 Chapter 1 of Book 1 of Les Misérables Vol. 5 by Victor Hugo. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Les Misérables Vol. 5 by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabelle Florence Hepgood Book 1, Book 1st, The War Between Four Walls. Chapter 1, The Caribdis of the Faubourg Saint Antoine, and the Scylla of the Faubourg du Temple. The two most memorable barricades which the observer of social maladies can name do not belong to the period in which the action of this work is laid. These two barricades, both of them symbols under two different aspects of a redoubtable situation, spraying from the earth at the time of the fatal insurrection of June 1848, the greatest war of the streets that history has ever beheld. It sometimes happens that even contrary to principles, even contrary to liberty, equality, and fraternity, even contrary to the universal vote, even contrary to the government, by all for all, from the depths of its anguish, of its discouragements and its destitutions, of its fevers, of its distresses, of its miasmas, of its ignorances, of its darkness, that great and despairing body the rabble protests against and that the populist wages battle against the people. Beggars attack the common right. The Oclocracy rises against demos. These are melancholy days, for there is always a certain amount of night, even in this madness. There is suicide in this duel, and those words which are intended to be insults, Beggars, Kanaya, Oclocracy, populus exhibit alas rather the fault of those who reign than the fault of those who suffer, rather the fault of the privileged than the fault of the disinherited. For our own part we never pronounce these words without pain and without respect. For when philosophy fathoms the facts to which they correspond, it often finds many a grandeur beside these miseries. Athens was an Oclocracy. The Beggars were the making of Holland. The populists saved Rome more than once, and the rabble followed Jesus Christ. There is no thinker who has not at times contemplated the magnificences of the lower classes. It was of this rabble that Saint Jerome was thinking no doubt, and of all these poor people, and all these vagabonds, and all these miserable people, went spraying the apostles and the martyrs when he uttered this mysterious saying, fex urbis lex urbis, the dregs of the city, the law of the earth. The exasperations of this crowd which suffers and bleeds, its violence is contrary to all sense, directed against the principles which are its life, its masterful deeds against the right, are its popular coup d'etat and should be repressed. The man of probity sacrifices himself, and out of his very love for this crowd he combats it. But how excusable he feels it even while holding out against it, how he venerates it even while resisting it. This is one of those rare moments when while doing that which it is one's duty to do, one feels something which disconcerts one and which would dissuade one from proceeding further. One persists it is necessary but conscience though satisfied is sad, and the accomplishment of duty is complicated with a pain at the heart. June 1848, let us hasten to say was an exceptional fact, an almost impossible of classification in the philosophy of history. All the words which we have just uttered must be discarded when it becomes a question of this extraordinary revolt in which one feels the holy anxiety of toil claiming its rights. It was necessary to combat it, and this was a duty for it attack the Republic, but what was June 1848 at bottom, a revolt of the people against itself? Where the subject is not lost side of there is no digression. May we then be permitted to arrest the reader's attention for a moment on the two absolutely unique barricades of which we have just spoken and which characterize this insurrection. One blocked the entrance to the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. The other defended the approach to the Faubourg du Temple. Those before whom these two fearful masterpieces of civil war reared themselves beneath the brilliant blue sky of June will never forget them. The Saint-Antoine barricade was tremendous. It was three stories high and seven hundred feet wide. It barred the vast opening of the Faubourg, that is to say three streets from angle to angle. Reveined, jagged, cut up, divided, crenellated with an immense rent, buttressed with piles that were bastions in themselves, throwing out capes here and there, powerfully backed up by two great promontories of houses of the Faubourg. It reared itself like a cyclopean dyke at the end of the formidable place which had seen the fourteenth of July. Nineteen barricades were ranged, one behind the other, in the depths of the streets behind this principal barricade. At the very side of it, one felt the agonizing suffering in the immense Faubourg which had reached that point of extremity when a distress may become a catastrophe. Of what was that barricade made? Of the ruins of three six-story houses demolished expressly, said some. Of the prodigy of all wraths, said others. It wore the lamentable aspect of all constructions of hatred, ruin. It might be asked, who built this? It might also be said, who destroyed this? It was the improvisation of ebullition. Hold, take this door, this grating, this penthouse, this chimney-piece, this broken-brazier, this cracked pot, give-all, cast-away-all. Push this roll, dig, dismantle, overturn, ruin everything. It was the collaboration of the pavement, the block of stone, the beam, the bar of iron, the rag, the scrap, the broken pane, the unceded chair, the cabbage stalk, the tatter, the rag, and the malediction. It was grand and it was petty. It was the abyss parodied on the public place by Habab. The mess beside the atom, the strip of ruined wall in the broken bowl, threatening fraternization of every sort of rubbish. Sisyphus had thrown his rock there and jove his potsherd. Terrible and short. It was the acropolis of the bare-footed. Overturned carts broke the uniformity of the slope. An immense dray was spread out their crossways, its axle pointed heavenward, and seemed a scar on that tumultuous façade. An omnibus hoisted gaily by main force to the very summit of the heap, as though the architects of this bit of savagery had wished to add a touch of the street-urchin humor to their terror, presented its hoarseless, unharnessed pole to no one knows what horses of the air. This gigantic heap, the alluvium of the revolt, figured to the mind an osse-unpellion of all revolutions. Ninety-three on eighty-nine. The ninth of Thermador on the tenth of August. The eighteenth of Brumaire on the eleventh of January. Vendemière en prairieale. Eighteen-forty-eight on eighteen-thirty. The situation deserved the trouble, and this barricade was worthy to figure on the very spot once the bustee had disappeared. If the ocean made dykes, it is thus that it would build. The fury of the flood was stamped on this shapeless mass. What flood? The crowd. One thought one beheld hubbub petrified. One thought one heard humming above this barricade as though there had been over their hive enormous dark bees of violent progress. Was it a thicket? Was it a bacchanalia? Was it a fortress? Vertigo seemed to have constructed it with blows of its wings. There was something of the cesspool in that redoubt and something Olympian in that confusion. One there beheld in a palmel full of despair the rafters of roofs, bits of garret windows with their figured paper, windows sashes with their glass planted there in the ruins awaiting the cannon, wrecks of chimneys, cupboards, tables, benches, howling topsy-turvy dumb, and those thousands poverty-stricken things the very refuse of the mendicant, which contain at the same time fury and nothingness. One would have said that it was the tatters of a people, rags of wood, of iron, of bronze, of stone, and that the fable sentent one had thrust it there at its door with a colossal flourish of the broom-making of its misery, its barricade. Blocks resembling Headsman's blocks, dislocated chains, pieces of woodwork with brackets having the form of gibbets, horizontal wheels projecting from the rubbish, amalgamated with this edifice of anarchy, the somber figure of the old tortures endured by the people. The barricade sentent one converted everything into a weapon, everything that civil war could throw at the head of society preceded thence. It was not combat, it was a paroxysm. The carbines which defended this redoubt among which there were some blunderbusses sent bits of earthenware bones, coat buttons, even the casters from nightstands, dangerous projectiles on account of the brass. This barricade was furious. It hurled to the clouds an inexpressible clamor at certain moments when provoking the army, it was covered with throngs and tempests, a tumultuous crowd of flaming heads crowned it, a swarm filled it, it had a thorny crest of guns, of sabers, of cudgels, of axes, of pikes and of bayonets, a vast red flag flapped in the wind, shouts of command, songs of attack, the rolls of drums, the sobs of women and bursts of gloomy laughter from the starving were to be heard there. It was huge in living and like the back of an electric beast there proceeded from it little flashes of lightning. The spirit of revolution covered with its cloud this summit where rumbled that voice of the people which resembles the voice of God. A strange majesty was emitted by this titanic basket of rubbish. It was a heap of filth and it was Sinai. As we have said previously, it attacked in the name of the revolution. The revolution, it, that barricade, chance, hazard, disorder, terror, misunderstanding, the unknown, it had facing it the constituent assembly, the sovereignty of the people, universal suffrage, the nation, the republic, and it was the Carmagnol bidding defiance to the Marseillais. Immense but heroic defiance for the old foe boule is a hero. The foe boule and its redoubt lent each other assistance. The foe boule shouldered the redoubt. The redoubt took its stand under cover of the foe boule. The vast barricade spread out like a cliff against which the strategy of the African generals dashed itself. Its caverns, its excrescences, its warts, its gibbosites grimaced, so to speak, and