|
NIGHT BEGINS TO DESCEND UPON GRANTAIRE
The spot was, in fact, admirably adapted, the entrance to
the street widened out, the other extremity narrowed together
into a pocket without exit.
Corinthe created an obstacle, the Rue Mondetour was easily
barricaded on the right and the left, no attack was possible except
from the Rue Saint-Denis, that is to say, in front, and in full
sight.
Bossuet had the comprehensive glance of a fasting Hannibal.
Terror had seized on the whole street at the irruption of
the mob. There was not a passer-by who did not get out of sight.
In the space of a flash of lightning, in the rear, to right
and left, shops, stables, area-doors, windows, blinds, attic skylights,
shutters of every description were closed, from the ground floor
to the roof.
A terrified old woman fixed a mattress in front of her window
on two clothes-poles for drying linen, in order to deaden the
effect of musketry.
The wine-shop alone remained open; and that for a very good
reason, that the mob had rushed into it.--"Ah my God!
Ah my God!" sighed Mame Hucheloup.
Bossuet had gone down to meet Courfeyrac.
Joly, who had placed himself at the window, exclaimed:--
"Courfeyrac, you ought to have brought an umbrella.
You will gatch gold."
In the meantime, in the space of a few minutes, twenty iron
bars had been wrenched from the grated front of the wine-shop,
ten fathoms of street had been unpaved; Gavroche and Bahorel had
seized in its passage, and overturned, the dray of a lime-dealer
named Anceau; this dray contained three barrels of lime, which
they placed beneath the piles of paving-stones: Enjolras raised
the cellar trap, and all the widow Hucheloup's empty casks were
used to flank the barrels of lime; Feuilly, with his fingers skilled
in painting the delicate sticks of fans, had backed up the barrels
and the dray with two massive heaps of blocks of rough stone.
Blocks which were improvised like the rest and procured no
one knows where. The beams which served as props were torn from
the neighboring house-fronts and laid on the casks.
When Bossuet and Courfeyrac turned round, half the street
was already barred with a rampart higher than a man.
There is nothing like the hand of the populace for building
everything that is built by demolishing.
Matelote and Gibelotte had mingled with the workers.
Gibelotte went and came loaded with rubbish.
Her lassitude helped on the barricade. She served the barricade
as she would have served wine, with a sleepy air.
An omnibus with two white horses passed the end of the street.
Bossuet strode over the paving-stones, ran to it, stopped
the driver, made the passengers alight, offered his hand to "the
ladies,"
dismissed the conductor, and returned, leading the vehicle and
the horses by the bridle.
"Omnibuses," said he, "do not pass the Corinthe.
Non licet omnibus adire Corinthum."
An instant later, the horses were unharnessed and went off
at their will, through the Rue Mondetour, and the omnibus lying
on its side completed the bar across the street.
Mame Hucheloup, quite upset, had taken refuge in the first
story.
Her eyes were vague, and stared without seeing anything, and
she cried in a low tone.
Her terrified shrieks did not dare to emerge from her throat.
"The end of the world has come," she muttered.
Joly deposited a kiss on Mame Hucheloup's fat, red, wrinkled
neck, and said to Grantaire:
"My dear fellow, I have always regarded a woman's neck
as an infinitely delicate thing."
But Grantaire attained to the highest regions of dithryamb.
Matelote had mounted to the first floor once more, Grantaire seized
her round her waist, and gave vent to long bursts of laughter
at the window.
"Matelote is homely!" he cried:
"Matelote is of a dream of ugliness! Matelote is a chimaera.
This is the secret of her birth: a Gothic Pygmalion, who was
making gargoyles for cathedrals, fell in love with one of them,
the most horrible, one fine morning. He besought Love to give
it life, and this produced Matelote. Look at her, citizens!
She has chromate-of-lead-colored hair, like Titian's mistress,
and she is a good girl.
I guarantee that she will fight well.
Every good girl contains a hero.
As for Mother Hucheloup, she's an old warrior.
Look at her moustaches! She inherited them from her husband.
A hussar indeed!
She will fight too.
These two alone will strike terror to the heart of the banlieue.
Comrades, we shall overthrow the government as true as there
are fifteen intermediary acids between margaric acid and formic
acid; however, that is a matter of perfect indifference to me.
Gentlemen, my father always detested me because I could not
understand mathematics.
I understand only love and liberty. I am Grantaire, the good
fellow.
Having never had any money, I never acquired the habit of
it, and the result is that I have never lacked it; but, if I had
been rich, there would have been no more poor people!
You would have seen!
Oh, if the kind hearts only had fat purses, how much better
things would go!
I picture myself Jesus Christ with Rothschild's fortune!
How much good he would do!
Matelote, embrace me!
You are voluptuous and timid! You have cheeks which invite
the kiss of a sister, and lips which claim the kiss of a lover."
"Hold your tongue, you cask!" said Courfeyrac.
Grantaire retorted:--
"I am the capitoul[52] and the master of the floral games!"
[52] Municipal officer of Toulouse.
Enjolras, who was standing on the crest of the barricade,
gun in hand, raised his beautiful, austere face.
Enjolras, as the reader knows, had something of the Spartan
and of the Puritan in his composition. He would have perished
at Thermopylae with Leonidas, and burned at Drogheda with Cromwell.
"Grantaire," he shouted, "go get rid of the
fumes of your wine somewhere else than here.
This is the place for enthusiasm, not for drunkenness.
Don't disgrace the barricade!"
This angry speech produced a singular effect on Grantaire.
One would have said that he had had a glass of cold water
flung in his face. He seemed to be rendered suddenly sober.
He sat down, put his elbows on a table near the window, looked
at Enjolras with indescribable gentleness, and said to him:--
"Let me sleep here."
"Go and sleep somewhere else," cried Enjolras.
But Grantaire, still keeping his tender and troubled eyes
fixed on him, replied:--
"Let me sleep here,--until I die."
Enjolras regarded him with disdainful eyes:--
"Grantaire, you are incapable of believing, of thinking,
of willing, of living, and of dying."
Grantaire replied in a grave tone:--
"You will see."
He stammered a few more unintelligible words, then his head
fell heavily on the table, and, as is the usual effect of the
second period of inebriety, into which Enjolras had roughly and
abruptly thrust him, an instant later he had fallen asleep.
|
