, and I insist on eating eggs without receiving

permission to do so. Yours is the cold burning style, while I amuse

myself; moreover, I am not expending myself, but getting the steam up,

and if I tore that order down, Hercle! it is to give me an appetite."

This word _hercle_ struck Gavroche, for he sought every opportunity of

instructing himself, and this tearing down of posters possessed his

esteem. Hence he asked,--

"What's the meaning of _hercle?_"

Bahorel answered,--

"It means cursed name of a dog in latin."

Here Bahorel noticed at a window a pale young man, with a black beard,

who was watching them pass, probably a Friend of the A. B. C He shouted

to him,--

"Quick with the cartridges, _para bellum!_"

"A handsome man [bel homme], that's true," said Gavroche, who now

comprehended Latin.

A tumultuous crowd accompanied them,--students, artists, young men

affiliated to the Cougourde of Aix, artisans, and lightermen, armed

with sticks and bayonets, and some, like Combeferre, with pistols

passed through their trouser-belt. An old man, who appeared very aged,

marched in this band; he had no weapon, and hurried on, that he might

not be left behind, though he looked thoughtful. Gavroche perceived him.

"Keksekça?" said he to Courfeyrac.

"That is an antique."

It was M. Mabœuf.

CHAPTER V.

THE OLD MAN.

We will tell what had occurred. Enjolras and his friends were on the

Bourdon Boulevard near the granaries at the moment when the dragoons

charged, and Enjolras, Courfeyrac, and Combeferre were among those

who turned into the Rue Bassompierre shouting, "To the barricades!"

In the Rue Lesdiguières they met an old man walking along, and what

attracted their attention was, that he was moving very irregularly,

as if intoxicated. Moreover, he had his hat in his hand, although it

had rained the whole morning, and was raining rather hard at that

very moment. Courfeyrac recognized Father Mabœuf, whom he knew

through having accompanied Marius sometimes as far as his door.

Knowing the peaceful and more than timid habits of the churchwarden

and bibliomaniac, and stupefied at seeing him in the midst of the

tumult, within two yards of cavalry charges, almost in the midst of the

musketry fire, bareheaded in the rain, and walking about among bullets,

he accosted him, and the rebel of five-and-twenty and the octogenarian

exchanged this dialogue:--

"Monsieur Mabœuf, you had better go home."

"Why so?"

"There is going to be a row."

"Very good."

"Sabre-cuts and shots, Monsieur Mabœuf."

"Very good."

"Cannon-shots."

"Very good. Where are you gentlemen going?"

"To upset the Government."

"Very good."

And he began following them, but since that moment had not said a word.

His step had become suddenly firm, and when workmen offered him an arm,

he declined it with a shake of the head. He walked almost at the head

of the column, having at once the command of a man who is marching and

the face of a man who is asleep.

"What a determined old fellow!" the students muttered; and the rumor

ran along the party that he was an ex-conventionalist, an old regicide.

The band turn into the Rue de la Verrerie, and little Gavroche marched

at the head, singing at the top of his voice, which made him resemble a

bugler. He sang:--

"Voici la lune qui paraît,

Quand irons-nous dans la forêt?

Demandait Charlot à 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 rosée à même le thym,

Deux moineaux étaient 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 étaient soûls;

Un 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 forêt?

Demandait Charlot à Charlotte.

"Tin tin tin

Pour Pantin.

Je n'ai qu'un Dieu, qu'un roi, qu'un liard et qu'une botte."

They proceeded towards St. Merry.

CHAPTER VI.

RECRUITS.

The band swelled every moment, and near the Rue des Billettes, a tall,

grayish-haired man, whose rough bold face Courfeyrac, Enjolras, and

Combeferre noticed, though not one of them knew him, joined them.

Gavroche, busy singing, whistling, and shouting, and rapping the

window-shutters with his pistol-butt, paid no attention to this man.

As they went through the Rue de la Verrerie they happened to pass

Courfeyrac's door.

"That's lucky," said Courfeyrac, "for I have forgotten my purse and

lost my hat."

He left the band and bounded up-stairs, where he put on an old hat and

put his purse in his pocket. He also took up a large square box of the

size of a portmanteau, which was concealed among his dirty linen. As he

was running down-stairs again his portress hailed him.

"Monsieur de Courfeyrac!"

"Portress, what is your name?" Courfeyrac retorted.

She stood in stupefaction.

"Why, you know very well, sir, that my name is Mother Veuvain."

"Well, then, if ever you call me M. de Courfeyrac again I shall call

you Mother de Veuvain. Now speak; what is it?"

"Some one wishes to speak to you."

"Who is it?"

"I don't know."

"Where is he?"

"In my lodge."

"Oh, the devil!" said Courfeyrac.

"Why! he has been waiting for more than an hour for you to come in."

At the same time a species of young workman, thin, livid, small,

marked with freckles, dressed in an old blouse and a pair of patched

cotton-velvet trousers, who looked more like a girl attired as a boy

than a man, stepped out of the lodge and said to Courfeyrac in a voice

which was not the least in the world a feminine voice,--

"Monsieur Marius, if you please?"

"He is not here."

"Will he come in to-night?"

"I do not know."

And Courfeyrac added, "I shall not be in to-night."

The young man looked at him intently and asked,--

"Why not?"

"Because I shall not."

"Where are you going?"

"How does that concern you?"

"Shall I carry your chest for you?"

"I am going to the barricades."

"May I go with you?"

"If you like," Courfeyrac replied; "the street is free, and the

pavement belongs to everybody."

And he ran off to join his friends again; when he had done so, he gave

one of them the box to carry, and it was not till a quarter of an hour

after that he noticed that the young man was really following them. A

mob does not go exactly where it wishes, and we have explained that a

puff of wind directs it. They passed St. Merry, and found themselves,

without knowing exactly why, in the Rue St. Denis.

BOOK XII.

CORINTH.

CHAPTER I.

HISTORY OF CORINTH FROM ITS FOUNDATION.

The Parisians, who at the present day on entering the Rue Rambuteau

from the side of the Halles notice on their right, opposite the Rue

Mondétour, a basket-maker's shop having for sign a basket in the shape

of Napoleon the Great, with this inscription:

NAPOLÉON EST FAIT

TOUT EN OSIER,

do not suspect the terrible scenes which this very site saw hardly

thirty years ago. Here were the Rue de la Chanvrerie, which old

title-deeds write Chanverrerie, and the celebrated wine-shop called

Corinth. Our readers well remember all that has been said about the

barricade erected at this spot, and eclipsed by the way by the St.

Merry barricade. It is on this famous barricade of the Rue de la

Chanvrerie, which has now fallen into deep night, that we are going to

throw a little light.

