 CHAPTER XII. BASUE MUTTERED IN COMBAFAIR'S EAR. HE DID NOT ANSWER MY QUESTION. HE IS A MAN WHO DOES GOOD BY GUNSHOTS, SAID COMBAFAIR. THOSE WHO HAVE PRESERVED SOME MEMORY OF THIS ALREADY DISTANT EAPOCK KNOW THAT THE NATIONAL GUARD FROM THE SUBURBS WAS VALIENT AGAINST INSURRECTIONS. IT WAS PARTICULARLY ZELUS AND INTREPID IN THE DAYS OF JUNE, 1832, A CERTAIN GOOD DRAM SHOPKEEPER OF PENTAIN DE VIRTU, OR LA CUNET, WHOSE ESTABLISHMENT HAD BEEN CLOSED BY THE RIOTS, BECAME LEONINE AT THE SIGHT OF HIS DESERTED DANCE HALL, AND GOT HIMSELF KILLED TO PRESERVE THE ORDER REPRESENTED BY A TEA-GARDEN. IN THAT BOURGEOIS AND HEROIC TIME, IN THE PRESENCE OF IDEAS WHICH HAD THEIR NIGHTS, INTERESTS, HAD THEIR PALADINS, THE PROSENESS OF THE ORIGINATORS DETRACTED NOTHING FROM THE BRAVERY OF THE MOVEMENT, THE DEMINUTION OF A PILE OF CROWNS MADE BANKERS SING THE MARSEILES, THEY SHED THEIR BLOOD LEARICALLY FOR THE COUNTING HOUSE, AND THEY DEFENDED THE SHOP, THAT AMENSE DEMINITIVE OF THE FATHERLAND, WITH LACIDEMONIAN ENTHUSIASM. AT BOTTOM WE WILL OBSERVE THERE WAS NOTHING IN ALL THIS THAT WAS NOT EXTREMELY SERIOUS. IT WAS SOCIAL ELEMENTS ENTERING INTO STRIFE, WHILE WAITING THE DAY WHEN THEY SHOULD ENTER INTO EQUILIBRIUM. Another sign of the times was the anarchy mingled with governmentalism, the barbarous name of the correct party. People were for order, in combination with a lack of discipline. The drums suddenly beat capricious calls at the command of such or such a colonel of the National Guard such and such a captain went into action through inspiration. Such and such national guardsmen fought for an idea and on their own account. At critical moments, on days, they took counsel less of their leaders than of their instincts. There existed in the army of order veritable gorillas, some of the sword like fanico, others of the pen, like Henri von Fred. Civilisation, unfortunately, represented at this epoch rather by an aggregation of interests than by a group of principles, was or thought itself in peril. It set up the cry of alarm, each constituting himself a centre, defended it, suckered it, and protected it with his own head, and the first comer took it upon himself to save society. Zeal sometimes proceeded to extermination. A platoon of the National Guard would constitute itself on its own authority a private council of war, and judge and execute a captured insurgent in five minutes. It was an improvisation of this sort that had slain Jean Prouvert, fierce lynch-law with which no one party had any right to reproach the rest, for it has been applied by the Republic in America as well as by the monarchy in Europe. This lynch-law was complicated with mistakes. On one day of riding, a young poet named Paul M. Garnier was pursued in the Place Royale with a bayonet at his loins, and only escaped by taking refuge under the port-co-sher of No. 6. They shouted. There's another of those Saint-Simonian, and they wanted to kill him. Now he had under his arm a volume of the memoirs of the Duke de Saint-Simon. A National Guard had read the words Saint-Simon on the book, and had shouted, Death. On the 6th of June, 1832, a company of the National Guards from the suburbs, commanded by the Captain Fanico, above mentioned, had itself decimated in the Rue de la Chambre Veverie, out of Caprice and its own good pleasure. This fact, singular though it may seem, was proved at the judicial investigation opening consequence of the insurrection of 1832. And Fanico, a bold and impatient bourgeois, a sort of con de tier of the order of those whom we have just characterized, a fanatical and intractable governmentalist, could not resist the temptation to fire prematurely, and the ambition of capturing the barricade alone and unaided, that is to say, with his company, exasperated by the successive apparition of the red flag and the old coat which he took for the black flag, he loudly blamed the generals and chiefs of the corps, who were holding counsel and did not think that the moment for decisive assault had arrived, and who were allowing the insurrection to fry in its own fat, to use the celebrated expression of one of them. For his part he thought the barricade ripe, and as that which is ripe ought to fall, he made the attempt. He commanded men as resolute as himself, raging fellows, as a witness said. His company, the same which had shot Jean Prouvert the poet, was the first of the battalion posted at the angle of the street. At the moment they were least expecting it, the captain launched his men against the barricade. This movement, executed with more goodwill than strategy, cost the fanico company dear. Before it had traversed two-thirds of the street, it was received by a general discharge from the barricade. For the most audacious, who were running on in front, were moaned down point-blank at the very foot of the readout, and this courageous throng of national guards, very brave men but lacking in military tenacity, were forced to fall back, after some hesitation, leaving fifteen corpses on the pavement. This momentary hesitation gave the insurgents time to reload their weapons, and a second and very destructive discharge struck the company before it could regain the corner of the street, its shelter. A moment more, and it was caught between two fires, and it received the volley from the battery-piece, which, not having received the order, had not discontinued its firing. The intrepid and imprudent fanico was one of the dead from this grape-shot. He was killed by the cannon, that is to say, by order. This attack, which was more furious than serious, irritated Anjulhra. The fool, said he. They are getting their own men killed, and they are using up our ammunition for nothing. Anjulhra spoke like the real general of the insurrection, which he was. Insurrection and repression do not fight with equal weapons. Insurrection which is speedily exhausted, has only a certain number of shots to fire, and a certain number of combatants to expend. An empty cartridge-box, a man killed, cannot be replaced. As repression has the army, it does not count its men. And as it has Vincennes, it does not count its shots. Revolution has as many regiments as the barricade has men, and as many arsenals as the barricade has cartridge-boxes. Thus there are struggles of one against a hundred, which always end in crushing the barricade, unless the revolution, uprising suddenly, flings into the ballads its flaming archangel's sword. This does happen sometimes. Then everything rises, the pavements begin to see, popular read-outs abound. Paris quivers supremely. The quid divinum is given forth. A tenth of August is in the air. A twenty-ninth of July is in the air. A wonderful light appears. The yawning maw of force draws back. And the army, that lion, sees before it a wrecked and tranquil, that prophet, France. Chapter 13. Passing Gleams. In the chaos of sentiments and passions which defend a barricade, there is a little of everything. There is bravery. There is youth, honour, enthusiasm, the ideal, conviction, the rage of the gambler, and, above all, intermittences of hope. One of these intermittences, one of these vague quivers of hope, suddenly traverse the barricade of the roue de la chanverie at the moment when it was least expected. Listen, suddenly cried Angera, who was still on the watch. It seems to me that Paris is waking up. It is certain that, on the morning of the sixth of June, the insurrection broke out afresh for an hour or two, to a certain extent. The obstinacy of the alarm peal of Salmerie reanimated some fancies. Barricades were begun in the roue du Poirier and the roue des graviers. In front of the port Saint-Martin, a young man armed with a rifle, attacked alone a squadron of cavalry. In plain sight, on the open boulevard, he placed one knee on the ground, shouldered his weapon, fired, killed the commander of the squadron, and turned away, saying, there's another who will do us no more harm. He was put to the sword. In the roue Saint-Denis, a woman fired on the National Guard from behind a lowered blind. The slats of the blind could be seen to tremble at every shot. A child 14 years of age was arrested in the roue de la chanverie with his pockets full of cartridges. Many posts were attacked. At the entrance to the roue Bertain Poirier, a very lively and utterly unexpected fusillade, welcomed a regiment of Couracier, at whose head marched Marshal General Cavagnon de Barac. In the roue planche mibré, they threw old pieces of pottery and household utensils down on the soldiers from the roues. A bad sign, and when this matter was reported to Marshal Sou, Napoleon's old lieutenant grew thoughtful, as he recalled Souche's saying at Saragossa, we are lost when the old women empty their poulte chambre on our heads. These general symptoms, which presented themselves at the moment when it was thought that the uprising had been rendered local, this fever of wrath, these sparks which flew hither and thither above those deep masses of combustibles which are called the Foubours of Paris, all this taken together, disturbed the military chiefs. They made haste to stamp out these beginnings of conflagration. They delayed the attack on the barricades Mopé, de la Chovier, and Samarie, until these sparks had been extinguished, in order that they might have to deal with the barricades only, and be able to finish them at one blow. Columns were thrown into the streets where there was fermentation, sweeping the large, sounding the small, right and left, now slowly and cautiously, now at full charge. The troops broke in the doors of houses when shots had been fired. At the same time, maneuvers by the cavalry dispersed the groups on the boulevard. This repression was not affected without some commotion, and without that tumultuous uproar peculiar to collisions between the army and the people. This is what Anjolra had caught up in the intervals of the cannonade and the musketry. Moreover, he had seen wounded men passing the end of the street in litters, and he said to Corféraque, these wounded do not come from us. Their hope did not last long. The gleam was quickly eclipsed. In less than half an hour, what was in the air vanished. It was a flash of lightning, unaccompanied by thunder, and the insurgents felt that sort of ledden cope with the indifference of the people castes over obstinate and deserted men fall over them once more. The general movement, which seemed to have assumed a vague outline, had miscarried, and the attention of the minister of war and the strategy of the generals could now be concentrated on the three or four barricades which still remained standing. The sun was mounting above the horizon, and insurgent hailed Anjolra. We are hungry here. Are we really going to die like this without anything to eat? Anjolra, who was still leaning on his elbows at his embrasure, made an affirmative sign with his head, but without taking his eyes from the end of the street. End of Book One, Chapter 13. Chapters 14 to 15 of Book One of Lémi Zerab, 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. Recording by Ella Jane Quentin. Lémi Zerab, Volume 5 by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabelle Florence Hapkut. Book One, The War Between Four Walls. Chapters 14 to 15. Chapter 14, wherein will appear the name of Anjolra's mistress. Corferac, seated on a paving stone beside Anjolra, continued to insult the cannon, and each time that gloomy cloud of projectiles, which is called Grape Shot, passed overhead with its terrible sound, he assailed it with a burst of irony. You are wearing out your lungs, poor, brutal old fellow. You