Enjolras hurriedly left the gamin and whispered a few words to a

laborer from the wine-docks who was present. The laborer went out and

returned almost immediately, followed by three others. The four men,

four broad-shouldered porters, stationed themselves silently behind the

table at which the man of the Rue des Billettes was seated, in evident

readiness to fall upon him, and then Enjolras walked up to the man and

asked him,--

"Who are you?"

At this sudden question the man started; he looked into the depths of

Enjolras's candid eyeballs, and seemed to read his thoughts. He gave a

smile, which was at once the most disdainful, energetic, and resolute

possible, and answered, with a haughty gravity,--

"I see what you mean,--well, yes!"

"Are you a spy?"

"I am an agent of the authority!"

"And your name is--"

"Javert."

Enjolras gave the four men a sign, and in a twinkling, before Javert

had time to turn round, he was collared, thrown down, bound, and

searched. They found on him a small round card fixed between two pieces

of glass, and bearing on one side the arms of France, with the motto,

"Surveillance and vigilance," and on the other this notice, "JAVERT,

Police Inspector, fifty-two years of age," and the signature of the

Prefect of Police of that day, M. Gisquet. He had also a watch, and a

purse containing some pieces of gold, and both were left him. Behind

his watch at the bottom of his fob a paper was found, which Enjolras

unfolded, and on which he read these lines, written by the Prefect of

Police himself:--

"So soon as his political mission is concluded, Javert will assure

himself by a special watch whether it is true that criminals assemble

on the slope of the right bank of the Seine, near the bridge of Jena."

When the search was ended, Javert was raised from the ground, his arms

were tied behind his back, and he was fastened in the middle of the

room to the celebrated post which in olden times gave its name to the

wine-shop. Gavroche, who had watched the whole scene and approved of

everything with a silent shake of the head, went up to Javert, and

said,--

"The mouse has trapped the cat."

All this took place so quickly that it was completed before those

outside the wine-shop were aware of it. Javert had not uttered a

cry, but on seeing him fastened to the post, Courfeyrac, Bossuet,

Combeferre, Joly, and the men scattered over the two barricades,

flocked in. Javert, who was surrounded with cords so that he could not

stir, raised his head with the intrepid serenity of a man who has never

told a falsehood.

"It is a spy," said Enjolras; and turning to Javert, "You will be shot

two minutes before the barricade is taken."

Javert replied, with his most imperious accent,--

"Why not at once?"

"We are saving of powder."

"Then settle the affair with a knife."

"Spy," said the beautiful Enjolras, "we are judges, and not assassins."

Then he called Gavroche.

"You be off now and do what I told you."

"I am off," Gavroche cried, but stopped just as he reached the door.

"By the way, you will give me his gun. I leave you the musician, but I

want his clarinet."

The gamin gave a military salute, and gayly slipped round the large

barricade.

CHAPTER VIII.

WAS HIS NAME LE CABUC?

The tragical picture we have undertaken would not be complete, the

reader would not see in their exact and real relief those great

moments of social lying-in and revolutionary giving birth, in which

there are throes blended with effort, if we were to omit in our sketch

an incident full of an epic and stern horror, which occurred almost

immediately after Gavroche's departure.

Bands of rioters, it is well known, resemble a snowball, and, as

they roll along, agglomerate many tumultuous men, who do not ask one

another whence they come. Among the passers-by who joined the band

led by Enjolras, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac, there was a man wearing

a porter's jacket, much worn at the shoulders, who gesticulated and

vociferated, and had the appearance of a drunken savage. This man,

whose name or nickname was Le Cabuc, and who was entirely unknown to

those who pretended to know him, was seated, in a state of real or

feigned intoxication, with four others, round a table which they had

dragged out of the wine-shop. This Cabuc, while making the others

drink, seemed to be gazing thoughtfully at the large house behind the

barricade, whose five stories commanded the whole street and faced the

Rue St Denis. All at once he exclaimed,--

"Do you know what, comrades? We must fire from that house. When we are

at the windows, hang me if any one can come up the street."

"Yes, but the house is closed," said one of the drinkers.

"We'll knock."

"They won't open."

"Then we'll break in the door."

Le Cabuc ran up to the door, which had a very massive knocker, and

rapped; as the door was not opened he rapped again, and no one

answering, he gave a third rap, but the silence continued.

"Is there any one in here?" Le Cabuc shouted. But nothing stirred, and

so he seized a musket and began hammering the door with the butt end.

It was an old, low, narrow, solid door, made of oak, lined with sheet

iron inside and a heavy bar, and a thorough postern gate. The blows

made the whole house tremble, but did not shake the door. The inmates,

however, were probably alarmed, for a little square trap window was

at length lit up and opened on the third story, and a candle and the

gray-haired head of a terrified old man, who was the porter, appeared

in the orifice. The man who was knocking left off.

"What do you want, gentlemen?" the porter asked.

"Open the door!" said Le Cabuc.

"I cannot, gentlemen."

"Open, I tell you!"

"It is impossible, gentlemen."

Le Cabuc raised his musket and took aim at the porter, but as he was

below and it was very dark the porter did not notice the fact.

"Will you open? Yes or no."

"No, gentlemen."

"You really mean it?"

"I say no, my kind--"

The porter did not finish the sentence, for the musket was fired; the

bullet entered under his chin and came out of his neck, after passing

through the jugular vein. The old man fell in a heap, without heaving

a sigh, the candle went out, and nothing was visible save a motionless

head lying on the sill of the window, and a small wreath of smoke

ascending to the roof.

"There," said Le Cabuc, as he let the butt of the musket fall on the

pavement again.

He had scarce uttered the word ere he felt a hand laid on his shoulder

with the tenacity of an eagle's talon, and he heard a voice saying to

him,--

"On your knees!"

The murderer turned, and saw before him Enjolras's white, cold face.

Enjolras held a pistol in his hand, and had hurried up on hearing the

shot fired, and clutched with his left hand Le Cabuc's blouse, shirt,

and braces.

"On your knees!" he repeated.

And with a sovereign movement the frail young man of twenty bent like a

reed the muscular and thick-set porter, and forced him to kneel in the

mud. Le Cabuc tried to resist, but he seemed to have been seized by a

superhuman hand. Enjolras, pale, bare-neck, with his dishevelled hair

and feminine face, had at this moment I know not what of the ancient

Themis. His dilated nostrils, his downcast eyes, gave to his implacable

Greek profile that expression of wrath and that expression of chastity

which, in the opinion of the old world, are becoming to justice. All

the insurgents had hurried up, and then ranged themselves in a circle

at a distance, feeling that it was impossible for them to utter a word

in the presence of what they were going to see. Le Cabuc, conquered, no

longer attempted to struggle, and trembled all over: Enjolras loosed

his grasp, and took out his watch.

"Pray or think!" he said; "you have one minute to do so."

"Mercy!" the murderer stammered, then hung his head and muttered a few

inarticulate execrations.

Enjolras did not take his eyes off the watch; he let the minute pass,

and then put the watch again in his fob. This done, he seized Le Cabuc

by the hair, who clung to his knees with a yell, and placed the muzzle

of the pistol to his ear. Many of these intrepid men, who had so

tranquilly entered upon the most frightful of adventures, turned away

their heads. The explosion was heard, the assassin fell on his head on

the pavement, and Enjolras drew himself up and looked round him with a

stern air of conviction. Then he kicked the corpse and said,--

"Throw this outside."

Three men raised the body of the wretch, which was still writhing in

the last mechanical convulsions of expiring life, and threw it over

the small barricade into the Mondétour lane. Enjolras stood pensive;

some grand darkness was slowly spreading over his formidable serenity.

Presently he raised his voice, and all were silent.

"Citizens," said Enjolras, "what that man did is frightful, and what

I have done is horrible; he killed, and that is why I killed, and

I was obliged to do so, as insurrection must have its discipline.

Assassination is even more of a crime here than elsewhere, for we stand

under the eye of the Revolution, we are the priests of the Republic,

we are the sacred victims to duty, and we must not do aught that would

calumniate our combat. I, therefore, tried and condemned this man to

death; for my part, constrained to do what I have done, but abhorring

it, I have also tried myself, and you will shortly see what sentence I

have passed."

All who listened trembled.

"We will share your fate," Combeferre exclaimed.

"Be it so!" Enjolras continued. "One word more. In executing that man

I obeyed Necessity; but Necessity is a monster of the old world, and

its true name is Fatality. Now, it is the law of progress that monsters

should disappear before angels, and Fatality vanish before Fraternity.

It is a bad moment to utter the word love; but no matter, I utter it,

and I glorify it. Love, thou hast a future; Death, I make use of thee,

but I abhor thee. Citizens, in the future there will be no darkness,

no thunderclaps; neither ferocious ignorance nor bloodthirsty

retaliation; and as there will be no Satan left, there will be no Saint

Michael. In the future no man will kill another man; the earth will be

radiant, and the human race will love. The day will come, citizens,

when all will be concord, harmony, light, joy, and life, and we are

going to die in order that it may come."

Enjolras was silent, his virgin lips closed, and he stood for some

time at the spot where he had shed blood, in the motionlessness of a

marble statue. His fixed eyes caused people to talk in whispers around

him. Jean Prouvaire and Combeferre shook their heads silently, and

leaning against each other in an angle of the barricade, gazed, with

an admiration in which there was compassion, at this grave young man,

who was an executioner and priest, and had, at the same time, the

light and the hardness of crystal. Let us say at once, that after the

action, when the corpses were conveyed to the Morgue and searched, a

police-agent's card was found on Le Cabuc; the author of this work had

in his hands, in 1848, the special report on this subject made to the

Prefect of Police in 1832. Let us add that, if we may believe a strange

but probably well-founded police tradition, Le Cabuc was Claquesous. It

is certainly true that after the death of Cabuc, Claquesous was never

heard of again, and left no trace of his disappearance. He seemed to

have become amalgamated with the invisible; his life had been gloom,

and his end was night.

The whole insurgent band were still suffering from the emotion of this

tragical trial, so quickly begun and so quickly ended, when Courfeyrac

saw again at the barricade the short young man who had come to his

lodgings to ask for Marius; this lad, who had a hold and reckless look,

had come at night to rejoin the insurgents.

BOOK XIII.

MARIUS ENTERS THE SHADOW.

CHAPTER I.

FROM THE RUE PLUMET TO THE QUARTIER ST. DENIS.

The voice which summoned Marius through the twilight to the barricade

in the Rue de la Chanvrerie had produced on him the effect of the voice

of destiny. He wished to die, and the opportunity offered; he rapped

at the door of the tomb, and a hand held out the key to him from the

shadows. Such gloomy openings in the darkness just in front of despair

are tempting; Marius removed the bar which had so often allowed him to

pass, left the garden, and said, "I will go." Mad with grief, feeling

nothing fixed and solid in his brain, incapable of accepting anything

henceforth of destiny, after the two months spent in the intoxication

of youth and love, and crushed by all the reveries of despair at once,

he had only one wish left,--to finish with it all at once. He began

walking rapidly, and he happened to be armed, as he had Javert's

pistols in his pocket. The young man whom he fancied that he had seen

had got out of his sight in the streets.

Marius, who left the Rue Plumet by the boulevard, crossed the esplanade

and bridge of the Invalides, the Champs Élysées, the square of Louis

XV., and reached the Rue de Rivoli. The shops were open there, the gas

blazed under the arcades, ladies were making purchases, and people were

eating ices at the Café Laiter and cakes at the English pastry-cook's.

A few post-chaises, however, were leaving at a gallop the Hôtel des

Princes and Meurice's. Marius entered the Rue St. Honoré by the passage

Delorme. The shops were closed there, the tradesmen were conversing

before their open doors, people walked along, the lamps were lighted,

and from the first-floor upwards the houses were illumined as usual.