For the clearness of our narrative, we may be permitted to have

recourse to the simple mode which we employed for Waterloo. Those

persons who wish to represent to themselves in a tolerably exact manner

the mass of houses which at that day stood near Sainte Eustache at

the northeast corner of the Halles de Paris, at the spot where the

opening of the Rue Rambuteau now is, need only imagine an N whose two

vertical strokes are the Rue de la Grande Truanderie and the Rue de

la Chanvrerie, and of which the Rue de la Petite Truanderie would be

the cross-stroke. The old Rue Mondétour intersected the three strokes

with the most tortuous angles, so that the Dædalian entanglement of

these four streets was sufficient to make, upon a space of one hundred

square yards, between the Halles and the Rue St. Denis on one side,

between the Rue du Cygne and the Rue des Prêcheurs, on the other side,

seven islets of houses, strangely cut, of different heights, standing

sideways, and as if accidentally, and scarce separated by narrow

cracks, like the blocks of stone in a dock. We say narrow cracks, and

cannot give a fairer idea of these obscure, narrow, angular lanes,

bordered by tenements eight stories in height. These houses were so

decrepit that in the Rues de la Chanvrerie and La Petite Truanderie,

the frontages were supported by beams running across from one house to

the other. The street was narrow and the gutter wide; the passer-by

walked on a constantly damp pavement, passing shops like cellars,

heavy posts shod with iron, enormous piles of filth, and gates armed

with extraordinarily old palings. The Rue Rambuteau has devastated

all this. The name of Mondétour exactly describes the windings of all

this lay-stall. A little farther on it was found even better expressed

by the Rue Pirouette, which threw itself into the Rue Mondétour.

The wayfarer who turned out of the Rue St. Denis into the Rue de la

Chanvrerie saw it gradually contract before him, as if he had entered

an elongated funnel. At the end of the street, which was very short,

he found the passage barred on the side of the Halles by a tall row

of houses, and he might have fancied himself in a blind alley had

he not perceived on his right and left two black cuts through which

he could escape. It was the Rue Mondétour, which joined on one side

the Rue des Prêcheurs, on the other the Rue du Cygne. At the end of

this sort of blind alley, at the corner of the right-hand cutting, a

house lower than the rest, forming a species of cape in the street,

might be noticed. It is in this house, only two stories high, that an

illustrious cabaret had been installed for more than three hundred

years. This inn produced a joyous noise at the very spot which old

Théophile indicated in the two lines:

"Là branle le squelette horrible

D'un pauvre amant qui se pendit."

The spot was good, and the landlords succeeded each other from father

to son. In the time of Mathurin Régnier, this cabaret was called the

_Pot-aux-Roses,_ and as rebuses were fashionable, it had for a sign

a poteau (post) painted in rose-color. In the last century, worthy

Natoire, one of the fantastic masters disdained at the present day by

the stiff school, having got tipsy several times in this inn at the

same table where Régnier had got drunk, painted, out of gratitude,

a bunch of currants on the pink post. The landlord, in his delight,

changed his sign, and had the words gilded under the bunch, _Au raisin

de Corinthe_,--hence the name of Corinth. Nothing is more natural to

drunkards than ellipses, for they are the zigzags of language. Corinth

had gradually dethroned the rose-pot, and the last landlord of the

dynasty, Father Hucheloup, not being acquainted with the tradition, had

the post painted blue.

A ground-floor room in which was the bar, a first-floor room in which

was a billiard-table, a spiral wooden staircase piercing the ceiling,

wine on the tables, smoke on the walls, and candles by daylight,--such

was the inn. A staircase with a trap in the ground-floor room led

to the cellar, and the apartments of the Hucheloups, on the second

floor, were reached by a staircase more like a ladder, and through a

door hidden in the wall of the large first-floor room. Under the roof

were two garrets, the nests of the maid-servants, and the kitchen

shared the ground-floor with the bar. Father Hucheloup might have been

born a chemist, but was really a cook, and customers not only drank

but ate in his wine-shop. Hucheloup had invented an excellent dish,

which could be eaten only at his establishment; it was stuffed carp,

which he called _carpes au gras_. This was eaten by the light of a

tallow candle, or a lamp of the Louis XVI. style, on tables on which

oil-cloth was nailed in lieu of a table-cloth. People came from a long

distance; and Hucheloup one fine morning had thought it advisable to

inform passers-by of his "speciality:" he dipped a brush in a pot of

blacking, and as he had an orthography of his own, he improvised on his

wall the following remarkable inscription:--

CARPES HO GRAS.

One winter the showers and the hail amused themselves with effacing the

"S" which terminated the first word, and the "G" which began the last,

and the following was left:--

CARPE HO RAS.

By the aid of time and rain a humble gastronomic notice had become a

profound counsel. In this way it happened that Hucheloup, not knowing

French, had known Latin, had brought philosophy out of the kitchen,

and while simply wishing to eclipse Carême, equalled Horace. And the

striking thing was that this also meant "enter my inn." Nothing of all

this exists at the present day; the Mondétour labyrinth was gutted and

widened in 1847, and probably is no longer to be found. The Rue de

la Chanvrerie and Corinth have disappeared under the pavement of the

Rue Rambuteau. As we have said, Corinth was a meeting-place, if not a

gathering-place, of Courfeyrac and his friends, and it was Grantaire

who discovered it. He went in for the sake of the _carpe ho ras_, and

returned for the sake of the carp _au gras_. People drank there, ate

there, and made a row there: they paid little, paid badly, or paid

not at all, but were always welcome. Father Hucheloup was a worthy

fellow. Hucheloup, whom we have just called a worthy fellow, was an

eating-house keeper with a moustache,--an amusing variety. He always

looked ill-tempered, appeared wishful to intimidate his customers,

growled at persons who came in, and seemed more disposed to quarrel

with them than serve them. And yet we maintain people were always

welcome. This peculiarity filled his bar, and brought to him young men

who said, "Let us go and have a look at Father Hucheloup." He had been

a fencing-master, and would suddenly break out into a laugh; he had a

rough voice, but was a merry fellow. He had a comical background with a

tragical appearance; he asked for nothing better than to frighten you,

something like the snuff-boxes which had the shape of a pistol,--the

detonation produces a sneeze. He had for wife a Mother Hucheloup, a

bearded and very ugly being. About 1830 Father Hucheloup died, and

with him disappeared the secret of the carp _au gras_. His widow, who

was almost inconsolable, carried on the business, but the cooking

degenerated and became execrable, and the wine, which had always been

bad, was frightful. Courfeyrac and his friends, however, continued to

go to Corinth,--through pity, said Bossuet.

Widow Hucheloup was short of breath and shapeless, and had rustic

recollections, which she deprived of their insipidity by her

pronunciation. She had a way of her own of saying things which seasoned

her reminiscences of her village and the spring: it had formerly been

her delight, she declared, to hear "the red-beasts singing in the

awe-thorns."[1] The first-floor room, where the restaurant was, was

a large, long apartment, crowded with stools, chairs, benches, and

tables, and an old rickety billiard-table. It was reached by the spiral

staircase which led to a square hole in the corner of the room, like

a ship's hatchway. This apartment, lighted by only one narrow window

and a constantly-burning lamp, had a garret-look about it, and all the

four-legged articles of furniture behaved as if they had only three.