grinned beneath the smoke. The mitraia vanished in shapelessness. The bombs plunged into it. Bullets only succeeded in making holes in it. What was the use of cannonating chaos? And the regiments accustomed to the fiercest visions of war gazed with uneasy eyes on that species of redoubt, a wild beast in its bore like bristling and a mountain by its enormous size. A quarter of a league away from the corner of the rue du temple which debouches on the boulevard near the Château d'eau, if one thrusts one's head bodily beyond the point formed by the front of the d'Almagne-chap, one perceived in the distance beyond the canal in the street which mounts the slopes of Belleville at the culminating point of the rise, a strange wall reaching to the second story of the house fronts, a sort of hyphen between the houses on the right and the houses on the left, as though the street had folded back on itself its loftiest wall in order to close itself abruptly. This wall was built of paving stones. It was straight, correct, cold, perpendicular, leveled with the square, laid out by rule and line. Cement was lacking, of course, but as in the case of certain Roman walls, without interfering with this rigid architecture. The entablature was mathematically parallel with the base. From distance to distance, one could distinguish on the grey surface almost invisible loopholes which resembled black threads. These loopholes were separated from each other by equal spaces. The street was deserted as far as the eye could reach. All windows and doors were closed. In the background rose this barrier which made a blind thoroughfare of the street, a motionless and tranquil wall. No one was visible, nothing was audible, not a cry, not a sound, not a breath, a sepulchre. The dazzling sun of June inundated this terrible thing with light. It was the barricade of the full boule of the temple. As soon as one arrived on the spot and caught sight of it, it was impossible, even for the boldest, not to become thoughtful before this mysterious apparition. It was adjusted, jointed, imbricated, rectilinear, symmetrical, and funereal. Science and gloom met there. One felt that the chief of this barricade was a geometrician or a specter. One looked at it and spoke low. From time to time, if some soldier, an officer or representative of the people, chanced to traverse the deserted highway, a faint sharp whistle was heard, and the passer-by fell dead or wounded, or, if he escaped the bullet, sometimes a bisquian was seen to a sconce itself in some closed shutter in the interstice between two blocks of stone or in the plaster of a wall. For the man in the barricade made themselves two small cannons out of two cast-iron lengths of gas pipe plugged up at one end with tau and fire clay, and there was no waste of useless powder. Nearly every shot told. There were corpses here and there in pools of blood on the pavement. I remember a white butterfly which went and came in the street. Summer does not abdicate. In the neighborhood, the spaces beneath the Porte-Cochère were encumbered with wounded. One felt oneself aimed at by some person whom one did not see, and one understood that guns were leveled at the whole length of the street. Massed behind the sort of sloping ridge which the vaulted canal forms at the entrance to the Foubourg du Temple, the soldiers of the attacking column gravely and thoughtfully watched this dismal redoubt, this immobility, this passivity, went spraying death. Some crawled flat on their faces as far as the crest of the curve of the bridge, taking care that their sheikos did not project beyond it. The valiant Coronel Montena admired this barricade with a shudder. How that is built, he said to a representative, not one paving stone projects beyond its neighbor, it is made of porcelain. At that moment a bullet broke the cross on his breast and he fell. The cowards, people said, let them show themselves, let us see them, they dare not, they are hiding. The barricade of the Foubourg du Temple defended by eighty men, attacked by ten thousand, held out for three days. On the fourth they did as at Zacha, as at Constantine. They pierced the houses, they came over the roofs, the barricade was taken, not one of the eighty cowards thought of flight. All were killed there, with the exception of the leader, Bartolomie, of whom we shall speak presently. The Saint Antoine barricade was the tumult of thunders. The barricade of the temple was silence. The difference between these two redoubts was the difference between the formidable and the sinister. One seemed a maw, the other a mask. Admitting that the gigantic and gloomy insurrection of June was composed of a wrath and of an enigma, one divined in the first barricade the dragon and behind the second the sphinx. These two fortresses had been erected by two men named the one, Cournée, the other Bartolomie. Cournée made the Saint Antoine barricade, Bartolomie the barricade of the temple. Each was the image of the man who had built it. Cournée was a man of lofty stature. He had broad shoulders, a red face, a crushing fist, a bold heart, a loyal soul, a sincere and terrible eye, intrepid, energetic, irascible, stormy, the most cordial of men, the most formidable of combatants. War, strife, conflict were the very air he breathed and put him in a good humor. He had been an officer in the navy and from his gestures and his voice one divine that he sprang from the ocean and that he came from the tempest, he carried the hurricane on into battle. With the exception of the genius there was in Cournée something of Danton as with the exception of the divinity there was in Danton something of Hercules. Bartolomie, thin, feeble, pale, taciturn was a sort of tragic street urchin who having had his ears boxed by a policeman lay in wait for him and killed him and at seventeen was sent to the galleys. He came out and made this barricade. Later on fatal circumstance in London proscribed by all Bartolomie's Lou Cournée. It was a funereal duel. Some time afterwards caught in the gearing of one of those mysterious adventures in which passion plays a part a catastrophe in which French justice sees extenuating circumstances and in which English justice sees only death Bartolomie was hanged. I remember social construction is so made that thanks to material destitution thanks to moral obscurity that unhappy being who possessed an intelligence certainly firm, possibly great began in France with the galleys and ended in England with the gallows. Bartolomie on occasion flew one flag the black flag. End of book one, chapter one. There's two and three of book one of Les Misérables volume five by Victor Hugo. This is a LibreVox recording. All LibreVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibreVox.org. Les Misérables volume five by Victor Hugo translated by Isabelle Florence Hepgood. Book the first, the war between four walls. Chapter two, what is to be done in the abyss if one does not converse? Sixteen years count in the subterranean education of insurrection and June 1848 knew a great deal more about it than June 1832. So the barricade of the rue de la chanfrerie was only an outline and an embryo compared to the two colossal barricades which we have just sketched but it was formidable for that epic. The insurgents under the eye of Anjolra for Marius no longer looked after anything had made good use of the night. The barricade had been not only repaired but augmented. They had raised it two feet. Bars of iron planted in the pavement resembled lances in rest. All sorts of rubbish brought and added from all directions complicated the external confusion. The redoubt had been cleverly made over into a wall on the inside and a thicket on the outside. The staircase of paving stones which permitted one to mount it like the wall of a citadel had been reconstructed. The barricade had been put in order. The tap room disencumbered. The kitchen appropriated for the ambulance. The dressing of the wounded completed. The powder scattered on the ground and on the tables had been gathered up. Bullets run. Cartridges manufactured. Lent scraped. The fallen weapons redistributed. The interior of the redoubt cleaned. The rubbish swept up. Corpses removed. The dead in a heap in the Mondotour Lane of which they were still the masters. The pavement was red for a long time at that spot. Among the dead there were four national guardsmen of the suburbs. Anjolra had their uniforms laid aside. Anjolra had advised two hours of sleep. Advice from Anjolra was a command. Still only three or four took advantage of it. Feyi employed those two hours in engraving this inscription on the wall which faced the tavern. Long live the peoples. These four words hollowed out in the rough stone with a nail could be still read on the wall in 1848. The three women had profited by the respite of the night to vanish definitely which allowed the insurgents to breathe more freely. They had found means of taking refuge in some neighboring house. The greater part of the wounded were able and wished to fight still. On a litter of mattresses and trusses of straw in the kitchen which had been converted into an ambulance there were five men gravely wounded two of whom were municipal guardsmen. The municipal guardsmen were attended to first. In the tap room there remained only Mabouf under his black cloth and Javert bound to his post. This is the Hall of the Dead said Anjolra. In the interior of this hall barely lighted by a candle at one end the mortuary table being behind the post like a horizontal bar a sort of vast vague cross resulted from Javert-Hiret and Mabouf lying prone. The pole of the omnibus although snapped off by the fusillade was still sufficiently upright to admit of their fastening the flag to it. Anjolra, who possessed that quality of leader of always doing what he said attached to this staff the bullet-ridden and the bloody coat of the old man's. No repast had been possible. There was neither bread nor meat. The fifty men in the barricade had speedily exhausted the scanty provisions of the wine shop during the sixteen hours which they had passed there. At a given moment every barricade inevitably becomes the raft of the medus. They were obliged to resign themselves to hunger. They had then reached the first hours