Jean Prouvaire was timid only in repose.
Once excited, he burst forth, a sort of mirth accentuated his enthusiasm, and he was at once both laughing and lyric.
"Let us not insult the gods," said he.
"The gods may not have taken their departure.
Jupiter does not impress me as dead. The gods are dreams, you say.
Well, even in nature, such as it is to-day, after the flight of these dreams, we still find all the grand old pagan myths.
Such and such a mountain with the profile of a citadel, like the Vignemale, for example, is still to me the headdress of Cybele; it has not been proved to me that Pan does not come at night to breathe into the hollow trunks of the willows, stopping up the holes in turn with his fingers, and I have always believed that Io had something to do with the cascade of Pissevache."
In the last corner, they were talking politics.
The Charter which had been granted was getting roughly handled.
Combeferre was upholding it weakly.
Courfeyrac was energetically making a breach in it. On the table lay an unfortunate copy of the famous Touquet Charter. Courfeyrac had seized it, and was brandishing it, mingling with his arguments the rattling of this sheet of paper.
"In the first place, I won't have any kings; if it were only from an economical point of view, I don't want any; a king is a parasite.
One does not have kings gratis.
Listen to this: the dearness of kings.
At the death of Francois I., the national debt of France amounted to an income of thirty thousand livres; at the death of Louis XIV.
it was two milliards, six hundred millions, at twenty-eight livres the mark, which was equivalent in 1760, according to Desmarets, to four milliards, five hundred millions, which would to-day be equivalent to twelve milliards.
In the second place, and no offence to Combeferre, a charter granted is but a poor expedient of civilization.
To save the transition, to soften the passage, to deaden the shock, to cause the nation to pass insensibly from the monarchy to democracy by the practice of constitutional fictions,--what detestable reasons all those are! No! no! let us never enlighten the people with false daylight. Principles dwindle and pale in your constitutional cellar. No illegitimacy, no compromise, no grant from the king to the people. In all such grants there is an Article 14.
By the side of the hand which gives there is the claw which snatches back.
I refuse your charter point-blank. A charter is a mask; the lie lurks beneath it. A people which accepts a charter abdicates.
The law is only the law when entire.
No! no charter!"
It was winter; a couple of fagots were crackling in the fireplace. This was tempting, and Courfeyrac could not resist.
He crumpled the poor Touquet Charter in his fist, and flung it in the fire. The paper flashed up.
Combeferre watched the masterpiece of Louis XVIII. burn philosophically, and contented himself with saying:--
"The charter metamorphosed into flame."
And sarcasms, sallies, jests, that French thing which is called entrain, and that English thing which is called humor, good and bad taste, good and bad reasons, all the wild pyrotechnics of dialogue, mounting together and crossing from all points of the room, produced a sort of merry bombardment over their heads.
BOOK FOURTH.--THE FRIENDS OF THE A B C
CHAPTER V
ENLARGEMENT OF HORIZON
The shocks of youthful minds among themselves have this admirable property, that one can never foresee the spark, nor divine the lightning flash.
What will dart out presently?
No one knows. The burst of laughter starts from a tender feeling.
At the moment of jest, the serious makes its entry.
Impulses depend on the first chance word.
The spirit of each is sovereign, jest suffices to open the field to the unexpected.
These are conversations with abrupt turns, in which the perspective changes suddenly. Chance is the stage-manager of such conversations.
A severe thought, starting oddly from a clash of words, suddenly traversed the conflict of quips in which Grantaire, Bahorel, Prouvaire, Bossuet, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac were confusedly fencing.
How does a phrase crop up in a dialogue?
Whence comes it that it suddenly impresses itself on the attention of those who hear it? We have just said, that no one knows anything about it.
In the midst of the uproar, Bossuet all at once terminated some apostrophe to Combeferre, with this date:--
"June 18th, 1815, Waterloo."
At this name of Waterloo, Marius, who was leaning his elbows on a table, beside a glass of water, removed his wrist from beneath his chin, and began to gaze fixedly at the audience.
"Pardieu!" exclaimed Courfeyrac ("Parbleu" was falling into disuse at this period), "that number 18 is strange and strikes me.
