'Tis thus that an amorous soul applies the chart of the Tender to the Latin country. O Place Maubert!
O Place Dauphine!
When in the fresh spring-like hut thou didst draw thy stocking on thy delicate leg, I saw a star in the depths of the garret.
I have read a great deal of Plato, but nothing of it remains by me; better than Malebranche and then Lamennais thou didst demonstrate to me celestial goodness with a flower which thou gavest to me, I obeyed thee, thou didst submit to me; oh gilded garret! to lace thee! to behold thee going and coming from dawn in thy chemise, gazing at thy young brow in thine ancient mirror! And who, then, would forego the memory of those days of aurora and the firmament, of flowers, of gauze and of moire, when love stammers a charming slang?
Our gardens consisted of a pot of tulips; thou didst mask the window with thy petticoat; I took the earthenware bowl and I gave thee the Japanese cup.
And those great misfortunes which made us laugh!
Thy cuff scorched, thy boa lost!
And that dear portrait of the divine Shakespeare which we sold one evening that we might sup!
I was a beggar and thou wert charitable. I kissed thy fresh round arms in haste.
A folio Dante served us as a table on which to eat merrily a centime's worth of chestnuts. The first time that, in my joyous den, I snatched a kiss from thy fiery lip, when thou wentest forth, dishevelled and blushing, I turned deathly pale and I believed in God.
Dost thou recall our innumerable joys, and all those fichus changed to rags?
Oh! what sighs from our hearts full of gloom fluttered forth to the heavenly depths!
The hour, the spot, these souvenirs of youth recalled, a few stars which began to twinkle in the sky, the funeral repose of those deserted streets, the imminence of the inexorable adventure, which was in preparation, gave a pathetic charm to these verses murmured in a low tone in the dusk by Jean Prouvaire, who, as we have said, was a gentle poet.
In the meantime, a lamp had been lighted in the small barricade, and in the large one, one of those wax torches such as are to be met with on Shrove-Tuesday in front of vehicles loaded with masks, on their way to la Courtille.
These torches, as the reader has seen, came from the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.
The torch had been placed in a sort of cage of paving-stones closed on three sides to shelter it from the wind, and disposed in such a fashion that all the light fell on the flag.
The street and the barricade remained sunk in gloom, and nothing was to be seen except the red flag formidably illuminated as by an enormous dark-lantern.
This light enhanced the scarlet of the flag, with an indescribable and terrible purple.
BOOK TWELFTH.--CORINTHE
CHAPTER VII
THE MAN RECRUITED IN THE RUE DES BILLETTES
Night was fully come, nothing made its appearance.
All that they heard was confused noises, and at intervals, fusillades; but these were rare, badly sustained and distant.
This respite, which was thus prolonged, was a sign that the Government was taking its time, and collecting its forces.
These fifty men were waiting for sixty thousand.
Enjolras felt attacked by that impatience which seizes on strong souls on the threshold of redoubtable events.
He went in search of Gavroche, who had set to making cartridges in the tap-room, by the dubious light of two candles placed on the counter by way of precaution, on account of the powder which was scattered on the tables. These two candles cast no gleam outside.
The insurgents had, moreover, taken pains not to have any light in the upper stories.
Gavroche was deeply preoccupied at that moment, but not precisely with his cartridges.
The man of the Rue des Billettes had just entered the tap-room and had seated himself at the table which was the least lighted.
A musket of large model had fallen to his share, and he held it between his legs.
Gavroche, who had been, up to that moment, distracted by a hundred "amusing" things, had not even seen this man.
When he entered, Gavroche followed him mechanically with his eyes, admiring his gun; then, all at once, when the man was seated, the street urchin sprang to his feet.
Any one who had spied upon that man up to that moment, would have seen that he was observing everything in the barricade and in the band of insurgents, with singular attention; but, from the moment when he had entered this room, he had fallen into a sort of brown study, and no longer seemed to see anything that was going on.
The gamin approached this pensive personage, and began to step around him on tiptoe, as one walks in the vicinity of a person whom one is afraid of waking. At the same time, over his childish countenance which was, at once so impudent and so serious, so giddy and so profound, so gay and so heart-breaking, passed all those grimaces of an old man which signify: Ah bah! impossible!
My sight is bad!
I am dreaming! can this be? no, it is not! but yes! why, no! etc.