Cavalry were stationed on the square of the Palais Royal. Marius

followed the Rue St. Honoré, and the farther he got from the Palais

Royal the fewer windows were lit up; the shops were entirely closed,

nobody was conversing on the thresholds, the street grew darker, and

at the same time the crowd denser, for the passers-by had now become a

crowd. No one could be heard speaking in the crowd, and yet a hollow,

deep buzzing issued from it. Near the Fountain of Arbre Sec there were

motionless mobs, and sombre groups standing among the comers and goers

like stones in the middle of a running stream. At the entrance of the

Rue des Prouvaires, the crowd no longer moved; it was a resisting,

solid, compact, almost impenetrable mob of persons packed together

and conversing in a low voice. There were hardly any black coats or

round hats present, only fustian jackets, blouses, caps, and bristling

beards. This multitude undulated confusedly in the night mist and

its whispering had the hoarse accent of a rustling; and though no one

moved, a tramping in the mud could be heard. Beyond this dense crowd

there was not a window lit up in the surrounding streets, and the

solitary and decreasing rows of lanterns could only be seen in them.

The street-lanterns of that day resembled large red stars suspended

from ropes, and cast on to the pavement a shadow which had the shape of

a large spider. These streets, however, were not deserted, and piled

muskets, moving bayonets, and troops bivouacking could be distinguished

in them. No curious person went beyond this limit, and circulation

ceased there; there the mob ended and the army began.

Marius wished with the will of a man who no longer hopes; he had been

summoned and was bound to go. He found means to traverse the crowd

and bivouacking troops; he hid himself from the patrols and avoided

the sentries. He made a circuit, came to the Rue de Béthisy, and

proceeded in the direction of the markets; at the corner of the Rue

des Bourdonnais the lanterns ceased. After crossing the zone of the

mob he passed the border of troops, and now found himself in something

frightful. There was not a wayfarer, nor a soldier, nor a light,

nothing but solitude, silence, and night, and a strangely-piercing

cold; entering a street was like entering a cellar. Still he continued

to advance: Some one ran close past him: was it a man?--a woman? Were

there more than one? He could not have said, for it had passed and

vanished. By constant circuits he reached a lane, which he judged

to be the Rue de la Poterie, and toward the middle of that lane came

across an obstacle. He stretched out his hands and found that it was

an overturned cart, and his feet recognized pools of water, holes,

scattered and piled-up paving-stones; it was a barricade which had

been begun and then abandoned. He clambered over the stones and soon

found himself on the other side of the obstacle; he walked very close

to the posts, and felt his way along the house walls. A little beyond

the barricade he fancied that he could see something white before him,

and on drawing nearer it assumed a form. It was a pair of white horses,

the omnibus horses unharnessed by Bossuet in the morning, which had

wandered, haphazard, from street to street all day, and at last stopped

here, with the stolid patience of animals which no more comprehend the

actions of man than man comprehends the actions of Providence. Marius

left the horses behind him, and as he entered a street which seemed to

be the Rue du Contrat Social, a musket-shot, which came no one could

say whence, and traversed the darkness at hazard, whizzed close past

him, and pierced above his head a copper shaving-dish, hanging from a

hair-dresser's shop. In 1846 this dish with the hole in it was still

visible at the corner of the pillars of the markets. This shot was

still life, but from this moment nothing further occurred; the whole

itinerary resembled a descent down black steps, but for all that Marius

did not the less advance.

CHAPTER II.

AN OWL'S-EYE VIEW OF PARIS.

Any being hovering over Paris at this moment, with the wings of a

bat or an owl, would have had a gloomy spectacle under his eyes. The

entire old district of the markets, which is like a city within a

city, which is traversed by the Rues St. Denis and St. Martin, and by

a thousand lanes which the insurgents had converted into their redoubt

and arsenal, would have appeared like an enormous black hole dug in

the centre of Paris. Here the eye settled on an abyss, and, owing to

the broken lamps and the closed shutters, all brilliancy, life, noise,

and movement had ceased in it. The invisible police of the revolt were

watching everywhere and maintaining order, that is to say, night.

To hide the small number in a vast obscurity, and to multiply each

combatant by the possibilities which this obscurity contains, this is

the necessary tactics of insurrection, and at nightfall every window in

which a candle gleamed received a bullet; the light was extinguished,

and sometimes the occupant killed. Hence, nothing stirred; there was

nought but terror, mourning, and stupor in the houses, and in the

streets a sort of sacred horror. Not even the long rows of windows and

floors, the network of chimneys and roofs, and the vague reflections

which glisten on the muddy and damp pavement, could be perceived. The

eye which had looked down from above on this mass of shadow might

perhaps have noticed here and there indistinct gleams, which made the

broken and strange lines, and the profile of singular buildings, stand

out, something like flashes flitting through ruins; at such spots were

the barricades. The rest was a lake of darkness and mystery, oppressive

and funereal, above which motionless and mournful outlines rose,--the

Tower of St. Jacques, St. Merry church, and two or three other of those

grand edifices of which man makes giants and night phantoms. All around

this deserted and alarming labyrinth, in those districts where the

circulation of Paris was not stopped, and where a few lamps glistened,

the aerial observer would have distinguished the metallic scintillation

of bayonets, the dull rolling of artillery, and the buzz of silent

battalions which was augmented every moment; it was a formidable belt,

slowly contracting and closing in on the revolt.

The invested district was now but a species of monstrous cavern;

everything seemed there asleep or motionless, and, as we have seen,

each of the streets by which it could be approached only offered

darkness. It was a stern darkness, full of snares, full of unknown and

formidable collisions, into which it was terrifying to penetrate and

horrible to remain, where those who entered shuddered before those who

awaited them, and those who awaited shuddered before those who were

about to come. Invisible combatants were intrenched at the corner

of every street, like sepulchral traps hidden in the thickness of

the night. It was all over; no other light could be hoped for there

henceforth save the flash of musketry, no other meeting than the sudden

and rapid apparition of death. Where, how, when, they did not know,

but it was certain and inevitable: there, in the spot marked out for

the contest, the Government and the insurrection, the National Guards

and the popular society, the bourgeoisie and the rioters, were about

to grope their way toward one another. There was the same necessity

for both sides, and the only issue henceforth possible was to be

killed or conquer. It was such an extreme situation, such a powerful

obscurity, that the most timid felt resolute and the most daring

terrified. On both sides, however, there was equal fury, obstinacy,

and determination; on one side advancing was death, and no one dreamed

of recoiling; on the other, remaining was death, and no one thought of

flying. It was necessary that all should be over by the morrow, that

the victory should be with one side or the other, and the insurrection

either become a revolution or a riot. The Government understood this

as well as the partisans, and the smallest tradesman felt it. Hence

came an agonizing thought with the impenetrable gloom of this district,

where all was about to be decided; hence came a redoubled anxiety

around this silence, whence a catastrophe was going to issue. Only one

sound could be heard,--a sound as heart-rending as a death-rattle and

as menacing as a male-diction, the tocsin of St. Merry. Nothing could

be so chilling as the clamor of this distracted and despairing bell as

it lamented in the darkness.

As often happens, nature seemed to have come to an understanding with

what men were going to do, and nothing deranged the mournful harmonies

of the whole scene. The stars had disappeared, and heavy clouds filled

the entire horizon with their melancholy masses. There was a black

sky over these dead streets, as if an intense pall were cast over

the immense tomb. While a thoroughly political battle was preparing

on the same site which had already witnessed so many revolutionary

events,--while the youth, the secret associations, and the schools

in the name of principles, and the middle classes in the name of

interests, were coming together to try a final fall,--while everybody

was hurrying up and appealing to the last and decisive hour of the

crisis, in the distance and beyond that fatal district, at the lowest

depths of the unfathomable cavities of that old wretched Paris which is

disappearing under the splendor of happy and opulent Paris, the gloomy

voice of the people could be heard hoarsely growling. It is a startling

and sacred voice, composed of the yell of the brute and the word of

God, which terrifies the weak and warns the wise, and which at once

comes from below like the voice of the lion, and from above like the

voice of thunder.

CHAPTER III.

THE EXTREME BRINK.

Marius had reached the markets; there all was calmer, darker, and even

more motionless than in the neighboring streets. It seemed as if the

frozen peace of the tomb had issued from the ground and spread over

the sky. A ruddy tinge, however, brought out from the black background

the tall roofs of the houses which barred the Rue de la Chanvrerie on

the side of St. Eustache. It was the reflection of the torch burning

on the Corinth barricade, and Marius walked toward that ruddy hue;

it led him to the Marché aux Poirées, and he caught a glimpse of the

Rue des Prêcheurs, into which he turned. The sentry of the insurgents

watching at the other end did not notice him; he felt himself quite

close to what he was seeking, and he walked on tiptoe. He thus reached

the corner of that short piece of the Mondétour lane which was, as will

be remembered, the sole communication which Enjolras had maintained

with the outer world. At the corner of the last house on his left he

stopped and peeped into the lane. A little beyond the dark corner

formed by the lane and the Rue de la Chanvrerie, which formed a large

patch of shadow in which he was himself buried, he noticed a little

light on the pavement, a portion of a wine-shop, a lamp flickering in

a sort of shapeless niche, and men crouching down with guns on their

knees,--all this was scarce ten yards from him, and was the interior of

the barricade. The houses that lined the right-hand side of the lane

hid from him the rest of the wine-shop, the large barricade, and the

flag. Marius had but one step to take, and then the unhappy young man

sat down on a post, folded his arms, and thought of his father.

He thought of that heroic Colonel Pontmercy, who had been such a proud

soldier, who had defended under the Republic the frontier of France,

and touched under the Empire the frontier of Asia; who had seen Genoa,

Alexandria, Milan, Turin, Madrid, Vienna, Dresden, Berlin, and Moscow;

who had left on all the victorious battle-fields of Europe drops of the

same blood which Marius had in his veins; who had grown gray before age

in discipline and command; who had lived with his waist-belt buckled,

his epaulettes falling on his chest, his cockade blackened by smoke,

his brow wrinkled by his helmet, in barracks, in camp, in bivouacs, and

in hospitals, and who, at the expiration of twenty years, had returned

from the great wars with his scarred cheek and smiling face, simple,

tranquil, admirable, pure as an infant, having done everything for

France and nothing against her. He said to himself that his own day

had now arrived, that his hour had at length struck, that after his

father he too was going to be brave, intrepid, and bold, to rush to

meet bullets, offer his chest to the bayonets, shed his blood, seek

the enemy, seek death; that he in his turn was about to wage war and

go into the battle-field, and that the battle he would enter was the

street, and the war he was about to wage civil war! He saw civil war

opening like a gulf before him, and that he was going to fell into it;

then he shuddered.

He thought of his fathers sword, which his grandfather had sold to the

old-clothes dealer, and which he had so painfully regretted. He said

to himself that this valiant and chaste sword had done well to escape

from him, and disappear angrily in the darkness; that it fled away thus

because it was intelligent, and foresaw the future,--the riots, the war

of gutters, the war of paving-stones, fusillades from cellar-traps,

and blows dealt and received from behind; that, coming from Marengo

and Austerlitz, it was unwilling to go to the Rue de la Chanvrerie,

and after what it had done with the father refused to do that with the

son! He said to himself that if that sword had been here, if, after

receiving it at his dead fathers bedside, he had dared to take it, and

carry it into this nocturnal combat between Frenchmen in the streets,

it would assuredly have burned his hands, and have flashed before

him like the glaive of the archangel! He said to himself that it was

fortunate it was not there, but had disappeared,--that this was well,

this was just, that his grandfather had been the true guardian of his

fathers glory, and that it was better for the Colonel's sword to have

been put up to auction, sold to the second-hand dealer, or broken up

as old iron, than come to-day to make the flank of the country bleed.