It is Bonaparte's fatal number.
Place Louis in front and Brumaire behind, you have the whole destiny of the man, with this significant peculiarity, that the end treads close on the heels of the commencement."
Enjolras, who had remained mute up to that point, broke the silence and addressed this remark to Combeferre:--
"You mean to say, the crime and the expiation."
This word crime overpassed the measure of what Marius, who was already greatly agitated by the abrupt evocation of Waterloo, could accept.
He rose, walked slowly to the map of France spread out on the wall, and at whose base an island was visible in a separate compartment, laid his finger on this compartment and said:--
"Corsica, a little island which has rendered France very great."
This was like a breath of icy air.
All ceased talking.
They felt that something was on the point of occurring.
Bahorel, replying to Bossuet, was just assuming an attitude of the torso to which he was addicted.
He gave it up to listen.
Enjolras, whose blue eye was not fixed on any one, and who seemed to be gazing at space, replied, without glancing at Marius:--
"France needs no Corsica to be great.
France is great because she is France.
Quia nomina leo."
Marius felt no desire to retreat; he turned towards Enjolras, and his voice burst forth with a vibration which came from a quiver of his very being:--
"God forbid that I should diminish France!
But amalgamating Napoleon with her is not diminishing her.
Come! let us argue the question. I am a new comer among you, but I will confess that you amaze me. Where do we stand?
Who are we?
Who are you?
Who am I?
Let us come to an explanation about the Emperor.
I hear you say Buonaparte, accenting the u like the Royalists.
I warn you that my grandfather does better still; he says Buonaparte'. I thought you were young men.
Where, then, is your enthusiasm?
And what are you doing with it?
Whom do you admire, if you do not admire the Emperor? And what more do you want?
If you will have none of that great man, what great men would you like?
He had everything.
He was complete. He had in his brain the sum of human faculties.
He made codes like Justinian, he dictated like Caesar, his conversation was mingled with the lightning-flash of Pascal, with the thunderclap of Tacitus, he made history and he wrote it, his bulletins are Iliads, he combined the cipher of Newton with the metaphor of Mahomet, he left behind him in the East words as great as the pyramids, at Tilsit he taught Emperors majesty, at the Academy of Sciences he replied to Laplace, in the Council of State be held his own against Merlin, he gave a soul to the geometry of the first, and to the chicanery of the last, he was a legist with the attorneys and sidereal with the astronomers; like Cromwell blowing out one of two candles, he went to the Temple to bargain for a curtain tassel; he saw everything; he knew everything; which did not prevent him from laughing good-naturedly beside the cradle of his little child; and all at once, frightened Europe lent an ear, armies put themselves in motion, parks of artillery rumbled, pontoons stretched over the rivers, clouds of cavalry galloped in the storm, cries, trumpets, a trembling of thrones in every direction, the frontiers of kingdoms oscillated on the map, the sound of a superhuman sword was heard, as it was drawn from its sheath; they beheld him, him, rise erect on the horizon with a blazing brand in his hand, and a glow in his eyes, unfolding amid the thunder, his two wings, the grand army and the old guard, and he was the archangel of war!"
All held their peace, and Enjolras bowed his head.
Silence always produces somewhat the effect of acquiescence, of the enemy being driven to the wall.
Marius continued with increased enthusiasm, and almost without pausing for breath:--
"Let us be just, my friends!
What a splendid destiny for a nation to be the Empire of such an Emperor, when that nation is France and when it adds its own genius to the genius of that man!
To appear and to reign, to march and to triumph, to have for halting-places all capitals, to take his grenadiers and to make kings of them, to decree the falls of dynasties, and to transfigure Europe at the pace of a charge; to make you feel that when you threaten you lay your hand on the hilt of the sword of God; to follow in a single man, Hannibal, Caesar, Charlemagne; to be the people of some one who mingles with your dawns the startling announcement of a battle won, to have the cannon of the Invalides to rouse you in the morning, to hurl into abysses of light prodigious words which flame forever, Marengo, Arcola, Austerlitz, Jena, Wagram! To cause constellations of victories to flash forth at each instant from the zenith of the centuries, to make the French Empire a pendant to the Roman Empire, to be the great nation and to give birth to the grand army, to make its legions fly forth over all the earth, as a mountain sends out its eagles on all sides to conquer, to dominate, to strike with lightning, to be in Europe a sort of nation gilded through glory, to sound athwart the centuries a trumpet-blast of Titans, to conquer the world twice, by conquest and by dazzling, that is sublime; and what greater thing is there?"