of that spartan day of the 6th of June and in the barricade Sémérée Jean surrounded by the insurgents who demanded bread replied to all combatants crying something to eat with Why? It is three o'clock at four o'clock we shall be dead. As they could no longer eat Anjolra forbade them to drink. He interdicted wine and portioned out the brandy. They had found in the cellar two full bottles hermetically sealed. Anjolra and Combefer examined them. Combefer, when he came up again, said it's the old stock of Father Huchelou who began business as a grocer. It must be real wine, observed Bossuet it's lucky that Grandeur is asleep if he were on foot there would be a good deal of difficulty in saving these bottles. Anjolra in spite of all murmurs placed his veto on the fifteen bottles and in order that no one might touch them he had them placed under the table on which Father Mabouf was lying. About two o'clock in the morning they reckoned up their strength. There were still thirty-seven of them. The day began to dawn. The torch which had been replaced in its cavity and the pavement had just been extinguished. The interior of the barricade that species of tiny courtyard appropriated from the street was bathed in shadows and resembled the fort, the vague twilight horror the deck of a disabled ship. The combatants as they went and came moved about there like black forms. Above that terrible nesting place of doom and gloom the stories of the mute houses were lividly outlined. At the very top the chimney stood palely out. The sky was of that charming undecided hue which may be white and may be blue. Birds flew about in it with cries of joy. The lofty house which formed the back of the barricade being turned to the east had upon its roof a rosy reflection. The morning breeze ruffled the gray hair on the head of the dead man in the window. I am delighted that the torch has been extinguished that torch flickering in the wind annoyed me. It had the appearance of being afraid. The light of torches resembles the wisdom of cowards. It gives a bad light because it trembles. Dawn awakens minds as it does the birds. I'll begin to talk. Dawn is receiving a cat prowling on a gutter extracted philosophy from it. What is the cat, he exclaimed? It is a corrective. The good God having made the mouse said, Hello! I have committed a blunder. And so he made the cat. The cat is the erratum of the mouse. The mouse plus the cat is the proof of creation revised and corrected. Combe faire surrounded by students and artisans was speaking of the dead of Jean Prouvert, of Baurel, of Mabuff and even of Cabuc and of Angel-Rase's sad severity. He said, Hermodius and Aristojiton, Brutus, Charias, Stephanus, Cromwell, Charlotte, Corday, Sand have all had their moment of agony when it was too late. Our hearts quiver so and human life is such a mystery that even in the case of a civic murder, even in a murder for liberation if there be such a thing, the remorse for having struck a man surpasses the joy of having served the human race. And such are the windings of the exchange of speech that a moment later by a transition brought about through Jean Prouvert's verses, Combe faire was comparing the translators of the Georgics, Ro with Cournant, Cournant with Delile, pointing out the passages translated by Malphilatre, particularly the prodigies of Caesar's death, and at that word, Caesar, the conversation reverted to Brutus. Caesar said Combe faire fell justly. Cicero was severe toward Caesar and he was right. That severity is not diatribe. When Zoalus insults Homer, when Maivius insults Virgil, when Weiss insults Molière, when Pope insults Shakespeare, when Frederick insults Voltaire. It is an old law of envy and hatred which is being carried out. Genius attracts insult. Great men are always more or less barked at. But Zoalus and Cicero are two men. Cicero is an arbiter in thought, just as Brutus is an arbiter by the sword. For my part I blame that last justice, the blade. But antiquity admitted it. Caesar, the violator of the Rubicon, conferring as though they came from him, the dignities which emanated from the people, not rising at the entrance of the Senate, committed the acts of a king of England, regia acpene tyrannica. He was a great man, so much the worse, or so much the better. The lesson is but the more exalted. His 23 wounds touch me less than the spitting in the face of Jesus Christ. Caesar is stabbed by the Senators. Christ is cuffed by lackeys. One feels the God through the greater outrage. Bosue, who towered above the interlocutors from the summit of a heap of paving stones, exclaimed, rifle in hand, O Siddethinium, O Mirhinus, O Probulinthus, O Graces of the Iantides, O who will grant me to pronounce the verses of Homer like a Greek of Llorium, or of Adeption. Chapter 3 Light and Shadow Anjolra had been to make a reconnaissance. He had made his way out through Mondetouille lane gliding along close to the houses. The insurgents, we will remark, were full of hope. The manner in which they had repulsed the attack of the preceding night had caused them to almost disdain and advance the attack at dawn. They waited for it with a smile. They had no more doubt as to their success than as to their cause. Moreover, Sucker was evidently on the way to them. They reckoned on it. With that facility of triumphant prophecy, which is one of the sources of strength in the French combatant, they divided the day which was at hand into three distinct phases. At six o'clock in the morning a regiment which had been prepared with, quote-unquote, would turn. At noon the insurrection of all Paris at sunset revolution. They heard the alarm bell of Samiri, which had not been silent for an instant since the night before, a proof that the other barricade, the great one, Jeanne's, still held out. All these hopes were exchanged between the different groups in a sort of gay and formidable whisper, which resembled the war-like hum of a hive of bees. Engelra re-appeared. He returned from his somber eagle flight into outer darkness. He listened for a moment to all this joy with folded arms and one hand on his mouth. Then, fresh and rosy in the growing whiteness of the dawn, he said, the whole army of Paris is to strike. A third of the army is bearing down upon the barricades in which you now are. There is the National Guard in addition. I have picked out the chaicos of the fifth of the line and the standard bearers of the sixth legion. In one hour you will be attacked. As for the populace it was seething yesterday, today it is not stirring. There is nothing to expect, nothing to hope for, neither from a full bull nor from a regiment. You are abandoned. These words fell upon the buzzing of the groups and produced on them the effect caused on a swarm of bees by the first drops of a storm. A moment of indescribable silence ensued in which death might have been heard flitting by. This moment was brief. A voice from the obscure depths of the groups shouted to Angola, so be it. Let us raise the barricade to a height of twenty feet and let us all remain in it. Citizens let us offer the protests of corpses. Let us show that if the people abandon the Republicans the Republicans do not abandon the people. These words freed the thought of all from the painful cloud of individual anxieties. It was hailed with an enthusiastic acclamation. No one ever has known the name of the man who spoke thus. He was some unknown blouse-wearer, a stranger, a man forgotten, a passing hero that great anonymous always mingled in human crises and in social geniuses who, at a given moment, utters in a supreme fashion the decisive word and who vanishes into the shadows after having represented for a minute in a lightning flash the people and God. This inexorable resolution so thoroughly impregnated the air of the 6th of June, 1832, that almost at the very same hour on the barricade Saint-Méry the insurgents were raising that clamor, to become a matter of history and which has been consigned to the documents in the case. Quote-unquote, what matters it whether they come to our assistance or not, let us get ourselves killed here to the very last man. As the reader sees the two barricades, though materially isolated, we're in communication with each other. End of Book 1, Chapters 2 and 3 Chapter 4 of Book 1 of Les Misérables, Volume 5 by Victor Hugo This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Les Misérables, Volume 5 by Victor Hugo, translated by Isabelle Florence Hepgood Book 1st, The War Between Four Walls Chapter 4 Minus 5 plus 1 After the man who decreed the quote-unquote protest of corpses had spoken and had given this formula of their common soul, they're issued from all mouths a strangely satisfied and terrible cry, funereal in a sense and triumphant in tone. Long live death, let us all remain here. Why all, said Anjolra? All, all! Anjolra resumed. The position is good. The barricade is fine. Thirty men are enough. Why sacrifice forty? They replied, because not one will go away. Citizens cried Anjolra and there was an almost irritated vibration in his voice. This republic is not rich enough in men to indulge in the expenditure of them. Vain glory is waste. If the duty of some is to depart, that duty should be fulfilled like any other. Anjolra, the man principal, had over his co-religionist that sort of omnipotent power which emanates from the absolute. Still, great as was this omnipotence, a murmur arose. A leader to the very fingertips, Anjolra, seeing that they murmured, insisted. He resumed hotly, let those who are afraid of not numbering more than thirty say so. The murmurs redoubled. Besides observed a voice in one group, it is easy enough to talk about leaving. The barricade is hemmed in. Not on the side of Leal, said Anjolra. The rue Mont de Tour is free. And through the rue des Prachères one can reach the Marche des Innocents. And there went on another voice, you would be captured. You would fall in with some grand guard of the line or the suburbs. They will spy a man passing in blouse and cape. Once come you, don't you belong to the barricade? And they will look at your hands. You smell of powder, shot. Anjolra, without making any reply, touched Combefer's shoulder and the two entered the taproom. They emerged thence a moment