pain me, you are wasting your row. That's not thunder, it's a cough. And the bystanders laughed. Corferac and Basouet, whose brave good humor increased with the peril, like Madame Scarrant, replaced nourishment with pleasantry. And as wine was lacking, they poured out gaiety to all. I admire Anjolra, said Basouet. His impassive temerity astounds me. He lives alone, which renders him a little sad, perhaps. Anjolra complains of his greatness, which binds him to widowhood. The rest of us have mistresses, more or less. Who make us crazy, that is to say, brave. When a man is as much in love as a tiger, the least that he can do is fight like a lion. That is one way of taking our revenge for the capers that may damn our grisette play on us. Roland gets himself killed for Angelique. All our heroism comes from our women. A man without a woman is a pistol without a trigger. It is the woman that sets the man off. While Anjolra has no woman, he is not in love, and yet he manages to be intrepid. It is a thing unheard of that a man should be as cold as ice and as bold as fire. Anjolra did not appear to be listening, but had anyone been near him, that person would have heard him mutter in a low voice. Patria. Basue was still laughing when Corp Firoc exclaimed, news, and assuming the tone of an usher making an announcement, he added, my name is eight pounder. In fact, a new personage had entered on the scene. This was a second piece of ordinance. The artillery men rapidly performed their maneuvers in force and placed this second piece in line with the first. This outlined the catastrophe. A few minutes later, the two pieces rapidly served, were firing point blank at the readout. The platoon firing of the line and of the soldiers from the suburbs sustained the artillery. Another cannonade was audible at some distance. At the same time that the two guns were furiously attacking the readout from the Rue de la Chantverie, two other cannons, trained one from the Rue Saint Denis, the other from the Rue au Prix le Boucher, were riddling the Saint-Marie barricade. The four cannons echoed each other mournfully. The barking of these somber dogs of war replied to each other. One of the two pieces which was now battering the barricade on the Rue de la Chantverie was firing Grape-shot, the other balls. The piece which was firing balls was pointed a little high and the aim was calculated so that the ball struck the extreme edge of the upper crest of the barricade and crumbled the stone down upon the insurgents, mingled with bursts of Grape-shot. The object of this mode of firing was to drive the insurgents from the summit of the readout and to compel them to gather close in the interior. That is to say, this announced the assault. The combatants once driven from the crest of the barricade by balls and from the windows of the cabaret by Grape-shot, the attacking columns could venture into the street without being picked off. Perhaps even without being seen could briskly and suddenly scale the readout as on the preceding evening and, who knows, take it by surprise. It is absolutely necessary that the inconvenience of those guns should be diminished, said Angera, and he shouted, fire on the artillery men. All were ready. The barricade which had long been silent poured forth a desperate fire. Seven or eight discharges followed with a sort of rage and joy. The street was filled with blinding smoke and at the end of a few minutes a thwart dismissed all streak with flame. Two thirds of the gunners could be distinguished lying beneath the wheels of the cannons. Those who were left standing continued to serve the pieces with severe tranquility, but the fire had slackened. Things are going well now, said Basway to Angera, success. Angera shook his head and replied, another quarter of an hour of this success and there will not be any cartridges left in the barricade. It appears that Gavrash overheard this remark. Chapter 15. Gavrash outside. Korfirak suddenly caught sight of someone at the base of the barricade outside in the street amid the bullets. Gavrash had taken a bottle basket from the wine shop, had made his way out through the cut and was quietly engaged in emptying the full cartridge boxes of the National Guardsmen who had been killed on the slope of the readout into his basket. What are you doing there? asked Korfirak. Gavrash raised his face. I'm filling my basket, citizen. Don't you see the grape-shot? Gavrash replied, well, it is raining, what then? Korfirak shouted, come in. Instanter, said Gavrash, and with a single bound he plunged into the street. It will be remembered that Fanico's company had left behind it a trail of bodies. Twenty corpses lay scattered here and there on the pavement through the whole length of the street. Twenty cartouches for Gavrash meant a provision of cartridges for the barricade. The smoke in the street was like a fog. Whoever has beheld a cloud which has fallen into a mountain gorge between two peaked escarpments can imagine this smoke rendered denser and thicker by two gloomy rows of lofty houses. It rose gradually and was incessantly renewed, hence a twilight which made even the broad daylight turn pale. The combatants could hardly see each other from one end of the street to the other short as it was. This obscurity which had probably been desired and calculated on by the commanders who were to direct the assault on the barricade was useful to Gavrash. Beneath the folds of this veil of smoke and thanks to his small size he could advance tolerably far into the street without being seen. He rifled the first seven or eight cartridge boxes without much danger. He crawled flat on his belly, galloped on all fours, took his basket and his teeth, twisted, glided, undulated, wound from one dead body to another, and emptied the cartridge box or cartouche as a monkey opens a nut. They did not dare to shout to him to return from the barricade which was quite near for fear of attracting attention to him. On one body, that of a corporal, he found a powder flask. For thirst, said he, putting it in his pocket. Idented advancing, he reached a point where the fog of the fuselage became transparent, so that the sharpshooters of the line ranged on the outlook behind their paving stone dyke, and the sharpshooters of the baleum, massed at the corner of the street, suddenly pointed out to each other something moving through the smoke. At the moment when Gavrash was relieving a sergeant who was lying near a stone door-post of his cartridges, a bullet struck the body. Fikr, ejaculated Gavrash, they are killing my dead men for me. A second bullet struck a spark from the pavement beside him. A third overturned his basket. Gavrash looked and saw that this came from the men of the banlieue. He sprang to his feet, stood erect, with his hair flying in the wind, his hands on his hips, his eyes fixed on the National Guardsmen who were firing, and sang. On et laïd à Nanterre, c'est la faute à Volterre. Et bête à Palazaux, c'est la faute à Rousseau. Men are ugly at Nanterre, tis the fault of Volterre, and dull at Palazaux, tis the fault of Rousseau. Then he picked up his basket, replaced the cartridges which had fallen from it without missing a single one, and advancing toward the fusilade set about plundering another cartridge-box. There a fourth bullet missed him again. Gavrash sang. Je ne suis pas notaire, c'est la faute à Volterre. Je suis un petit oiseau, c'est la faute à Rousseau. I am not a notary, tis the fault of Volterre. I am a little bird, tis the fault of Rousseau. A fifth bullet only succeeded in drawing from him a third couplet. Joie est mon caractère, c'est la faute à Volterre. Misère est mon trousseau, c'est la faute à Rousseau. Thus it went on for some time. It was a charming and terrible sight. Gavrash, though shot at, was teasing the fusilade. He had the air of being greatly diverted. It was the sparrow pecking at the sportsman. To each discharge he retorted with a couplet. They aimed at him constantly and always missed him. The National Guardsmen, they were the only ones who had the chance to see him. They were the only ones who had the chance to see him. The National Guardsmen and the soldiers laughed as they took aim at him. He lay down, sprang to his feet, hid in the corner of a doorway. Then made abound, disappeared, reappeared, scampered away, returned, replied to the grapeshot with his thumb at his nose, and all the while went on pillaging the cartouches, emptying the cartridge-boxes, and filling his basket. The insurgents panting with anxiety followed him with their eyes. The barricade trembled. He sang. He was not a child. He was not a man. He was a strange, gammon fairy. He might have been called the invulnerable dwarf of the fray. The bullets flew after him. He was more nimble than they. He played a fearful game of hide-and-seek with death. Every time that the flat-nosed face of the spectre approached, the urchin administered to it a fillip. One bullet, however, better aimed or more treacherous than the rest, finally struck the will of the wisp of a child. Gavrash was seen to stagger, then he sank to the earth. The whole barricade gave vent to a cry, but there was something of anteus in that pygmy. For the gammon to touch the pavement is the same as for the giant to touch the earth. Gavrash had fallen only to rise again. He remained in a sitting posture. A long thread of blood streaked his face. He raised both arms in the air, glanced in the direction once the shot had come, and began to sing. Je suis tombée par terre, c'est la faute, à Voltaire, le nez d'un louriso, c'est la faute. I have fallen to the earth, tis the fault of Voltaire. With my nose in the gutter, tis the fault of... He did not finish. A second bullet from the same marksman stopped him short. This time he fell face downward on the pavement and moved no more. His grand little soul had taken its flight. End of book one, chapters fourteen to fifteen. Chapter sixteen of book one of Les Miserables, volume five 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. Recording by Karen. Les Miserables, volume five by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood. Book one, chapter sixteen. How from a brother one becomes a father. At that same moment in the Garden of the Luxembourg, for the gaze of the drama must be everywhere present, two children were holding each other by the hand. One might have been seven years old, the other five. The rain, having soaked them, they were walking along the paths on the sunny side. The elder was leading the younger. They were pale and ragged. They had the air of wild birds. The smaller of them said, I am very hungry. The elder, who was already somewhat of a protector, was leading his brother with his left hand, and in his right he carried a small stick. They were alone in the garden. The garden was deserted. The gates had been closed by order of the police, on account of the insurrection. The troops who had been bivouacking there had departed for the exigencies of combat. How did those children come there? Perhaps they had escaped from some guard-house, which stood ajar. Perhaps there was a vicinity at the barrière d'enfer, or on the esplan de la observatoire, or in the neighbouring Carrefour, dominated by the pediment on which could be read, in venerant par voulum panis involutum, some Montmanx booth from which they had fled. Perhaps they had, on the previous evening, escaped the eye of the inspectors of the garden at the hour of closing, and had passed the night in some one of those sentry boxes where people read the papers. The fact is they were stray