The white-washed wall had for sole ornament the following quatrain in

honor of Mame Hucheloup:--

"Elle étonne à dix pas, elle épouvante à deux,

Une verrue habite en son nez hasardeux;

On tremble à chaque instant qu'elle ne vous la mouche,

Et qu'un beau jour son nez ne tombe dans sa bouche."

This was written in charcoal on the wall. Mame Hucheloup, very like

her description, walked past this quatrain from morning till night

with the most perfect tranquillity. Two servant-girls, called Matelote

and Gibelotte, and who were never known by other names, helped Mame

Hucheloup in placing on the tables bottles of blue wine, and the

various messes served to the hungry guests in earthenware bowls.

Matelote, stout, round, red-haired, and noisy, an ex-favorite sultana

of the defunct Hucheloup, was uglier than the ugliest mythological

monster; and yet, as it is always proper that the servant should be

a little behind the mistress, she was not so ugly as Mame Hucheloup.

Gibelotte, tall, delicate, white with a lymphatic whiteness, with

blue circles round her eyes, and drooping lids, ever exhausted and

oppressed, and suffering from what may be called chronic lassitude,

the first to rise, the last to go to bed, waited on everybody, even

the other servant, silently and gently, and smiling a sort of vague,

sleepy smile through her weariness. Before entering the restaurant the

following line written by Courfeyrac in chalk was legible: "Régale si

tu peux et mange si tu l'oses."

[1] The original malapropism, "les loups-de-gorge chanter dans les

ogrépines," is utterly untranslatable. The above is only an attempt to

convey some approximative idea.

CHAPTER II.

PRELIMINARY GAYETIES.

Laigle of Meaux, as we know, liked better to live with Joly than any

one else, and he had a lodging much as the bird has a branch. The

two friends lived together, ate together, slept together, and had

everything in common, even a little Musichetta. They were what they

call _bini_ in the house of the Assistant Brothers. On the morning of

June 5 they went to breakfast at Corinth. Joly had a cold in his head,

and Laigles coat was threadbare, while Joly was well dressed. It was

about nine in the morning when they pushed open the door of Corinth,

and went up to the first-floor room, where they were received by

Matelote and Gibelotte.

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

They sat down at a table; the room was empty; there was no one in it

but themselves. Gibelotte, recognizing Joly and Laigle, placed a bottle

of wine on the table, and they attacked the first dozen of oysters. A

head appeared in the hatchway and a voice said,--

"As I was passing I smelt a delicious perfume of Brie cheese, so I

stepped in."

It was Grantaire; he took a stool and sat down at the table.

Gibelotte, on seeing Grantaire, placed two bottles of wine on the

table, which made three.

"Are you going to drink these two bottles?" Laigle asked Grantaire, who

replied,--

"All men are ingenious, but you alone are ingenuous. Two bottles never

yet astonished a man."

The others began with eating, but Grantaire began with drinking; a pint

was soon swallowed.

"Why, you must have a hole in your stomach," said Laigle.

"Well, you have one in your elbow," Grantaire retorted, and after

emptying his glass, he added,--

"Oh yes, Laigle of the funeral orations, your coat is old."

"I should hope so," Laigle replied, "for my coat and I live comfortably

together. It has assumed all my wrinkles, does not hurt me anywhere,

has moulded itself on my deformities, and is complacent to all my

movements, and I only feel its presence because it keeps me warm. Old

coats and old friends are the same thing."

"Grantaire," Joly asked, "have you come from the boulevard?"

"No."

"Laigle and I have just seen the head of the procession pass. It is a

marvellous sight."

"How quiet this street is!" Laigle exclaimed. "Who could suspect that

Paris is turned topsy-turvy? How easy it is to see that formerly there

were monasteries all round here! Du Breuil and Sauval give a list of

them, and so does the Abbé Lebeuf. There was all around where we

are now sitting a busy swarm of monks, shod and barefooted, tonsured

and bearded, gray, black, white, Franciscans, Minims, Capuchins,

Carmelites, little Augustines, great Augustines, old Augustines--"

"Don't talk about monks," Grantaire interrupted, "for it makes me want

to scratch myself." Then he exclaimed,--

"Bouh! I have just swallowed a bad oyster, and that has brought back

my hypochondria. Oysters are spoiled, servant-girls are ugly, and

I hate the human race. I passed just now before the great public

library in the Rue Richelieu, and that pile of oyster-shells, which

is called a library, disgusts me with thinking. What paper! What ink!

What pot-hooks and hangers! All that has been written! What ass was

that said man was a featherless biped? And then, too, I met a pretty

girl I know, lovely as spring, and worthy to be called Floréal, who

was ravished, transported, happy in Paradise, the wretch, because

yesterday a hideous banker spotted with small-pox deigned to throw

his handkerchief to her! Alas! woman looks out for a keeper quite

as much as a lover; cats catch mice as well as birds. This girl not

two months ago was living respectably in a garret, and fitted little

copper circles into the eyelet-holes of stays,--what do you call it?

She sewed, she had a flockbed, she lived by the side of a pot of

flowers, and was happy. Now she is a bankeress, and the transformation

took place last night. I met the victim this morning perfectly happy,

and the hideous thing was that the wretched creature was quite as

pretty this morning as she was yesterday, and there was no sign of the

financier on her face. Roses have this more or less than women, that

the traces which the caterpillars leave on them are visible. Ah! there

is no morality left in the world, and I call as witnesses the myrtle,

symbol of love, the laurel, symbol of war, the olive, that absurd

symbol of peace, the apple-tree, which nearly choked Adam with its

pips, and the fig-tree, the grandfather of petticoats. As for justice,

do you know what justice is? The Gauls covet Clusium, Rome protects

Clusium and asks what wrong Clusium has done them. Brennus answers,

'The wrong which Alba did to you, the wrong that Fidène did to you, the

wrong that the Equi, Volscians, and Sabines did to you. They were your

neighbors, and the Clusians are ours. We understand neighborhood in the

same way as you do. You stole Alba, and we take Clusium.' Rome says,

'You shall not take Clusium,' and Brennus took Rome, and then cried 'Væ

victis!' That is what justice is! Oh, what beasts of prey there are in

the world! What eagles, what eagles! the thought makes my flesh creep."