later. Anjolra held in his outstretched hands the four uniforms which he had laid aside. Combefer followed, carrying the shoulder belts and the sheikos. With this uniform, said Anjolra, you can mingle with the ranks here is enough for four. And he flung on the ground deprived of its pavement the four uniforms. No wavering took place in his stoical audience. Combefer took the word. Come, said he, you must have a little pity. Do you know what the question is here? It is a question of women. See here. Are there women or are there not? Are there children or are there not? Are there mothers, yes or no, who rock cradles with their foot and who have a lot of little ones around them? Let that man of you who has never beheld a nurse's breast raise his hand. Ah, you want to get yourselves killed? So do I. I who am speaking to you, but I do not want to feel the phantoms of women reading their arms around me. If you will, but don't make others die. Suicides like that which is on the brink of accomplishment here are sublime. But suicide is narrow and does not admit of extension. And as soon as it touches your neighbors suicide is murder. Think of the little blonde heads think of the white locks. Listen, Angiola has just told me that he saw at the corner of the guided casement a candle in a poor window on the fifth floor and on the pain the quivering shadow of the head of an old woman who had the air of having spent the night in watching. Perhaps she is the mother of someone of you. Well let that man go and make haste to say to his mother here I am mother let him feel at ease the task here will be performed when one supports one's relatives by one's toil one has not the right to sacrifice oneself that is deserting one's family. And those who have daughters what are you thinking of you get yourselves killed you are dead that as well and tomorrow young girls without bread that is a terrible thing. Man begs women's cells ah those charming and gracious beings so gracious and so sweet who have bonnets of flowers who fill the house with purity who sing in prattle who are like a living perfume who prove the existence of angels in heaven by the purity of virgins on earth. That Jean, that Lise, that Mimi those adorable and honest creatures who are your blessings and your pride ah good god they will suffer hunger I want me to say to you there is a market for human flesh and it is not with your shadowy hands shuttering around them that you will prevent them from entering it think of the street think of the pavement covered with passersby think of the shops past which women go and come with necks all bare and through the mire these women too were pure once think of your sisters those of you who have them misery prostitution the police that is what those beautiful delicate girls those fragile marvels of modesty gentleness and loveliness fresher than lilacs in the month of may will come to ah you have got yourselves killed you are no longer on hand that is well you have wished to release the people from royalty after over your daughters to the police friends have a care have mercy women unhappy women we are not in the habit of bestowing much thought on them we trust to the women not having received a man's education we prevent their reading we prevent their thinking we prevent their occupying themselves with politics will you prevent them from going to the dead house this evening your bodies let us see those who have families must be tractable and shake hands with us and take themselves off and leave us here alone to attend to this affair I know well that courage is required to leave that it is hard but the harder it is the more meritorious you say I have a gun I am at the barricade so much the worse I shall remain there much the worse is easily said my friends there is a morrow you will not be here tomorrow but your families will and what sufferings see here is a pretty healthy child with cheeks like an apple who babbles, prattles, chatters who laughs, who smells sweet beneath your kiss and do you know what becomes of him when he is abandoned I have seen one a very small creature no taller than that his father was dead poor people had taken him in out of charity but they had bread only for themselves the child was always hungry it was winter he did not cry you could see him approach the stove in which there was never any fire and whose pipe you know was of mastic and yellow clay his breathing was hoarse his face livid his limbs flaccid his belly prominent he said nothing if you spoke to him he did not answer he is dead he was taken to the Necker hospital where I saw him I was house surgeon in that hospital now if there are any fathers among you fathers whose happiness it is to stroll on Sundays holding their child's tiny hand in their robust hand let each one of those fathers imagine that this child is his own that poor brat I remember and I seem to see him now when he lay nude on the dissecting table how his ribs stood out on his skin like the graves beneath the grass in a cemetery a sort of mud was found in his stomach there were ashes in his teeth come let us examine ourselves conscientiously and take counsel with our heart statistics show that the mortality among abandoned children is 55% I repeat it is a question of women it concerns mothers it concerns young girls it concerns little children who is talking to you of yourselves we know well what you are we know well that you are brave par bleu we know well that you all have in your souls the joy and the glory of giving your life for the great cause we know well that you feel yourselves elected to die usefully and magnificently and that each one of you clings to his share in the triumph very well but you are not alone in this world there are other beings of whom you must think you must not be egoists all drop their heads with a gloomy air strange contradictions of the human heart at its most sublime moments con befer who spoke thus was not an orphan he recalled the mothers of other men and forgot his own he was about to get himself killed he was an egoist marius fasting and having emerged in succession from all hope and having been stranded in grief the most somber of shipwrecks and saturated with violent emotions and conscious that the end was near had plunged deeper and deeper into that visionary stupor which always precedes the fatal hour voluntarily accepted a physiologist might have studied in him the growing symptoms of that febrile absorption of the two and classified by science and which is to suffering what voluptuousness is to pleasure despair also has its ecstasy marius had reached this point he looked on at everything as from without as we have said things which pass before him seemed far away he made out the whole he beheld men going and coming as through a flame he heard voices speaking as at the bottom of an abyss but this moved him there was in this scene a point which pierced and roused even him he had but one idea now to die and he did not wish to be turned aside from it but he reflected in his gloomy some numbulism that while destroying himself he was not prohibited from saving someone else he raised his voice Anjolra and Combefer are right he said no one necessary sacrifice I join them and you must make haste Combefer has said convincing things to you there are some among you who have families, mothers, sisters wives, children let such leave the ranks no one stirred married men and the supporters of families step out of the ranks repeated Marius his authority was great Anjolra was certainly the head of the barricade but Marius was its savior I order it cried Anjolra I entreat you said Marius then touched by Combefer's words shaken by Anjolra's order touched by Marius's entreaty these heroic men began to denounce each other it is true said one man to a full grown man you are the father of a family go it is your duty rather retorted the man you have two sisters whom you maintain and an unprecedented controversy broke forth each struggled to determine which should not allow himself or the tomb make haste said Corfeac in another quarter of an hour it will be too late citizens pursued Anjolra this is the Republic and universal suffrage reigns do you yourselves designate those who are to go they obeyed after the expiration of a few minutes five were unanimously selected and stepped out of the ranks there are five of them exclaimed Marius there were only four uniforms well began the five one must stay behind and then a struggle arose as to who should remain and who should find reasons for the others not remaining the generous quarrel began afresh you have a wife who loves you you have your aged mother you have neither father nor mother and what is to become of your three little brothers you are the father of five children you have a right to live you are only seventeen it is too early for you to die these great revolutionary barricades were assembling points for heroism the improbable was simple there these men did not astonish each other be quick repeated Corfeac men shouted to Marius from the groups do you designate who is to remain yes said the five choose we will obey you Marius did not believe that he was capable of another emotion still at this idea that of choosing a man for death his blood rushed back to his heart he would have turned pale had it been possible for him to become any paler he advanced towards the five he smiled upon him each with his eyes full of that grand flame which one beholds in the depths of history hovering over Thermopylae cried to him me me me and Marius stupidly counted them there were still five of them then his glance dropped to the four uniforms at that moment a fifth uniform fell as if from heaven upon the other four the fifth man was saved Marius raised his eyes and recognized Monsieur Fauch Levin Jean Valjean had just entered the barricade he had arrived by way of Mondetour lane with or by dint of inquiries made or by instinct or by chance thanks to his dress of a national guardsman he had made his way without difficulty the sentinel stationed by the insurgents in the roue Mondetour had no occasion to give the alarm for a single national guardsman and he had allowed the latter to entangle himself in the street saying to himself probably it is a reinforcement in any case it is a