They reached the Quai Morland.
Cravatless, hatless, breathless, soaked by the rain, with lightning in their eyes.
Gavroche accosted them calmly:--
"Where are we going?"
"Come along," said Courfeyrac.
Behind Feuilly marched, or rather bounded, Bahorel, who was like a fish in water in a riot.
He wore a scarlet waistcoat, and indulged in the sort of words which break everything. His waistcoat astounded a passer-by, who cried in bewilderment:--
"Here are the reds!"
"The reds, the reds!" retorted Bahorel.
"A queer kind of fear, bourgeois.
For my part I don't tremble before a poppy, the little red hat inspires me with no alarm.
Take my advice, bourgeois, let's leave fear of the red to horned cattle."
He caught sight of a corner of the wall on which was placarded the most peaceable sheet of paper in the world, a permission to eat eggs, a Lenten admonition addressed by the Archbishop of Paris to his "flock."
Bahorel exclaimed:--
"`Flock'; a polite way of saying geese."
And he tore the charge from the nail.
This conquered Gavroche. From that instant Gavroche set himself to study Bahorel.
"Bahorel," observed Enjolras, "you are wrong.
You should have let that charge alone, he is not the person with whom we have to deal, you are wasting your wrath to no purpose.
Take care of your supply. One does not fire out of the ranks with the soul any more than with a gun."
"Each one in his own fashion, Enjolras," retorted Bahorel. "This bishop's prose shocks me; I want to eat eggs without being permitted.
Your style is the hot and cold; I am amusing myself.
Besides, I'm not wasting myself, I'm getting a start; and if I tore down that charge, Hercle! 'twas only to whet my appetite."
This word, Hercle, struck Gavroche.
He sought all occasions for learning, and that tearer-down of posters possessed his esteem. He inquired of him:--
"What does Hercle mean?"
Bahorel answered:--
"It means cursed name of a dog, in Latin."
Here Bahorel recognized at a window a pale young man with a black beard who was watching them as they passed, probably a Friend of the A B C. He shouted to him:--
"Quick, cartridges, para bellum."
"A fine man! that's true," said Gavroche, who now understood Latin.
A tumultuous retinue accompanied them,--students, artists, young men affiliated to the Cougourde of Aix, artisans, longshoremen, armed with clubs and bayonets; some, like Combeferre, with pistols thrust into their trousers.
An old man, who appeared to be extremely aged, was walking in the band.
He had no arms, and he made great haste, so that he might not be left behind, although he had a thoughtful air.
Gavroche caught sight of him:--
"Keksekca?" said he to Courfeyrac.
"He's an old duffer."
It was M. Mabeuf.
BOOK ELEVENTH.--THE ATOM FRATERNIZES WITH THE HURRICANE
CHAPTER V
THE OLD MAN
Let us recount what had taken place.
Enjolras and his friends had been on the Boulevard Bourdon, near the public storehouses, at the moment when the dragoons had made their charge.
Enjolras, Courfeyrac, and Combeferre were among those who had taken to the Rue Bassompierre, shouting:
"To the barricades!" In the Rue Lesdiguieres they had met an old man walking along. What had attracted their attention was that the goodman was walking in a zig-zag, as though he were intoxicated.
Moreover, he had his hat in his hand, although it had been raining all the morning, and was raining pretty briskly at the very time.
Courfeyrac had recognized Father Mabeuf.
He knew him through having many times accompanied Marius as far as his door.
As he was acquainted with the peaceful and more than timid habits of the old beadle-book-collector, and was amazed at the sight of him in the midst of that uproar, a couple of paces from the cavalry charges, almost in the midst of a fusillade, hatless in the rain, and strolling about among the bullets, he had accosted him, and the following dialogue had been exchanged between the rioter of fire and the octogenarian:--
"M. Mabeuf, go to your home."
"Why?"
"There's going to be a row."
"That's well."
"Thrusts with the sword and firing, M. Mabeuf."
"That is well."
"Firing from cannon."
"That is good.
Where are the rest of you going?"
"We are going to fling the government to the earth."
"That is good."
And he had set out to follow them.
From that moment forth he had not uttered a word.
His step had suddenly become firm; artisans had offered him their arms; he had refused with a sign of the head.
He advanced nearly to the front rank of the column, with the movement of a man who is marching and the countenance of a man who is sleeping.
"What a fierce old fellow!" muttered the students.