lambs, and they seemed free. To be a stray and to seem free is to be lost. These poor little creatures were, in fact, lost. These two children were the same over whom Gavraj had been put to some trouble, as the reader will recollect. Children of the Tenardier, leased out to Magnon, attributed to Monsieur Guy Normand, and now leaves fallen from all these rootless branches and swept over the ground by the wind. Their clothing, which had been clean in Magnon's day, and which had served her as a prospectus with Monsieur Guy Normand, had been converted into rags. Henceforth these beings belonged to the statistics as abandoned children, whom the police took note of, collect, misle, and find again on the pavements of Paris. It required the disturbance of a day like that to account for these miserable little creatures being in that garden. If the superintendents had caught sight of them, they would have driven such rags forth. Poor little things do not enter public gardens. Still, people should reflect that as children they have a right to flowers. These children were their thanks to the locked gates. They were their contrary to the regulations. They had slipped into the garden, and there they remained. Closed gates do not dismiss the inspectors, oversight is supposed to continue, but it grows slack and reposes, and the inspectors move by the public anxiety and more occupied with the outside than the inside, no longer glanced into the garden and had not seen the two delinquents. It had rained the night before, and even a little in the morning. But in June showers do not count for much. An hour after storm it can hardly be seen that the beautiful blonde day has wept. The earth in summer is as quickly dried as a cheek of a child. At that period of the solstice, the light of full noon day is, so to speak, poignant. It takes everything. It applies itself to the earth and superposes itself with a sort of suction. Some would say that the sun was thirsty. A shower is but a glass of water. A rainstorm is instantly drunk up. In the morning everything was dripping. In the afternoon everything is powdered over. Nothing is so worthy of admiration as foliage washed by the rain and wiped by the rays of sunlight. It is warm freshness. The gardens and meadows having water at their roots and sun in their flowers become perfuming pans of incense and smoke with all their odors at once. Everything smiles, sings, and offers itself. One feels greatly intoxicated. The springtime is a provisional paradise. The sun helps man to have patience. There are beings who demand nothing further. Mortals who have in the azure of heaven say, it is enough. Contemplators absorbed in the wonderful, dipping into the idolatry of nature, indifferent to good and evil, contemplators of cosmos and radiantly forgetful of man, who do not understand how people can occupy themselves with the hunger of these and the thirst of those, with the nudity of the poor in winter, with the lymphatic curvature of the little spinal column, with the pallet, the attic, the dungeon, and the rags of shivering young girls, when they can dream beneath the trees, peaceful and terrible spirits they, and pitilessly satisfied. Strange to say, the infinite suffices them. That great need of man, the finite which admits of embrace, they ignore. The finite which admits of progress and sublime toil, they do not think about. The indefinite, which is born from the human and divine combination of the infinite and the finite, escapes them, provided that they are face to face with immensity, they smile. Joy never, ecstasy forever. Their lifelies in surrendering their personality in contemplation, the history of humanity is for them only a detailed plan. All is not there, the true all remains without. What is the use of busying oneself over that detailed man? Man suffers, that's quite possible. But look at Aldebaran rising. The mother has no more milk, the newborn babe is dying. I know nothing about that. But just look at this wonderful rosette, which is sliced of wood cells of the pine present under the microscope. Compare the most beautiful meckling lace to that, if you can. These thinkers forget to love. The zodiac thrives with them to such a point that it prevents their seeing the weeping child. God eclipses their souls. This is a family of minds which are at once great and petty. Horace was one of them. So was Goethe. Lafontaine, perhaps. Magnificent egoists of the infinite. Tranquil spectators of sorrow. Who do not behold Nero if the weather be fair. For whom the sun conceals a funeral pile. Who would look on at an execution by the guillotine in the search for an effect of light. Who hear nearer to the cry, nor the sob, nor the death rattle, nor the alarm peel. For whom everything is well, since there is a month of May. Who so long as there are clouds of purple and gold above their heads declare themselves content. And who are determined to be happy until the radiance of the stars and the songs of the birds are exhausted. These are dark radiances. They have no suspicion that they are to be pitied. Certainly they are so. He who does not weep does not see. They are to be admired and pitied, as one would both pity and admire a being at once night and day, without eyes beneath his lashes, but with a star on his brow. The indifference of these thinkers is, according to some, a superior philosophy. That may be. But in this superiority there is some infirmity. One may be immortal and yet limp, witness Vulcan. One may be more than man and less than man. There is incomplete immensity in nature. Who knows whether the sun is not a blind man. But then what? In whom can we trust? Solom qui stitere falsum aureat. Who shall dare to say that the sun is false? Thus certain geniuses themselves, certain very lofty mortals, man-stars, may be mistaken. That which is on high at the summit, at the crest, at the zenith. That which sends down so much light on the earth, sees but little, sees badly, sees not at all. Is not this a desperate state of things? No. But what is there then above the sun? The god. On the 6th of June, 1832, about eleven o'clock in the morning, the Luxembourg solitary and depopulated was charming. The queen conxes and flowerbeds shed forth balm and dazzling beauty into the sunlight. The branches wild with a brilliant glow of midday seemed endeavouring to embrace. In the sycamores there was an uproar of linets, sparrows triumphed. Woodpeckers climbed among the chestnut trees, administering little pecks on the bark. The flowerbeds accepted the legitimate royalty of the lilies. The most agust of perfumes is that which emanates from whiteness. The peppery odor of the carnations was perceptible. The old crows of Merida Medici were amorous in the tall trees. The sun, gilded and purpled, set fire to enlighten up the tulips, which are nothing but all the varieties of flame made into flowers. All around the banks of tulips the bees, the sparks of these flame flowers, hummed. All was grace and gaiety, even the impending rain. This relapse by which the lilies of the valley and the honeysuckles were destined to profit had nothing disturbing about it. The swallows indulged in the charming threat of flying low. He who was there aspired to happiness. Life smelled good. All nature exhaled candor, help, assistance, paternity, caress, dawn. The thoughts which fell from heaven were sweet as a tiny hand of a baby when one kisses it. The statues under the trees, white and nude, had robes of shadow pierced with light. These goddesses were all tattered with sunlight. Rays hung from them on all sides. Around the great fountain the earth was already dried up to the point of being burnt. There were sufficient breeze to raise little insurrections of dust here and there. A few yellow leaves left over from the autumn chased each other merrily and seemed to be playing tricks on each other. This abundance of light had something indescribably reassuring about it. Life, sap, heat, odors overflowed. One was conscious beneath creation of the enormous size of the source. In all these breaths permeated with love, in this interchange of reverberations and reflections, in this marvelous expenditure of rays, in this infinite outpouring of liquid gold, when felt the prodigality of the inexhaustible, and behind the splendor as behind a curtain of flame, one caught a glimpse of God, that millionaire of stars. Thanks to the sand there was not a speck of mud, thanks to the rain there was not a grain of ashes. The clumps of blossoms had just been bathed, every sort of velvet, satin, gold and varnish, which springs from the earth in the form of flowers was irreproachable. This magnificence was cleanly. The grand silence of happy nature filled the garden, a celestial silence that is compatible with a thousand sorts of music, the cooing of nests, the buzzing of swarms, the fluttering of the breeze. All the harmony of the season was complete in one gracious whole. The entrances and exits of spring took place in proper order. The lilacs ended, the jasmine began. Some flowers were tardy, some insects in advance of their time. The vanguard of the red June butterflies fraternized with the rearguard of the white butterflies of May. The plantain trees were getting their new skins, the breeze hollowed out undulations in the magnificency normity of the chestnut trees. It was splendid. A veteran from the neighboring barracks who was gazing through the fence said, Here is a spring presenting arms and in full uniform. All nature was breakfasting, creation was at table, this was its hour. The great blue cloth was spread in the sky and the great green cloth on earth. The sun lighted it all up brilliantly. God was serving the universal repast. Each creature had his pasture or his mess. The ring-dove found his hemp seed, the chaffinch found his millet. The goldfinch found chickweed, the red-brass found worms. The greenfinch found flies. The fly found infusoriae, the bee found flowers. They ate each other somewhat, it is true, which is the misery of evil mixed with good, but not a beast of them all had an empty stomach. The two little abandoned creatures had arrived in the vicinity of the Grand Fountain, and rather bewildered by all this light they tried to hide themselves, the instinct of the poor in the weak in the presence of even impersonal magnificence, and they kept behind the swan's hutch. Here and there it intervals when the wind blew shouts, clamours, a sort of tumultuous death-rattle, which was the firing and dull blows, which were discharges of cannon, struck the ear confusedly. Smoke hung over the roofs in the direction of the all, a bell which had the air of an appeal was ringing in the distance. These children did not appear to notice these noises, the little one repeated from time to time. I am hungry. Almost at the same instant with the children another couple approached the Great Basin. They consisted of a good man about fifty years of age, who was leading by the hand a little fellow of six, no doubt a father and a son. The little man of six had a big brioche. At that epic certain houses abutting on the river in the Rue Madame and Danfair had keys to the Luxembourg garden, of which the lodgers enjoyed the use when the gates were shut, a privilege which was suppressed later on. This father and son came from one of these houses, no doubt. The two poor little creatures watched that gentleman approaching and hid themselves a little more thoroughly. He was a bourgeois. The same person perhaps who Marius had one day heard through his love fever near the same Grand Basin, counseling his son to avoid