prisoner the moment was too grave to admit of the sentinel abandoning his duty and his post of observation at the moment when Jean Valjean entered the redoubt no one had noticed him all eyes being fixed on the five chosen men in the four uniforms Jean Valjean also had seen and heard and he had silently removed his coat and flung it on the pile with the rest the emotion aroused was indescribable who is this man demanded boursuer he is a man who saves others replied con be faire Marius added in a grave voice I know him this guarantee satisfied everyone I will return to Jean Valjean welcome citizen and he added you know that we are about to die Jean Valjean without replying helped the insurgent whom he was saving to don his uniform end of book one chapter four chapters five and six of book one of les misérables volume five by Victor Hugo this is a Librevox recording all Librevox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit Librevox.org les misérables volume five by Victor Hugo translated by Isabelle Florence Hepgood book the first the war between four walls chapter five the horizon which one of a barricade the situation of all in that fatal hour and that pitiless place had as result and culminating point in Jean Ra's supreme melancholy Jean Ra bore within him the plenitude of the revolution he was incomplete however so far as the absolute can be so he had too much of Saint-Just about him Anacarsis Clutes still his mind in the society of the friends of the ABC had ended by undergoing a certain polarization from Combefeuille's ideas for some time past he had been gradually emerging from the narrow form of dogma and had allowed himself to incline to the broadening influence of progress and he had come to accept as a definitive and magnificent evolution the transformation of the great French Republic into the immense human Republic as far as the immediate means were concerned a violent situation being given he wished to be violent on that point he never varied and he remained of that epic and redoubtable school which is summed up in the words 83 Jean Ra was standing erect on the staircase of paving stones one elbow resting on the stock of his gun he was engaged in thought he quivered as at the passage of prophetic breaths places where death is have these effects of tripods a sort of stifle fire darted from his eyes which were filled with an inward look all at once he threw back his head his blonde locks fell back like those of an angel on the sombre quadriga made of stars they were like the main of a startled lion in the flaming of an halo and Jean Ra cried citizens do you picture the future to yourselves the streets of cities inundated with light green branches on the thresholds nations sisters men just blessing children the past loving the present thinkers entirely at liberty believers on terms of full equality for religion heaven god the direct priest human conscience become an altar no more hatreds the fraternity of the workshop and the school for soul penalty and recompense fame work for all right for all peace over all no more bloodshed no more wars happy mothers to conquer matter is the first step to realize the ideal is the second reflect on what progress has already accomplished formally the first human races be held with terror the hydra pass before their eyes breathing on the waters the dragon which bombeted flame the griffin who was the monster of the air and who flew with the wings of an eagle and the talons of a tiger fearful beasts which were above man man nevertheless spread his snares consecrated by intelligence and finally conquered these monsters we have vanquished the hydra and it is called the locomotive we are on the point of vanquishing the griffin it is called the balloon on the day when this promethean task shall be accomplished and when man shall have definitely harness to his will the triple shimmer of antiquity the hydra the dragon and the griffin he will be the master of water fire and a bear he will be for the rest of animated creation that which the ancient gods formally were to him citizens wither are we going to science made government to the force of things become the sole public force to the natural law having in itself its sanction and its penalty and promulgating itself by evidence to a dawn of truth corresponding to a dawn of day we are advancing to the union of peoples we are advancing to the unity of man no more fictions no more parasites the real governed by the true that is the goal civilization will hold its assizes at the summit of Europe and later on at the center of continents in a grand parliament of the intelligence something similar has already been seen the amphichtions had two sittings a year one at Delphos the seat of the gods and the other at Thermopylae in Delphos Europe will have her amphichtions the globe will have its amphichtions France bears this sublime future in her breast this is the gestation of the 19th century that which Greece sketched out is worthy of being finished by France listen to me you valiant artisan man of the republic truly behold the future yes you are right you had neither father nor mother you adopted humanity for your mother and right for your father you are about to die that is to say to triumph here citizens whatever happens today through our defeat as well as through our victory it is a revolution that we are about to create the whole city so revolutions illuminate the whole human race and what is the revolution that we shall cause we have just told you the revolution of the true from a political point of view there is but a single principle the sovereignty of man over himself this sovereignty of myself over myself is called liberty where two or three of these dimensions but in that association there is no abdication each sovereignty concedes a certain quantity of itself for the purpose of forming the common right this quantity is the same for all of us this identity of concession which each makes to all is called equality common right is nothing else than the protection of all beaming on the right of each eternity the point of intersection of all these assembled sovereign teases called society this intersection being a junction this point is a not hence what is called the social bond some say social contract which is the same thing the word contract being etymologically formed with the idea of a bond let us come to an understanding about equality for if liberty is the summit equality is the base equality citizens is not wholly a surface vegetation a society of great blades of grass and tiny oaks a proximity of jealousies which render each other null and void legally speaking it is all aptitudes possessed of the same opportunity politically it is all votes possessed of the same weight religiously it is all consciences possessed of the same right equality has an organ gratuitous and obligatory instruction the right to the alphabet that is where the beginning must be made the primary school imposed on all the secondary school offered to all that is the law from an identical school an identical society will spring yes instruction light everything comes from light and to it everything returns citizens the 19th century is great but the 20th century will be happy then there will be nothing more like the history of old we shall no longer as today have to fear a conquest an invasion an usurpation a rivalry arms in hand an interruption of civilization depending on a marriage of kings on a birth in hereditary tyrannies a partition of peoples by a congress a dismemberment because of the failure of a dynasty a combat of two religions meeting face to face like two bucks in the dark on the bridge of the infinite we shall no longer have to fear famine farming out rising from distress misery from the failure of work and the scaffold and the sword and battles and the roughianism of chance in the forest of events one might almost say there will be no more events we shall be happy the human race will accomplish its law as the terrestrial globe accomplishes its law harmony will be reestablished between the soul and the star the soul will gravitate around the truth as the planet around the light friends the present hour in which I am addressing you is a gloomy hour but these are terrible purchases of the future a revolution is a toll oh the human race will be delivered raised up, consoled we affirm it on this barrier whence should proceed that cry of love if not from the heights of sacrifice oh my brothers this is the point of junction of those who think and of those who suffer this barricade is not made of paving stones nor of joists nor of bits of iron it is made of two heaps a heap of ideas and a heap of woes here misery meets the ideal the day embraces the night I am about to die and thou shall be born again with me from the embrace of all desolations faith leaps forth sufferings bring hither their agony and ideas their immortality this agony and this immortality are about to join and constitute our death brothers he who dies here dies in the radiance of the future we are entering a tomb all flooded with the dawn a genre paused rather than became silent his lips continued to move silently as though he were talking to himself which caused them all to gaze attentively at him in the endeavor to hear more there was no applause but they whispered together for a long time speech being a breath a scene of intelligences resembles the wrestling of leaves Chapter 6 Marius Haggard Javert Laconic let us narrate what was passing in Marius's thoughts let the reader recall the state of his soul we have just recalled it everything was a vision to him now his judgment was disturbed Marius let us insist on this point was under the shadow of the great dark wings which are spread over those in the death agony he felt that he had entered the tomb it seemed to him that he was already on the other side of the wall and he no longer beheld the faces of the living except with the eyes of one dead how did Monsieur Fourchlevant come there why was he there what had he come there to do Marius did not address all these questions to himself besides since our despair has this peculiarity that it envelops others as well as ourselves it seemed logical to him that all the world should come thither to die only he thought of