And then he began weeping bitterly. It was horrible, but what was he

to do? He could not live without Cosette, and since she had departed

all left him was to die. Had he not pledged her his word of honor that

he would die? She had gone away knowing this, and it was plain that

she was pleased with Marius's dying; and then it was clear that she no

longer loved him, since she had gone away thus without warning him,

without a word, without a letter, and yet she knew his address! Of what

use was it to live; and why should he live now? And then, to have come

so far and then recoil! to have approached the danger and run away!

to have come to look at the barricade and then slip off! to slip off,

trembling and saying, "After all, I have had enough of that I have seen

it, that is sufficient; it is civil war, and I will be off!" To abandon

his friends who expected him, who perhaps had need of him, who were a

handful against an army! To be false to everything at once,--to love,

to friendship, to his word! to give his poltroonery the pretext of

patriotism! Oh, that was impossible, and if his father's phantom were

there in the shadows, and saw him recoil, it would lash him with the

flat of its sabre, and cry to him, "Forward, coward!"

A prey to this oscillation of his thoughts, he hung his head, but

suddenly raised it again, for a species of splendid rectification

had just taken place in his mind. There is a dilation of thought

peculiar to the vicinity of the tomb; and to be near death makes

a man see correctly. The vision of the action upon which he saw

himself perhaps on the point of entering, no longer appeared to him

lamentable, but superb; the street was become transfigured by some

internal labor of the soul before his mental eye. All the tumultuous

notes of interrogation of reverie crowded back upon him, but without

troubling him, and he did not leave a single one unanswered. Why would

his father be indignant? Are there not cases in which; insurrection

attains to the dignity of duty? What was there degrading for the son

of Colonel Pontmercy in the combat which was about to begin? It is no

longer Montmirail or Champaubert, it is something else; it is no longer

a question of a sacred territory, but of a holy idea. The country

complains; be it so, but humanity applauds. Is it true, besides, that

the country complains? France bleeds, but liberty smiles, and on seeing

the smile of liberty France forgets her wound. And then, regarding

things from a higher point still, what did people mean by talking of a

civil war?

What is the meaning of civil war? Is there such a thing as a foreign

war? Is not every war between men a war between brothers? War can only

be qualified by its object, and there is neither foreign war nor civil

war, there is only just or unjust war. Up to the day when the great

human concordat is concluded, war, at least that which is the effort

of the hurrying future against the laggard past, may be necessary.

What reproach can be urged against such a war? War does not become a

disgrace, or the sword a dagger, until it assassinates right, progress,

reason, civilization, and truth. In such a case, whether civil war

or foreign war, it is iniquitous, and is called crime. Beyond that

holy thing justice, what right would one form of war have to despise

another? By what right would the sword of Washington ignore the pike of

Camille Desmoulins? Which is the greater, Leonidas contending against

the foreigner, or Timoleon against the tyrant? One is the defender,

the other is the liberator. Must we brand, without investigating the

object, every taking up of arms in the interior of a city? If so, mark

with contumely Brutus, Marcel, Arnould of Blankenheim, and Coligny. A

war of thickets--a street war? Why not? Such was the war of Ambiorix,

of Artevelde, of Marnix, and Pelagius. But Ambiorix struggled against

Rome, Artevelde against France, Marnix against Spain, and Pelagius

against the Moors,--all against the foreigner. Well, monarchy is the

foreigner, oppression is the foreigner, divine right is the foreigner,

and despotism violates the moral frontier as invasion does the

geographical frontier. Expelling the tyrant or expelling the English

is, in either case, a reconquest of territory. An hour arrives when a

protest is insufficient; after philosophy, action is needed; living

strength completes what the idea has sketched out: Prometheus vinctus

begins, Aristogiton ends, the Encyclopædia enlightens minds, and August

10 electrifies them. After Æschylus, Thrasybulus; after Diderot,

Danton. Multitudes have a tendency to accept the master, and their mass

deposits apathy. A crowd is easily led into habits of obedience. These

must be stirred up, impelled, and roughly treated by the very blessing

of their deliverance, their eyes be hurt by the truth, and light

hurled at them in terrible handfuls. They must themselves be to some

extent thunderstruck by their own salvation, for such a dazzling awakes

them. Hence comes the necessity of tocsins and wars: it is necessary

that great combatants should rise, illumine nations by audacity, and

shake up that sorry humanity over which divine right, Cæsarian glory,

strength, fanaticism, irresponsible power, and absolute majesties

cast a shadow,--a mob stupidly occupied in contemplating these gloomy

triumphs of the night in their crepuscular splendor. But what? Whom

are you talking of? Do you call Louis Philippe the tyrant? No; no more

than Louis XVI. These are both what history is accustomed to call

good kings; but principles cannot be broken up, the logic of truth is

rectilinear, and its peculiarity to be deficient in complaining. No

concession therefore; every encroachment on man must be repressed:

there is the right divine in Louis XVI., there is the "because a

Bourbon" in Louis Philippe; both represent to a certain extent the

confiscation of right, and they must be combated in order to sweep away

universal usurpation; it must be so, for France is always the one who

begins, and when the master falls in France he falls everywhere. In a

word, what cause is more just, and consequently what war is greater,

than to re-establish social truth, give back its throne to liberty,

restore the people to the people and the sovereignty to man, to replace

the crown on the head of France, to restore reason and equity in

their plenitude, to suppress every germ of antagonism by giving back

individuality, to annihilate the obstacle which the royalty offers to

the immense human concord, and to place the human race once again on a

level with right? Such wars construct peace. An enormous fortalice of

prejudice, privileges, superstitions, falsehoods, exactions, abuses,

violences, iniquities, and darknesses, is still standing on the

earth with its towers of hatred, and it must be thrown down, and the

monstrous mass crumble away. To conquer at Austerlitz is great, but to

take the Bastille is immense.

No one but will have noticed in himself that the mind--and this is the

marvel of its unity complicated with ubiquity--has the strange aptitude

of reasoning almost coldly in the most violent extremities, and it

often happens that weird passions and deep despair, in the very agony

of their blackest soliloquies, handle subjects and discuss theses.

Logic is mingled with the convulsion, and the thread of syllogism runs

without breaking through the storm of the thoughts: such was Marius's

state of mind. While thinking thus, crushed but resolute, and yet

hesitating and shuddering at what he was going to do, his eyes wandered

about the interior of the barricade. The insurgents were conversing

in whispers, without moving, and that almost silence which marks the

last phase of expectation was perceptible. Above them, at a third-floor

window, Marius distinguished a species of spectator or of witness who

seemed singularly attentive; it was the porter killed by Le Cabuc. From

below, this head could be vaguely perceived in the reflection of the

torch burning on the barricade, and nothing was stranger in this dense

and vacillating light than this motionless, livid, and amazed face,

with its bristling hair, open and fixed eyes, and gaping mouth, bending

over the street in an attitude of curiosity. It might be said that this

dead man was contemplating those who were going to die. A long stream

of blood, which had flowed from his head, descended from the window to

the first-floor, where it stopped.

BOOK XIV.

THE GRANDEUR OF DESPAIR.

CHAPTER I.

THE FLAG: ACT FIRST.

Nothing came yet: it had struck ten by St. Merry's, and Enjolras and

Combeferre were sitting musket in hand near the sally-port of the great

barricade. They did not speak, but were listening, trying to catch the

dullest and most remote sound of marching. Suddenly, in the midst of

this lugubrious calm, a clear, young, gay voice, which seemed to come

from the Rue St. Denis, burst forth, and began singing distinctly, to

the old popular tune of "Au clair de la lune," these lines, terminating

with a cry that resembled a cock-crow:--

"Mon nez est en larmes,

Mon ami Bugeaud,

Prêt'-moi tes gendarmes

Pour leur dire un mot.

En capote bleue,

La poule au shako,

Voici la banlieue!

Co-cocorico!"

They shook hands.

"'T is Gavroche," said Enjolras.

"He is warning us," said Combeferre.

Hurried footsteps troubled the deserted streets, and a being more

active than a clown was seen climbing over the omnibus, and Gavroche

leaped into the square, out of breath, and saying,--

"My gun! Here they are!"

An electric shudder ran along the whole barricade, and the movement of

hands seeking guns was heard.

"Will you have my carbine?" Enjolras asked the gamin.

"I want the big gun," Gavroche answered, and took Javert's musket.

Two sentries had fallen back and come in almost simultaneously with

Gavroche; they were those from the end of the street and the Petite

Truanderie. The vedette in the Lane des Prêcheurs remained at his

post, which indicated that nothing was coming from the direction of

the bridges and the markets. The Rue de la Chanvrerie, in which a few

paving-stones were scarce visible in the reflection of the light cast

on the flag, offered to the insurgents the aspect of a large black

gate vaguely opened in a cloud of smoke. Every man proceeded to his

post: forty-three insurgents, among whom were Enjolras, Combeferre,

Courfeyrac, Bossuet, Joly, Bahorel, and Gavroche, knelt behind the

great barricade, with the muzzles of their guns and carbines thrust out

between the paving-stones as through loop-holes, attentive, silent,

and ready to fire. Six, commanded by Feuilly, installed themselves

at the upper windows of Corinth. Some minutes more elapsed, and

then a measured, heavy tramp of many feet was distinctly heard from

the direction of St. Leu; this noise, at first faint, then precise,

and then heavy and re-echoing, approached slowly, without halt or

interruption, and with a tranquil and terrible continuity. Nothing was

audible but this; it was at once the silence and noise of the statute

of the commendatore, but the stormy footfall had something enormous

and multiple about it, which aroused the idea of a multitude at the

same time as that of a spectre; you might have fancied that you heard

the fearful statue Legion on the march. The tramp came nearer, nearer

still, and then ceased; and the breathing of many men seemed to be

audible at the end of the street. Nothing, however, was visible, though

quite at the end in the thick gloom could be distinguished a multitude

of metallic threads, fine as needles and almost imperceptible, which

moved about like that indescribable phosphoric network which we

perceive under our closed eyelids just at the moment when we are

falling asleep. These were bayonets and musket-barrels on which the

reflection of the torch confusedly fell. There was another pause, as

if both sides were waiting. All at once a voice which was the more

sinister because no one could be seen, and it seemed as if the darkness

itself was speaking, shouted, "Who goes there?"

At the same time the click of muskets being cocked could be heard.

Enjolras replied with a sonorous and haughty accent,--

"French Revolution!"

"Fire!" the voice commanded.

A flash lit up all the frontages in the street, as if the door of a

furnace had been suddenly opened and shut, and a frightful shower of

bullets hurled against the barricade, and the flag fell. The discharge

had been so violent and dense that it cut the staff asunder, that is to

say, the extreme point of the omnibus pole. Bullets ricochetting from

the corners of the houses penetrated the barricade and wounded several

men. The impression produced by this first discharge was chilling; the

attack was rude, and of a nature to make the boldest think. It was

plain that they had to do with a whole regiment at the least.

"Comrades," Courfeyrac cried, "let us not waste our powder, but wait

till they have entered the street before returning their fire."

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

He picked up the flag, which had fallen at his feet: outside, the

ring of ramrods in barrels could be heard; the troops were reloading.

Enjolras continued,--

"Who has a brave heart among us? Who will plant the flag on the

barricade again?"

Not one replied; for to mount the barricade at this moment, when all

the guns were doubtless again aimed at it, was simply death, and the

bravest man hesitates to condemn himself. Enjolras even shuddered as he

repeated,--

"Will no one offer?"

CHAPTER II.

THE FLAG: ACT SECOND.

Since the arrival at Corinth and the barricade had been begun no one

paid any further attention to Father Mabœuf. M. Mabœuf, however,

had not quitted the insurgents: he had gone into the ground-floor room

of the wine-shop and seated himself behind the bar, where he was, so

to speak, annihilated in himself. He seemed no longer to see or think.

