Les Miserables (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (110 page)

After he had fully determined that that young man was at the bottom of this state of affairs, and that it all came from him, he, Jean Valjean, the regenerated man, the man who had laboured so much upon his soul, the man who had made so many efforts to resolve all life, all misery, and all misfortune into love; he looked within himself, and there he saw a spectre, Hatred.

While he was thinking, Toussaint entered. Jean Valjean arose, and asked her:

“In what direction is it? Do you know?”

Toussaint, astonished, could only answer:

“If you please?”

Jean Valjean resumed:

“Didn’t you tell me just now that they were fighting?”

“Oh! yes, monsieur,” answered Toussaint. “It is over by Saint Merry.”

There are some mechanical impulses which come to us, without our knowledge even, from our deepest thoughts. It was doubtless under the influence of an impulse of this kind, and of which he was hardly conscious, that Jean Valjean five minutes afterwards found himself in the street.

He was bare-headed, seated upon the stone block by the door of his house. He seemed to be listening.

The night had come.

SUDDENLY he raised his eyes, somebody was walking in the street, he heard steps near him, he looked, and, by the light of the lamp, in the direction of the Archives, he perceived a livid face, young and radiant.

Gavroche had just arrived in the Rue de l‘Homme Armé.

Gavroche was looking in the air, and appeared to be searching for something. He saw Jean Valjean perfectly, but he took no notice of him.

Gavroche, after looking into the air, looked on the ground; he raised himself on tiptoe and felt of the doors and windows of the ground floors; they were all closed, bolted, and chained. After having found five or six houses barricaded in this way, the
gamin
shrugged his shoulders, and took counsel with himself in these terms:

“Golly!”

Then he began to look into the air again.

Jean Valjean, who, the instant before, in the state of mind in which he was, would not have spoken nor even replied to anybody, felt irresistibly impelled to address a word to this child.

“Little boy,” said he, “what is the matter with you?”

“The matter is that I am hungry,” answered Gavroche tartly. And he added: “Little yourself.”

Jean Valjean felt in his pocket and took out a five-franc coin.

But Gavroche, who was of the wagtail species, and who passed quickly from one action to another, had picked up a stone. He had noticed a lamp.

“Hold on,” said he, “you have your lamps here still. You are not regular, my friends. It is disorderly. Break that for me.”

And he threw the stone into the lamp, the glass from which fell with such a clatter that some bourgeois, hid behind their curtains in the opposite house, cried: “There is ‘Ninety-three!”

The lamp swung violently and went out. The street became suddenly dark.

“That’s it, old street,” said Gavroche, “put on your nightcap.”

Jean Valjean approached Gavroche.

“Poor creature,” said he, in an undertone, and speaking to himself, “he is hungry.”

And he put the hundred-sous coin into his hand.

Gavroche cocked up his nose, astonished at the size of this big sou; he looked at it in the dark, and the whiteness of the big sou dazzled him. He knew five-franc coins by hearsay; their reputation was agreeable to him; he was delighted to see one so near. He said: “let us contemplate the tiger.”

He gazed at it for a few moments in ecstasy; then, turning towards Jean Valjean, he handed him the coin, and said majestically:

“Bourgeois, I prefer to break lamps. Take back your wild beast. You don’t corrupt me. It has five claws; but it don’t scratch me.”

“Have you a mother?” inquired Jean Valjean.

Gavroche answered:

“Perhaps more than you have.”

“Well,” replied Jean Valjean, “keep this money for your mother.”

Gavroche felt softened. Besides he had just noticed that the man who was talking to him, had no hat, and that inspired him with confidence.

“Really,” said he, “it isn’t to prevent my breaking the lamps?”

“Break all you like.”

“You are a fine fellow,” said Gavroche.

And he put the five-franc coin into one of his pockets.

His confidence increasing, he added:

“Do you live here?”

“Yes; why?”

“Could you show me number seven?”

“What do you want with number seven?”