excesses. He had an affable and haughty air and a mouth which was always smiling since it did not shut. This mechanical smile produced by too much jaw and too little skin shows the teeth rather than the soul. The child with his brioche which he had bitten into but had not finished eating seemed satiated. The child was dressed as a National Guardsman owing to the insurrection and the father had remained clad as a bourgeois out of prudence. Father and son halted near the fountain where two swans were sporting. This bourgeois appeared to cherish a special admiration for the swans. He resembled them in this sense that he walked like them. For the moment the swans were swimming which is their principal talent and they were superb. If the two poor little beings had listened and if they had been of an age to understand they might have gathered the words of this grave man. The father was saying to his son, The sage lives content with little. Look at me, my son. I do not love pomp. I am never seen in clothes decked with gold lace and stones. I leave that false splendor to badly organized souls. Here the deep shouts which proceeded from the direction of the hall burst out with fresh force of bell and uproar. What is that? inquired the child. The father replied, It is a Saturnalia. All at once he caught sight of the two little ragged boys behind the green swan-hutch. There is the beginning, said he. And after a pause he added, Anarchy is entering this garden. In the meanwhile his son took a bite of his brioche, spitted out and suddenly burst out crying. What are you crying about? demanded his father. I am not hungry anymore, said the child. The father's smile became more accentuated. One does not need to be hungry in order to eat a cake. My cake tires me stale. Don't you want any more of it? No. The father pointed to the swans. Throw it to those pommepeds. The child hesitated. A person may not want any more of his cake, but that's no reason for giving it away. The father went on, Be humane, you must have compassion on animals. And taking the cake from his son he flung it into the basin. The cake fell very near the edge. The swans were far away in the center of the basin and busy with some prey. They had seen neither the bourgeois nor the brioche. The bourgeois feeling that the cake was in danger of being wasted, and moved by this useless shipwreck, entered upon a telegraphic agitation which finally attracted the attention of the swans. They perceived something floating, steered for the edge like ships as they are, and slowly directed their course toward the brioche, with the stupid majesty which befits white creatures. The swans, seniors, understand sign, senior, said the bourgeois, delighted to make a jest. At that moment the distant tumble to the city underwent another sudden increase. This time it was sinister. There are some gusts of wind which speak more distinctly than others. The one which was blowing at that moment brought clearly defined drumbeats, clamors, platoon firing, and the dismal replies of the toxin and the cannon. This coincided with a black cloud which suddenly veiled a sun. The swans had not yet reached the brioche. Let us return home, said the father. They are attacking the twilery. He grasped his son's hand again, then he continued. From the twilery to the Luxembourg there is but the distance which separates royalty from the peerage. That's not far. Shots will soon rain down. He glanced at the cloud. Because it's rain itself that's about to shower down, the sky is joining in. The younger branches condemned, let us return home quickly. I should like to see the swans eat the brioche, said the child. The father replied, that would be imprudent. And he led his little bourgeois away. The son, regretting the swans, turned his head back toward the basin until a corner of the quinclunkses concealed it from him. In the meanwhile the two little waves had approached the brioche at the same time as the swans. It was floating on the water. The smaller of them stared at the cake, the elder, gazed after the retreating bourgeois. Father and son entered the labyrinth of vox which leads to the grand flight of steps near the clump of trees on the side of the rue madame. As soon as they had disappeared from view the elder child hastily flung himself flat on his stomach on the rounding curb of the basin and clinging to it with his left hand and leaning over the water on the verge of falling in. He stretched out his right hand with a stick towards the cake. The swans, perceiving the enemy, made haste. And in so doing they produced an effect of their breaths which was absurd to the little fisher. The water flowed back before the swans, and one of these gentle concentric undulations softly floated the brioche towards the child's wand. Just as the swans came up the stick touched the cake. The child gave it a brisk wrap, drew in the brioche, frightened away the swan, seized the cake, and sprang to his feet. The cake was wet, but they were hungry and thirsty. The elder broke the cake into two portions, a large one and a small one. Took the small one for himself, gave the large one to his brother, and said to him, ram that into your muzzle. The Miserab volume five by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. Book one. The War Between Four Walls. Chapter seventeen. Mortus pater filium moriturum expectat. Marius dashed out of the barricade. Comfer followed him. But he was too late. Gavroch was dead. Marius brought back the basket of cartridges. Marius bore the child. Alas, he thought, that which the father had done for his father, he was requiting to the son. Only to Nardier had brought back his father alive. He was bringing back the child dead. When Marius re-entered the redoubt with Gavroch in his arms, his face like the child was inundated with blood. At the moment when he had stooped to live Gavroch, a bullet had graced his head. He had not noticed it. Coyferac untied his cravat, and with it bandaged Marius' brow. They laid Gavroch on the same table with Mabouf, and spread over the two corpses the black shawl. There was enough of it for both the old man and the child. Comfer distributed the cartridges from the basket which he had brought in. Marius gave each man fifteen rounds to fire. Jean Valjean was still in the same place motionless on his stone post. When Comfer offered him his fifteen cartridges, he shook his head. He's a rare eccentric, said Comfer in a low voice to end Jolras. He finds a way of not fighting in this barricade. Which does not prevent him from defending it, responded end Jolras. Gerozan has its originals, resumed Comfer, and Coyferac would overheard added, he is another sort from Father Mabouf. One thing which must be noted is that the fire which was battering the barricade hardly disturbed the interior. Those who have never traversed the whirlwind of this sort of war can form no idea of the singular moments of tranquillity mingled with these convulsions. Then go and come, they talk, they jest, they lounge. Someone who we know heard a combatant say to him in the midst of the grape-shot, we are here as at a bachelor breakfast. The redoubt of the roue de la chauverie, we repeat, seemed very calm within. All mutations and all phases had been or were about to be exhausted. The position from critical had become menacing, and from menacing was probably about to become desperate. In proportion as this situation grew gloomy, the glow of heroes imbibed purple the barricade more and more, and Joel Russ, who was grave, dominated it, in the attitude of a young Spartan sacrificing his naked sword to the somber genius, Epidotus. Comfer wearing an apron was dressing the wounds. Boswe and Foyi were making cartridges with the powder flask, picked up by Gavroch on the dead corporal. And Boswe said to Foyi, we are soon to take the diligence for another planet. Koy Fyrrach was disposing and arranging on some paving-stones, which he had reserved for himself near Anjolras, a complete arsenal. His sword cane, his gun, two holster pistols, and a cudgel, with the care of a young girl setting a small dunk-a-cay in order. Jean Verjean stared silently at the wall opposite him. An artisan was fastening Mother Huchelot's big straw hat on his head with a string for Fyrrach's son-stroke, as he said. The young men from the Korgurd die were chatting merrily among themselves, as though eager to speak patois for the last time. Jolie, who had taken Widow Huchelot's mirror from the wall, was examining his tongue in it. Some combatants, having discovered a few crusts of rather moldy bread and a drawer, were eagerly devouring them. Marius was disturbed with regard to what his father was about to say to him. After eighteen, the vulture become prey. We must insist upon one psychological fact peculiar to barricades. Nothing which is characteristic of that surprising war of the streets should be omitted. Whatever may have been the singular inward tranquillity which we have just mentioned. The barricade, for those who are inside it, remains, nonetheless, a vision. There is something of the apocalypse in civil war, all the mists of the unknown are commingled with fierce flashes, revolutions as sphinxes, and any one who has passed through a barricade thinks he has traversed a dream. The feelings to which one is subject in these places we have pointed out in the case of Marius, and we shall see the consequences. They are both more or less than life. On emerging from a barricade one no longer knows what one has seen there. One has been terrible, but one knows it not. One has been surrounded with conflicting ideas which had human faces. One's head has been in the light of the future. There were corpses lying prone there, and phantoms standing erect. The hours were colossal and seemed hours of eternity. One has lived in death. Shadows have passed by. What were they? One has beheld hands on which there was blood. There was a deafening horror. There was also a frightful silence. There were open mouths which shouted, and other open mouths which held their peace. One was in the midst of smoke, of night, perhaps. One fancied that one had touched the sinister ooze of unknown depths. One stares at something red on one's fingernails. One no longer remembers anything. Let us return to the roue de la chanverie. All at once between two discharges, the distant sound of a clock striking the owl became audible. It was his midday, said Comphère. The twelve strokes had not finished tracking when Angel Russ sprang to his feet, and from the summit of the barricade hurled this thundering shout, Carry stones up into the houses, lie in the window-sills and the roofs with them, half the men to their guns, the other half to the paving-stones. There was not a minute to be lost. A squad of sappers and miners, ax on shoulder, had just made their appearance in battle array at the end of the street. This could only be the head of a column. And of what column? The attacking column, evidently. The sappers charged with the demolition of the barricade must always precede the soldiers who are to scale it. There were evidently on the brink of that moment which Monsieur Clermont Tonnerre in 1822 called the tug of war. Angel Russ' order was executed with the correct haste which is peculiar to ships and barricades. The only two scenes of combat were escape as impossible. In less than a minute, two-third of the stones which in whole Russ had piled up at the door of the Corinth had been gathered up to the first floor in the attic, and before a second minute had elapsed. These stones artistically set, one upon the other, walled up the