He held out his glass to Joly, who filled it, then drank, and continued

almost without having been interrupted by the glass of wine, which no

one noticed, not even himself:--

"Brennus who takes Rome is an eagle; the banker who takes the grisette

is an eagle; and there is no more shame in one than the other. So let

us believe nothing; there is only one reality, drinking. Of whatever

opinion you may be, whether you back the lean cock, like the canton

of Uri, or the fat cock, like the canton of Glaris, it is of no

consequence; drink. You talk to me about the boulevard, the procession,

etc.; what, are we going to have another revolution? This poverty of

resources astonishes me on the part of le bon Dieu; and He must at

every moment set to work greasing the groove of events. Things stick

and won't move,--look sharp then with a revolution; le bon Dieu has

always got his hands black with that filthy cart-wheel grease. In his

place I should act more simply, I should not wind up my machinery at

every moment, but lead the human race evenly; I should knit facts

mesh by mesh without breaking the thread; I should have no temporary

substitutes, and no extraordinary repertory. What you fellows call

progress has two motive-powers, men and events, but it is a sad thing

that something exceptional is required every now and then. For events

as for men the ordinary stock company is not sufficient; among men

there must be geniuses, and among events revolutions. Great accidents

are the law, and the order of things cannot do without them; and,

judging from the apparition of comets, we might be tempted to believe

that Heaven itself feels a want of leading actors. At the moment when

it is least expected, God bills the wall of the firmament with a

meteor, and some strange star follows, underlined by an enormous tail;

and that causes the death of Cæsar. Brutus gives him a dagger-thrust,

and God deals him a blow with a comet. Crac! here is an aurora

borealis, here is a revolution, here is a great man: '93 in big

letters, napoleon in a line by itself, and the comet of 1811 at the

head of the bill. Ah! what a fine blue poster, spangled all over with

unexpected flashes! Boum! boum! an extraordinary sight. Raise your

eyes, idlers. Everything is in disorder, the star as well as the drama.

Oh Lord! It is too much and not enough; and these resources, drawn from

exceptional circumstances, seem magnificence and are only poverty. My

friends, Providence has fallen into the stage of expedients. What does

a revolution prove? That God is running short: He produces a _coup

d'état_, because there is a solution of continuity between the present

and the future, and He is unable to join the ends. In fact, this

confirms me in my conjectures as to the state of Jehovah's fortune;

and on seeing so much discomfort above and below, so much paltriness

and pinching and saving and distress both in heaven and on earth, from

the bird which has not a seed of grain, to myself who have not one

hundred thousand francs a year,--on seeing human destiny which is very

much worn, and even royal destiny which is threadbare, as witness the

Prince de Condé hanged,--on seeing winter, which is only a rent in the

zenith through which the wind blows,--on seeing so many rags, even in

the bran-new morning purple on the tops of the hills,--on seeing drops

of dew, those false pearls, and hoar-frost, that paste jewelry,--on

seeing humanity unripped and events patched, and so many spots on the

sun, so many holes in the moon, and so much wretchedness everywhere,--I

suspect that God is not rich. There is an appearance, it is true,

but I see the pressure, and He gives a revolution just as a merchant

whose cash-box is empty gives a ball. We must not judge the gods by

appearances, and under the gilding of heaven I catch a glimpse of a

poor universe. There is a bankruptcy in creation, and that is why I am

dissatisfied. Just see, this is June 5, and it is almost night; I have

been waiting since morning for day to come, and it has not come, and I

will wager that it does not come at all. It is the irregularity of a

badly-paid clerk. Yes, everything is badly arranged, nothing fits into

anything, this old world is thrown out of gear, and I place myself in

the ranks of the opposition. Everything goes crooked, and the universe

is close-fisted; it is like the children,--those who ask get nothing,

and those who don't ask get something. And then, again, it afflicts me

to look at that bald-headed Laigle of Meaux, and I am humiliated by the

thought that I am of the same age as that knee. However, I criticise

but do not insult; the universe is what it is, and I speak without

any evil meaning, and solely to do my duty by my conscience. Ah! by

all the saints of Olympus, and by all the gods of Paradise, I was not

made to be a Parisian, that is to say, to be constantly thrown like

a shuttle-cock between two battledores, from a group of idlers to a

group of noisy fellows. No! I was meant to be a Turk, looking all day

at Egyptian damsels performing those exquisite dances, wanton like the

dreams of a chaste man, or a Beauceron peasant, or a Venetian gentleman

surrounded by fair ladies, or a little German prince, supplying one

half a soldier to the Germanic Confederation, and employing his

leisure hours in drying his stockings on his hedge, that is to say, his

frontier! Such were the destinies for which I was born. Yes, I said

Turk, and I will not recall it. I do not understand why the Turks are

usually looked upon askance, for Mahom has some good points. Let us

respect the inventor of harems of houris, and Paradises of Odalisques,

and we ought not to insult Mahometism, the only religion adorned with

a hen-coop! After this, I insist on drinking, for the earth is a great

piece of stupidity. And it appears that all those asses are going to

fight, to break each other's heads and massacre one another in the

heart of summer, in the month of June, when they might go off with

a creature on their arm to inhale in the fields the perfume of that

immense cup of tea of cut hay. Really, too many follies are committed.

An old broken lantern, which I saw just now at a bric-à-brac dealer's,

suggests a reflection to me, 'it is high time to enlighten the human

race.' Yes, I am sad again, and it has come from swallowing an oyster

and a revolution the wrong way. I am growing lugubrious again. Oh,

frightful old world! On your surface people strive, are destitute,

prostitute themselves, kill themselves, and grow accustomed to it!"

And after this burst of eloquence Grantaire had a burst of coughing,

which was well deserved.

"Talking of a revolution," said Joly, "it seebs that Barius is

certaidly in love."

"Do you know with whom?" Laigle asked.

"Do."

"No?"

"Do, I tell you."

"The loves of Marius!" Grantaire exclaimed, "I can see them from here.

Marius is a fog and will have found a vapor. Marius is of the poetic

race. Who says poet says madman. _Tymbræus Apollo_. Marius and his

Marie, or his Maria, or his Mariette, or his Marion, must be a funny

brace of lovers. I can fancy what it is: ecstasies in which kissing is

forgotten. Chaste on earth but connected in the infinitude. They are

souls that have feelings, and they sleep together in the stars."

Grantaire was attacking his second bottle, and perhaps his second

harangue, when a new head emerged from the staircase hatchway. It

was a boy under ten years of age, ragged, very short and yellow,

with a bull-dog face, a quick eye, and an enormous head of hair; he

was dripping with wet, but seemed happy. The lad choosing without

hesitating among the three, though he knew none of them, addressed

Laigle of Meaux.

"Are you Monsieur Bossuet?" he asked.

"I am called so," Laigle replied; "what do you want?"

"A big blonde on the boulevard said to me, 'Do you know Mother

Hucheloup's?' I said,' Yes, Rue Chanvrerie, the widow of the old

buffer,' He says to me, 'Go there; you will find Monsieur Bossuet

there, and say to him from me, A--B--C.' I suppose it's a trick played

you, eh? 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 gave the lad. "Thank you, sir," he

said.

"What is your name?" Laigle asked.

"Navet, Gavroche's friend."

"Stay with us," Laigle said.

"Breakfast with us," Grantaire added.

The lad replied, "I can't, for I belong to the procession, and have to

cry, 'Down with Polignac!'"