Courfeyrac and others had twice or thrice accosted him, warning him

of the peril and begging him to withdraw, but he had not appeared to

hear them. When no one was speaking to him his lips moved as if he were

answering some one, and so soon as people addressed him his lips left

off moving, and his eyes no longer seemed alive. A few hours before

the barricade was attacked he had assumed a posture which he had not

quitted since, with his two hands on his knees, and his head bent

forward, as if he were looking into a precipice. Nothing could have

drawn him out of this attitude, and it did not appear as if his mind

were in the barricade. When every one else went to his post the only

persons left in the room were Javert tied to the post, an insurgent

with drawn sabre watching over Javert, and Mabœuf. At the moment of

the attack, at the detonation, the physical shock affected and as it

were awoke him; he suddenly rose, crossed the room, and at the moment

when Enjolras repeated his appeal, "Does no one offer?" the old man was

seen on the threshold of the wine-shop. His presence produced a species

of commotion in the groups, and the cry was raised,--

"It is the voter, the conventionalist, the representative of the

people!"

He probably did not hear it: he walked straight up to Enjolras, the

insurgents making way for him with a religious fear, tore the flag from

Enjolras, who recoiled with petrifaction, and then, no one daring to

arrest or help him, this old man of eighty, with shaking head but firm

step, slowly began ascending the staircase of paving-stones formed

inside the barricade. This was so gloomy and so grand that all around

him cried, "Off with your hats!" With each step he ascended the scene

became more frightful; his white hair, his decrepit face, his high,

bald, and wrinkled forehead, his hollow eyes, his amazed and open

mouth, and his old arm raising the red banner, stood out from the

darkness and were magnified in the sanguinary, brightness of the torch,

and the spectators fancied they saw the spectre of '93 issuing from the

ground, holding the flag of terror in its hand. When he was on the last

step, when this trembling and terrible phantom, standing on the pile of

ruins, in the presence of twelve hundred invisible gun-barrels, stood

facing death, and as if stronger than it, the whole barricade assumed

a supernatural and colossal aspect in the darkness. There was one of

those silences which occur only at the sight of prodigies, and in the

midst of this silence the old man brandished the red flag and cried,--

"Long live the revolution! Long live the republic! Fraternity,

equality, and death!"

A low and quick talking, like the murmur of a hurried priest galloping

through a mass, was heard; it was probably the police commissary making

the legal summons at the other end of the street; then the same loud

voice which had shouted "Who goes there?" cried,--

"Withdraw!"

M. Mabœuf, livid, haggard, with his eyeballs illumined by the

mournful flames of mania, raised the flag about his head and repeated,--

"Long live the republic!"

"Fire!" the voice commanded.

A second discharge, resembling a round of grape-shot, burst against

the barricade; the old man sank on his knees, then rose again, let the

flag slip from his hand, and fell back on the pavement like a log,

with his arms stretched out like a cross. Streams of blood flowed

under him, and his old, pale, melancholy face seemed to be gazing at

heaven. One of those emotions stronger than man, which makes him forget

self-defence, seized on the insurgents, and they approached the corpse

with respectful horror.

"What men these regicides are!" said Enjolras.

Courfeyrac whispered in Enjolras's ear,--

"This is only between ourselves, as I do not wish to diminish the

enthusiasm; but this man was anything rather than a regicide. I knew

him, and his name was Mabœuf. I do not know what was the matter with

him to-day, but he was a brave idiot. Look at his head."

"The head of an idiot and the heart of Brutus!" Enjolras replied; then

he raised his voice:--

"Citizens! such is the example which the old give to the young. We

hesitated and he came; we recoiled and he advanced. This is what those

who tremble with old age teach those who tremble with fear! This

aged man is august before his country; he has had a long life and a

magnificent death! Now let us place his corpse under cover; let each of

us defend this dead old man as he would defend his living father; and

let his presence in the midst of us render the barricade impregnable!"

A murmur of gloomy and energetic adhesion followed these words.

Enjolras bent down, raised the old man's head and sternly kissed him on

the forehead; then, stretching out his arms and handling the dead man

with tender caution, as if afraid of hurting him, he took off his coat,

pointed to the blood-stained holes, and said,--

"This is now our flag!"

CHAPTER III.

GAVROCHE HAD BETTER HAVE ACCEPTED THE CARBINE OF ENJOLRAS.

A long black shawl of Widow Hucheloup's was thrown over Father

Mabœuf: six men made a litter of their muskets, the corpse was laid

on them, and they carried it with bare heads and solemn slowness to

a large table in the ground-floor room. These men, entirely engaged

with the grave and sacred thing they were doing, did not think of the

perilous situation in which they were, and when the corpse was carried

past the stoical Javert, Enjolras said to the spy,--

"Your turn will come soon."

During this period little Gavroche, who alone had not left his post,

and had remained on the watch, fancied he could see men creeping

up to the barricade: all at once he cried, "Look out!" Courfeyrac,

Enjolras, Jean Prouvaire, Combeferre, Joly, Bahorel, and Bossuet all

hurried tumultuously out of the wine-shop; but it was almost too late,

for they saw a flashing line of bayonets undulating on the crest of

the barricade. Municipal Guards of tall stature penetrated, some by

striding over the omnibus, others through the sally-port, driving

before them the gamin, who fell back, but did not fly. The moment

was critical; it was that first formidable minute of inundation

when the river rises to the level of the dam and the water begins

to filter through the fissures of the dyke. One second more and the

barricade was captured. Bahorel dashed at the first Municipal Guard

who entered, and killed him with a shot from his carbine; the second

killed Bahorel with a bayonet-thrust. Another had already levelled

Courfeyrac, who was shouting "Help!" while the tallest of all of them,

a species of Colossus, was marching upon Gavroche, with his bayonet

at the charge. The gamin raised in his little arms Javert's enormous

musket, resolutely aimed at the giant, and pulled the trigger. But the

gun did not go off, as Javert had not loaded it: the Municipal Guard

burst into a laugh, and advanced upon the lad. Before the bayonet had

reached Gavroche, however, the musket fell from the soldier's hands,

for a bullet struck him in the middle of the forehead, and he fell on

his back. A second bullet struck the other guard, who had attacked

Courfeyrac, in the middle of the chest, and laid him low.

The shots were fired by Marius, who had just entered the barricade.

CHAPTER IV.

THE BARREL OF GUNPOWDER.

Marius, still concealed at the corner of the Rue Mondétour, had watched

the first phase of the combat with shuddering irresolution. Still

he was unable to resist for any length of time that mysterious and

sovereign dizziness which might be called the appeal from the abyss;

and at the sight of the imminence of the peril, of M. Mabœuf's

death, that mournful enigma, Bahorel killed, Courfeyrac shouting for

help, this child menaced, and his friends to succor or revenge, all

hesitation vanished, and he rushed into the medley, pistols in hand.

With the first shot he saved Gavroche, and with the second delivered

Courfeyrac. On hearing the shots, and the cries of the guards, the

assailants swarmed up the intrenchment, over the crest of which could

now be seen more than half the bodies of Municipal Guards, troops of

the line, and National Guards from the suburbs, musket in hand. They

already covered more than two thirds of the barricade, but no longer

leaped down into the enclosure, and hesitated, as if they feared some

snare. They looked down into the gloomy space as they would have peered

into a lion's den; and the light of the torch only illumined bayonets,

bearskin shakos, and anxious and irritated faces.

Marius had no longer a weapon, as he had thrown away his discharged

pistols; but he had noticed the barrel of gunpowder near the door of

the ground-floor room. As he half turned to look in that direction a

soldier levelled his musket at him, and at the moment when the soldier

was taking steady aim at Marius, a hand was laid on the muzzle of his

musket and stopped it up; the young workman in the velvet trousers

had rushed forward. The shot was fired, the bullet passed through the

hand, and probably through the workman, for he fell, but it did not hit

Marius. Marius, who was entering the wine-shop, hardly noticed this;

still he had confusedly seen the gun pointed at him, and the hand laid

on the muzzle, and had heard the explosion. But in minutes like this

things that men see vacillate, and they do not dwell on anything, for

they feel themselves obscurely impelled toward deeper shadows still,

and all is mist. The insurgents, surprised but not terrified, had

rallied, and Enjolras cried, "Wait; do not throw away your shots!"

and, in truth, in the first moment of confusion they might wound each

other. The majority had gone up to the first-floor and attic windows,

whence they commanded the assailants; but the more determined, with

Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Jean Prouvaire, and Combeferre, were haughtily

standing against the houses at the end, unprotected, and facing the

lines of soldiers and guards who crowned the barricade. All this

was done without precipitation, and with that strange and menacing

gravity which precedes a combat; on both sides men were aiming at each

other within point-blank range, and they were so near that they could

converse. When they were at the point where the spark was about to

shoot forth, an officer wearing a gorget and heavy epaulettes stretched

out his sword and said,--

"Throw down your arms!"

"Fire!" Enjolras commanded.

The two detonations took place at the same moment, and everything

disappeared in smoke,--a sharp and stifling smoke,--in which the dying

and the wounded writhed, with faint and hollow groans. When the smoke

dispersed, the two lines of combatants could be seen thinned, but

at the same spot, and silently reloading their guns. All at once a

thundering voice was heard shouting,--

"Begone, or I will blow up the barricade!"

All turned to the quarter whence the voice came.

Marius had entered the wine-shop, fetched the barrel of gunpowder,

and then, taking advantage of the smoke and obscure mist which

filled the intrenched space, glided along the barricade up to the

cage of paving-stones in which the torch was fixed. To tear out the

torch, place in its stead the barrel of powder, throw down the pile

of paving-stones on the barrel, which was at once unheaded with

a sort of terrible obedience, had only occupied so much time as

stooping and rising again; and now all, National Guards and Municipal

Guards, officers and privates, collected at the other end of the

barricade, gazed at him in stupor, as he stood with one foot on the

paving-stones, the torch in his hand, his haughty face illumined by a

fatal resolution, approaching the flame of the torch to the formidable

heap, in which the broken powder-barrel could be distinguished, and

uttering the terrifying cry,--

"Begone, or I will blow up the barricade!"

Marius, on this barricade after the octogenarian, was the vision of the

young revolution after the apparition of the old one.

"Blow up the barricade!" a sergeant said, "and yourself too!"

Marius answered, "And myself too!"

And he lowered the torch toward the barrel of gunpowder; but there was

no one left on the barricade. The assailants, leaving their dead and

their wounded, fell back pell-mell and in disorder to the end of the

street, and disappeared again in the night. It was a _sauve qui peut_.

The barricade was saved.

CHAPTER V.

END OF THE VERSES OF JEAN PROUVAIRE.

All surrounded Marius, and Courfeyrac fell on his neck.

"Here you are!"

"What happiness!" said Combeferre.

"You arrived just in time," said Bossuet.

"Were it not for you I should be dead!" Courfeyrac remarked.

"Without you I should have been gobbled!" Gavroche added.

Marius asked,--

"Who is the leader?"

"Yourself," Enjolras replied.

Marius the whole day through had had a furnace in his brain, but now

it was a whirlwind; and this whirlwind which was in him produced on

him the effect of being outside him and carrying him away. It seemed

to him as if he were already an immense distance from life, and his

two luminous months of joy and love suddenly terminated at this

frightful precipice. Cosette lost to him, this barricade, M. Mabœuf

letting himself be killed for the Republic, himself chief of the

insurgents,--all these things seemed to him a monstrous nightmare, and

he was obliged to make a mental effort in order to remind himself that

all which surrounded him was real. Marius had not lived long enough yet

to know that nothing is so imminent as the impossible, and that what

must be always foreseen is the unforeseen. He witnessed the performance

of his own drama as if it were a piece of which he understood nothing.

