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THE FLAG: ACT SECOND
Since they had arrived at Corinthe, and had begun the construction
of the barricade, no attention had been paid to Father Mabeuf.
M. Mabeuf had not quitted the mob, however; he had entered the
ground-floor of the wine-shop and had seated himself behind the
counter.
There he had, so to speak, retreated into himself. He no longer
seemed to look or to think.
Courfeyrac and others had accosted him two or three times,
warning him of his peril, beseeching him to withdraw, but he did
not hear them.
When they were not speaking to him, his mouth moved as though
he were replying to some one, and as soon as he was addressed,
his lips became motionless and his eyes no longer had the appearance
of being alive.
Several hours before the barricade was attacked, he had assumed
an attitude which he did not afterwards abandon, with both fists
planted on his knees and his head thrust forward as though he
were gazing over a precipice.
Nothing had been able to move him from this attitude; it did
not seem as though his mind were in the barricade. When each had
gone to take up his position for the combat, there remained in
the tap-room where Javert was bound to the post, only a single
insurgent with a naked sword, watching over Javert, and himself,
Mabeuf.
At the moment of the attack, at the detonation, the physical
shock had reached him and had, as it were, awakened him; he started
up abruptly, crossed the room, and at the instant when Enjolras
repeated his appeal:
"Does no one volunteer?" the old man was seen to
make his appearance on the threshold of the wine-shop. His presence
produced a sort of commotion in the different groups. A shout
went up:--
"It is the voter!
It is the member of the Convention! It is the representative
of the people!"
It is probable that he did not hear them.
He strode straight up to Enjolras, the insurgents withdrawing
before him with a religious fear; he tore the flag from Enjolras,
who recoiled in amazement and then, since no one dared to stop
or to assist him, this old man of eighty, with shaking head but
firm foot, began slowly to ascend the staircase of paving-stones
arranged in the barricade.
This was so melancholy and so grand that all around him cried:
"Off with your hats!"
At every step that he mounted, it was a frightful spectacle;
his white locks, his decrepit face, his lofty, bald, and wrinkled
brow, his amazed and open mouth, his aged arm upholding the red
banner, rose through the gloom and were enlarged in the bloody
light of the torch, and the bystanders thought that they beheld
the spectre of '93 emerging from the earth, with the flag of terror
in his hand.
When he had reached the last step, when this trembling and
terrible phantom, erect on that pile of rubbish in the presence
of twelve hundred invisible guns, drew himself up in the face
of death and as though he were more powerful than it, the whole
barricade assumed amid the darkness, a supernatural and colossal
form.
There ensued one of those silences which occur only in the
presence of prodigies.
In the midst of this silence, the old man waved the red flag
and shouted:--
"Long live the Revolution!
Long live the Republic!
Fraternity! Equality! and Death!"
Those in the barricade heard a low and rapid whisper, like
the murmur of a priest who is despatching a prayer in haste. It
was probably the commissary of police who was making the legal
summons at the other end of the street.
Then the same piercing voice which had shouted:
"Who goes there?" shouted:--
"Retire!"
M. Mabeuf, pale, haggard, his eyes lighted up with the mournful
flame of aberration, raised the flag above his head and repeated:--
"Long live the Republic!"
"Fire!" said the voice.
A second discharge, similar to the first, rained down upon
the barricade.
The old man fell on his knees, then rose again, dropped the
flag and fell backwards on the pavement, like a log, at full length,
with outstretched arms.
Rivulets of blood flowed beneath him.
His aged head, pale and sad, seemed to be gazing at the sky.
One of those emotions which are superior to man, which make
him forget even to defend himself, seized upon the insurgents,
and they approached the body with respectful awe.
"What men these regicides were!" said Enjolras.
Courfeyrac bent down to Enjolras' ear:--
"This is for yourself alone, I do not wish to dampen
the enthusiasm. But this man was anything rather than a regicide.
I knew him. His name was Father Mabeuf.
I do not know what was the matter with him to-day. But he
was a brave blockhead.
Just look at his head."
"The head of a blockhead and the heart of a Brutus,"
replied Enjolras.
Then he raised his voice:--
"Citizens!
This is the example which the old give to the young. We hesitated,
he came!
We were drawing back, he advanced!
This is what those who are trembling with age teach to those
who tremble with fear!
This aged man is august in the eyes of his country. He has
had a long life and a magnificent death!
Now, let us place the body under cover, that each one of us
may defend this old man dead as he would his father living, and
may his presence in our midst render the barricade impregnable!"
A murmur of gloomy and energetic assent followed these words.
Enjolras bent down, raised the old man's head, and fierce
as he was, he kissed him on the brow, then, throwing wide his
arms, and handling this dead man with tender precaution, as though
he feared to hurt it, he removed his coat, showed the bloody holes
in it to all, and said:--
"This is our flag now."
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