2 (3)
NIGHT BEGINS TO GATHER OVER GRANTAIRE
THE PLACE WAS indeed admirably chosen, the entrance of the street wide, the further end contracted and like a cul-de-sac, Corinth throttling it, Rue Mondétour easy to bar at the right and left, no attack possible except from the Rue Saint-Denis, that is from the front, and without cover. Bossuet tipsy had the coup d‘œil of Hannibal fasting.
At the irruption of the mob, dismay seized the whole street, not a passer-by but had gone into eclipse. In a flash, at the end, on the right, on the left, shops, stalls, alley gates, windows, blinds, dormer-windows, shutters of every size, were closed from the ground to the roofs. One frightened old woman had fixed a mattress before her window on two clothes poles, as a shield against the musketry. The tavern was the only house which remained open; and that for a good reason, because the band had rushed into it. “Oh my God! Oh my God!” sighed Ma‘am Hucheloup.
Bossuet had gone down to meet Courfeyrac.
Joly, who had come to the window, cried:
“Courfeyrac, you bust take ad ubbrella. You will catch cold.”
Meanwhile, in a few minutes, twenty iron bars had been wrested from the grated front of the tavern, twenty yards of pavement had been torn up, Gavroche and Bahorel had seized on its passage and tipped over the dray of a lime merchant named Anceau, this dray contained three barrels full of lime, which they had placed under the piles of paving-stones; Enjolras had opened the trap-door of the cellar and all the widow Hucheloup’s empty casks had gone to flank the lime barrels; Feuilly, with his fingers accustomed to colour the delicate folds of fans, had buttressed the barrels and the dray with two massive heaps of stones. Stones improvised like the rest, and obtained nobody knows where. Some shoring-timbers had been pulled down from the front of a neighbouring house and laid upon the casks. When Bossuet and Courfeyrac turned round, half the street was already barred by a rampart higher than a man. There is nothing like the popular hand to build whatever can be built by demolishing.
Chowder and Fricassee had joined the labourers. Fricassee went back and forth loaded with rubbish. Her weariness contributed to the barricade. She served paving-stones, as she would have served wine, with a sleepy air.
An omnibus with two white horses passed at the end of the street.
Bossuet sprang over the pavement, ran, stopped the driver, made the passengers get down, gave his hand “to the ladies,” dismissed the conductor, and came back with the vehicle, leading the horses by the bridle.
“An omnibus,” said he, “doesn’t pass by Corinth. Non licet omnibus adire Corinthum.”
A moment later the horses were unhitched and going off at will through the Rue Mondétour, and the omnibus, lying on its side, completed the barring of the street.
Ma‘am Hucheloup, completely upset, had taken refuge in the second story.
Her eyes were wandering, and she looked without seeing, crying in a whisper. Her cries were dismayed and dared not come out of her throat.
“It is the end of the world,” she murmured.
Joly deposited a kiss upon Ma‘am Hucheloup’s coarse, red, and wrinkled neck, and said to Grantaire: “My dear fellow, I have always considered a woman’s neck an infinitely delicate thing.”
But Grantaire was attaining the highest regions of dithyramb. Chowder having come up to the second floor, Grantaire seized her by the waist and pulled her towards the window with long bursts of laughter.
“Chowder is ugly!” cried he; “Chowder is the dream of ugliness! Chowder is a chimera. Listen to the secret of her birth: a Gothic Pygmalion who was making cathedral waterspouts, fell in love with one of them one fine morning, the most horrible of all. He implored Love to animate her, and that made Chowder. Behold her, citizens! her hair is the colour of chromate of lead, like that of Titian’s mistress, and she is a good girl. I warrant you that she will fight well. Every good girl contains a hero. As for Mother Hucheloup, she is an old soldier. Look at her moustaches! she inherited them from her husband. A hussaress, indeed, she will fight too. They two by themselves will frighten the banlieue. Comrades, we will overturn the government, as true as there are fifteen acids intermediate between margaric acid and formic acid; besides, I don’t care. Messieurs, my father always detested me because I could not understand mathematics. I only understand love and liberty. I am Grantaire, a good boy. Never having had any money, I have never got used to it, and by that means I have never felt the need of it, but if I had been rich, there would have been no more poor! you should have seen. Oh! if the good hearts had the fat purses, how much better everything would go! I imagine Jesus Christ with Rothschild’s fortune! How much good he would have done! Chowder, embrace me! you are voluptuous and timid! you have cheeks which call for the kiss of a sister, and lips which demand the kiss of a lover.”
“Be still, wine-cask!” said Courfeyrac.
Grantaire answered:
“I am Capitoul and Master of Floral Games!”
Enjolras, who was standing on the crest of the barricade, musket in hand, raised his fine austere face. Enjolras, we know, had something of the Spartan and of the Puritan. He would have died at Thermopylæ with Leonidas, and would have burned Drogheda with Cromwell.
“Grantaire,” cried he, “go sleep yourself sober away from here. This is the place for intoxication and not for drunkenness. Do not dishonour the barricade!”
This angry speech produced upon Grantaire a singular effect. One would have said that he had received a glass of cold water in his face. He appeared suddenly sobered. He sat down, leaned upon a table near the window, looked at Enjolras with an inexpressible gentleness, and said to him:
“Let me sleep here.”
“Go sleep elsewhere,” cried Enjolras.
But Grantaire, keeping his tender and troubled eyes fixed upon him, answered:
“Let me sleep here—until I die here.”
Enjolras regarded him with a disdainful eye:
“Grantaire, you are incapable of belief, of thought, of will, of life, and of death.”
Grantaire answered gravely: “You’ll see.”
He stammered out a few more unintelligible words, then his head fell heavily upon the table, and, a common effect of the second stage of inebri ety into which Enjolras had roughly and suddenly pushed him, a moment later he was asleep.