Cosette with a pang at his heart however Monsieur Fourchlevant did not speak to him did not look at him he had not even the air of hearing him when Marius raised his voice to say I know him as far as Marius was concerned this attitude of Monsieur Fourchlevant was comforting and if such a word can be used for such impressions we should say that it pleased him he had always felt the absolute impossibility of addressing that enigmatic man who was in his eyes both equivocal and imposing moreover it had been a long time since he had seen him and this still further augmented the impossibility for Marius's timid and reserved nature the five chosen men left the barricade by way of Mont de Tourlain they bore a perfect resemblance to members of the National Guard one of them wept as he took his leave and now they embraced those who remained when the five men sent back to life had taken their departure Angiolra thought of the man who had been condemned to death he entered the tap room Javert still bound to the post was engaged in meditation do you want anything Angiolra asked him Javert replied when are you going to kill me and all our cartridges just at present then give me a drink said Javert Angiolra himself offered him a glass of water and as Javert was pinioned he helped him to drink is that all inquired Angiolra I am uncomfortable against this post replied Javert you are not tender to have left me to pass the night here bind me as you please but you surely might lay me on a table like that other man and with a motion of the head he indicated the body of Missumabuff there was as the reader will remember a long broad table at the end of the room on which they had been running bullets and making cartridges all the cartridges having been made and all the powder used this table was free at Angiolra's command four insurgents unbound Javert from the post while they were loosing him a fifth held the bayonet against his breast leaving his arms tied behind his back they placed about his feet a slender but stout whip cord as is done to men on the point of mounting the scaffold which allowed him to take steps about 15 inches in length and made him walk to the table at the end of the room where they laid him down closely bound about the middle of the body by way of further security and by means of a rope fastened to his neck they added to the system of ligatures which rendered every attempt at escape impossible that sort of bond which is called in prisons a martingale which starting at the neck forks on the stomach and meets the hands after passing between the legs while they were binding Javert a man standing on the threshold with him with singular attention the shadow cast by this man made Javert turn his head he raised his eyes and recognized Jean-Vargent he did not even start but dropped his lids proudly and confined himself to the remark it is perfectly simple end of book one chapters five and six book one chapters seven and eight Les Miserables of volume five this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Les Miserables of volume five by Victor Hugo translated by Isabelle Florence Hepgood book the first the war between four walls chapter seven becomes aggravated the daylight was increasing rapidly not a window was opened not a door stood ajar it was the dawn but not the awakening the end of the rue de la chanvreurie opposite the barricade had been evacuated by the troops as we have stated it seemed to be free and presented itself to passersby with a sinister tranquility and a knee was as dumb as the avenue of the sphinx at teb not a living being in the crossroads which gleamed white in the light of the sun nothing is so mournful as this light in deserted streets nothing was to be seen but there was something to be heard a mysterious movement was going on at a certain distance it was evident that the critical moment was approaching as on the previous evening the sentinels had come in but this time all had come the barricade was stronger than on the occasion of the first attack since the departure of the five they had increased its height still further on the advice of the sentinels who had examined the region of Léal-Angela for fear of a surprise in the rear came to a serious decision he had the small gut of the Mont-de-Tour lane which had been left open up to that time barricaded for this purpose they tore up the pavement for the length of several houses more in this manner the barricade walled on three streets in front on the rue de la chanvrerie to the left on the rue du signe and de la petite trondrerie and to the right on the rue Mont-de-Tour was really almost impregnable it is true that they were fatally hemmed in there it had three fronts but no exit a fortress but a rat hole too said Corférac with a laugh Angela had about 30 paving stones torn up in excess said Beaussué piled up near the door of the wine shop the silence was now so profound in the quarter whence the attack must needs come that Angela had each man resume his post of battle an allowance of brandy was doled out to each nothing is more curious than a barricade preparing for an assault each man selects his place as though at the theater they jostle and elbow and crowd each other there are some who make stalls of paving stones here is a corner of the wall which is in the way it is removed here is a redan which may afford protection they take shelter behind it left-handed men are precious they take the places that are inconvenient to the rest many arrange to fight in a sitting posture they wish to be at ease to kill and to die comfortably in the sad war of june 1848 an insurgent who was a formidable marksman and who was firing from the top of a terrace upon a roof had a reclining chair brought there for his use a charge of grape shot found him out there as soon as the leader has given the order to clear the decks for action all disorderly movements cease there is no more pulling from one another there are no more coteries no more asides there is no more holding aloof everything in their spirits converges in and changes into a waiting for the assailants a barricade before the arrival of danger is chaos in danger it is discipline itself peril produces order as soon as angela had seized his double barreled rifle and had placed himself in a sort of embrasure which he had reserved for himself all the rest held their peace a series of faint sharp noises resounded confusedly along the wall of paving stones it was the men cocking their guns moreover their attitudes were prouder more confident than ever the excess of sacrifice strengthens they no longer cherished any hope but they had despair despair the last weapon which sometimes gives victory Virgil has said so supreme resources spring from extreme resolutions to embark in death is sometimes the means of escaping a shipwreck and the lid of the coffin becomes a plank of safety as on the preceding evening the attention of all was directed we might almost say leaned upon the end of the street now lighted up and visible they had not long to wait a stir began distinctly in the sand quarter but it did not resemble the movement of the first attack the flashing of chains the uneasy jolting of a mass the click of brass skipping along the pavement a sort of solemn uproar announced that some sinister construction of iron was approaching there arose a tremor in the bosoms of these peaceful old streets pierced and built for the fertile circulation of interests and ideas and which are not made for the ideals of war the fixity of I in all the combatants upon the extremity of the street became ferocious a cannon made its appearance artillery men were pushing the peace it was in firing trim the four carriage had been detached two upheld the gun carriage four were at the wheels others followed with the case on they could see the smoke of the burning lint stock fire shouted the whole barricade fired the report was terrible an avalanche of smoke covered and effaced both cannon and men after a few seconds the cloud dispersed and the cannon and men reappeared the gun crew had just finished rolling it slowly, correctly without haste into position facing the barricade not one of them had been struck then the captain of the peace bearing down upon the breach in order to raise the muzzle began to point the cannon with the gravity of an astronomer leveling a telescope bravo for the cannon years cried bosue and the whole barricade clapped their hands a moment later squarely planted in the very middle of the street a stride of the gutter the peace was ready for action a formidable pair of jaws yawned on the barricade come merrily now ejaculated kufiak that's the brutal part of it after the fill up on the nose the blow from the fist the army is reaching out to us the barricade is going to be severely shaken up the fusillade tries the cannon takes it is a piece of eight new model brass added kumbefe those pieces are libel to burst as soon as the proportion of ten parts of tin to one hundred of brass is exceeded the excess of tin renders them too tender then it comes to pass that they have caves and chambers when looked at from the vent hole in order to obviate this danger and to render it possible to force the charge it may become necessary to return to the process of the fourteenth century hooping and to encircle the piece on the outside with a series of unwelded steel bands from the breach to the trunnions in the meantime they remedy this defect as best they may they manage to discover where the holes are located in the vent of a cannon by means of a searcher but there is a better method with griboval's movable star in the sixteenth century remark beaux sué they used to rifle cannon yes, replied kumbefe that augments the projectile force but diminishes the accuracy of the firing in firing at short range the trajectory is not as rigid as could be desired the parabola is exaggerated the line of the projectile is no longer sufficiently rectilinear to allow of its striking intervening objects which is, nevertheless, a necessity of battle the importance of which increases with the proximity of the enemy to the charge this defect of the tension of the curve of the projectile in the rifled cannon of the sixteenth century arose from the smallness of the charge small charges for that sort