The rumor spread through the troop that he was a former member of the Convention,-- an old regicide.
The mob had turned in through the Rue de la Verrerie.
Little Gavroche marched in front with that deafening song which made of him a sort of trumpet.
He sang:
"Voici la lune qui paratt,
Quand irons-nous dans la foret?
Demandait Charlot a Charlotte.
Tou tou tou
Pour Chatou.
Je n'ai qu'un Dieu, qu'un roi, qu'un liard, et qu'une botte.
"Pour avoir bu de grand matin
La rosee a meme le thym,
Deux moineaux etaient en ribotte.
Zi zi zi
Pour Passy.
Je n'ai qu'un Dieu, qu'un roi, qu'un liard, et qu'une botte.
"Et ces deux pauvres petits loups,
Comme deux grives estaient souls;
Une tigre en riait dans sa grotte.
Don don don
Pour Meudon.
Je n'ai qu'un Dieu, qu'un roi, qu'un liard, et qu'une botte.
"L'un jurait et l'autre sacrait.
Quand irons nous dans la foret?
Demandait Charlot a Charlotte.
Tin tin tin
Pour Pantin.
Je n'ai qu'un Dieu, qu'un roi, qu'un liard, et qu'une botte."[46]
They directed their course towards Saint-Merry.
[46] Here is the morn appearing.
When shall we go to the forest, Charlot asked Charlotte.
Tou, tou, tou, for Chatou, I have but one God, one King, one half-farthing, and one boot.
And these two poor little wolves were as tipsy as sparrows from having drunk dew and thyme very early in the morning.
And these two poor little things were as drunk as thrushes in a vineyard; a tiger laughed at them in his cave. The one cursed, the other swore.
When shall we go to the forest? Charlot asked Charlotte.
BOOK ELEVENTH.--THE ATOM FRATERNIZES WITH THE HURRICANE
CHAPTER VI
RECRUITS
The band augmented every moment.
Near the Rue des Billettes, a man of lofty stature, whose hair was turning gray, and whose bold and daring mien was remarked by Courfeyrac, Enjolras, and Combeferre, but whom none of them knew, joined them.
Gavroche, who was occupied in singing, whistling, humming, running on ahead and pounding on the shutters of the shops with the butt of his triggerless pistol; paid no attention to this man.
It chanced that in the Rue de la Verrerie, they passed in front of Courfeyrac's door.
"This happens just right," said Courfeyrac, "I have forgotten my purse, and I have lost my hat."
He quitted the mob and ran up to his quarters at full speed. He seized an old hat and his purse.
He also seized a large square coffer, of the dimensions of a large valise, which was concealed under his soiled linen.
As he descended again at a run, the portress hailed him:--
"Monsieur de Courfeyrac!"
"What's your name, portress?"
The portress stood bewildered.
"Why, you know perfectly well, I'm the concierge; my name is Mother Veuvain."
"Well, if you call me Monsieur de Courfeyrac again, I shall call you Mother de Veuvain.
Now speak, what's the matter?
What do you want?"
"There is some one who wants to speak with you."
"Who is it?"
"I don't know."
"Where is he?"
"In my lodge."
"The devil!" ejaculated Courfeyrac.
"But the person has been waiting your return for over an hour," said the portress.
At the same time, a sort of pale, thin, small, freckled, and youthful artisan, clad in a tattered blouse and patched trousers of ribbed velvet, and who had rather the air of a girl accoutred as a man than of a man, emerged from the lodge and said to Courfeyrac in a voice which was not the least in the world like a woman's voice:--
"Monsieur Marius, if you please."
"He is not here."
"Will he return this evening?"
"I know nothing about it."
And Courfeyrac added:--
"For my part, I shall not return."
The young man gazed steadily at him and said:--
"Why not?"
"Because."
"Where are you going, then?"
"What business is that of yours?"
"Would you like to have me carry your coffer for you?"
"I am going to the barricades."
"Would you like to have me go with you?"
"If you like!" replied Courfeyrac.
"The street is free, the pavements belong to every one."
And he made his escape at a run to join his friends.
When he had rejoined them, he gave the coffer to one of them to carry. It was only a quarter of an hour after this that he saw the young man, who had actually followed them.
A mob does not go precisely where it intends.
We have explained that a gust of wind carries it away.