And, drawing his foot slowly after him, which is the most respectful of

bows possible, he went away. When he was gone, Grantaire remarked,--

"That is the pure gamin, and there are many varieties in the gamin

genus. The notary-gamin is called 'skip-the-gutter;' the cook-gamin

is called 'scullion;' the baker-gamin is called 'paper-cap;'

the footman-gamin is called 'tiger;' the sailor-gamin is called

'cabin-boy;' the soldier-gamin is called 'drummer-boy;' the

painter-gamin is called 'dauber;' the tradesman-gamin is called

'errand-boy;' the courtier-gamin is called 'favorite;' the royal-gamin

is called 'dauphin;' and the divine-gamin is called 'Bambino.'"

In the mean while Laigle meditated, and said in a low voice,--

"A--B--C, that is to say, funeral of General Lamarque."

"The tall, fair man," Grantaire observed, "is Enjolras, who has sent to

warn you."

"Shall we go?" asked Bossuet.

"It's raiding," said Joly; "I have sworn to go through fire but dot

through water, and I do dot wish to bake by cold worse."

"I shall stay here," Grantaire remarked; "I prefer a breakfast to a

hearse."

"Conclusion, we remain," Laigle continued; "in that case let us drink.

Besides, we may miss the funeral without missing the row."

"Ah, the row!" cried Joly, "I'b id that."

Laigle rubbed his hands.

"So the revolution of 1830 is going to begin over again. Indeed, it

disturbs people by brushing against them."

"I do not care a rap for your revolution," Grantaire remarked, "and I

do not execrate the present Government, for it is the crown tempered

by the cotton nightcap, a sceptre terminating in an umbrella. In

such weather as this Louis Philippe might use his royalty for two

objects,--stretch out the sceptre-end against the people, and open the

umbrella-end against the sky."

The room was dark, and heavy clouds completely veiled the daylight.

There was no one in the wine-shop or in the streets, for everybody had

gone "to see the events."

"Is it midday or midnight?" Bossuet asked; "I can see nothing; bring a

candle, Gibelotte."

Grantaire was drinking sorrowfully.

"Enjolras disdains me," he muttered. "Enjolras said to himself, 'Joly

is ill and Grantaire is drunk,' and so he sent Navet to Bossuet. And

yet, if he had fetched me, I would have followed him. All the worse for

Enjolras! I will not go to his funeral."

This resolution formed, Bousset, Grantaire, and Joly did not stir

from the wine-shop, and at about 2 P.M. the table at which they sat

was covered with empty bottles. Two candles burned on it, one in a

perfectly green copper candlestick, the other in the neck of a cracked

water-bottle. Grantaire had led Joly and Bossuet to wine, and Bossuet

and Joly had brought Grantaire back to joy. As for Grantaire, he

gave up wine at midday, as a poor inspirer of illusions. Wine is not

particularly valued by serious sots, for in ebriety there is black

magic and white magic, and wine is only the white magic. Grantaire

was an adventurous drinker of dreams. The blackness of a formidable

intoxication yawning before him, far from arresting, attracted him,

and he had given up bottles and taken to the dram-glass, which is an

abyss. Not having at hand either opium or hashish, and wishing to fill

his brain with darkness, he turned to that frightful mixture of brandy,

stout, and absinthe, which produces such terrible lethargies. Of these

three vapors, beer, brandy, and absinthe, the lead of the soul is made:

they are three darknesses in which the celestial butterfly is drowned;

and there are formed in a membraneous smoke, vaguely condensed into a

bat's wing, three dumb furies, Nightmare, Night, and Death, which hover

over the sleeping Psyche. Grantaire had not yet reached that phase;

far from it: he was prodigiously gay, and Bossuet and Joly kept even

with him. Grantaire added to the eccentric accentuation of words and

ideas the vagary of gestures; he laid his left hand on his knee with a

dignified air, and with his neckcloth unloosed, straddling his stool,

and with his full glass in his right hand, he threw these solemn words

at the stout servant-girl Matelote:--

"Open the gates of the Palace! Let every man belong to the Académie

Française, and have the right of embracing Madame Hucheloup! Let us

drink."

And turning to the landlady, he added,--

"Antique female, consecrated by custom, approach, that I may

contemplate thee."

And Joly exclaimed,--

"Batelote and Gibelotte, don't give Grantaire adybore drink. He is

spending a frightful sum, and odly since this borning has devoured in

shabeful prodigality two francs, dwenty-five centibes."

And Grantaire went on,--

"Who has unhooked the stars without my leave, in order to place them on

the table in lieu of candles?"

Bossuet, who was very drunk, had retained his calmness, and was sitting

on the sill of the open window, letting the rain drench his back, while

he gazed at his two friends. All at once he heard behind him a tumult,

hurried footsteps, and shouts of "To arms!" He turned, and noticed

in the Rue St. Denis, at the end of the Rue Chanvrerie, Enjolras

passing, carbine in hand, Gavroche with his pistol, Feuilly with his

sabre, Courfeyrac with his sword, Jean Prouvaire with his musquetoon,

Combeferre with his gun, Bahorel with his, and the whole armed and

stormy band that followed them. The Rue de la Chanvrerie was not a

pistol-shot in length, so Bossuet improvised a speaking-trumpet with

his two hands round his mouth, and shouted,--

"Courfeyrac! Courfeyrac! hilloh!"

Courfeyrac heard the summons, perceived Bossuet, and walked a few steps

down the Rue de la Chanvrerie, exclaiming, "What do you want?" which

was crossed by a "Where are you going?"

"To make a barricade," Courfeyrac answered.

"Well, why not make it here? the spot is good."

"That is true, Eagle," Courfeyrac remarked.

And at a sign from Courfeyrac the mob rushed into the Rue de la

Chanvrerie.

CHAPTER III.

THE NIGHT BEGINS TO FALL ON GRANTAIRE.

The ground was, in fact, admirably suited; the entrance of the street

was wide, the end narrowed, and, like a blind alley, Corinth formed a

contraction in it, the Rue de Mondétour could be easily barred right

and left, and no attack was possible save by the Rue St. Denis; that

is to say, from the front and in the open. Bossuet drunk had had the

inspiration of Hannibal sober. At the sound of the band rushing on,

terror seized on the whole street, and not a passer-by but disappeared.

More quickly than a flash of lightning, shops, stalls, gates, doors,

Venetian blinds, and shutters of every size were shut from the

ground-floor to the roofs, at the end, on the right, and on the left.

An old terrified woman fixed up a mattress before her window with

clothes-props, in order to deaden the musketry, and the public-house

alone remained open,--and for an excellent reason, because the

insurgents had rushed into it.

"Oh Lord! oh Lord!" Mame Hucheloup sighed.

Bossuet ran down to meet Courfeyrac, and Joly, who had gone to the

window, shouted,--

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

cold."