of engine are imposed by the ballistic necessities such, for instance, as the preservation of the gun carriage in short, that despot the cannon cannot do all that it desires a cannonball only travels 600 leagues an hour light travels 70,000 leagues a second such is the superiority of jesus christ over napoleon reload your guns said angela how was the casing of the barricade going to behave under the cannonballs would they affect a breach that was the question while the insurgents were reloading their guns the artillery men were loading the cannon the anxiety in the redoubt was profound the shot sped the report burst forth present shouted a joyous voice and gavrosh flung himself into the barricade just as the ball dashed against it he came from the direction of the rudicine and he had nimbly climbed which fronted on the labyrinth of the rue de la petite troie de rue gavrosh produced a greater sensation in the barricade than the cannonball the ball buried itself in the mass of rubbish at the most there was an omnibus will broken and the old enceau cart was demolished on seeing this the barricade burst into a laugh go on shouted bosue to the terrorists chapter 8 the artillery men compel people to take them seriously they flocked around gavrosh but he had no time to tell anything marius drew him aside with a shutter what are you doing here hello said the child what are you doing here yourself and he stared at marius intently with his epic effrontery his eyes grew larger and he could not get within them it was with an accent of severity that marius continued who told you to come back did you deliver my letter at the address gavrosh was not without some compunctions in the matter of that letter in his haste to return to the barricade he had got rid of it rather than delivered it he was forced to acknowledge to himself that he had confided it to that stranger whose face he had not been able to make out it is true that the man was bare-headed but that was not sufficient in short he had been administering to himself little inward remonstrances and he feared marius's reproaches in order to extricate himself from the predicament he took the simplest course he lied abominably citizen i delivered the letter to the porter the lady was asleep she will have the letter when she wakes up marius had had two objects in sending that letter to bid farewell to causette and to save gavrosh he was obliged to content himself with the half of his desire the dispatch of his letter and the presence of messieurs for cheleval in the barricade was a coincidence which occurred to him he pointed out messieurs for cheleval to gavrosh do you know that man no said gavrosh gavrosh had in fact as we have just mentioned seen jan valjan only at night the troubled and unhealthy conjectures which had outlined themselves in marius's mind were dissipated did he know messieurs for cheleval's opinions perhaps messieurs for cheleval was a republican hence his very natural presence in this combat in the meanwhile gavrosh was shouting at the other end of the barricade my gun coferac had it returned to him gavrosh warned his comrades as he called them that the barricade was blocked he had had great difficulty in reaching it a battalion of the line whose arms were piled in the rue de la petite trouandeurée was on the watch on the side of the rue du signe on the opposite side the municipal guard occupied the rue des pracheurs the bulk of the army was facing them in front this information given gavrosh added I authorize you to hit him a tremendous whack meanwhile angela was straining his ears with a handbracher the assailants dissatisfied no doubt with their shot had not repeated it a company of infantry of the line had come up and occupied the end of the street behind the piece of ordinance the soldiers were tearing up the pavement and constructing with the stones a small low wall a sort of side work not more than 18 inches high and facing the barricade in the angle at the left of this épaulement there was visible the head of the column of a battalion from the suburbs massed in the rue Saint-Denis angela on the watch thought he distinguished the peculiar sound which is produced when the shells of grape shot are drawn from the caissons and he saw the commander of the piece change the elevation and incline the mouth of the cannon slightly to the left then the cannon ears began to load the piece the chief sees the lint-stock himself and lowered it to the vent down with your heads hug the wall shouted angela and all on your knees along the barricade the insurgents who were straggling in front of the wine shop and who had quitted their posts of combat on gavroshes of rival rushed pelmel towards the barricade but before angela's order could be executed the discharge took place with the terrifying rattle of a round of grape shot this is what it was in fact the charge had been aimed at the cut in the redoubt and had there rebounded from the wall and this terrible rebound had produced two dead and three wounded if this were continued the barricade was no longer tenable the grape shot made its way in a murmur of consternation arose let us prevent the second discharge said angela and lowering his rifle he took aim at the captain of the gun who at that moment was bearing down on the breach of his gun and rectifying and definitely fixing its pointing the captain of the piece was a handsome sergeant of artillery very young, blonde with a very gentle face and the intelligent air peculiar to that predestined and redoubtable weapon which by dint of perfecting itself in horror must end in killing war qu'en buffet who is standing beside angela scrutinized this young man what a pity said qu'en buffet what hideous things these butcheries are come when there are no more kings there will be no more war angela you are taking aim at that sergeant you are not looking at him fancy he is a charming young man he is intrepid it is evident that he is thoughtful those young artillery men are very well educated he has a father, a mother, a family he's probably in love he's not more than five and twenty at the most he might be your brother he is in angela yes replied qu'en buffet his mind too will let us not kill him let me alone it must be done and a tear trickled slowly down angela's marble cheek at the same moment he pressed the trigger of his rifle the flame leaped forth the artillery man turned around twice his arms extended in front of him his head uplifted as though for breath then he fell with his side on the gun and lay there motionless they could see his back from the center of which there flowed directly a stream of blood the ball had transversed his breast from side to side he was dead he had to be carried away and replaced by another several minutes were thus gained in fact chapters seven and eight chapters nine through eleven of book one of le misérables volume five by victorigo this is a liber vox recording all liber vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libervox.org le misérables volume five by victorigo translated by isabel florentz hepgood book one the war between four walls chapters nine through eleven chapter nine employment of the old talents of a poacher and that infallible marksmanship which influenced the condemnation of 1796 opinions were exchanged in the barricade the firing from the gun was about to begin again against that great shot they could not hold out a quarter of an hour longer it was absolutely necessary to deaden the blows angiolra issued this command we must place a mattress there we have none said qu'on veut faire the wounded are lying on them Jean Valjean who was seated apart on a stone post at the corner of the tavern with his gun between his knees had up to that moment taken no part in anything that was going on he did not appear to hear the combatants saying around him here is a gun that is doing nothing at the order issued by angiolra he rose it will be remembered that on the arrival of the rabble in the rue de la chanvrerie an old woman foreseeing the bullets had placed her mattress in front of her window an attic window was on the roof of a six-story house situated a little beyond the barricade the mattress placed crosswise supported at the bottom on two poles for drying linen was upheld at the top by two ropes which at that distance looked like two threads and which were attached to two nails planted in the window frames these ropes were distinctly visible like hairs against the sky can someone lend me a double-barreled rifle said Jean-Valjean angiolra who had just reloaded his handed it to him Jean-Valjean took aim at the attic window and fired one of the mattress ropes was cut the mattress now hung by one thread only Jean-Valjean fired the second charge the second rope lashed out of the attic window the mattress slipped between the two poles and fell into the street the barricade applauded all voices cried here is a mattress yes said Combe-Felbe who will go and fetch it the mattress had in fact fallen outside the barricade between besiegers and besieged now the death of the sergeant of artillery having exasperated the troop the soldiers had for several minutes been lying flat on their stomachs behind the line of paving stones which they had erected and in order to supply the force silence of the peace which was quiet while its service was in course of reorganization they had open fired on the barricade the insurgents did not reply to this musketry in order to spare their ammunition the fusillade broke against the barricade but the street which it filled was terrible Jean Valjean stepped out of the cut entered the street traversed the storm of bullets walked up to the mattress hoisted it upon his back and returned to the barricade he placed the mattress in the cut with his own hands he fixed it there against the wall in such a manner but that done they awaited the next discharge of grapeshot it was not long in coming the cannon vomited forth its package of buckshot with a roar but there was no rebound the effect which they had foreseen had been attained the barricade was saved citizens said Jean Valjean the republic thanks you they admired and laughed he exclaimed it is immoral that a mattress should have so much power triumph of that which yields over that which strikes with