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MANY INTERROGATION POINTS WITH REGARD TO A CERTAIN LE CABUC
WHOSE NAME MAY NOT HAVE BEEN LE CABUC
The tragic picture which we have undertaken would not be complete,
the reader would not see those grand moments of social birth-pangs
in a revolutionary birth, which contain convulsion mingled with
effort, in their exact and real relief, were we to omit, in the
sketch here outlined, an incident full of epic and savage horror
which occurred almost immediately after Gavroche's departure.
Mobs, as the reader knows, are like a snowball, and collect
as they roll along, a throng of tumultuous men.
These men do not ask each other whence they come.
Among the passers-by who had joined the rabble led by Enjolras,
Combeferre, and Courfeyrac, there had been a person wearing the
jacket of a street porter, which was very threadbare on the shoulders,
who gesticulated and vociferated, and who had the look of a drunken
savage.
This man, whose name or nickname was Le Cabuc, and who was,
moreover, an utter stranger to those who pretended to know him,
was very drunk, or assumed the appearance of being so, and had
seated himself with several others at a table which they had dragged
outside of the wine-shop. This Cabuc, while making those who vied
with him drunk seemed to be examining with a thoughtful air the
large house at the extremity of the barricade, whose five stories
commanded the whole street and faced the Rue Saint-Denis. All
at once he exclaimed:--
"Do you know, comrades, it is from that house yonder
that we must fire. When we are at the windows, the deuce is in
it if any one can advance into the street!"
"Yes, but the house is closed," said one of the
drinkers.
"Let us knock!"
"They will not open."
"Let us break in the door!"
Le Cabuc runs to the door, which had a very massive knocker,
and knocks. The door opens not.
He strikes a second blow.
No one answers. A third stroke.
The same silence.
"Is there any one here?" shouts Cabuc.
Nothing stirs.
Then he seizes a gun and begins to batter the door with the
butt end.
It was an ancient alley door, low, vaulted, narrow, solid,
entirely of oak, lined on the inside with a sheet of iron and
iron stays, a genuine prison postern.
The blows from the butt end of the gun made the house tremble,
but did not shake the door.
Nevertheless, it is probable that the inhabitants were disturbed,
for a tiny, square window was finally seen to open on the third
story, and at this aperture appeared the reverend and terrified
face of a gray-haired old man, who was the porter, and who held
a candle.
The man who was knocking paused.
"Gentlemen," said the porter, "what do you
want?"
"Open!" said Cabuc.
"That cannot be, gentlemen."
"Open, nevertheless."
"Impossible, gentlemen."
Le Cabuc took his gun and aimed at the porter; but as he was
below, and as it was very dark, the porter did not see him.
"Will you open, yes or no?"
"No, gentlemen."
"Do you say no?"
"I say no, my goo--"
The porter did not finish.
The shot was fired; the ball entered under his chin and came
out at the nape of his neck, after traversing the jugular vein.
The old man fell back without a sigh.
The candle fell and was extinguished, and nothing more was
to be seen except a motionless head lying on the sill of the small
window, and a little whitish smoke which floated off towards the
roof.
"There!" said Le Cabuc, dropping the butt end of
his gun to the pavement.
He had hardly uttered this word, when he felt a hand laid
on his shoulder with the weight of an eagle's talon, and he heard
a voice saying to him:--
"On your knees."
The murderer turned round and saw before him Enjolras' cold,
white face.
Enjolras held a pistol in his hand.
He had hastened up at the sound of the discharge.
He had seized Cabuc's collar, blouse, shirt, and suspender
with his left hand.
"On your knees!" he repeated.
And, with an imperious motion, the frail young man of twenty
years bent the thickset and sturdy porter like a reed, and brought
him to his knees in the mire.
Le Cabuc attempted to resist, but he seemed to have been seized
by a superhuman hand.
Enjolras, pale, with bare neck and dishevelled hair, and his
woman's face, had about him at that moment something of the antique
Themis. His dilated nostrils, his downcast eyes, gave to his implacable
Greek profile that expression of wrath and that expression of
Chastity which, as the ancient world viewed the matter, befit
Justice.