In a few minutes twenty iron bars were pulled down from the railings

in front of the inn, and ten yards of pavement dug up. Gavroche and

Bahorel seized, as it passed, the truck of a lime-dealer of the name

of Anceau, and found in it three barrels of lime, which they placed

under the piles of paving-stones; Enjolras had raised the cellar-flap,

and all Mame Hucheloup's empty casks went to join the barrels of lime;

Feuilly, with his fingers accustomed to illumine the delicate sticks

of fans, reinforced the barrels and the trucks with two massive piles

of stones,--rough stones, improvised like the rest, and taken from

no one knew where. The supporting shores were pulled away from the

frontage of an adjoining house, and laid on the casks. When Courfeyrac

and Bossuet turned round, one half the street was already barred by a

rampart taller than a man, for there is nothing like the hand of the

people to build up anything that is built by demolishing. Matelote and

Gibelotte were mixed up with the workmen, and the latter went backwards

and forwards, loaded with rubbish, and her lassitude helped at the

barricade. She served paving-stones, as she would have served wine,

with a sleepy look. An omnibus drawn by two white horses passed the

end of the street; Bossuet jumped over the stones, ran up, stopped the

driver, ordered the passengers to get out, offered his hand to "the

ladies," dismissed the conductor, and returned, pulling the horses on

by the bridles.

"Omnibuses," he said, "must not pass before Corinth. _Non licet omnibus

adire Corinthum_."

A moment after, the unharnessed horses were straggling down the Rue

Mondétour, and the omnibus lying on its side completed the barricade.

Mame Hucheloup, quite upset, had sought refuge on the first-floor; her

eyes were wandering and looked without seeing, and her cries of alarm

dared not issue from her throat.

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

Joly deposited a kiss on Mame Hucheloup's fat, red, wrinkled neck, and

said to Grantaire, "My dear fellow, I have always considered a woman's

neck an infinitely delicate thing." But Grantaire had reached the

highest regions of dithyramb. When Matelote came up to the first-floor,

he seized her round the waist and burst into loud peals of laughter at

the window.

"Matelote is ugly," he cried; "Matelote is the ideal of ugliness;

she is a chimera. Here is the secret of her birth,--a Gothic

Pygmalion, who was carving cathedral gargoyles, fell in love on a

fine morning with the most horrible of them. He implored love to

animate it, and this produced Matelote. Look at her, citizens! She has

chromate-of-lead-colored hair, like Titian's mistress, and is a good

girl; I will answer that she fights well, for every good girl contains

a hero. As for Mother Hucheloup, she is an old brave. Look at her

mustachios; she inherited them from her husband. She will fight too,

and the couple will terrify the whole of the suburbs. Comrades, we will

overthrow the Government so truly as there are fifteen intermediate

acids between margaric acid and formic acid; however, it is a matter

of perfect indifference to me. My father always detested me because I

could not understand mathematics; I only understand love and liberty. I

am Grantaire, the good fellow; never having had any money, I have not

grown accustomed to it, and for that reason have never wanted it; but,

had I been rich, there would be no poor left! You would have seen! Oh,

if good hearts had large purses, how much better things would be! I can

imagine the Saviour with Rothschild's fortune! What good he would do!

Matelote, embrace me! You are voluptuous and timid; you have cheeks

that claim the kiss of a sister, and lips that claim the kiss of a

lover!"

"Hold your tongue, barrel!" Courfeyrac said. Grantaire replied,--

"I am the Capitoul and master of the Floral games!"

Enjolras, who was standing on the top of the barricade, gun in hand,

raised his handsome, stern face. Enjolras, as we know, blended the

Spartan with the Puritan; he would have died at Thermopylæ with

Leonidas, and burned Drogheda with Cromwell.

"Grantaire," he cried, "go and sleep off your wine elsewhere; this is

the place for intoxication, and not for drunkenness. Do not dishonor

the barricade."

These stinging words produced on Grantaire a singular effect, and it

seemed as if he had received a glass of cold water in his face. He

appeared suddenly sobered, sat down near the window, gazed at Enjolras

with inexpressible tenderness, and said to him,--

"Let me sleep here."

"Go and sleep elsewhere," Enjolras cried.

But Grantaire, still fixing on him his tender and misty eyes,

answered,--

"Let me sleep here till I die here."

Enjolras looked at him disdainfully.

"Grantaire, you are incapable of believing, thinking, wishing, living,

and dying."

Grantaire replied in a grave voice,--

"You will see."

He stammered a few more unintelligible words, then his head fell

noisily on the table, and--as is the usual effect of the second period

of ebriety into which Enjolras had roughly and suddenly thrust him--a

moment later he was asleep.

CHAPTER IV.

AN ENDEAVOR TO CONSOLE THE WIDOW HUCHELOUP.

Bahorel, delighted with the barricade, exclaimed, "How well the street

looks décolleté!"

Courfeyrac, while gradually demolishing the public-house, tried to

console the widowed landlady.

"Mother Hucheloup, were you not complaining the other day that you had

been summoned by the police, because Gibelotte shook a counterpane out

of the window?"

"Yes, my good Monsieur Courfeyrac. Ah! good gracious! are you going

to put that table too in your horror? Yes, and the Government also

condemned me to a fine of one hundred francs on account of a flower-pot

that fell out of the garret into the street. Is that not abominable?"

"Well, Mother Hucheloup, we are going to avenge you."

Mother Hucheloup did not exactly see the advantage accruing to her from

the reparation made her. She was satisfied after the fashion of the

Arab woman who, having received a box on the ears from her husband,

went to complain to her father, crying vengeance, and 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 boxed

her right cheek, and said, "Now you must be satisfied. Go and tell your

husband that he buffeted my daughter, but I have buffeted his wife."

The rain had ceased, and recruits began to arrive. Artisans brought

under their blouses a barrel of gunpowder, a hamper containing carboys

of vitriol, two or three carnival torches, and a basket full of lamps,

"remaining from the king's birthday," which was quite recent, as it

was celebrated on May 1. It was said that this ammunition was sent by

a grocer in the Faubourg St. Antoine named Pépin. The only lantern in

the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and all those in the surrounding streets,

were broken. Enjolras, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac directed everything,

and now two barricades were erected simultaneously, both of which were

supported by Corinth and formed a square; the larger one closed the Rue

de la Chanvrerie, and the smaller the Rue Mondétour on the side of the

Rue du Cygne. This latter barricade, which was very narrow, was merely

made of barrels and paving-stones. There were about fifty workmen

there, of whom three were armed with guns, for on the road they had

borrowed a gunsmith's entire stock.

Nothing could be stranger or more motley than this group: one had a

sleeved waistcoat, a cavalry sabre, and a pair of holster pistols;

another was in shirt-sleeves, with a round hat, and a powder-flask

hung at his side; while a third was cuirassed with nine sheets of gray

paper, and was armed with a saddler's awl. There was one who shouted,

"Let us exterminate to the last, and die on the point of our bayonet!"

This man had no bayonet. Another displayed over his coat the belts and

pouch of a National Guard, with these words sewn in red worsted on the

cover, "Public order." There were many muskets, bearing the numbers

of legions, few hats, no neckties, a great many bare arms, and a few

pikes; add to this all ages, all faces, short pale youths, and bronzed

laborers at the docks. All were in a hurry, and while assisting each

other, talked about the possible chances,--that they were sure of one

regiment, and Paris would rise. There were terrible remarks, with which

a sort of cordial joviality was mingled; they might have been taken for

brothers, though they did not know one another's names. Great dangers

have this beauty about them, that they throw light on the fraternity of

strangers.