sash window on the first floor and the windows in the roof to half their height. A few loopholes carefully planned by Four Yee, the principal architect, allowed the passage of the gun-barrels. The armament of the windows could be erected all the more easily since the firing of grape-shot had ceased. The two cannons were now discharging ball against a centre of a barrier in order to make a hole there, and if possible, a breach for the assault. When the stones destined to the final defence were in place, Angel Russ had the bottles which he had set under the table where Mabouflay carried to the first floor. Always to drink that, Busway asked him. They replied, Angel Russ. Then they barricaded the window below and held in readiness the iron cross-bars which served to secure the door of the wine-shop at night. The fortress was complete. The barricade was the rampart. The wine-shop was the dungeon. With the stones which remained, they stopped up the outlet. As the defenders of a barricade are always obliged to be sparing of their ammunition, and as the assailants know this, the assailants combine their arrangements with the sort of irritating leisure, expose themselves to fire prematurely, though in appearance more than in reality, and take their ease. The preparations for attack are always made with certain methodical deliberation, after which the lightning strikes. This deliberation permitted Angel Russ to take a review of everything and to perfect everything. He felt that, since such men were to die, their death ought to be a masterpiece. He said to Marius, We are the two leaders. I will give the last orders inside. Do you remain outside and observe? Marius posted himself on the lookout upon the crest of the barricade. Angel Russ had the door of the kitchen, which was the ambulance as the reader will remember, nailed up. No splashing of the wounded, he said. He issued his final orders in the tap-room in a curt, but profoundly tranquil tone. For ye listened and replied in the name of all. On the first floor hold your axes in readiness to cut the staircase. Have you them? Yes, said for ye. How many? Two axes in a poleaxe. That is good. There are now twenty-six combatants of us on foot. How many guns are there? Thirty-four. Eight too many. Keep those eight guns loaded, like the rest, in at hand. Swords and pistols in your belts. Twenty men to the barricade. Six ambushed in the attic windows, and the window on the first floor to fire on the assailants through the loopholes and stones, that not a single worker remain inactive here. Presently when the drum beats the assault, let the twenty below stairs rush to the barricade. The first to arrive will have the best places. These arrangements made. He turned to Javert and said, I am not forgetting you. And laying a pistol on the table, he added, the last man to leave this room will smash the skull of this spy. Here, inquired a voice. No, let us not mix their corpses with our own. A little barricade of the Monte Duolaine can be scaled. It is only four feet high. The man is well pinioned. He shall be taken thither and put to death. There was someone who was more impassive at that moment than in Jolras. It was Javert. Here Jean Valjean made his appearance. He had been lost among the group of insurgents. He stepped forth and said to in Jolras, You are the commander. Yes. You thanked me a while ago. In the name of a republic, the barricade has two saviors, Marius, Paul, Merci and yourself. Do you think that I deserve a recompense? Certainly. Well, I request one. What is it that I may blow that man's brains out? Javert raised his head, sore, Jean Valjean, made an almost imperceptible movement and said, That is just. As for Jolras, he had begun to reload his rifle. He cut his eyes about him. No objections. And he turned to Jean Valjean. Take the spy. Jean Valjean did in fact take possession of Javert by seating himself on the end of the table. He seized the pistol and a faint click announced that he had cocked it. Just at the same moment a blast of trumpets became audible. Take care, shouted Marius, from the top of the barricade. Javert began to laugh with that noiseless laugh which was peculiar to him, and gazing intently at the insurgents he said to them, You are in no better case than I am. All out, shouted in Jolras. The insurgents poured out tumultuously, and as they went received in the back, may we be permitted the expression, this sally of Javert's. We shall meet again shortly. CHAPTER XIX Jean Valjean takes his revenge. When Jean Valjean was after the loan of Javert, he untied the rope which fastened the prisoner across the middle of the body, and the knot of which was under the table. After this he made him a sign to rise. Javert obeyed with that indefinable smile in which the supremacy of enchained authority is condensed. Jean Valjean took Javert by the martingale, as one would take a beast of burden by the breastband, and dragging the latter after him emerged from the wine-shop slowly because Javert with his impeded limbs could take only very short steps. Jean Valjean had the pistol in his hand. In this manner they crossed the inner trapezium of the barricade. The insurgents all intent on the attack, which was imminent, had their backs turned these two. Marius alone stationed on one side at the extreme left of the barricade saw them pass. This group of victim and executioner was illuminated by the sepulchre light which he bore in his own soul. Jean Valjean was some difficulty, but without relaxing his hold for a single instant, he made Javert opinioned as he was, scale the little entrenchment in the Montador lane. When they had crossed this barrier they found themselves alone in the lane. No one saw them. Among the heap they could distinguish a livid face, streaming hair, a pierced hand and the half-nude breast of a woman. It was eponine. The corner of the houses hid them from the insurgents. The corpses carried away from the barricade formed a terrible pile a few pieces distant. Javert gazed as scants at this body, and profoundly calm, said in a low tone, It strikes me that I know that girl. Then he turned to Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean thrust the pistol under his arm and fixed on Javert a look which it required no words to interpret. Javert, it is I. Javert replied, Take your revenge. Jean Valjean drew from his pocket a knife and opened it. A clasp? Knife. exclaimed Javert. You are right. That suits you better. Jean Valjean cut the martingale which Javert had about his neck. Then he cut the cords on his wrists. Then stooping down he cut the cord on his feet, and straightening himself up he said to him, You are free. Javert was not easily astonished. Still master of himself though he was he could not repress a start. He remained open-mouthed and motionless. Jean Valjean continued, I do not think that I shall escape from this place, but if by chance I do, I live under the name of Fauchévalant in the Rue de l'homme-arme, number seven. Javert snarled like a tiger which made him half open one corner of his mouth and he muttered between his teeth, Have a care. Go, said Jean Valjean. Javert began again, Thou saidst Fauchévalant, Rue de l'homme-arme. Number seven. Javert repeated in a low voice. Number seven. He buttoned up his coat once more, resumed the military stiffness between his shoulders, made a half turn, folded his arms, and sporting his chin on one of his hands he set out in the direction of the halles. Jean Valjean followed him with his eyes. A few minutes later Javert turned round and shouted to Jean Valjean, You annoy me, kill me rather. Javert himself did not notice that he no longer addressed Jean Valjean as Thou. Be off with you, said Jean Valjean. Javert retreated slowly. A moment later he turned the corner of the Rue des Prachures. When Javert had disappeared Jean Valjean fired his pistol in the air. Then he returned to the barricade and said, It is done. In the meanwhile this is what had taken place. Marius, more intent on the outside than on the interior, had not, up to that time, taken a good look at the pinion-spire in the dark background of the taproom. When he beheld him in broad daylight striding over the barricade in order to proceed to his death, he recognized him. Something suddenly recurred to his mind. He recalled the inspector of the Rue des Panteurs, the two pistols which the latter had handed to him in which he, Marius, had used in this very barricade, and not only did he recall his face but his name as well. This recollection was misty and troubled, however, like all his ideas. It was not an affirmation that he made but a question which he put to himself. It is not that the inspector of police who told me that his name was Javert. Perhaps there was still time to intervene in behalf of that man, but in the first place he must know whether this was Javert. This cold Anjolras who had just stationed himself at the other extremity of the barricade. Anjolras! What? What is the name of Yonder Mann? What man? The police agent. Do you know his name? Of course, he told us. What is it? Javert. Marius sprang to his feet. At that moment they heard the report of the pistol. Jean Valjeuil reappeared and cried. It is done. A gloomy chill traversed Marius' heart. Le Miserab volume 5 by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabel Florence Hapgood. Book 1. The War Between Four Walls. Chapter 20. The dead are in the right and the living are not in the wrong. The death agony of the barricade was about to begin. Everything contributed to its tragic majesty at that supreme moment. A thousand mysterious crashes in the air. The breath of armed masses set in movement in the streets which were not visible. The intermittent gallop of cavalry. The heavy shock of artillery on the march. The firing by squads. And the cannonades crossing each other in the labyrinth of Paris. The smokes of battle mounting all gilded above the roofs. Indescribable and vaguely terrible cries. Lightnings of menace everywhere. The toxin of Saint Mary. Which had now the accents of a sob. The mildness of the weather. The splendour of the sky filled with sun and clouds. The beauty of the day. And the alarming silence of the houses. Four, since the preceding evening. The two rows of houses in the roux de la channe Ferrari. Had become two walls. Ferocious walls. Doors closed. Windows closed. Shuttles closed. In those days so different from those in which we live. When the hour was come. When the people wished to put an end to a situation which had lasted too long. With a charter granted or with a legal country. When universal wrath was diffused in the atmosphere. When the city consented to the tearing up of the pavements. When insurrection made the bourgeoisie smile by whispering its password in its ear. Then the inhabitant thoroughly penetrated with the revolt so to speak. Was the auxiliary of the combatant. And the house fraternised with the improvised fortress which rested on it. When the situation was not ripe. When the insurrection was not decidedly admitted. When the masses disowned the movement. All was over with the combatants. The city was changed into a desert around the revolt. Souls grew chilled. Refuges were nailed up. When the street turned into a defile to help the army to take the barricade. A people cannot be forced through surprise to walk more quickly than it chooses. Woe to whomsoever tries to force its hand. A people does not let itself go at random. Then it abandons the insurrection to itself. The insurgents become noxious infected with the plague. A house is an escarpment. A door is a