In his mental fog he did not recognize Javert, who, fastened to his

post, had not made a movement of his head during the attack on the

barricade, and saw the revolt buzzing round him with the resignation

of a martyr and the majesty of a judge. Marius did not even notice

him. In the mean while the assailants no longer stirred; they could

be heard marching and moving at the end of the street, but did not

venture into it, either because they were waiting for orders, or else

required reinforcements, before rushing again upon this impregnable

redoubt. The insurgents had posted sentries, and some who were medical

students had begun dressing wounds. All the tables had been dragged

out of the wine-shop, with the exception of the two reserved for the

lint and the cartridges, and the one on which Father Mabœuf lay;

they had been added to the barricade, and the mattresses off the beds

of Widow Hucheloup and the girls had been put in their place. On these

mattresses the wounded were laid; as for the three poor creatures who

inhabited Corinth, no one knew what had become of them, but they were

at length found hidden in the cellar.

A poignant emotion darkened the joy of the liberated barricade; the

roll-call was made, and one of the insurgents was missing. Who was he?

One of the dearest and most valiant, Jean Prouvaire. He was sought for

among the dead, but was not there; he was sought for among the wounded,

and was not there; he was evidently a prisoner. Combeferre said to

Enjolras,--

"They have our friend, but we have their agent; do you insist on the

death of this spy?"

"Yes," Enjolras replied, "but less than the life of Jean Prouvaire."

This was said in the bar-room close to Javert's post.

"Well," Combeferre continued, "I will fasten a handkerchief to my cane,

and go as a flag of truce to offer to give them their man for our man."

"Listen," said Enjolras, as he laid his hand on Combeferre's arm.

There was a meaning click of guns at the end of the street, and a manly

voice could be heard crying,--

"Long live France! Long live the future!"

They recognized Prouvaire's voice; a flash passed and a detonation

burst forth; then the silence returned.

"They have killed him," Combeferre exclaimed.

Enjolras looked at Javert and said to him,--

"Your friends have just shot you."

CHAPTER VI.

DEATH'S AGONY AFTER LIFE'S AGONY.

It is a singularity of this sort of war, that the attack on barricades

is almost always made in the front, and that the assailants generally

refrain from turning positions, either because they suspect ambuscades,

or are afraid to enter winding streets. The whole attention of the

insurgents was, consequently, directed to the great barricade, which

was evidently the constantly threatened point, and the contest would

infallibly recommence there. Marius, however, thought of the little

barricade, and went to it; it was deserted, and only guarded by the

lamp which flickered among the paving-stones. However, the Mondétour

lane and the branches of the Little Truanderie were perfectly calm. As

Marius, after making his inspection, was going back, he heard his name

faintly uttered in the darkness,--

"Monsieur Marius!"

He started, for he recognized the voice which had summoned him two

hours back through the garden railings in the Rue Plumet, but this

voice now only seemed to be a gasp; he looked around him and saw

nobody. Marius fancied that he was mistaken, and that it was an

illusion added by his mind to the extraordinary realities which were

pressing round him. He took a step to leave the remote angle in which

the barricade stood.

"Monsieur Marius!" the voice repeated; this time he could not doubt,

for he had heard distinctly; he looked around but saw nothing.

"At your feet," the voice said.

He stooped down, and saw in the shadow a form crawling toward him on

the pavement. It was the speaker. The lamp enabled him to distinguish

a blouse, torn cotton-velvet trousers, bare feet, and something that

resembled a pool of blood; Marius also caught a glimpse of a pale face

raised to him, and saying,--

"Do you not recognize me?"

"No."

"Éponine."

Marius eagerly stooped down; it was really that hapless girl, dressed

in male clothes.

"What brought you here? What are you doing?"

"Dying," she said to him.

There are words and incidents that wake up crushed beings; Marius cried

with a start,--

"You are wounded! Wait, I will carry you into the wine-shop! Your wound

will be dressed! Is it serious? How shall I catch hold of you so as not

to hurt you? Where is it you suffer? Help, good God! But what did you

come to do here?"

And he tried to pass his hand under her to lift her, and as he did so

he touched her hand; she uttered a faint cry.

"Have I hurt you?" Marius asked.

"A little."

"But I only touched your hand."

She raised her hand to Marius's eyes, and he could see a hole right

through it.

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

"It is pierced."

"Pierced?"

"Yes."

"What with?"

"A bullet."

"How?"

"Did you see a musket aimed at you?"

"Yes, and a hand laid on the muzzle."

"It was mine."

Marius shuddered.

"What madness! poor child! But all the better; if that is your wound,

it is nothing, so let me carry you to a bed. Your wound will be

dressed, and people do not die of a bullet through the hand."

She murmured,--

"The bullet passed through my hand but came out of my back, so it is

useless to move me from here. I will tell you how you can do me more

good than a surgeon; sit down by my side on that stone."

He obeyed; she laid her head on his knees, and without looking at him,

said,--

"Oh, how good that is, how comforting! See, I no longer suffer!"

She remained silent for a moment, then turned her head with an effort

and gazed at Marius.

"Do you know this, Monsieur Marius? It annoyed me that you entered that

garden, though it was very foolish of me, as I showed you the house;

and then, too, I ought to have remembered that a young gentleman like

you--"

She broke off, and leaping over the gloomy transitions which her mind

doubtless contained, she added with a heart-rending smile,--

"You thought me ugly, did you not?"

Then she continued,--

"You are lost, and no one will leave the barricade now. I brought you

here, you know, and you are going to die, I feel sure of it. And yet,

when I saw the soldier aiming at you, I laid my hand on the muzzle of

his gun. How droll that is! But the reason was that I wished to die

with you. When I received that bullet I dragged myself here, and as no

one saw me I was not picked up. I waited for you and said, 'Will he not

come?' Oh, if you only knew how I bit my blouse, for I was suffering so

terribly! But now I feel all right. Do you remember the day when I came

into your room and looked at myself in your glass, and the day when I

met you on the boulevard near the washerwomen? How the birds sang! and

it is not so very long ago. You gave me five francs, and I said to you,

'I do not want your money.' I hope you picked up your coin, for you are

not rich, and I did not think of telling you to pick it up. The sun was

shining and it was not at all cold. Do you remember, Monsieur Marius?

Oh, I am so happy, for everybody is going to die!"

She had a wild, grave, and heart-rending look, and her ragged blouse

displayed her naked throat. While speaking, she laid her wounded hand

on her chest, in which there was another hole, and whence every moment

a stream of blood spirted like a jet of wine from an open bung. Marius

gazed at this unfortunate creature with profound compassion.

"Oh," she suddenly continued, "it is coming back! I suffocate!"

She raised her blouse and bit it, and her limbs stiffened on the

pavement. At this moment Gavroche's crowing voice could be heard from

the barricade: the lad had got on to a table to load his musket, and

was gayly singing the song so popular at that day,--

"En voyant Lafayette,

Le gendarme répète:

Sauvons-nous! sauvons-nous! sauvons-nous!"

Éponine raised herself and listened; then she muttered,--

"It is he."

And, turning to Marius, added,--

"My brother is here, but he must not see me, or he would scold me."

"Your brother?" Marius asked, as he thought most bitterly and sadly of

the duties toward the Thénardiers which his father had left him; "which

is your brother?"

"That little fellow."

"The one who is singing?"

"Yes."

Marius made a move.

"Oh, do not go away!" she said; "it will not be long just now."

She was almost sitting up, but her voice was very low, and every now

and then interrupted by the death-rattle. She put her face as close as

she could to that of Marius, and added with a strange expression,--

"Come, I will not play you a trick: I have had a letter addressed to

you in my pocket since yesterday; I was told to put it in the post, but

kept it, as I did not wish it to reach you. But perhaps you will not

be angry with me when we meet again ere long, for we shall meet again,

shall we not? Take your letter."

She convulsively seized Marius's hand with her wounded hand, but seemed

no longer to feel the suffering. She placed Marius's hand in her blouse

pocket, and he really felt a paper.

"Take it," she said.

Marius took the letter, and she gave a nod of satisfaction and

consolation.

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

And she stopped.

"What?" Marius asked.

"Promise me!"

"I do promise!"

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

She let her head fall again on Marius's knees and her eyes closed;

he fancied the poor soul departed. Éponine remained motionless; but

all at once, at the moment when Marius believed her eternally asleep,

she slowly opened her eyes, on which the gloomy profundity of death

was visible, and said to him with an accent whose gentleness seemed

already to come from another world,--

"And then, look you, Monsieur Marius, I think that I was a little in

love with you."

She tried to smile once more, and expired.

CHAPTER VII.

GAVROCHE CALCULATES DISTANCES.

Marius kept his promise; he deposited a kiss on this livid forehead,

upon which an icy perspiration beaded. It was not an infidelity to

Cosette, but a pensive and sweet farewell to an unhappy soul. He had

not taken without a quiver the letter which Éponine gave him; for he at

once suspected an event in it, and was impatient to read it. The heart

of man is so constituted,--and the unfortunate child had scarce closed

her eyes ere Marius thought of unfolding the paper. He gently laid her

on the ground and went off, for something told him that he could not

read this letter in the presence of a corpse. He walked up to a candle

on the ground-floor room; it was a little note folded and sealed with

the elegant care peculiar to women. The address was in a feminine

handwriting, and ran,--

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

Verrerie."

He broke the seal and read:--

"MY WELL-BELOVED,--Alas! my father insists on our going away at once.

We shall be this evening at No. 7, Rue de l'Homme Armé, and within a

week in London. COSETTE."

"June 4."

Such was the innocence of their love, that Marius did not even know

Cosette's handwriting.

What had happened may be told in a few words. Éponine had done it

all. After the night of June 3 she had had a double thought,--to foil

the plans of her father and the bandits upon the house in the Rue

Plumet, and separate Marius and Cosette. She had changed rags with the

first scamp she met, who thought it amusing to dress up as a woman,

while Éponine disguised herself as a man. It was she who gave Jean

Valjean the expressive warning, "Remove!" and he had gone straight

home and said to Cosette, "We shall start this evening and go to the

Rue de l'Homme Armé with Toussaint. Next week we shall be in London."

Cosette, startled by this unexpected blow, had hastily written two

lines to Marius, but how was she to put the letter in the post? She

never went out alone, and Toussaint, surprised by such an errand, would

certainly show the letter to M. Fauchelevent. In this state of anxiety,

Cosette noticed through the railings Éponine in male clothes, who now

incessantly prowled round the garden. Cosette had summoned "this young

workman," and given him the letter and a five-franc piece, saying,

"Carry this letter at once to its address," and Éponine put the letter

in her pocket. The next day she went to Courfeyrac's and asked for

Marius, not to hand him the letter, but "to see,"--a thing which every

jealous, loving soul will understand. There she waited for Marius, or

at any rate Courfeyrac--always to see. When Courfeyrac said to her,

"We are going to the barricades," an idea crossed her mind,--to throw

herself into this death as she would have done into any other, and

thrust Marius into it. She followed Courfeyrac, assured herself of the

spot where the barricade was being built, and feeling certain, since

Marius had not received the letter, that he would go at nightfall to

the usual meeting-place, she went to the Rue Plumet, waited for Marius

there, and gave him that summons in the name of his friends, which, as

she thought, must lead him to the barricade. She reckoned on Marius's

despair when he did not find Cosette, and she was not mistaken, and

then she returned to the Rue de la Chanvrerie. We have just seen what

she did there; she died with the tragic joy of jealous hearts, which

drag the beloved being down to death with them and say, "No one shall

have him!"