The whole barricade hastened up, then all ranged themselves
in a circle at a distance, feeling that it was impossible to utter
a word in the presence of the thing which they were about to behold.
Le Cabuc, vanquished, no longer tried to struggle, and trembled
in every limb.
Enjolras released him and drew out his watch.
"Collect yourself," said he.
"Think or pray.
You have one minute."
"Mercy!" murmured the murderer; then he dropped
his head and stammered a few inarticulate oaths.
Enjolras never took his eyes off of him:
he allowed a minute to pass, then he replaced his watch in
his fob.
That done, he grasped Le Cabuc by the hair, as the latter
coiled himself into a ball at his knees and shrieked, and placed
the muzzle of the pistol to his ear. Many of those intrepid men,
who had so tranquilly entered upon the most terrible of adventures,
turned aside their heads.
An explosion was heard, the assassin fell to the pavement
face downwards.
Enjolras straightened himself up, and cast a convinced and
severe glance around him.
Then he spurned the corpse with his foot and said:--
"Throw that outside."
Three men raised the body of the unhappy wretch, which was
still agitated by the last mechanical convulsions of the life
that had fled, and flung it over the little barricade into the
Rue Mondetour.
Enjolras was thoughtful.
It is impossible to say what grandiose shadows slowly spread
over his redoubtable serenity.
All at once he raised his voice.
A silence fell upon them.
"Citizens," said Enjolras, "what that man did
is frightful, what I have done is horrible.
He killed, therefore I killed him. I had to do it, because
insurrection must have its discipline. Assassination is even more
of a crime here than elsewhere; we are under the eyes of the Revolution,
we are the priests of the Republic, we are the victims of duty,
and must not be possible to slander our combat. I have, therefore,
tried that man, and condemned him to death. As for myself, constrained
as I am to do what I have done, and yet abhorring it, I have judged
myself also, and you shall soon see to what I have condemned myself."
Those who listened to him shuddered.
"We will share thy fate," cried Combeferre.
"So be it," replied Enjolras.
"One word more.
In executing this man, I have obeyed necessity; but necessity
is a monster of the old world, necessity's name is Fatality.
Now, the law of progress is, that monsters shall disappear
before the angels, and that Fatality shall vanish before Fraternity.
It is a bad moment to pronounce the word love.
No matter, I do pronounce it. And I glorify it.
Love, the future is thine.
Death, I make use of thee, but I hate thee.
Citizens, in the future there will be neither darkness nor
thunderbolts; neither ferocious ignorance, nor bloody retaliation.
As there will be no more Satan, there will be no more Michael.
In the future no one will kill any one else, the earth will
beam with radiance, the human race will love. The day will come,
citizens, when all will be concord, harmony, light, joy and life;
it will come, and it is in order that it may come that we are
about to die."
Enjolras ceased.
His virgin lips closed; and he remained for some time standing
on the spot where he had shed blood, in marble immobility. His
staring eye caused those about him to speak in low tones.
Jean Prouvaire and Combeferre pressed each other's hands silently,
and, leaning against each other in an angle of the barricade,
they watched with an admiration in which there was some compassion,
that grave young man, executioner and priest, composed of light,
like crystal, and also of rock.
Let us say at once that later on, after the action, when the
bodies were taken to the morgue and searched, a police agent's
card was found on Le Cabuc.
The author of this book had in his hands, in 1848, the special
report on this subject made to the Prefect of Police in 1832.
We will add, that if we are to believe a tradition of the
police, which is strange but probably well founded, Le Cabuc was
Claquesous. The fact is, that dating from the death of Le Cabuc,
there was no longer any question of Claquesous.
Claquesous had nowhere left any trace of his disappearance;
he would seem to have amalgamated himself with the invisible.
His life had been all shadows, his end was night.
The whole insurgent group was still under the influence of
the emotion of that tragic case which had been so quickly tried
and so quickly terminated, when Courfeyrac again beheld on the
barricade, the small young man who had inquired of him that morning
for Marius.
This lad, who had a bold and reckless air, had come by night
to join the insurgents.
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