refusal. A façade is a wall. This wall hears, sees and will not. It might open and save you. No. This wall is a judge. It gazes at you and condemns you. What dismal things are closed houses. They seem dead. They are living. Life which is, as it were, suspended there, persists there. No one has gone out of them for four and twenty hours. But no one is missing from them. In the interior of that rock people go and come, go to bed and rise again. They are a family party there. There they eat and drink. They are afraid, a terrible thing. Fear excuses this fearful lack of hospitality. Terror is mixed with it in extenuating circumstance. Sometimes even, and this has been actually seen, fear turns to passion. Fright may change into fury as prudence does into rage. Hence this wise saying, the enraged moderates. There are outbursts of supreme terror whence springs wrath like a mournful smoke. What do these people want? What have they come there to do? Let them get out of the scrape. So much the worse for them. It is their fault. They are only getting what they deserve. It's not concern us. Here is our poor street all riddled with balls. There are a pack of rascals. Above all, things don't open the door. And the house assumes the air of a tomb. The insurgent is in the death-throws in front of that house. He sees the grape-shot and naked swords drawing near. If he cries, he knows that they are listening to him, and that no one will come. There stand walls which might protect him. There are men who might save him. And these walls have ears of flesh. And these men have bowels of stone. Whom shall he reproach? No one and everyone. The incomplete times in which we live. It is always at its own risk and peril that utopia is converted into revolution. And from philosophical protest becomes an armed protest. And from Minerva turns to palace. The utopia which grows impatient and becomes revolt knows what awaits it. It almost always comes too soon. Then it becomes resigned and stoically accepts catastrophe and new of triumph. It serves those who deny it without complaint, even excusing them, and even disculpates them. And its magnanimity consists in consenting to abandonment. It is indomitable in the face of obstacles and gentle towards ingratitude. Is this ingratitude, however? Yes, from the point of the human race. No, from the point of view of the individual. Progress is man's mode of existence. The general life of the human race is called progress. The collective stride of the human race is called progress. Progress advances. It makes the great human and terrestrial journey towards the celestial and the divine. It has its halting places where it rallies the laggard troop. It has its station where it mediates in the presence of some splendid Canaan suddenly unveiled on its horizon. It has its nights when it sleeps. And it is one of the poignant anxieties of the thinker that he sees the shadow resting on the human soul. And that he gropes in darkness without being able to awaken that slumbering progress. God is dead, perhaps, said Girard de Neval one day to the writer of these lines, confounding progress with God and taking the interruption of movement for the death of being. He who despairs is in the wrong. Progress infallibly awakes. And in short we may say that it marches on even when it is asleep, for it has increased in size. When we behold it erect once more we find it taller. To be always peaceful does not depend on progress any more than it does on the stream. Erect no barriers, cast in no boulders. Obstacles make water froth and humanity boil. Hence arise troubles. But after these troubles we recognize the fact that ground has been gained until order, which is nothing else than universal peace, has been established until harmony and unity reign. Progress will have revolutions as its halting places. What, then, is progress? We have just enunciated it, the permanent life of the peoples. Now it sometimes happens that the momentary life of individuals offers resistance to the eternal life of the human race. Let us admit, without bitterness, that the individual has his distinct interests and can, without forfeiture, stipulate for his interest and defend it. The present has his pardonable dose of egotism. Momentary life has its rights, and is not bound to sacrifice itself constantly to the future. The generation which is passing in its turn over the earth is not forced to abridge it for the sake of the generations—its equal, after all—who will have their turn later on. I exist, murmurs, that someone whose name is all. I am young and in love. I am old and I wish to repose. I am the father of a family. I toil. I prosper. I am successful in business. I have houses to lease. I have money and the government funds. I am happy. I have a wife and children. I have all this. I desire to live. Leave me in peace. Ends, at certain hours, profound cold brews over the magnanimous vanguard of the human race. Utopia, moreover, we must admit, quits its radiant sphere when it makes war. It, the truth of tomorrow, borrows its mode of procedure, battle, from the lie of yesterday. It, the future, behaves like the past. It, pure idea, becomes a deed of violence. It complicates its heroism with a violence for which it is just that it should be held in answer. A violence of occasion and expedient, contrary to principle, and for which it is fatally punished. The utopia, insurrection, fights with the old military code in its fist. It shoots spies. It executes traitors. It suppresses living beings and flings them into unknown darkness. It makes use of death a serious matter. It seems as though utopia had no longer any faith in radiance, its irresistible and incorruptible force. It strikes with the sword. Now, no sword is simple. Every blade has two edges. He who wounds with the one is wounded with the other. Having made this reservation and made it with all severity, it is impossible for us not to admire whether they succeed or not. It knows the glorious combatants of the future, the confessors of utopia. Even when they miscarry, they are worthy of veneration, and it is perhaps in failure that they possess the most majesty. Victory, when it is in accord with progress, merits the applause of the people. But a heroic defeat merits their tender compassion. The one is magnificent. The other sublime. For our own part we prefer martyrdom to success. John Brown is greater than Washington, and Pissacan is greater than Garibaldi. It certainly is necessary that someone should take the part of the vanquished. We are unjust towards these men who attempt the future when they fail. Revolutionists are accused of sowing fear abroad. Every barricade seems a crime. Their theories are uncriminated, their aims suspected, their ulterior motive is feared, their conscience denounced. They are approached with raising, erecting and heaping up against the reigning social state, a mass of miseries, of griefs, of iniquities, of wrongs, of despairs, and of tearing from the lowest depths blocks of shadow in order they are in to embattle themselves and to combat. People shout to them, you are tearing up the pavements of hell. They might reply, that is because our barricade is made of good intentions. The best thing assuredly is the Pacific solution. In short, let us agree that when we behold the pavement we think of the bear, and it is a good will which renders society uneasy. But it depends on society to save itself. It is to its own good will that we make our appeal. No violent remedy is necessary. To study evil amably, to prove its existence, then to cure it, is to this that we invited. However that may be, even when fallen, above all when fallen, these men, who at every point of the universe with their eyes fixed on France, are striving for the grand work with the inflexible logic of the ideal, are aghast. They give their life a free offering to progress. They accomplish the will of Providence. They perform a religious act. At the appointed hour, with as much disinterestedness as an actor who answers to his cue, in obedience to the divine stage manager, they enter the tomb. And this hopeless combat, the stoical disappearance, they accept in order to bring about the supreme and universal consequences. The magnificent and irresistibly human movement begun on the 14th of July 1789. These soldiers are priests. The French Revolution is an act of God. Moreover there are, and it is proper to add this distinction to the distinctions already pointed out in another chapter, there are accepted revolutions. Revolutions which are called revolutions. There are refused revolutions which are called riots. An insurrection which breaks out is an idea which is passing its examination before the people. If the people let's fall a black ball, the idea is dried fruit. The insurrection is a mere skirmish. Waging war at every summons and every time that utopia desires it is not the thing for the peoples. Nations have not always and at every hour the temperament of heroes and martyrs. They are positive. Our priori, insurrection is repugnant to them in the first place because it often results in a catastrophe in the second place because it always has an abstraction as its point of departure. Because, and this is a noble thing, it is always for the ideal and for the ideal alone that those who sacrifice themselves do thus sacrifice themselves. An insurrection is an enthusiasm. And the enthusiasm may wax wroth, hence the appeal to arms. But every insurrection which aims at a government or a regime aims higher. Thus, for instance, and we insist upon it, what the chiefs of the insurrection of 1832 and, in particular, the young enthusiasts of the roue de la chanfrerie were combating was not precisely Louis Philippe. The majority of them, when talking freely, did justice to this king who stood midway between monarchy and revolution. No one hated him. But they attacked the younger branch of the divine right of Louis Philippe as they had attacked its elder branch in Charles X. And that which they wished to overturn in overturning royalty in France was, as we have explained, the usurpation of man over man and of privilege over right in the entire universe. Paris without a king has, as a result, the world without despots. This is the manner in which they are reasoned. Their aim was distant, no doubt vague, perhaps, and it retreated in the face of their efforts. But it was great. Thus it is. And we sacrifice ourselves for these visions, which are almost always illusions for the sacrificed, but illusions with which, after all, the whole of human certainty is mingled. We throw ourselves into these tragic affairs and become intoxicated with that which we are about to do. Who knows? We may succeed. We are few in number. We have a whole army arrayed against us. But we are defending right, the natural law, the sovereignty of each one over himself from which no abdication is possible, justice and truth. And in case of need we die like the three hundred Spartans. We do not think of Don Quixote, but of Leonidas. And we march straight before us, and once pledged, we do not draw back, and we rush onwards with head held low, cherishing as our hope an unprecedented victory. Revolution completed, progress set free again, the grandisement of the human race, universal deliverance, and in the event of the worst, thermopoly. These passages of arms for the sake of progress often suffer shipwreck, and we have just explained why. The crowd is restive in the presence of the impulses of paladins, heavy masses, the multitudes which are fragile because of their very weight, fear adventures, and