lightning but never mind glory to the mattress which annalls a cannon end of book one chapter nine chapter ten dawn at that moment awoke her chamber was narrow neat and obtrusive with a long sash window facing the east on the back courtyard of the house Cosette knew nothing of what was going on in Paris she had not been there on the preceding evening and she had already retired to her chamber when Toussaint had said it appears that there is a row not only a few hours but soundly she had had sweet dreams which possibly arose from the fact that her little bed was very white someone who was Marius had appeared to her in the light she awoke with the sun in her eyes which at first produced on her the effect of being a continuation of her dream her first thought on emerging from this dream was that she could not be the only one Cosette felt herself thoroughly reassured like Jean Vajon she had a few hours previously passed through that reaction of the soul which absolutely will not hear of unhappiness she began to cherish hope with all her might without knowing why then she felt a pang at her heart it was three days but she said to herself that he must have received her letter that he knew where she was and that he was so clever that he would find means of reaching her and that certainly today and perhaps that very morning it was broad daylight but the rays of light were very horizontal she thought that it was very early but that she must rise nevertheless in order to receive Marius she felt that she could not live without Marius and that consequently that was sufficient and that Marius would come no objection was valid all this was certain it was monstrous enough already to have suffered for three days Marius absent three days this was horrible on the part of the good God now this cruel teasing from on high had been gone through with Marius was about to arrive and he would bring good news youth is made thus it quickly dries its eyes it finds sorrow useless and does not accept it youth is the smile of the future in the presence of an unknown quantity which is itself it is natural to it to be happy it seems as though its respiration were made of hope moreover Cosette could not remember what Marius had said to her on the subject of this absence which was to last only one day and what explanation of it he had given her everyone has noticed with what nimbleness a coin which one has dropped on the ground rolls away and hides and with what art renders itself undiscoverable there are thoughts which play us the same trick they nestle away in a corner of our brain that is the end of them they are lost it is impossible to lay the memory on them Cosette was somewhat vexed at the useless little effort made by her memory she told herself that it was very naughty and very wicked no words uttered by Marius she sprang out of bed and accomplished the two ablutions of soul and body her prayers and her toilette one may in any case of exigency introduce the reader into a nuptial chamber not into a virginal chamber verse would hardly venture it prose must not it is the interior of a flower that is not yet unfolded it is whiteness in the dark it is the private cell of a closed lily which must not be gazed upon by man so long as the sun has not gazed upon it woman in the bud is sacred that innocent bud which opens that adorable half nudity which is afraid of itself that white foot which takes refuge in a slipper that throat which veils itself before a mirror as though a mirror were an eye that chemise which makes haste to rise up and conceal the shoulder for a creaking bit of furniture or a passing vehicle those cords tied those clasps fastened those laces drawn those tremors those shivers of cold and modesty that exquisite a fright in every movement that almost winged uneasiness where there is no cause for alarm the successive phases of dressing as charming as the clouds of dawn it is not fitting that all this should be narrated and it is too much to have even called attention to it the eye of man must be more religious in the presence of the rising of a young girl than in the presence of the rising of a star the possibility of herding should inspire an augmentation of respect the down on the peach the bloom on the plum the radiated crystal of the snow the wing of the butterfly powdered with feathers are coarse compared to that chastity which does not even know the young girl is only the flash of a dream and is not yet a statue her bed chamber is hidden in the somber part of the ideal the indiscreet touch of a glance brutalizes this vague penumbra here contemplation is profanation we shall therefore show nothing of that sweet little flutter of cosettes rising an oriental tale relates how the rose was made white by God but that Adam looked upon her when she was unfolding and she was ashamed and turned crimson we are of the number who fall speechless in the presence of young girls and flowers since we think them worthy of veneration cosette dressed herself very hastily combed and dressed her hair which was a very simple matter in those days when women did not swell out their curls and bands with cushions and puffs and did not put crinoline in their locks then she opened the window and cast her eyes around in every direction hoping to describe some bit of the street an angle of the house an edge of pavement she might be able to watch for malus there but no view of the outside was to be had the back court was surrounded by tolerably high walls and the outlook was only on several gardens cosette pronounced these gardens hideous for the first time in her life she found flowers ugly the smallest scrap of the gutter of the street better she decided to gaze at the sky as though she thought that malus might come from that quarter all at once she burst into tears not that this was fickleness of soul but hopes cut in twain by rejection that was her case she had a confused consciousness of something horrible thoughts were rife in the air in fact she told herself that she was not sure of anything that to withdraw herself from sight was to be lost and the idea that malus could return to her from heaven appeared to her no longer charming but mournful then as is the nature of these clouds calm returned to her and hope in a sort of unconscious smile which yet indicated trust in God everyone in the house was still asleep a country like silence reigned not a shutter had been opened the porter's lodge was closed Toussaint had not risen and cosette naturally thought that her father was asleep she must have suffered much and she must have still been suffering greatly she told herself that her father had been in kind but she counted on malus the eclipse of such a light was decidedly impossible now and then she heard sharp shocks in the distance and she said it is odd that people should be opening and shutting their carriage gates so early they were the reports of the cannon battering the barricade a few feet below cosette's window in the ancient and perfectly black cornice of the wall there was a martin's nest the curve of this nest formed a little projection beyond the cornice so that from above it was possible to look into this little paradise the mother was there spreading her wings like a fan over her brood the father fluttered about flew away then came back bearing in his beak food and kisses the dawning day gilded this happy thing the great law multiply lay their smiling in august and that sweet mystery unfolded in the glory of the morning cosette with her hair in the sunlight her soul absorbed in chimeras illumined by love within her eyes out bent over mechanically and almost without daring to avow to herself that she was thinking at the same time of malus began to gaze at these birds at this family at that male and female that mother and her little ones with the profound trouble which a nest produces on a virgin end of book one chapter eleven the shot which misses nothing and kills no one the assailants fire continued musketry and grape shot alternated but without committing great ravages to tell the truth the top alone of the Corinth facade suffered the window on the first floor and the attic window in the roof riddled with buckshot and viscayans were slowly losing their shape the combatants who had been posted there had been obliged to withdraw however this is according to the tactics of barricades to fire for a long while in order to exhaust the insurgents ammunition if they commit the mistake of replying when it is perceived from the slackening of their fire that they have no more powder than the salt is made Anjolra had not fallen into this trap the barricade did not reply at every discharge by platoons Gavroge puffed out his cheek with his tongue a sign of supreme disdain good for you said he rip up the cloth we want some lint Courferac called the grape shot to order for the little effect which it produced and said to the canon you are growing diffuse my good fellow one gets puzzled in battle as at a ball it is probable that this silence on the part of the redoubt began to render the besiegers uneasy and to make them fear some unexpected incident and that they felt the necessity of getting a clear view behind that heap of paving stones and of knowing what was going on behind that impassable wall which received blows without retorting the insurgents suddenly perceived a helmet glittering in the sun on a neighboring roof a fireman had placed his back against a tall chimney and seemed to be acting as sentinel his glance fell directly down into the barricade there is an embarrassing water said Anjolra Jean Vajon had returned Anjolra's rifle but he had his own gun without saying a word he took aim at the fireman and a second later the helmet smashed by a bullet rattled noisily into the street the terrified soldier made haste to disappear a second observer took his place this one was an officer Jean Vajon who had reloaded his gun took aim at the newcomer and sent the officer's casque to join the soldiers the officer did not persist and retired speedily this time the warning was understood no one made his appearance thereafter on that roof and the idea of spying on the barricade was abandoned why did you not kill the man bossué as Jean Vajon Jean Vajon made no reply end of book 1 chapters 9 through 11