Here the boy stopped; he feared that he had said too much; he plunged his nails vigorously into his hair, and merely answered:

“Ah! that’s it.”

An idea flashed across Jean Valjean’s mind. Anguish has such lucidities. He said to the child:

“Have you brought the letter I am waiting for?”

“You?” said Gavroche. “You are not a woman.”

“The letter is for Mademoiselle Cosette; isn’t it?”

“Cosette?” muttered Gavroche, “yes, I believe it is that funny name.”

“Well,” resumed Jean Valjean, “I am to deliver the letter to her. Give it to me.”

“In that case you must know that I am sent from the barricade?”

“Of course,” said Jean Valjean.

Gavroche thrust his hand into another of his pockets, and drew out a folded paper.

Then he gave a military salute.

“Respect for the despatch,” said he. “It comes from the provisional government.”

And he handed the paper to Jean Valjean.

“And hurry yourself, Monsieur What‘s-your-name, for Mamselle What’s-her-name is waiting.”

Gavroche was proud of having produced this witticism.

Jean Valjean asked:

“Is it to Saint Merry that the answer is to be sent?”

“In that case,” exclaimed Gavroche, “you would be making one of those pastries commonly called blunders [brioches]. That letter comes from the barricade in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and I am going back there. Good night, citizen.”

This said, Gavroche went away, or rather, resumed his flight like an escaped bird towards the spot whence he came. He plunged back into the darkness as if he made a hole in it, with the rapidity and precision of a projectile; the little Rue de l‘Homme Armé again became silent and solitary; in a twinkling, this strange child, who had within him shadow and dream, was buried in the dusk of those rows of black houses, and was lost therein like smoke in the darkness; and one might have thought him dissipated and vanished, if, a few minutes after his disappearance, a loud crashing of glass and the splendid patatras of a lamp falling upon the pavement had not abruptly reawakened the indignant bourgeois. It was Gavroche passing along the Rue du Chaume.

JEAN VALJEAN WENT inside with Marius’ letter.

He groped his way upstairs, pleased with the darkness like an owl which holds his prey, opened and softly closed the door, listened to see if he heard any sound, decided that, according to all appearances, Cosette and Toussaint were asleep, plunged three or four matches into the bottle of the Fumade tinder-box before he could raise a spark, his hand trembled so much; there was theft in what he was about to do. At last, his candle was lighted, he leaned his elbows on the table, unfolded the paper, and read.

In violent emotions, we do not read, we wrestle down the paper which we hold, so to speak, we strangle it like a victim, we crush the paper, we bury the nails of our wrath or of our delight in it; we run to the end, we leap to the beginning; the attention has a fever; it comprehends by wholesale, almost, the essential; it seizes a point, and all the rest disappears. In Marius’ note to Cosette, Jean Valjean saw only these words.

“—I die. When you read this, my soul will be near you.”

Before these two lines, he was horribly dazzled; he sat a moment as if crushed by the change of emotion which was wrought within him, he looked at Marius’ note with a sort of drunken astonishment; he had before his eyes that splendour, the death of the hated being.

He uttered a hideous cry of inward joy. So, it was finished. The end came sooner than he had dared to hope. The being who encumbered his destiny was disappearing. He was going away of himself, freely, of his own accord. Without any intervention on his, Jean Valjean’s part, without any fault of his, “that man” was about to die. Perhaps even he was already dead.—Here his fever began to calculate.—No. He is not dead yet. The letter was evidently written to be read by Cosette in the morning; since those two discharges which were heard between eleven o‘clock and midnight, there had been nothing; the barricade will not be seriously attacked till daybreak; but it is all the same, for the moment “that man” meddled with this war, he was lost; he is caught in the net. Jean Valjean felt that he was delivered. He would then find himself once more alone with Cosette. Rivalry ceased; the future began again. He had only to keep the note in his pocket. Cosette would never know what had become of “that man.” “I have only to let things take their course. That man cannot escape. If he is not dead yet, it is certain that he will die. What happiness!”