there is a touch of adventure in the ideal. Moreover, and we must not forget this, interests which are not very friendly to the ideal and the sentimental are in the way. Sometimes a stomach paralyzes the heart. The grandeur and beauty of France lies in this, that she takes less from the stomach than other nations. She more easily knots the rope about her loins. She is the first awake, the last sleep. She marches forwards, she is a seeker. This arises from the fact that she is an artist. The ideal is nothing but the culminating point of logic, the same as the beautiful is nothing but the summit of the true. Artistic peoples are also consistent peoples. To love beauty is to see the light. That is why the torch of Europe, that is to say of civilization, was first born by Greece, who passed it on to Italy, who handed it on to France, divine, illuminating nations of scouts, Vitalampada tradonde. It is an admirable thing that the poetry of a people is the element of its progress. The amount of civilization is measured by the quantity of imagination. Only a civilizing people should retain a manly people. Corinth, yes. Sbaris, no. Whoever becomes effeminate makes himself a bastard. He must be neither a dilettante nor a virtuoso, but he must be artistic. In the matter of civilization he must not refine, but he must sublime. On this condition one gives it a human race the pattern of the ideal. The modern ideal has its type in art, and its means in science. It is through science that it will realize that Auguste vision of the poets, the socially beautiful. Eden will be reconstructed by A plus B. At the point which civilization has now reached, the exactest is necessary element of the splendid, and the artistic sentiment is not only served, but completed by the scientific organ. Dreams must be calculated. Art, which is the conqueror, should help for support science, which is the walker. The solidity of the creature which is ridden is of importance. The modern spirit is the genius of Greece, with the genius of India as its vehicle. Alexander on the elephant. Races which are petrified in dogma or demoralized by lucra are unfit to guide civilization. Genuflection before the idol or before money wastes away the muscles which walk in the wheel which advances. Hieratic or mercantile absorption lessens a people's power of radiance, lowers its horizon by lowering its level and deprives it of that intelligence, at once both human and divine of the universal goal which makes missionaries of nations. Babylon has no ideal. Carthage has no ideal. Athens and Rome have and keep throughout all the nocturnal darkness of the centuries, halos of civilization. France is in the same quality of race as Greece and Italy. She is Athenian in the matter of beauty and Roman in her greatness. Moreover, she is good. She gives herself. Oftener than is the case with other races, is she in the humour for self-devotion and sacrifice. Only this humour sees upon her and again abandons her. And therein lies the great peril for those who run when she desires only to walk or who walk when she desires to halt. France has her relapses into materialism and at certain instants the ideas which obstruct that sublime brain have no longer anything which recalls French greatness and are of the dimensions of a Missouri or a South Carolina. What is to be done in such a case? The giantess plays at being a dwarf. Immense France has her freaks of pettiness. That is all. To this there is nothing to say. People like planets possess the right to an eclipse and all is well, provided that the light returns and that the eclipse does not degenerate into night. Dawn and resurrection are synonyms. The reappearance of the light is identical with the persistence of the eye. Let us state these facts calmly. Death on the barricade or the tomb in exile is an acceptable occasion for devotion. The real name of devotion is disinterestedness. Let the abandoned allow themselves to be abandoned. Let the exiled allow themselves to be exiled. And let us confine ourselves to entreating great nations not to retreat too far when they do retreat. One must not push too far in dissent under pretext of a return to reason. Matter exists. The minute exists. Interest exists. The stomach exists. But the stomach must not be the sole wisdom. The life of the moment has its rights, we admit, but permanent life has its rights also. Alas, the fact that one is mounted does not preclude a fall. This can be seen in history more frequently than is desirable. A nation is great, it tastes the ideal, then it bites the mire and finds it good. And if it be asked how it happens that it has abandoned Socrates for false staff, it replies, because I love statesmen. One word more before returning to our subject, the conflict. A battle like the one which we are engaged in describing is nothing else than the convulsion towards the ideal. Progress, trampled, is sickly and is subject to these tragic ellipses. With that malady of progress, civil war, we have been obliged to come in contact in our passage. This is one of the fatal phases. At once act and interact of that drama whose pivot is a social condemnation and whose veritable title is progress. Progress. The cry to which we frequently give utterance is our whole thought. And at the point of this drama which we have now reached, the idea which it contains having still more than one trial to undergo it is perhaps permitted to us if not to lift the veil from it to at least allow it light to shine through. The book which the reader has under his eye at this moment is from one end to the other as a whole and in detail whatever may be its intermittencies, exceptions and faults, the march from evil to good from the unjust to the just from night to day from appetite to conscience from rottenness to life from hell to heaven from nothingness to God point of departure, matter point of arrival, the soul the hydra at the beginning the angel at the end. End of Book 1, Chapter 20. Translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood. Book 1. The War Between Four Walls. Chapter 21. The Heroes All at once the drum beat the charge. The attack was a hurricane. On the evening before in the darkness the barricade had been approached silently as by a boa. Now in broad daylight in that widening street surprise was decidedly impossible. The rude force had moreover been unmasked and the cannon had begun the roar the army hurled itself on the barricade. Fury now became skill. A powerful detachment of infantry of the line broken at regular intervals by the National Guard and the municipal guard on foot and supported by serried masses which could be heard though not seen debauched into the street at a run with drums beating, trumpets braying bayonets leveled the sappers at their head and imperturbable under the projectiles charged straight for the barricade with the weight of a brazen beam against a wall. The wall held firm. The insurgents fired impetuously. The barricade once scaled had a mane of lightning flashes. The assault was so furious that for one moment it was inundated with assailants but it shook off the soldiers as a lion shakes off the dogs and it was only covered with besiegers as the cliff is covered with foam to reappear a moment later beatling, black and formidable. The column forced to retreat remained masked in the street unprotected but terrible and replied to the redoubt with a terrible discharge of musketry. Anyone who has seen fireworks will recall the sheaf formed of interlacing lightning which is called a bouquet. Let the reader picture to himself this bouquet no longer vertical but horizontal bearing a bullet, buckshot or bescane at the tip of each one of its jets of flames and picking off dead men one or another from its clusters of lightning the barricade was underneath it. On both sides the resolution was equal the bravery exhibited there was almost barbarous and was complicated with a sort of heroic ferocity which began by the sacrifice of self. This was the epoch when a national guardman fought like the Zouave. The troop wished to make an end of it insurrection was desirous of fighting. The acceptance of the death agony in the flower of youth and in the flush of health turns intrepidity into frenzy. In this fray each one underwent the broadening growth of the death hour. The street was strewn with corpses. The barricade had Anjolra as one of its extremities and Marius at the other Anjolra who carried the whole barricade in his head reserved and sheltered himself. Three soldiers fell one after the other under his embrasure without having even seen him. Marius fought unprotected. He made himself a target. He stood with more than half his body above the breast works. There is no more violent prodigal than the avaricious man who takes the bit in his teeth. There is no more man more terrible in action than a dreamer. Marius was formidable and pensive. In battle he was as in a dream. One would have pronounced him a phantom engaged in firing a gun. The insurgents cartridges were giving out but not their sarcasm. In this whirlwind of the sepulcher in which they stood they laughed. Curaferac was bareheaded. What have you done with your hat, Bousa asked him. Curaferac replied they have taken it away from me with the cannonballs or they uttered haughty comments. Can anyone understand exclaimed fairly bitterly those men and he cited names well-known names even celebrated names some belonging to the old army who had promised to join us and taken an oath to aid us who had pledged their honor to it and who are our generals and who abandoned us and Cumferer restricted himself to replying with a grave smile. There are people who observe the rules of honor as one observed the stars from a great distance. The interior of the barricade was so strewn with torn cartridges that one would have said there had been a snowstorm. The assailants had numbers in their favor the insurgents had position they were at the top of the wall they thundered point blank upon the soldiers tripping over the dead and wounded and entangled in the enscarpment this barricade constructed as it was and admirably buttressed was really one of those situations where a handful of men hold a legion and check nevertheless the attacking column constantly recruited and enlarged under the shower of bullets drew an exorably clearer and now little by little step by step but surely the army closed in around the barricade as the vise grasped the wine press one assault followed another the horror of the situation kept increasing then there burst forth on that heap of paving stones in that rue de la chaleurerie the battle worthy of the wall of Troy these haggard ragged exhausted men who had nothing to eat for four and twenty hours who had not slept who had but a few more rounds to fire who were fumbling in their pockets which had been emptied of cartridges nearly all of whom were wounded with header arm bandaged with black and blood stained linen with holes in their clothes from which the blood trickled and who were hardly armed with poor guns and their swords became titans the barricade was ten times attacked, approached, assailed scaled and never captured in order to form an idea of this struggle it is necessary to imagine fire set to a throng of terrible courage and then to gaze at the conflagration it was not a combat it was the interior of a furnace their mouths breathed the flame, their countenance were extraordinary the human form seemed impossible there the combatants flamed forth there and it was formidable to behold the going and the comings in that red glow of those