They overshot Saint-Merry and found themselves, without precisely knowing how, in the Rue Saint-Denis.
BOOK TWELFTH.--CORINTHE
CHAPTER I
HISTORY OF CORINTHE FROM ITS FOUNDATION
The Parisians who nowadays on entering on the Rue Rambuteau at the end near the Halles, notice on their right, opposite the Rue Mondetour, a basket-maker's shop having for its sign a basket in the form of Napoleon the Great with this inscription:--
NAPOLEON IS MADE WHOLLY OF WILLOW,
have no suspicion of the terrible scenes which this very spot witnessed hardly thirty years ago.
It was there that lay the Rue de la Chanvrerie, which ancient deeds spell Chanverrerie, and the celebrated public-house called Corinthe.
The reader will remember all that has been said about the barricade effected at this point, and eclipsed, by the way, by the barricade Saint-Merry. It was on this famous barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, now fallen into profound obscurity, that we are about to shed a little light.
May we be permitted to recur, for the sake of clearness in the recital, to the simple means which we have already employed in the case of Waterloo.
Persons who wish to picture to themselves in a tolerably exact manner the constitution of the houses which stood at that epoch near the Pointe Saint-Eustache, at the northeast angle of the Halles of Paris, where to-day lies the embouchure of the Rue Rambuteau, have only to imagine an N touching the Rue Saint-Denis with its summit and the Halles with its base, and whose two vertical bars should form the Rue de la Grande-Truanderie, and the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and whose transverse bar should be formed by the Rue de la Petite-Truanderie. The old Rue Mondetour cut the three strokes of the N at the most crooked angles. So that the labyrinthine confusion of these four streets sufficed to form, on a space three fathoms square, between the Halles and the Rue Saint-Denis on the one hand, and between the Rue du Cygne and the Rue des Precheurs on the other, seven islands of houses, oddly cut up, of varying sizes, placed crosswise and hap-hazard, and barely separated, like the blocks of stone in a dock, by narrow crannies.
We say narrow crannies, and we can give no more just idea of those dark, contracted, many-angled alleys, lined with eight-story buildings. These buildings were so decrepit that, in the Rue de la Chanvrerie and the Rue de la Petite-Truanderie, the fronts were shored up with beams running from one house to another.
The street was narrow and the gutter broad, the pedestrian there walked on a pavement that was always wet, skirting little stalls resembling cellars, big posts encircled with iron hoops, excessive heaps of refuse, and gates armed with enormous, century-old gratings.
The Rue Rambuteau has devastated all that.
The name of Mondetour paints marvellously well the sinuosities of that whole set of streets.
A little further on, they are found still better expressed by the Rue Pirouette, which ran into the Rue Mondetour.
The passer-by who got entangled from the Rue Saint-Denis in the Rue de la Chanvrerie beheld it gradually close in before him as though he had entered an elongated funnel.
At the end of this street, which was very short, he found further passage barred in the direction of the Halles by a tall row of houses, and he would have thought himself in a blind alley, had he not perceived on the right and left two dark cuts through which he could make his escape.
This was the Rue Mondetour, which on one side ran into the Rue de Precheurs, and on the other into the Rue du Cygne and the Petite-Truanderie. At the bottom of this sort of cul-de-sac, at the angle of the cutting on the right, there was to be seen a house which was not so tall as the rest, and which formed a sort of cape in the street. It is in this house, of two stories only, that an illustrious wine-shop had been merrily installed three hundred years before. This tavern created a joyous noise in the very spot which old Theophilus described in the following couplet:-- La branle le squelette horrible
D'un pauvre amant qui se pendit.[47]
[47] There swings the horrible skeleton of a poor lover who hung himself.
The situation was good, and tavern-keepers succeeded each other there, from father to son.
In the time of Mathurin Regnier, this cabaret was called the Pot-aux-Roses, and as the rebus was then in fashion, it had for its sign-board, a post (poteau) painted rose-color. In the last century, the worthy Natoire, one of the fantastic masters nowadays despised by the stiff school, having got drunk many times in this wine-shop at the very table where Regnier had drunk his fill, had painted, by way of gratitude, a bunch of Corinth grapes on the pink post. The keeper of the cabaret, in his joy, had changed his device and had caused to be placed in gilt letters beneath the bunch these words: "At the Bunch of Corinth Grapes" ("Au Raisin de Corinthe"). Hence the name of Corinthe.
