NOTHING TO DO IN THE ABYSS BUT TALK.
Sixteen years count in the subterranean education of revolt, and June,
1848, knew a great deal more than June, 1832. Hence the barricade in
the Rue de la Chanvrerie was only a sketch and an embryo when compared
with the two colossal barricades which we have just described; but
for the period it was formidable. The insurgents, under the eye of
Enjolras,--for Marius no longer looked at anything,--had turned the
night to good account: the barricade had not only been repaired but
increased. It had been raised two feet, and iron bars planted in the
paving-stones resembled lances in rest. All sorts of rubbish, added and
brought from all sides, complicated the external confusion, and the
redoubt had been cleverly converted into a wall inside and a thicket
outside. The staircase of paving-stones, which allowed the top of the
barricade to be reached, was restored, the ground-floor of the room
of the inn was cleared out, the kitchen converted into an infirmary,
the wounds were dressed, the powder scattered about the tables and
floor was collected, bullets were cast, cartridges manufactured,
lint plucked, the fallen arms distributed; the dead were carried off
and laid in a heap in the Mondétour Lane, of which they were still
masters. The pavement remained for a long time red at that spot. Among
the dead were four suburban National Guards, and Enjolras ordered their
uniforms to be laid on one side. Enjolras had advised two hours' sleep,
and his advice was an order; still, only three or four took advantage
of it, and Feuilly employed the two hours in engraving this inscription
on the wall facing the wine-shop,--
"LONG LIVE THE PEOPLES."
These four words, carved in the stone with a nail, could still be read
on this wall in 1848. The three women took advantage of the respite
to disappear entirely, which allowed the insurgents to breathe more
at their ease; and they contrived to find refuge in some neighboring
house. Most of the wounded could and would still fight. There were,
on a pile of mattresses and trusses of straw laid in the kitchen
converted into an infirmary, five men seriously wounded, of whom two
were Municipal Guards; the wounds of the latter were dressed first. No
one remained in the ground-floor room save Mabœuf under his black
cere-cloth, and Javert fastened to the post.
"This is the charnel-house," said Enjolras.
In the interior of this room, which was scarce lighted by a solitary
candle, the mortuary table at the end being behind the post like a
horizontal bar, a sort of large vague cross resulted from Javert
standing and Mabœuf lying down. Although the pole of the omnibus was
mutilated by the bullets, sufficient remained for a flag to be attached
to it. Enjolras, who possessed that quality of a chief of always doing
what he said, fastened to it the bullet-pierced and blood-stained coat
of the killed old man. No meal was possible, for there was neither
bread nor meat. The fifty men during the sixteen hours they had stood
at the barricade speedily exhausted the scanty provisions of the inn.
At a given moment every barricade that holds out becomes the raft of
the _Méduse_, and the combatants must resign themselves to hunger.
They had reached the early hours of that Spartan day, June 6, when at
the barricade of St. Merry, Jeanne, surrounded by insurgents who cried
for bread, answered, "What for? It is three o'clock; at four we shall
be dead." As they could no longer eat, Enjolras prohibited drinking;
he put the wine under an interdict, and served out the spirits. Some
fifteen full bottles, hermetically sealed, were found in the cellar,
which Enjolras and Combeferre examined. Combeferre on coming up again
said, "It belongs to Father Hucheloup's stock at the time when he was
a grocer." "It must be real wine," Bossuet observed; "it is lucky that
Grantaire is asleep, for if he were up, we should have a difficulty in
saving those bottles." Enjolras, in spite of the murmurs, put his veto
on the fifteen bottles, and in order that no one might touch them, and
that they should be to some extent sacred, he had placed them under the
table on which Father Mabœuf lay.
At about two in the morning they counted their strength; there were
still thirty-seven. Day was beginning to appear, and the torch, which
had been returned to its stone lantern, was extinguished. The interior
of the barricade, that species of small yard taken from the street, was
bathed in darkness, and resembled, through the vague twilight horror,
the deck of a dismasted ship. The combatants moved about like black
forms. Above this frightful nest of gloom the floors of the silent
houses stood out lividly, and above them again the chimney-pots were
assuming a roseate hue. The sky had that charming tint which may be
white and may be blue, and the birds flew about in it with twitterings
of joy. The tall house which formed the background of the barricade
looked to the east, and had a pink reflection on its roof. At the
third-floor window the morning breeze blew about the gray hair on the
head of the dead man.
"I am delighted that the torch is put out," Courfeyrac said to Feuilly.
"That flame flickering in the breeze annoyed me, for it seemed to be
frightened. The light of torches resembles the wisdom of cowards; it
illumines badly because it trembles."
The dawn arouses minds like birds, and all were talking. Joly, seeing a
cat stalking along a gutter, extracted this philosophy from the fact.
"What is the cat?" he exclaimed. "It is a correction. _Le bon Dieu_
having made a mouse, said to himself, 'Hilloh! I have done a foolish
trick,' and he made the cat, which is the erratum of the mouse. The
mouse plus the cat is the revised and corrected proof of creation."
Combeferre, surrounded by students and workmen, was talking of the
dead, of Jean Prouvaire, of Bahorel, of Mabœuf, and even of Cabuc,
and the stern sorrow of Enjolras. He said,--
"Harmodius and Aristogiton, Brutus, Chereas, Stephanus, Cromwell,
Charlotte Corday, Sand, all had their moment of agony after the blow
was struck. Our heart is so quivering, and human life such a mystery,
that even in a civic murder, even in a liberating murder, if there be
such a thing, the remorse at having struck a man exceeds the joy of
having benefited the human race."
And, such are the meanderings of interchanged words, a moment later, by
a transition which came from Jean Prouvaire's verses, Combeferre was
comparing together the translators of the Georgics, Raux with Cournand,
Cournand with Delille, and pointing out the few passages translated by
Malfilâtre, especially the wonders of the death of Cæsar, and at that
name the conversation reverted to Brutus.
"Cæsar," said Combeferre, "fell justly. Cicero was severe to Cæsar,
and was in the right, for such severity is not a diatribe. When Zoïlus
insults Homer, when Mævius insults Virgil, when Visé insults Molière,
when Pope insults Shakspeare, when Fréron insults Voltaire, it is an
old law of envy and hatred being carried out; for genius attracts
insult, and great men are all barked at more or less. But Zoïlus and
Cicero are different. Cicero is a justiciary with thought in the same
way as Brutus is a justiciary with the sword. For my part, I blame that
last justice, the glaive; antiquity allowed it. Cæsar, the violator of
the Rubicon, conferring, as if coming from him, dignities that came
from the people, and not rising on the entrance of the senate, behaved,
as Eutropius said, like a king, and almost like a tyrant, _regiâ ac
pene tyrannica_. He was a great man; all the worse or all the better,
the lesson is the more elevated. His three-and-twenty wounds affect me
less than the spitting on the brow of Christ. Cæsar is stabbed by the
senators, Christ is buffeted by soldiers. God is felt in the greater
outrage."
Bossuet, standing on a pile of stones, and commanding the speaker,
exclaimed, gun in hand,--
"O Cydathenæum! O Myrrhinus! O Probalynthus! O graces of Æanthus! Oh,
who will inspire me to pronounce the verses of Homer like a Greek of
Laureum or Edapteon!"