salamanders of the fray the successive and the simultaneous scenes of this grand slaughter re-renounce all attempts at depicting the epic alone has the right to fill twelve thousand verses with a battle one would have pronounced this that hell of Brahmanism the most redoubtable of the seventeen abysses which the Veda calls the forest of the swords they fought hand to hand foot to foot with pistol shots with blows of the sword with their fists at a distance close at hand from above from below from everywhere from the roofs of the houses from the windows of the wine shops from the cellar windows with their summit crawled they were won against sixty the façade of the Corinth half demolished was hideous the window tattooed with grape shot had lost glass and frame and was nothing now but a shapeless hole tumultuously blocked with paving stones Boussette was killed Fouallee was killed Kouffayak was killed Kumbethair transfixed by three bows from a bayonet in the breast at the moment when he was lifting the wounded soldier had only time to glance to heaven when he expired Marius still fighting was so riddled with wounds particularly in the head that his countenance disappeared beneath the blood and one would have said that his face was covered with a red handkerchief and Jorah alone was not struck when he no longer had any weapon he reached out his hands to the right and left and an insurgent thrust from arm or other into his fist all he had left was the sumps of four swords one more than François Marion Homer says Diomedes cuts the throat of Axelis son of Tuthranus who dwelt in happy Arisba Uralis son of Mesisteus exterminates Dracos and Opheltios Ecipius whom the Niyad a Barbaraea born to the blameless Bucoleon Ulysses overthrows Padaeities of the Percosius Antelokius Ablaeris Polypades Estalus Polydamus Otois of Silene and Tosir Aration Magantheos dies under the blows of Eurepilus's Pike Agamemnon king of the heroes flings to earth elados born in the rocky city which is loved by the surrounding river Satnois In our old poems of exploits Applandian attacks of the giant Marcos Swantaborre with a cobbler's shoulder stick of fire and the latter defends himself by stoning the hero which towers he plucks up by the roots Our ancient mural frescoes shows us the two dukes Britannia and Bourbon armed, emblazoned, encrusted in war-like guise on horseback and approaching each other their battle-axes in hand masked with iron gloved with iron booted with iron one capparistaned in ermine the other draped in azure Britannia with his lion between two horns of his crown Bourbon, helmeted in a monster-floored lease on his spiser but in order to be superb it is not necessary to wear like Yevon, the Duke of Mauryan to have in the fist like Esplandian, a living flame or like Phaile's father of Polydamus to have brought back from Ifira a good suit of mail a present from the king of men Euphides, it suffices to give one's life for conviction or loyalty this ingenious little soldier yesterday, a peasant of Bosse or Limoussi who prowls with a clasp knife by his side around the children's nurses in the Luxembourg garden this pale young student bent over a piece of anatomy or a book, a blonde youth who shaves his beard with scissors take both of them, breathe upon them with a breath of duty place them face to face in the corfeur, bonchere or in the blind alley, plancher and let one fight for his flag or the other for his ideal and let both of them imagine that they are fighting for their country the struggle will be colossal and the shadow which this raw recruit and this saw bones in conflict will produce in that grand epic field where the human is striving will equal the shadow cast by Megaraon king of Lycia, tiger filled, crushing in his embrace the immense body of Ajax equal to the gods End of Book 1, Chapter 21 Chapter 22 of Book 1 of Les Misrabes 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 Misrabes Volume 5 by Victor Hugo translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood Book 1, The War Between Four Walls Chapter 22 Foot to Foot When there were no longer any of the leaders left alive except Enjorah and Marius at the two extremities of the barricade the center which had so long sustained Kefroyak, Jolie Boussé, Fuelle and Comberfer, Gavoy The canon, though it had not affected a practical breach had made a rather large hollow in the middle of the redoubt. There the summit of the wall had disappeared before the balls and had crumbled away and the rubbish which had fallen now inside, now outside had, as it accumulated formed two piles in the nature of slopes on the two sides of the barrier one on the inside the other on the outside The exterior slope presented an inclined plane to the attack A final assault was there attempted and this assault succeeded The mass, bristling with bayonets and hurled forward at a run, came up with irresistible force and the serried front of battle at the attacking column made its appearance through the smoke on the crested of the battlements This time it was decisive The group of insurgents who were defending the center retreated in confusion Then the gloomy love of life awoke once more in some of them Many, finding themselves under the muzzle of this forest of guns did not wish to die This is the moment when the instinct of self-preservation amidst howls when the beast reappears in men They were hemmed in by the lofty six-story house which formed the background of their redoubt This house might prove to be their salvation The building was barricaded and walled, as it were, from top to bottom Before the troops of the line had reached the interior of the redoubt there was time for a door to open and shut. The space of the flash of a lightning was sufficient for that and the door of that house suddenly opened to crack and closed again instantly was life for these despairing men Behind this house there were streets possible flight space They set to knocking at that door with the butts of their gun and with kicks, shouting, calling and treating bringing their hands No one opened From the little window on the third floor the head of a dead man gazed down upon them But Enjorah and Marius and the seven or eight rallied about them sprang forward and protected them Enjorah had shouted to the shoulders Don't advance and as an officer had not obeyed Enjorah had killed the officer He was now in the little inner court of the redoubt with his back planted against the Corinth building a sword in one hand a rifle in the other holding open the door of the wine shop which he barred against assailants He shouted to the desperate men There is but one open door this one and shielding him with his body and facing an entire battalion alone he made them pass in behind him All precipitated themselves thither Enjorah executing with his rifle which he now used like a cane what single stick players called a covered rose round his head leveled the bayonets around and in front of him and was the last to enter he then ensued a horrible moment when the soldiers tried to make their way in and the insurgents strove to bar them out the door was slammed with such violence that as it fell back into his frame it showed the five fingers of a soldier who had been clinging to it cut off and glued to the post Marius remained outside a shot had just broken his collar bone he felt that he was fainting and falling at that moment with eyes already shut a shock of a vigorous hand seizing him and the swoon in which his senses vanished hardly allowing him time for the thought mingled with the last memory of Cosette I am taken prisoner I shall be shot Enjorah not seeing Marius among those who had taken refuge in the wine shop had the same idea but they had reached a moment when each man has not the time to meditate on his own death Enjorah fixed the bar across the door and bolted it and double locked it with key and chain while those outside were battering furiously at it the soldiers with the butts of their muskets the sappers with their axes the assailants were grouped about that door the siege of the wine shop was now beginning the soldiers we will observe were full of wrath the death of the artillery sergeant had enraged them and then a still more melancholy circumstance during the few hours when they needed the attack it had been reported among them that the insurgents were mutilating their prisoners and that there was a headless body of a soldier in the wine shop this sort of fatal rumor is usually accompaniment of civil wars and it was a false report of this kind which later on produced the catastrophe of Rue Tresnossin when the door was barricaded Enjorah said to the others let us sell our lives dearly then he approached the table on which lay Mabouf and Gavrache beneath the black cloth two straight and rigid forms were visible one large and the other small and the two faces were vaguely outlined beneath the cold folds of the shroud a hand projected from beneath the winding sheet and hung near the floor it was that of the old man Enjorah bent down and kissed that venerable hand just as he had kissed his brow on the preceding evening these were the only two kisses which he had bestowed in the course of his life let us abridge the tale the barricade had fought like the gate of Thebes the wine shop fought like a house of Saragossa these resistances are dogged no quarter, no flag of truth possible, men are willing to die provided their opponent will kill them when Sochet says capitulate, Halifax replies after the war with cannon the war with knives nothing was lacking in the capture by assault of the Hushulat wine shop neither paving stones raining from the windows and the roof on the besiegers and exasperating the soldiers by crushing them horribly nor shots fired from the attic windows and the cellar nor the fury of the attack nor finally when the door yielded the frenzied madness of extermination the assailants rushing into the wine shop their feet entangled in the panels of the door which had been written in and flung on the ground found not a single combatant there the spiral staircase hewn asunder with the axe lay in the middle of the taproom a few wounded men were just breathing their last everyone who was not killed on the first floor and from there through the hole in the ceiling which had formed the entrance of the stairs a terrific fire burst forth this was the last of their cartridges when they were exhausted when these formidable men on the point of death were hungry, either powder or ball each grasped in his hands two of the bottles which Anjolra had reserved and of which we had spoken and held the scaling party in check with these frightfully fragile clubs they were the bottle of aqua fortis we relate these gloomy incidents of carnage as they occurred the besieged man alas converts everything into a weapon Greek fire did not disgrace Akamedes boiling pitch did not disgrace Bayard all war is a thing of terror and there is no choice in it the musketry of the besiegers though confined and embarrassed by being directed from below upwards was deadly the rim of the hole in the ceiling was speedily surrounded by heads of the slain when stripping long red and smoking streams the uproar was indescribable a close and burning smoke almost produced night over this combat words are lacking to express horror when it has reached this pitch there were no longer men in this conflict which was now infernal there are no longer giants mashed with the colossi it resembled Milton and Dante rather than Homer demons attacked specters resisted it was heroism become monstrous end of book 1 chapter 22