All this said within himself, he became gloomy.
^gj

Then he went down and waked the porter.

About an hour afterwards, Jean Valjean went out in the full dress of a National Guard, and armed. The porter had easily found in the neighbourhood what was necessary to complete his equipment. He had a loaded musket and a cartridge-box full of cartridges. He went in the direction of the markets.

THE INSURGENTS, under the eye of Enjolras, for Marius no longer looked to anything, turned the night to advantage. The barricade was not only repaired, but made larger. They raised it two feet. Iron bars planted in the paving-stones resembled lances in rest. All sorts of rubbish added, and brought from all sides, increased the exterior intricacy. The redoubt was skilfully made over into a wall within and a thicket without.

They rebuilt the stairway of paving-stones, which permitted ascent, as upon a citadel wall.

They put the barricade in order, cleared up the basement room, took the kitchen for a hospital, completed the dressing of the wounds; gathered up the powder scattered over the floor and the tables, cast bullets, made cartridges, scraped lint, distributed the arms of the fallen, cleaned the interior of the redoubt, picked up the fragments, carried away the corpses.

They deposited the dead in a heap in the little Rue Mondétour, of which they were still masters. The pavement was red for a long time at that spot. Among the dead were four National Guards of the banlieue. Enjolras had their uniforms laid aside.

No meals could now be had. There was neither bread nor meat. The fifty men of the barricade, in the sixteen hours that they had been there, had very soon exhausted the meagre provisions of the tavern. In a given time, every barricade which holds out, inevitably becomes the raft of le Méduse. They must resign themselves to famine. They were in the early hours of that Spartan day of the 6th of June, when, in the barricade Saint Merry, Jeanne, surrounded by insurgents who were asking for bread, to all those warriors, crying: “Something to eat!” answered: “What for? it is three o‘clock. At four o’clock we shall be dead.”

About two o‘clock in the morning, they took a count. There were thirty-seven of them left.

ENJOLRAS had gone to make a reconnaissance. He went out by the Little Rue Mondétour, creeping along by the houses.

The insurgents, we must say, were full of hope. The manner in which they had repelled the attack during the night, had led them almost to contempt in advance for the attack at daybreak. They awaited it, and smiled at it. They had no more doubt of their success than of their cause. Moreover, help was evidently about to come. They counted on it. With that facility for triumphant prophecy which is a part of the strength of the fighting Frenchman, they divided into three distinct phases the day which was opening: at six o‘clock in the morning a regiment, “which had been worked on,” would come over to their side. At noon, insurrection of all Paris; at sundown, revolution.

They heard the alarm bell of Saint Merry, which had not been silent a moment since the evening; a proof that the other barricade, the great one, that of Jeanne, still held out.

All these hopes were communicated from one to another in a sort of cheerful yet terrible whisper, which resembled the buzz of a hive of bees at war.

Enjolras reappeared. He returned from his gloomy eagle’s walk in the darkness without. He listened for a moment to all this joy with folded arms, one hand over his mouth. Then, fresh and rosy in the growing whiteness of the morning, he said:

“The whole army of Paris is fighting. A third of that army is pressing upon the barricade in which you are. Besides the National Guard, I distinguished the shakos of the Fifth of the line and the colours of the Sixth Legion. You will be attacked in an hour. As for the people, they were boiling yesterday, but this morning they do not stir. Nothing to expect, nothing to hope. No more from a suburb than from a regiment. You have been abandoned.”

These words fell upon the buzzing of the groups, and wrought the effect which the first drops of the tempest produce upon the swarm. All were dumb. There was a moment of inexpressible silence, when you might have heard the flight of death.

This moment was short.

A voice, from the most dark depths of the groups, cried to Enjolras:

“So be it. Let us make the barricade twenty feet high, and let us all stand by it. Citizens, let us offer the protest of corpses. Let us show that, if the people abandon the republicans, the republicans do not abandon the people.”