Marius covered Cosette's letter with kisses; she loved him, then, and

for a moment he had an idea that he ought not to die; but then he said

to himself, "Her father is taking her to England, and my grandfather

will not give his consent to the marriage; no change has taken place

in fatality." Dreamers like Marius undergo such supreme despondencies,

and desperate resolves issue from them; the fatigue of living is

insupportable, and death is sooner over. Then he thought that two

duties were left him to accomplish,--inform Cosette of his death and

send her his last farewell, and save from the imminent catastrophe

which was preparing, that poor boy, brother and Thénardier's son. He

had a pocket-book about him, the same which had contained the paper on

which he had written so many love-thoughts for Cosette; he tore out a

leaf, and wrote in pencil these few lines,--

"Our marriage was impossible; I asked my grand-father's consent, and

he refused to give it; I have no fortune, nor have you. I ran to your

house, and did not find you there; you remember the pledge I made to

you, and I have kept it. I die. I love you; and when you read this my

soul will be near you and smile upon you."

Having nothing with which to seal this letter, he merely folded it, and

wrote on it the address:--

"To Mademoiselle Cosette Fauchelevent, at M. Fauchelevent's, No. 7, Rue

de l'Homme Armé."

The letter folded, he stood for a moment in thought, then opened his

pocket-book again, and wrote with the same pencil these lines on the

first page.

"My name is Marius Pontmercy. Carry my body to my grandfather, M.

Gillenormand, No. 6, Rue des Filles du Calvaire, in the Marais."

He returned the book to his coat pocket, and then summoned Gavroche.

The lad, on hearing Marius's voice, ran up with his joyous and devoted

face.

"Will you do something for me?"

"Everything," said Gavroche. "God of Gods! my goose would have been

cooked without you."

"You see this letter?"

"Yes."

"Take it. Leave the barricade at once,"--Gavroche began scratching

his ear anxiously,--"and to-morrow morning you will deliver it at its

address No. 7, Rue de l'Homme Armé."

The heroic lad replied,--

"Well, but during that time the barricade will be attacked, and I shall

not be here."

"The barricade will not be attacked again till daybreak, according to

all appearances, and will not be taken till to-morrow afternoon."

The new respite which the assailants granted to the barricade was

really prolonged; it was one of those intermissions frequent in

night-fights, which are always followed by redoubled obstinacy.

"Well," said Gavroche, "suppose I were to deliver your letter to-morrow

morning?"

"It will be too late, for the barricade will probably be blockaded, all

the issues guarded, and you will be unable to get out. Be off at once."

Gavroche could not find any reply, so he stood there undecided, and

scratching his head sorrowfully. All at once he seized the letter with

one of those bird-like movements of his.

"All right," he said.

And he ran off toward the Mondétour lane. Gavroche had an idea which

decided him, but which he did not mention; it was the following:--

"It is scarce midnight; the Rue de l'Homme Armé is no great distance

off. I will deliver the letter at once, and be back in time."

BOOK XV.

THE RUE DE L'HOMME ARMÉ

CHAPTER I.

BLOTTING, BLABBING.

What are the convulsions of a city compared with the convulsions of a

soul? Man is even a greater profundity than the people. Jean Valjean at

this very moment was suffering from a frightful internal earthquake,

and all the gulfs were reopened within him. He too was quivering,

like Paris, on the threshold of a formidable and obscure revolution.

A few hours had sufficed to cover his destiny and his conscience with

shadows, and of him, as of Paris, it might be said, "The two principles

are face to face." The white angel and the black angel are about to

wrestle with each other on the brink of the abyss; which will hurl the

other down?

On the evening of that same day, Jean Valjean, accompanied by Cosette

and Toussaint, proceeded to the Rue de l'Homme Armé, where a tremendous

incident was fated to take place. Cosette had not left the Rue Plumet

without an attempt at resistance, and for the first time since they

had lived together, the will of Cosette and the will of Jean Valjean

had shown themselves distinct, and had contradicted each other, though

they did not come into collision. There was objection on one side and

inflexibility on the other: for the abrupt counsel, "Remove!" thrown

to Jean Valjean by a stranger, had alarmed him to such a point as

to render him absolute. He fancied himself tracked and pursued, and

Cosette was compelled to yield. The pair reached the Rue de l'Homme

Armé without exchanging a syllable, for each was so deep in personal

thought, while Jean Valjean was so anxious that he did not notice

Cosette's sadness, and Cosette was so sad that she did not notice Jean

Valjean's anxiety. Jean Valjean had brought Toussaint with him, which

he had never done in his previous absences, but he foresaw that he

might possibly never return to the Rue Plumet, and he could neither

leave Toussaint behind him nor tell her his secret. Moreover, he felt

her to be devoted and sure; the treachery of a servant to a master

begins with curiosity, and Toussaint, as if predestined to be Jean

Valjean's servant, was not curious. She was wont to say through her

stammering in her patois of a Barneville peasant, "I am so, I do my

work, and the rest does not concern me." In his departure from the Rue

Plumet, which was almost a flight, Jean Valjean took away with him

nothing but the fragrant little portmanteau, christened by Cosette the

"inseparable." Packed trunks would have required porters, and porters

are witnesses; a hackney-coach had been called to the gate in the Rue

de Babylone and they went away in it. It was with great difficulty

that Toussaint obtained permission to pack up a little stock of linen

and clothes, and a few toilet articles; Cosette herself only took her

desk and blotting-book. Jean Valjean, in order to heighten the solitude

and mystery of this disappearance, had so arranged as to leave the Rue

Plumet at nightfall, which had given Cosette the time to write her note

to Marius. They reached the Rue de l'Homme Armé when it was quite dark,

and went to bed in perfect silence.

The apartments in this street were situated on a second floor in a

back-yard, and consisted of two bed-rooms, a dining-room, and a kitchen

adjoining, with a closet in which was a flock-bed, that fell to the

lot of Toussaint. The dining-room was at the same time ante-room and

separated the two bed-rooms, and the apartments were provided with the

necessary articles of furniture. Human nature is so constituted that

men become reassured almost as absurdly as they are alarmed; hence Jean

Valjean had scarce reached the Rue de l'Homme Armé ere his anxiety

cleared away and was gradually dissipated. There are calming places

which act to some extent mechanically on the mind, and when a street is

obscure the inhabitants are peaceful. Jean Valjean felt a contagious

tranquillity in this lane of old Paris, which is so narrow that it is

barred against vehicles by a cross-beam, which is dumb and deaf amid

the noisy town, full of twilight in broad daylight, and, so to speak,

incapable of feeling emotions between its two rows of tall centenary

houses, which are silent like old folks are. There is in this street a

stagnant oblivion, and Jean Valjean breathed again in it, for how was

it possible that he could be found there? His first care was to place

the "inseparable" by his side; he slept soundly, and night counsels,

we might add, night appeases. The next morning he woke up almost gay.

He considered the dining-room charming, though it was hideous, for it

was furnished with an old round table, a low side-board surmounted

by a mirror, a rickety easy-chair, and a few chairs encumbered with

Toussaint's parcels. In one of these parcels Jean Valjean's National

Guard uniform could be seen through an opening.

As for Cosette, she ordered Toussaint to bring a basin of broth to

her bed-room, and did not make her appearance till evening. At about

five o'clock, Toussaint, who went about very busy with getting things

to rights, placed a cold fowl on the dinner-table, which Cosette

consented to look at, through deference for her father. This done,

Cosette protesting a persistent headache, said good-night to Jean

Valjean, and shut herself up in her bed-room. Jean Valjean ate a wing

of the fowl with appetite, and with his elbows on the table, and

gradually growing reassured, regained possession of his serenity. While

he was eating this modest dinner, he vaguely heard twice or thrice

stammering Toussaint say to him, "There is a disturbance, sir, and

people are fighting in Paris." But, absorbed in a multitude of internal

combinations, he had paid no attention to her; truth to tell, he had

not heard her. He rose and began walking from the door to the window,

and from the window to the door with calmness. Cosette, his sole

preoccupation, reverted to his mind, not that he was alarmed by this

headache, a slight nervous attack, a girl's pouting, a momentary cloud,

which would disappear in a day or two, but he thought of the future,

and, as usual, thought of it gently. After all, he saw no obstacle to

his happy life resuming its course: at certain hours everything seems

impossible, at others everything appears easy, and Jean Valjean was in

one of those good hours. They usually arrive after bad hours, as day

does after night, through that law of succession and contrast which is

the basis of our nature, and which superficial minds call antithesis.

In this peaceful street where he had sought shelter, Jean Valjean

freed himself from all that had troubled him for some time past, and

from the very fact that he had seen so much darkness he was beginning

to perceive a little azure. To have left the Rue Plumet without any

complication or incident was a good step gained, and perhaps it would

be wise to leave the country, were it only for a few months, and go

to London. Well, they would go; what did he care whether he were in

England or France, provided that he had Cosette by his side? Cosette

was his nation, Cosette sufficed for his happiness, and the idea that

he perhaps did not suffice for Cosette's happiness, that idea which had

formerly been his fever and sleeplessness, did not even present itself

to his mind. All his past sorrows had collapsed, and he was in the

centre of optimism. Cosette, being by his side, seemed to be his, and

this is an optical effect which everybody has experienced. He arranged

in his mind, and with all possible facility, the departure for England

with Cosette, and he saw his felicity reconstructed, no matter where,

in the perspectives of his reverie.

While slowly walking up and down, his eye suddenly fell on something

strange. He noticed, facing him in the inclined mirror over the

side-board, and read distinctly:--

"MY WELL-BELOVED,--Alas! my father insists on our going away at once.

We shall be this evening at No. 7, Rue de l'Homme Armé, and within a

week in London. COSETTE."

"June 4."

Jean Valjean stopped with haggard gaze. Cosette, on arriving, had laid

her blotting-book on the side-board facing the mirror, and, immersed

in her painful thoughts, had forgotten it, without even noticing that

she had left it open at the very page on which she had dried the few

lines she had written and intrusted to the young workman passing along

the Rue Plumet. The writing was imprinted on the blotting-paper and the

mirror reflected the writing. The result was what is called in geometry

a symmetric image, so that the writing reversed on the blotting-paper

was placed straight in the mirror, and offered its natural direction,

and Jean Valjean had before his eyes the letter written on the previous

evening by Cosette to Marius. It was simple and crushing. Jean Valjean

walked up to the mirror and read the lines again, but did not believe

in them. They produced on him the effect of appearing in a flash of

lightning: it was an hallucination; it was impossible; it was not.

Gradually his perception became more precise, he looked at Cosette's

blotting-book, and the feeling of the real fact returned to him. He

took up the blotting-book, saying, "It comes from that." He feverishly

examined the lines imprinted on the blotting-paper, but as they ran

backward he could see no meaning in the strange scrawl. Then he said

to himself, "Why, it means nothing; there is nothing written there."

And he drew a long breath with inexpressible relief. Who has not felt

such wild delight in horrible moments? The soul does not surrender to

despair till it has exhausted every illusion.

He held the book in his hand and gazed at it, stupidly happy, almost

ready to laugh at the hallucination of which he had been the dupe. All

at once his eyes fell again on the mirror, and he saw the vision again;

the lines stood on it with inexorable clearness. This time it was no

mirage, it was palpable, it was the writing turned straight in the

mirror, and he comprehended the fact. Jean Valjean tottered, let the

blotting-book slip from his grasp, and fell into the old easy-chair by

the side of the side-board with hanging head and glassy, wandering eye.