"To be free," said Combeferre.
Marius lowered his head in his turn; that cold and simple word had traversed his epic effusion like a blade of steel, and he felt it vanishing within him.
When he raised his eyes, Combeferre was no longer there.
Probably satisfied with his reply to the apotheosis, he had just taken his departure, and all, with the exception of Enjolras, had followed him.
The room had been emptied.
Enjolras, left alone with Marius, was gazing gravely at him.
Marius, however, having rallied his ideas to some extent, did not consider himself beaten; there lingered in him a trace of inward fermentation which was on the point, no doubt, of translating itself into syllogisms arrayed against Enjolras, when all of a sudden, they heard some one singing on the stairs as he went.
It was Combeferre, and this is what he was singing:-- "Si Cesar m'avait donne[25] La gloire et la guerre,
Et qu'il me fallait quitter L'amour de ma mere,
Je dirais au grand Cesar: Reprends ton sceptre et ton char,
J'aime mieux ma mere, o gue!
J'aime mieux ma mere!"
[25] If Cesar had given me glory and war, and I were obliged to quit my mother's love, I would say to great Caesar, "Take back thy sceptre and thy chariot; I prefer the love of my mother."
The wild and tender accents with which Combeferre sang communicated to this couplet a sort of strange grandeur.
Marius, thoughtfully, and with his eyes diked on the ceiling, repeated almost mechanically: "My mother?--"
At that moment, he felt Enjolras' hand on his shoulder.
"Citizen," said Enjolras to him, "my mother is the Republic."
BOOK FOURTH.--THE FRIENDS OF THE A B C
CHAPTER VI
RES ANGUSTA
That evening left Marius profoundly shaken, and with a melancholy shadow in his soul.
He felt what the earth may possibly feel, at the moment when it is torn open with the iron, in order that grain may be deposited within it; it feels only the wound; the quiver of the germ and the joy of the fruit only arrive later.
Marius was gloomy.
He had but just acquired a faith; must he then reject it already?
He affirmed to himself that he would not. He declared to himself that he would not doubt, and he began to doubt in spite of himself.
To stand between two religions, from one of which you have not as yet emerged, and another into which you have not yet entered, is intolerable; and twilight is pleasing only to bat-like souls.
Marius was clear-eyed, and he required the true light.
The half-lights of doubt pained him. Whatever may have been his desire to remain where he was, he could not halt there, he was irresistibly constrained to continue, to advance, to examine, to think, to march further.
Whither would this lead him? He feared, after having taken so many steps which had brought him nearer to his father, to now take a step which should estrange him from that father.
His discomfort was augmented by all the reflections which occurred to him.
An escarpment rose around him. He was in accord neither with his grandfather nor with his friends; daring in the eyes of the one, he was behind the times in the eyes of the others, and he recognized the fact that he was doubly isolated, on the side of age and on the side of youth.
He ceased to go to the Cafe Musain.
In the troubled state of his conscience, he no longer thought of certain serious sides of existence.
The realities of life do not allow themselves to be forgotten.
They soon elbowed him abruptly.
One morning, the proprietor of the hotel entered Marius' room and said to him:--
"Monsieur Courfeyrac answered for you."
"Yes."
"But I must have my money."
"Request Courfeyrac to come and talk with me," said Marius.
Courfeyrac having made his appearance, the host left them. Marius then told him what it had not before occurred to him to relate, that he was the same as alone in the world, and had no relatives.
"What is to become of you?" said Courfeyrac.
"I do not know in the least," replied Marius.
"What are you going to do?"
"I do not know."
"Have you any money?"
"Fifteen francs."