Gavroche balanced on his heels, clenched both fists in his pockets, moved his neck around like a bird, expended in a gigantic pout all the sagacity of his lower lip. He was astounded, uncertain, incredulous, convinced, dazzled. He had the mien of the chief of the eunuchs in the slave mart, discovering a Venus among the blowsy females, and the air of an amateur recognizing a Raphael in a heap of daubs.
His whole being was at work, the instinct which scents out, and the intelligence which combines.
It was evident that a great event had happened in Gavroche's life.
It was at the most intense point of this preoccupation that Enjolras accosted him.
"You are small," said Enjolras, "you will not be seen.
Go out of the barricade, slip along close to the houses, skirmish about a bit in the streets, and come back and tell me what is going on."
Gavroche raised himself on his haunches.
"So the little chaps are good for something! that's very lucky! I'll go!
In the meanwhile, trust to the little fellows, and distrust the big ones."
And Gavroche, raising his head and lowering his voice, added, as he indicated the man of the Rue des Billettes: "Do you see that big fellow there?"
"Well?"
"He's a police spy."
"Are you sure of it?"
"It isn't two weeks since he pulled me off the cornice of the Port Royal, where I was taking the air, by my ear."
Enjolras hastily quitted the urchin and murmured a few words in a very low tone to a longshoreman from the winedocks who chanced to be at hand.
The man left the room, and returned almost immediately, accompanied by three others.
The four men, four porters with broad shoulders, went and placed themselves without doing anything to attract his attention, behind the table on which the man of the Rue des Billettes was leaning with his elbows. They were evidently ready to hurl themselves upon him.
Then Enjolras approached the man and demanded of him:--
"Who are you?"
At this abrupt query, the man started.
He plunged his gaze deep into Enjolras' clear eyes and appeared to grasp the latter's meaning. He smiled with a smile than which nothing more disdainful, more energetic, and more resolute could be seen in the world, and replied with haughty gravity:--
"I see what it is.
Well, yes!"
"You are a police spy?"
"I am an agent of the authorities."
"And your name?"
"Javert."
Enjolras made a sign to the four men.
In the twinkling of an eye, before Javert had time to turn round, he was collared, thrown down, pinioned and searched.
They found on him a little round card pasted between two pieces of glass, and bearing on one side the arms of France, engraved, and with this motto:
Supervision and vigilance, and on the other this note: "JAVERT, inspector of police, aged fifty-two," and the signature of the Prefect of Police of that day, M. Gisquet.
Besides this, he had his watch and his purse, which contained several gold pieces.
They left him his purse and his watch.
Under the watch, at the bottom of his fob, they felt and seized a paper in an envelope, which Enjolras unfolded, and on which he read these five lines, written in the very hand of the Prefect of Police:--
"As soon as his political mission is accomplished, Inspector Javert will make sure, by special supervision, whether it is true that the malefactors have instituted intrigues on the right bank of the Seine, near the Jena bridge."
The search ended, they lifted Javert to his feet, bound his arms behind his back, and fastened him to that celebrated post in the middle of the room which had formerly given the wine-shop its name.
Gavroche, who had looked on at the whole of this scene and had approved of everything with a silent toss of his head, stepped up to Javert and said to him:--
"It's the mouse who has caught the cat."
All this was so rapidly executed, that it was all over when those about the wine-shop noticed it.
Javert had not uttered a single cry.
At the sight of Javert bound to the post, Courfeyrac, Bossuet, Joly, Combeferre, and the men scattered over the two barricades came running up.
Javert, with his back to the post, and so surrounded with ropes that he could not make a movement, raised his head with the intrepid serenity of the man who has never lied.
"He is a police spy," said Enjolras.
And turning to Javert:
"You will be shot ten minutes before the barricade is taken."
Javert replied in his most imperious tone:--
"Why not at once?"
"We are saving our powder."
"Then finish the business with a blow from a knife."
"Spy," said the handsome Enjolras, "we are judges and not assassins."
Then he called Gavroche:--
"Here you! go about your business!
Do what I told you!"
"I'm going!" cried Gavroche.
And halting as he was on the point of setting out:--
"By the way, you will give me his gun!" and he added:
"I leave you the musician, but I want the clarionet."
The gamin made the military salute and passed gayly through the opening in the large barricade.
BOOK TWELFTH.--CORINTHE
CHAPTER VIII
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.