He said to himself that it was evident that the light of this world

was eclipsed, and that Cosette had written that to somebody. Then he

heard his soul, which had become terrible again, utter a hoarse roar

in the darkness. Just attempt to take from the lion the dog he has in

his cage! Strange, and sad to say, at that moment Marius had not yet

received Cosette's letter, and accident had treacherously carried it

to Jean Valjean before delivering it to Marius. Jean Valjean up to

that day had never been conquered by a trial; he had been subjected to

frightful assaults, not a blow of evil fortune had been spared him,

and the ferocity of fate, armed with all social revenge and contempt,

had taken him for its victim and furiously attacked him. He had

accepted, when it was necessary, every extremity; he had surrendered

his reacquired inviolability as man, given up his liberty, risked his

head, lost everything and suffered everything, and he had remained

disinterested and stoical to such an extent that at times he seemed

to be oblivious of self, like a martyr. His conscience, hardened to

all possible assaults of adversity, might seem quite impregnable; but

any one who had now gazed into his heart would have been compelled to

allow that it was growing weak. In truth, of all the tortures he had

undergone in this long trial to which fate subjected him, this was the

most formidable, and never had such a vise held him before. He felt

the mysterious agitation of all his latent sensibilities, he felt the

twitching of an unknown fibre. Alas! the supreme trial, we may say the

sole trial, is the loss of the being whom we love.

Poor old Jean Valjean did not assuredly love Cosette otherwise than as

a father; but, as we have already remarked, the very widowhood of his

life had introduced all the forms of love into this paternity: he loved

Cosette as his daughter, loved her as his mother, and loved her as his

sister, and, as he had never had a mistress or a wife, that feeling

too, the most clinging of all, was mingled with the others, vague,

ignorant, pure with the purity of blindness unconscious, heavenly,

angelic, and divine, less as a feeling than an instinct, less as an

instinct than an attraction, imperceptible, invisible, but real; and

love, properly so called, was in his enormous tenderness for Cosette

as the vein of gold is in the mountain, dark and virginal. Our readers

must study for a moment this state of the heart; no marriage was

possible between them, not even that of souls, and yet it is certain

that their destinies were wedded. Excepting Cosette, that is to say,

excepting a childhood, Jean Valjean, during the whole of his life,

had known nothing about things that may be loved. Those passions and

loves which succeed each other had not produced in him those successive

stages of green, light green, or dark green, which may be noticed on

leaves that survive the winter, and in men who pass their fiftieth

year. In fine, as we have more than once urged, all this internal

fusion, all this ensemble, whose resultant was a lofty virtue, ended by

making Jean Valjean a father to Cosette,--a strange father, forged out

of the grandsire, the son, the brother, and the husband, which were in

Jean Valjean; a father in whom there was even a mother; a father who

loved Cosette and adored her, and who had this child for his light, his

abode, his family, his country, and his paradise. Hence, when he saw

that it was decidedly ended, that she was escaping from him, slipping

through his fingers, concealing herself, that she was a cloud, that she

was water; when he had before his eyes this crushing evidence: "Another

is the object of her heart, another is the wish of her life, she has

a lover, I am only the father, I no longer exist;" when he could no

longer doubt, when he said to himself, "She is leaving me," the sorrow

he experienced went beyond the limits of the possible. To have done all

that he had done to attain this, and to be nothing! Then, as we have

just stated, he had a quivering of revolt from head to foot; he felt

even in the roots of his hair the immense reawaking of selfishness, and

the "I" yelled in the depths of this man's soul.

There are such things as internal earthquakes; the penetration of

a desperate certainty into a man is not effected without removing

and breaking certain profound elements which are at times the man

himself. Grief, when it attains that pitch, is a frantic flight of

all the forces of the conscience, and such crises are fatal. Few

among us emerge from them equal to ourselves and firm in our duty;

for when the limit of suffering is exceeded, the most imperturbable

virtue is disconcerted. Jean Valjean took up the blotting-book and

convinced himself afresh; he bent down as if petrified, and with fixed

eye, over the undeniable lines, and such a cloud collected within

him that it might be believed that the whole interior of his soul

was in a state of collapse. He examined this revelation through the

exaggerations of reverie with an apparent and startling calmness, for

it is a formidable thing when a man's calmness attains the coldness

of a statue. He measured the frightful step which his destiny had

taken without any suspicion on his part, he recalled his fears of the

past summer, so madly dissipated, he recognized the precipice; it was

still the same, but Jean Valjean was no longer at the top but at the

bottom. It was an extraordinary and crushing fact that he had fallen

without perceiving it, the whole light of his life had fled while he

still fancied he could see the sun. His instinct did not hesitate; he

brought together certain circumstances, certain dates, certain blushes,

and certain palenesses of Cosette, and said to himself, "It is he!"

The divination of despair is a species of mysterious bow which never

misses its mark, and with its first shaft it hit Marius. He did not

know the name, but at once found the man; he perceived distinctly at

the bottom of the implacable evocation of memory the unknown prowler

of the Luxembourg, that villanous seeker of amourettes, that romantic

idler, that imbecile, that coward,--for it is cowardice to exchange

loving glances with girls who have by their side a father who loves

them. After feeling quite certain that this young man was at the bottom

of the situation, and that all this came from him, Jean Valjean, the

regenerated man, the man who had toiled so heavily in his soul, the

man who had made so many efforts to resolve his whole life, his whole

misery, and his whole misfortune into love, looked into himself and saw

there a spectre--hatred.

Great griefs contain exhaustion, and discourage us with life; the man

into whom they enter feels something retire from him. In youth their

visit is mournful, at a later date it is sinister. Alas! when the blood

is hot, when the hair is black, when the head is upright on the body

like the flame on the candle, when the heart, full of a yearning love,

still has palpitations which may be given to it in return, when a

man has time to recover from the wound, when all women are there, and

all the smiles, and all the future, and the whole horizon, when the

strength of life is complete,--if despair be a frightful thing under

such circumstances, what is it then in old age, when years are growing

more and more livid, at that twilight hour when the stars of the tomb

are beginning to become visible? While Jean Valjean was thinking,

Toussaint came in; he rose and asked her,--

"Do you know whereabout it is?"

Toussaint, in her stupefaction, could only answer,--

"I beg your pardon, sir."

Jean Valjean continued,--

"Did you not say just now that they were fighting?"

"Oh yes, sir," Toussaint replied; "over at St. Merry."

There are some mechanical movements which come to us, without our

cognizance, from our deepest thoughts. It was doubtless under the

impulse of a movement of this nature, of which he was scarce conscious,

that Jean Valjean found himself five minutes later in the street. He

was bareheaded, and sat down on the bench before his house, seemingly

listening.

Night had set in.

CHAPTER II.

THE GAMIN THE ENEMY OF LAMPS.

How long did he remain there? What was the ebb and flow of this

tragical meditation? Did he draw himself up? Did he remain bowed down?

Had he been bent till he was broken? Could he recover himself and stand

again upon something solid in his conscience? Probably he could not

have said himself. The street was deserted, and a few anxious citizens

who hurriedly returned home scarce noticed him, for each for himself is

the ride in times of peril. The lamplighter came as usual to light the

lamp which was exactly opposite the door of No. 7, and went away. Jean

Valjean would not have appeared to be a living man to any one who might

have examined him in this gloom, and he sat on his bench motionless,

like a statue of ice. His despair had got beyond congelation. The

tocsin and vague stormy rumors could be heard, and in the midst of

all these convulsions of the bell blended with the riot, the clock of

St. Paul struck the eleventh hour, solemnly and without hurrying; for

the tocsin is man, the hour is God. The passing of the hour produced

no effect on Jean Valjean, and he did not stir. Almost immediately

after, however, a sudden detonation broke out in the direction of the

markets, followed by a second even more violent; it was probably that

attack on the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie which we have just

seen repulsed by Marius. At this double discharge, whose fury seemed

increased by the stupor of the night, Jean Valjean started; he turned

in the direction whence the sound came, but then fell back on his

bench, crossed his arms, and his head slowly bent down again on his

chest. He resumed his dark dialogue with himself.

All at once he raised his eyes, for there was some one in the street;

he heard footsteps close to him, and by the light of the lamp he

perceived a livid, young, and radiant face, in the direction of the

street which runs past the Archives. It was Gavroche, who had just

arrived from the Rue de la Chanvrerie; Gavroche was looking up in

the air, and appeared to be seeking. He saw Jean Valjean distinctly,

but paid no attention to him. Gavroche, after looking up in the air,

looked down on the ground; he stood on tiptoe, and felt the doors and

ground-floor windows; they were all shut, bolted, and barred. After

examining the fronts of several houses barricaded in this way, the

gamin shrugged his shoulders, and then resumed his self-colloquy with

himself, thus, "By Jove!" Then he looked up in the air again. Jean

Valjean, who a moment previously in his present state of mind would

neither have spoken to nor answered any one, felt an irresistible

impulse to address this lad.

"My little boy," he said, "what is the matter with you?"

"Why, I'm hungry," Gavroche answered bluntly. And he added, "Little

yourself!"

Jean Valjean felt in his pocket and pulled out a five-franc piece. But

Gavroche, who was a species of wagtail, and rapidly passed from one

gesture to another, had just picked up a stone. He had noticed the lamp.

"Hilloh!" he said, "you have still got lights here. You are not acting

rightly, my friends; that is disorderly conduct. Break it for me."

And he threw the stone at the lamp, whose glass fell with such a noise

that the citizens concealed behind their curtains in the opposite house

cried, "There is '93!" The lamp oscillated violently and went out; the

street suddenly became dark.

"That's it, old street," said Gavroche, "put on your nightcap." Then,

turning to Jean Valjean, he said,--

"What do you call that gigantic monument which you have there at the

end of the street? It's the Archives, isn't it? Let's pull down some of

those great brutes of columns and make a tidy barricade."

Jean Valjean walked up to Gavroche.

"Poor creature!" he said in a low voice, and as if speaking to himself,

"he is hungry."

And he placed the five-franc piece in his hand. Gavroche raised his

nose, amazed at the size of this double sou; he looked at it in the

darkness, and the whiteness of the double sou dazzled him. He was

acquainted with five-franc pieces by hearsay, and their reputation was

agreeable to him; he was delighted to see one so closely, and said,

"Let us contemplate the tiger." He looked at it for some moments in

ecstasy; then, turning to Jean Valjean, he held out the coin to him,

and said majestically,--

"Citizen, I prefer breaking the lamps. Take back your ferocious animal,

for I am not to be corrupted. It has five claws, but can't scratch me."

"Have you a mother?" Jean Valjean asked.

Gavroche replied,--

"Perhaps more than you."

"Well," Jean Valjean continued, "keep that money for your mother."

Gavroche was affected. Moreover, he had noticed that the man who was

addressing him had no hat on, and this inspired him with confidence.

"Really, then," he said, "it is not to prevent me breaking the lamps?"

"Break as many as you like."

"You are a worthy man," said Gavroche.

And he put the five-franc piece in one of his pockets. Then, with

increasing confidence, he added;--

"Do you belong to this street?"

"Yes; why?"

"Can you point me out No. 7?"

"What do you want at No. 7?"

Here the lad stopped, for he feared lest he had said too much. He

energetically plunged his nails into his hair, and confined himself to

answering,--

"Ah, there it is."

An idea flashed across Jean Valjean's mind, for agony has lucidities of

that nature. He said to the boy,--

"Have you brought me the letter which I am expecting?"

"You," said Gavroche, "you ain't a woman."

"The letter is for Mademoiselle Cosette, is it not?"

"Cosette?" Gavroche grumbled; "yes, I think it is that absurd name."

"Well," Jean Valjean continued, "you have to deliver the letter to me;

so give it here."

"In that case, you must be aware that I am sent from the barricade?"

"Of course," said Jean Valjean.

Gavroche thrust his hand into another of his pockets, and produced a

square folded letter; then he gave the military salute.

"Respect for the despatch," he said; "it comes from the Provisional

Government."

"Give it to me," said Jean Valjean.

Gavroche held the paper above his head.

"You must not imagine that it is a love-letter, though it is for a

woman; it is for the people; we are fighting, and we respect the sex;

we are not like people in the world of fashion, where there are lions

that send poulets to camels."

"Give it to me."

"After all," Gavroche continued, "you look like an honest man."

"Make haste."

