8 (9)
USE OF THAT OLD POACHER’S SKILL, AND THAT INFALLIBLE AIM WHICH INFLUENCED THE CONVICTION OF 1796
THERE WAS confusion in the counsel of the barricade. The gun was about to be fired again. They could not hold out a quarter of an hour in that storm of grapeshot. It was absolutely necessary to deaden the blows.
Enjolras threw out his command:
“We must put a mattress there.”
“We have none,” said Combeferre, “the wounded are on them.”
Jean Valjean, seated apart on a block, at the corner of the tavern, his musket between his knees, had, up to this moment, taken no part in what was going on. He seemed not to hear the combatants about him say: “There is a musket which is doing nothing.”
At the order given by Enjolras, he got up.
It will be remembered that on the arrival of the company in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, an old woman, foreseeing bullets, had put her mattress before her window. This window, a garret window, was on the roof of a house of seven stories standing a little outside of the barricade. The mattress, placed crosswise, rested at the bottom upon two clothes-poles, and was sustained above by two ropes which, in the distance, seemed like threads, and which were fastened to nails driven into the window casing. These two ropes could be seen distinctly against the sky like hairs.
“Can somebody lend me a double-barrelled carbine?” said Jean Valjean.
Enjolras, who had just reloaded his, handed it to him.
Jean Valjean aimed at the window and fired.
One of the two ropes of the mattress was cut.
The mattress now hung only by one thread.
Jean Valjean fired the second barrel. The second rope struck the glass of the window. The mattress slid down between the two poles and fell into the street.
The barricade applauded.
All cried:
“There is a mattress.”
“Yes,” said Combeferre, “but who will go after it?”
The mattress had, in fact, fallen outside of the barricade, between the besieged and the besiegers. Now, the death of the gunner having exasperated the troops, the soldiers, for some moments, had been lying on their faces behind the line of paving-stones which they had raised, and, to make up for the compulsory silence of the gun, which was quiet while its service was being reorganised, they had opened fire on the barricade. The insurgents made no response to this musketry, to spare their ammunition. The fusilade was broken against the barricade; but the street, which it filled with balls, was terrible.
Jean Valjean went out at the opening, entered the street, passed through the storm of balls, went to the mattress, picked it up, put it on his back, and returned to the barricade.
He put the mattress into the opening himself. He fixed it against the wall in such a way that the artillerymen did not see it.
This done, they awaited the charge of grapeshot.
They had not long to wait.
The cannon vomited its package of shot with a roar. But there was no ricochet. The grapeshot miscarried upon the mattress. The desired effect was obtained. The barricade was preserved.
“Citizen,” said Enjolras to Jean Valjean, “the republic thanks you.”
Bossuet admired and laughed. He exclaimed:
“It is immoral that a mattress should have so much power. Triumph of that which yields over that which thunders. But it is all the same; glory to the mattress which nullifies a cannon.”