A fire was lighted in the kitchen, and men were melting in a

bullet-mould, bowls, spoons, forks, and all the pewter articles of

the public-house. They drank while doing this, and caps and slugs lay

pell-mell on the table with glasses of wine. In the billiard-room Mame

Hucheloup, Matelote, and Gibelotte, variously affected by terror,--as

one was brutalized by it, another had her breath stopped, while the

third was awakened,--were tearing up old sheets and making lint; three

insurgents helped them,--three hairy, bearded, and moustached fellows,

who pulled the linen asunder with the fingers of a sempstress and made

them tremble. The tall man, whom Courfeyrac, Combeferre, and Enjolras

had noticed as he joined the band at the corner of the Rue des

Billetes, was working at the small barricade and making himself useful;

Gavroche was working at the large one; and as for the young man who had

waited for Courfeyrac at his lodgings and asked after M. Marius, he

disappeared just about the time when the omnibus was overthrown.

Gavroche, who was perfectly radiant, had taken the arrangements on

himself; he came, went, ascended, descended, went up again, rustled

and sparkled. He seemed to be there for the encouragement of all. Had

he a spur? Certainly, in his misery. Had he wings? Certainly, in his

joy. Gavroche was a whirlwind; he was seen incessantly, and constantly

heard, and he filled the air, being everywhere at once. He was a sort

of almost irritating ubiquity, and it was impossible to stop with him.

The enormous barricade felt him on its crupper; he annoyed the idlers,

excited the slothful, reanimated the fatigued, vexed the thoughtful,

rendered some gay and gave others time to breathe, set some in a

passion and all in motion; he piqued a student and stung a workman;

he halted, then started again, flew over the turmoil and the efforts,

leaped from one to the other, murmured, buzzed, and harassed the whole

team; he was the fly of the immense revolutionary coach. Perpetual

movement was in his little arms, and perpetual clamor in his little

lungs.

"Push ahead; more paving-stones, more barrels, more vehicles! Where

are there any? We want a hodload of plaster to stop up this hole. Your

barricade is very small, and must mount. Put everything into it; smash

up the house; a barricade is Mother Gibou's tea. Hilloh! there's a

glass door."

This made the workmen exclaim,--

"A glass door! What would you have us do with that, tubercule?"

"Hercules yourselves," Gavroche retorted; "a glass door in a barricade

is excellent, for though it does not prevent the attack, it makes it

awkward to take it. Have you never boned apples over a wall on which

there was broken glass? A glass door cuts the corns of the National

Guards when they try to climb up the barricade. By Job! glass is

treacherous. Well, you fellows have no very bright imagination."

He was furious with his useless pistol, and went from one to the other,

saying, "A gun! I want a gun! Why don't you give me a gun?"

"A gun for you?" said Combeferre.

"Well, why not?" Gavroche answered; "I had one in 1830, when we

quarrelled with Charles X."

Enjolras shrugged his shoulders.

"When all the men have guns we will give them to boys."

Gavroche turned firmly, and answered him,--

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

"Gamin!" said Enjolras.

"Puppy!" said Gavroche.

A dandy lounging past the end of the street created a diversion;

Gavroche shouted to him,--

"Come to us, young man! What, will you do nothing for your old country?"

The dandy fled.

CHAPTER V.

PREPARATIONS.

The journals of the day which stated that the barricade in the Rue

de la Chanvrerie, that "almost impregnable fortress," as they called

it, reached the level of a first-floor, are mistaken, for the truth

is that it did not exceed an average height of six or seven feet.

It was so built that the combatants could at will either disappear

behind it or ascend to its crest by means of a quadruple row of

paving-stones arranged like steps inside. Externally the front of

the barricade, composed of piles of paving-stones and barrels, held

together by joists and planks passed through the wheels of the truck

and the omnibus, had a bristling and inextricable appearance. A gap,

sufficiently wide for one man to pass, was left between the house-wall

and the end of the barricade farthest from the wine-shop, so that

a sortie was possible. The pole of the omnibus was held upright by

ropes, and a red flag fixed to this pole floated over the barricade.

The small Mondétour barricade, concealed behind the wine-shop, could

not be seen, but the two barricades combined formed a real redoubt.

Enjolras and Courfeyrac had not thought it advisable to barricade the

other portion of the Rue Mondétour, which opens on to the Halles, as

they doubtless wished to maintain a possible communication with the

outside, and had but little fear of being attacked by the difficult

and dangerous Rue des Prêcheurs. With the exception of this issue left

free, which constituted what Folard would have called in a strategic

style a _boyau_, and of the narrow passage in the Rue de la Chanvrerie,

the interior of the barricade, in which the wine-shop formed a salient

angle, presented an irregular quadrilateral enclosed on all sides.

There was a space of twenty yards between the great barricade and the

tall houses which formed the end of the street, so that it might be

said that the barricade leaned against these houses, which were all

inhabited, but closed from top to bottom.

All this labor was completed without any obstacle, in less than

an hour, during which this handful of men had not seen a single

bearskin-cap or bayonet. The few citizens who still ventured at this

moment of riot into the Rue St. Denis took a glance into the Rue

de la Chanvrerie, perceived the barricade, and doubled their pace.

When the two barricades were completed and the flag was hoisted, a

table was pulled from the wine-shop into the street, and Courfeyrac

got upon it. Enjolras brought up the square chest, which Courfeyrac

opened, and it proved to be full of cartridges. When they saw these

cartridges the bravest trembled, and there was a moment's silence.

Courfeyrac distributed the cartridges smilingly, and each received

thirty: many had powder, and began making others with the bullets which

had been cast; as for the powder barrel, it was on a separate table,

near the door, and was held in reserve. The drum-beat call to arms,

which was traversing the whole of Paris, did not cease, but in the end

it had become a monotonous sound, to which they no longer paid any

attention. This noise at one moment retired, at another came nearer,

with lugubrious undulations. The guns and carbines were loaded all

together, without precipitation and with a solemn gravity. Enjolras

then stationed three sentries outside the barricades, one in the Rue de

la Chanvrerie, the second in the Rue des Prêcheurs, the third at the

corner of the Petite Truanderie. Then, when the barricades were built,

the posts assigned, the guns loaded, the sentries set, the insurgents

alone in these formidable streets, through which no one now passed,

surrounded by dumb and, as it were, dead houses, in which no human

movement palpitated, enveloped in the menacing darkness, in the midst

of that silence and obscurity in which they felt something advancing,

and which had something tragical and terrifying about it, isolated,

armed, determined, and tranquil--waited.

CHAPTER VI.

WAITING.

During the hours of waiting, what did they do? We are bound to tell it,

because this is historical.

