ORESTES SOBER AND PYLADES DRUNK.
At length, by employing the skeleton of the staircase, by climbing up
the walls, clinging to the ceiling, and killing on the very edge of the
trap the last who resisted, some twenty assailants, soldiers, National
and Municipal Guards, mostly disfigured by wounds in the face received
in this formidable ascent, blinded by blood, furious and savage,
burst into the first-floor room. There was only one man standing
there,--Enjolras; without cartridges or sword, he only held in his hand
the barrel of his carbine, whose butt he had broken on the heads of
those who entered. He had placed the billiard-table between himself and
his assailants, he had fallen back to the end of the room, and there,
with flashing eye and head erect, holding the piece of a weapon in his
hand, he was still sufficiently alarming for a space to be formed round
him. A cry was raised,--
"It is the chief; it was he who killed the artilleryman; as he has
placed himself there, we will let him remain there. Shoot him on the
spot!"
"Shoot me!" Enjolras said.
And throwing away his weapon and folding his arms, he offered his
chest. The boldness of dying bravely always moves men. So soon as
Enjolras folded his arms, accepting the end, the din of the struggle
ceased in the room, and the chaos was suddenly appeased in a species of
sepulchral solemnity. It seemed as if the menacing majesty of Enjolras,
disarmed and motionless, produced an effect on the tumult, and that
merely by the authority of his tranquil glance, this young man, who
alone was unwounded, superb, blood-stained, charming, and indifferent
like one invulnerable, constrained this sinister mob to kill him
respectfully. His beauty, heightened at this moment by his haughtiness,
was dazzling, and as if he could be no more fatigued than wounded after
the frightful four-and-twenty hours which had elapsed, he was fresh and
rosy. It was to him that the witness referred when he said at a later
date before the court-martial, "There was an insurgent whom I heard
called Apollo." A National Guard who aimed at Enjolras lowered his
musket, saying, "I feel as if I were going to kill a flower." Twelve
men formed into a platoon in the corner opposite to the one in which
Enjolras stood, and got their muskets ready in silence. Then a sergeant
shouted, "Present!"
An officer interposed.
"Wait a minute."
And, addressing Enjolras,--
"Do you wish to have your eyes bandaged?"
"No."
"It was really you who killed the sergeant of artillery?"
"Yes."
Grantaire had been awake for some minutes past. Grantaire, it will
be remembered, had been sleeping since the past evening in the upper
room, with his head lying on a table. He realized in all its energy
the old metaphor, dead drunk. The hideous philter of absinthe, stout,
and alcohol, had thrown him into a lethargic state, and, as his table
was small, and of no use at the barricade, they had left it him. He
was still in the same posture, with his chest upon the table, his
head reeling on his arms, and surrounded by glasses and bottles. He
was sleeping the deadly sleep of the hibernating bear or the filled
leech. Nothing had roused him,--neither the platoon fire, nor the
cannon-balls, nor the canister which penetrated through the window
into the room where he was, nor the prodigious noise of the assault.
Still, he at times responded to the cannon by a snore. He seemed to be
waiting for a bullet to save him the trouble of waking; several corpses
lay around him, and at the first glance nothing distinguished him from
these deep sleepers of death.
Noise does not wake a drunkard, but silence arouses him, and this
peculiarity has been more than once observed. The fall of anything near
him increased Grantaire's lethargy, and noise lulled him. The species
of halt which the tumult made before Enjolras was a shock for this
heavy sleep. It is the effect of a galloping coach which stops short.
Grantaire started up, stretched out his arms, rubbed his eyes, looked,
yawned, and understood. Intoxication wearing off resembles a curtain
that is rent, and a man sees at once, and at a single glance, all
that it concealed. Everything presents itself suddenly to the memory,
and the drunkard, who knows nothing of what has happened during the
last twenty-four hours, has scarce opened his eyes ere he understands
it all. Ideas return with a sudden lucidity; the species of suds
that blinded the brain is dispersed, and makes way for a clear and
distinctive apprehension of the reality.
Concealed, as he was, in a corner, and sheltered, so to speak, by the
billiard-table, the soldiers, who had their eyes fixed on Enjolras, had
not even perceived Grantaire, and the sergeant was preparing to repeat
the order to fire, when all at once they heard a powerful voice crying
at their side,--
"Long live the Republic! I belong to it."
Grantaire had risen; and the immense gleam of all the combat which
he had missed appeared in the flashing glance of the transfigured
drunkard. He repeated, "Long live the Republic!" crossed the room with
a firm step, and placed himself before the muskets by Enjolras's side.
"Kill us both at once," he said.
And turning gently to Enjolras, he asked him,--
"Do you permit it?"
Enjolras pressed his hand with a smile, and this smile had not passed
away ere the detonation took place. Enjolras, pierced by eight bullets,
remained leaning against the wall as if nailed to it; he merely hung
his head. Grantaire was lying stark dead at his feet. A few minutes
later the soldiers dislodged the last insurgents who had taken refuge
at the top of the house, and were firing through a partition in the
garret. They fought desperately, and threw bodies out of windows, some
still alive. Two voltigeurs, who were trying to raise the smashed
omnibus, were killed by two shots from the attics; a man in a blouse
rushed out of them, with a bayonet thrust in his stomach, and lay on
the ground expiring. A private and insurgent slipped together down
the tiles of the roof, and as they would not loosen their hold fell
into the street, holding each other in a ferocious embrace. There
was a similar struggle in the cellar,--cries, shots, and a fierce
clashing,--then a silence. The barricade was captured, and the soldiers
began searching the adjacent houses and pursuing the fugitives.