"Here it is."

And he handed the paper to Jean Valjean.

"And make haste, Monsieur Chose, since Mamselle Chosette is waiting."

Gavroche felt pleased at having made this pun. Jean Valjean added,--

"Must the answer be taken to St. Merry?"

"You would make in that way," Gavroche exclaimed, "one of those

pastries vulgarly called _brioches_ [blunders]. That letter comes from

the barricade in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and I am going back to it.

Good-night, citizen."

This said, Gavroche went away, or, to speak more correctly, resumed

his birdlike flight to the spot whence he had escaped. He plunged

again into the darkness, as if there were a hole there, with the rigid

rapidity of a projectile: the lane of l'Homme Armé became once again

silent and solitary. In a twinkling, this strange lad, who had shadows

and dreams within him, buried himself in the gloom of these rows of

black houses, and was lost in it like smoke in darkness, and it might

have been fancied that he was dispersed, had vanished, had not, a few

minutes after his disappearance, a noisy breakage of glass, and the

splendid echo of a lamp falling on the pavement, suddenly reawakened

the indignant citizens. It was Gavroche passing along the Rue de

Chaume.

CHAPTER III.

WHILE COSETTE AND TOUSSAINT SLEEP.

Jean Valjean re-entered with Marius's letter: he groped his way

up-stairs, pleased with the darkness like an owl that holds its prey,

gently opened and closed the door, listened whether he could hear any

sound, convinced himself that Cosette and Toussaint were, according to

all appearances, asleep, and plunged into the Fumade lighting-bottle

three or four matches before he could procure a spark, for his hand

trembled so, as what he had just done was a robbery. At last his candle

was lit, he sat down at the table, opened the letter, and read. In

such violent emotions men do not read, they hurl down, so to speak,

the paper they hold, clutch it like a victim, crumple it, bury in it

the nails of their fury or delight, they run to the end, they dash at

the beginning: the attention is feverish, it understands the essential

facts, it seizes on one point, and all the rest disappears. In the note

from Marius to Cosette Jean Valjean only saw these words,--

"I die: when you read this my soul will be near you."

In the presence of this line he felt a horrible bedazzlement; he

remained for a moment as if crushed by the change of emotion which took

place in him. He gazed at Marius's letter with a species of drunken

amazement, he had before his eyes this splendor,--the death of the

hated being. He uttered a frightful cry of internal joy. So all was

over, and the dénouement arrived more quickly than he could have dared

to hope. The being that encumbered his destiny was disappearing; he

went away of his own accord, freely and willingly, without his doing

anything in the matter, without any fault on the part of him, Jean

Valjean; "that man" was going to die, perhaps was already dead. Here

his fever made its calculations; "No, he is not yet dead. The letter

was evidently written to be read by Cosette on the next morning: since

the two volleys he had heard between eleven o'clock and midnight

nothing had occurred: the barricade would not be seriously attacked

till daybreak; but no matter, from the moment when 'that man' is mixed

up in this war, he is lost, he is caught in the cog-wheels." Jean

Valjean felt himself delivered; he was going to find himself once more

alone with Cosette; the rivalry ceased and the future began again.

He need only keep the note in his pocket, and Cosette would never

know what had become of "that man;" "I have only to let things take

their course. That man cannot escape, and if he is not dead yet, it

is certain that he is going to die. What happiness!" All this said

internally, he became gloomy: he went down and aroused the porter.

About an hour later Jean Valjean left the house in the uniform of a

National Guard and armed. The porter had easily obtained for him in the

neighborhood the articles to complete his equipment: he had a loaded

musket and a full cartouche-box. He proceeded in the direction of the

markets.

CHAPTER IV.

GAVROCHE'S EXCESS OF ZEAL.

In the mean while an adventure had happened to Gavroche; after

conscientiously stoning the lamp in the Rue du Chaume, he approached

the Rue des Vieilles Haudriettes, and not seeing "a cat" there, found

the opportunity excellent for striking up a song at the full pitch of

his lungs. His march, far from being checked by the singing, became

accelerated, and he sowed along the sleeping or terrified houses the

following incendiary verses:--

"L'oiseau médit dans les charmilles,

Et prétend qu'hier Atala

Avec un Russe s'en alla.

Où vont les belles filles,

Lon la.

"Mon ami Pierrot, tu babilles,

Parce que l'autre jour Mila

Cogna sa vitre, et m'appela.

Où vont les belles filles,

Lon la.

"Les drôlesses sont fort gentilles,

Leur poison qui m'ensorcela

Griserait Monsieur Orfila.

Où vont les belles filles,

Lon la.

"J'aime l'amour et ses bisbilles,

J'aime Agnès, j'aime Paméla,

Lise en m'allumant se brûla.

Où vont les belles filles,

Lon la.

"Jadis, quand je vis les mantilles

De Suzette et de Zéila,

Mon âme à leurs plis se mêla.

Où vont les belles filles,

Lon la.

"Amour, quand, dans l'ombre où tu brilles,

Tu coiffes de roses Lola,

Je me damnerais pour cela.

Où vont les belles filles,

Lon la.

"Jeanne, à ton miroir tu t'habilles!

Mon cœur un beau jour s'envola;

Je crois que c'est Jeanne qui l'a.

Où vont les belles filles,

Lon la.

"Le soir, en sortant des quadrilles,

Je montre aux étoiles Stella,

Et je leur dis: 'Regardez-la.'

Où vont les belles filles,

Lon la."

Gavroche, while singing, was lavish of his pantomime, for gesture is

the mainstay of a chorus. His face, an inexhaustible repertory of

masks, made grimaces more convulsive and more fantastic than the mouths

of a torn sheet in a stiff breeze. Unluckily, as he was alone and in

the dark, this was neither seen nor visible. Much wealth is lost in

this way. Suddenly he stopped short.

"We must interrupt the romance," he said.

His catlike eye had just distinguished inside a gateway what is called

in painting an ensemble, that is to say, a being and a thing; the thing

was a handcart, the being an Auvergnat sleeping inside it. The shafts

of the cart were upon the pavement, and the Auvergnat's head leaned on

the backboard of the truck. His body lay along this inclined plane,

and his feet touched the ground. Gavroche, with his experience of the

things of this world, recognized a drunkard: it was some street-corner

porter who had drunk too much and was sleeping too much.

"Such is the use," Gavroche thought, "to which summer nights may be

turned. The Auvergnat sleeps in his truck. I take the truck for the

republic, and leave the Auvergnat for the monarchy."

His mind had just been illumined by this flash.

"That truck would be famous on our barricade!"

The Auvergnat was snoring. Gavroche gently pulled the truck behind and

the Auvergnat in front, that is to say, by the feet, and in a second

the porter was lying imperturbably flat on the pavement. The truck was

liberated. Gavroche, accustomed constantly to face unexpected events,

had always everything about him. He felt in one of his pockets and

pulled out a scrap of paper and a piece of red pencil stolen from some

carpenter. He wrote

_République Française_

Received this truck.

And he signed, GAVROCHE.

This done, he placed the paper in the snoring porter's velvet waistcoat

pocket, seized the handcart, and started in the direction of the

markets, thrusting the truck before him at a gallop with a glorious

triumphal row. This was dangerous, for there was a post at the Royal

Printing Office, and Gavroche did not think of that. This post was held

by suburban National Guards; a certain amount of alarm was beginning to

arouse the squad, and heads were raised in the guard-beds. Two lamps

broken so shortly after each other, and this singing at the pitch of

the lungs, were a good deal for these cowardly streets, which like

to go to bed at sunset, and put the extinguisher on their candle at

so early an hour. For an hour past the gamin had been making in this

peaceful district the noise of a fly in a bottle. The suburban sergeant

listened and waited, for he was a prudent man. The wild rolling of the

truck filled up the measure of possible awaiting, and determined the

sergeant to attempt a reconnoisance.

"There must be a whole band of them," he said, "so we will advance

gently."

It was clear that the hydra of anarchy had emerged from its box, and

was playing the deuce in the quarter, so the sergeant ventured out of

the guard-house on tiptoe. All at once, Gavroche, pushing his truck,

found himself, just as he was turning out of the Rue des Vieilles

Haudriettes, face to face with a uniform, a shako, a pompon, and a

musket. For the second time he stopped short.

"Hilloh!" he said, "it's he. Good-day, public order."

Gavroche's surprises were short and rapidly thawed.

"Where are you going, scamp?" the sergeant cried.

"Citizen," said Gavroche, "I have not yet called you bourgeois, so why

do you insult me?"

"Where are you going, scoundrel?"

"Sir," Gavroche continued, "it is possible that you were a man of sense

yesterday, but you must have sent in your resignation this morning."

"I ask you where you are going, villain?"

Gavroche answered,--

"You speak politely. Really, no one would fancy you that age. You ought

to sell your hair at one hundred francs apiece, and that would bring

you in five hundred francs."

"Where are you going, where are you going, where are you going, bandit?"

Gavroche retorted,--

"Those are ugly words. The first time they give you the breast they

ought to wash your mouth out better."

The sergeant levelled his bayonet.

"Will you tell me where you are going or not, wretch?"

"My general," said Gavroche, "I am going to fetch the doctor for my

wife, who is taken in labor."

"To arms!" the sergeant shouted.

It is the masterpiece of powerful minds to save themselves by what has

ruined them; and Gavroche measured the whole situation at a glance.

It was the truck that had compromised him, and so the truck must now

protect him. At the moment when the sergeant was going to rush on

Gavroche, the truck, converted into a projectile and launched at full

speed, rolled upon him furiously, and the sergeant, struck in the

stomach, fell back into the gutter, while his musket was discharged

in the air. On hearing their sergeant's cry, the guard hurried forth

pell-mell; the shot produced a general discharge blindly, after which

the guns were reloaded, and they began again. This blindman's buff

firing lasted a good quarter of an hour, and killed sundry panes of

glass. In the mean while, Gavroche, who had turned back, stopped five

or six streets off, and sat down panting on the bench at the corner of

the Enfants Rouges, and listened. After breathing for a few minutes, he

turned in the direction where the musketry was raging, raised his left

hand to the level of his nose, and thrust it out thrice, while striking

the back of his head with his right hand,--a sovereign gesture, in

which the Parisian gamins have condensed French irony, and which is

evidently effective, as it has already lasted more than half a century.

This gayety was troubled by a bitter reflection.

"Yes," he said, "I am delighted, I overflow with joy, I crack my sides,

but I am losing my way, and shall be obliged to steer a roundabout

course. I only hope I shall reach the barricade betimes."

After saying this he ran off again, and while running asked himself,

"Where was I?" and he began his song again, which gradually died out

in the darkness of the streets.

"Mais il reste encor des bastilles,

Et je vais mettre le holà

Dans l'ordre public que voilà.

Où vont les belles filles,

Lon la.

"Quelqu'un veut-il jouer aux quilles?

Tout l'ancien monde s'écroula,

Quand la grosse boule roula.

Où vont les belles filles,

Lon la.

"Vieux bon peuple, à coups de béquilles,

Cassons ce Louvre où s'étala

La monarchie en falbala.

Où vont les belles filles,

Lon la.

"Nous en avons forcé les grilles,

Le roi Charles-Dix ce jour-là

Tenait mal, et se décolla.

Où vont les belles filles,

Lon la."

The turn-out of the Guard produced some results, for a truck was

captured and the drunkard made prisoner. The first was placed in

the Green Yard, while the second was afterwards brought before a

court-martial as an accomplice. The public minister of that day

displayed in this circumstance his indefatigable zeal in the defence of

society. Gavroche's adventure, which has remained as a tradition in

the Temple quarter, is one of the most terrible reminiscences of the

old bourgeois of the Marais, and is entitled in their memory,--"The

night attack on the guard-house of the Royal Printing Office."

END OF PART FOURTH.