While the men were making cartridges and the women lint, while a large

stewpan full of melted tin and lead, intended for the bullet-mould, was

smoking on a red-hot chafing-dish, while the vedettes were watching

with shouldered guns on the barricade, while Enjolras, whom it was

impossible to distract, watched the vedettes, Combeferre, Courfeyrac,

Jean Prouvaire, Feuilly, Bossuet, Joly, Bahorel, and a few others,

assembled, as in the most peaceful days of their student conversations,

and in one corner of the wine-shop converted into a casemate, two paces

from the barricade which they had raised, and with their loaded and

primed muskets leaning against the back of their chairs,--these fine

young men, so near their last hour, wrote love verses.

What verses? Here they are:--

Do you remember those days gone by,

Our youth's high spring-tide? The sweet glad spell

Held us a season, when you and I

Lived but to love and to look well?

Then all your years together with mine

Would not make two-score when all was said;

Our nest it was so cosy and fine,

Spring hid within till Winter had fled.

What days! Manuel, how lofty, how chaste!

Paris, turned godly, would be improved.

And how Foy thundered--and in your waist

Was a pin, that pricked when my fingers roved!

All eyes looked your way. At Prado's where

Your briefless barrister dined with you,

You were so pretty, the roses there

Turned and eyed you, in envy too.

I seemed to hear them whisper, "How fair!

What wealth of ringlets, what rich perfume!

They are wings she hides 'neath her mantle there;

Her bonnet's a blossom all a-bloom!"

Arm linked in arm, together we strayed;

Passers thought, as we went our way,

Light-hearted Cupid a match had made

'Twixt tender April and gallant May.

We lived so merrily hidden away,

Feeding on Love's dear forbidden fruit.

Swifter than aught that my lips could say

Your heart replied, when your lips were mute.

In the Sorbonne 't was, that idyllic spot,

I dreamed of you through the long night-hours.

'T is thus a youthful lover self-taught

In the Latin Quarter sights Love-land's towers.

O Place Maubert! O Place Dauphine!

Dear sky-built palace-attic where

You drew your stocking on, unseen--

I gazed at a star in the ceiling there!

Lamennais, Malebranche, forgotten they,

And Plato too, mastered so carefully;

But I fathomed God's Infinite Love one day

In a flower,--the flower you gave to me.

I was your slave. You my subject were.

O golden attic! to watch you pass

Back and forth, dressing, at daybreak there,

Your girl's face smiling from that old glass!

O golden dawn! O golden days!

Who can outlive them, forget them wholly?

The ribbons too, flowers and gauze and lace,

Wherein Love stammered its first sweet folly.

Our garden,--a tulip-pot held the whole!

Your petticoat curtained the window-pane;

I kept for myself the earthen-ware bowl,

And gave you the cup of porcelain.

And such mishaps too, for mirth and woe!

Your muff had caught fire, your tippet was gone

And that portrait of Shakespeare we valued so

Sold for a song--to be supped upon.

I'd beg and you would your alms bestow,

A kiss from your fair round arm I'd steal.

Our board was that Dante in folio,

And a hundred chestnuts our humble meal.

And that one moment, and all its joy

When your lips met mine and the first kiss given,

You fled, dishevelled and rosy and coy;

I grew quite pale and believed in Heaven!

Do you remember our countless joys?

Those neckerchiefs rumpled? ah, well-a-day!

And now from heavier hearts what sighs

To skies all darkened are borne away!

The hour, the spot, the recollections of youth recalled, a few stars

which were beginning to glisten in the sky, the funereal repose of

these deserted streets, the imminence of the inexorable adventure which

was preparing, gave a pathetic charm to these verses murmured in a low

voice in the twilight by Jean Prouvaire, who, as we said, was a gentle

poet.

In the mean while a lamp had been lit on the small barricade, and on

the large one, one of those wax torches such as may be seen on Shrove

Tuesday in front of the vehicles crowded with masks that are proceeding

to the Courtille. These torches, we know, came from the Faubourg St.

Antoine. The torch was placed in a species of lantern of paving-stones

closed on three sides to protect it from the wind, and arranged so that

the entire light should fall on the flag. The street and the barricade

remained plunged in darkness, and nothing was visible save the red flag

formidably illumined, as if by an enormous dark-lantern. This light

added a strange and terrible purple to the scarlet of the flag.

CHAPTER VII.

THE RECRUIT OF THE RUE DES BILLETTES.

Night had quite set in, and nothing occurred, only confused rumors

and fusillades now and then could be heard, but they were rare,

badly maintained, and distant. This respite, which was prolonged,

was a sign that the Government was taking its time and collecting

its strength. These fifty men were waiting for the coming of sixty

thousand. Enjolras was attacked by that impatience which seizes on

powerful minds when they stand on the threshold of formidable events.

He looked up Gavroche, who was busy manufacturing cartridges in the

ground-floor room by the dubious light of two candles placed on the bar

for precaution, on account of the gunpowder sprinkled over the tables.

These two candles threw no rays outside, and the insurgents allowed

no light in the upper floors. Gavroche was at this moment greatly

occupied, though not precisely with his cartridge.

The recruit from the Rue des Billettes had come into the room and

seated himself at the least-lighted table. A Brown Bess of the large

model had fallen to his share, and he held it between his legs.

Gavroche up to this moment, distracted by a hundred "amusing" things,

had not even seen this man. When he entered, gavotte looked after him,

mechanically admiring his musket, but when the man was seated the gamin

suddenly rose. Those who might have watched this man would have noticed

him observe everything in the barricade, and the band of insurgents

with singular attention; but when he entered the room he fell into a

state of contemplation, and seemed to see nothing of what was going on.

The gamin approached this pensive man, and began walking round him on

tiptoe, in the same way as people move round a man whom they are afraid

of awaking. At the same time all the grimaces of an old man passed over

his childish face, at once so impudent and so serious, so giddy and

so profound, so gay and so affecting, and these grimaces signified,

"Oh, stuff! it is not possible, I must see double--I am dreaming--can

it be?--no, it is not--yes, it is--no, it is not." Gavroche balanced

himself on his heels, clenched his fists in his pockets, moved his

neck like a bird, and expended on an enormously outstretched lip all

the sagacity of a lower lip. He was stupefied, uncertain, convinced,

and dazzled. He had the look of the chief of the eunuchs at the

slave-market discovering a Venus among the girls, and the air of an

amateur recognizing a Raphael in a pile of daubs. All about him was

at work the instinct that scents and the intellect that combines; it

was plain that an event was happening to Gavroche. It was when he was

deepest in thought that Enjolras accosted him.

"You are little," he said, "and will not be seen. Go out of the

barricades, slip along the houses, pass through as many streets as you

can, and come back to tell me what is going on."

Gavroche drew himself up.

"So little ones are good for something! That's lucky! I'm off. In the

mean while, trust to the little and distrust the big;" and Gavroche,

raising his head and dropping his voice, added, as he pointed to the

man of the Rue des Billettes,--

"You see that tall fellow?"

"Well?"

"He's a spy."

"Are you sure?"

"Not a fortnight back he pulled me down by the ear from the cornice of

the Pont Royal where I was taking the air."