Les Misérables, v. 5/5: Jean Valjean
Page 24
CHAPTER XXIII.
ORESTES SOBER AND PYLADES DRUNK.
At length, by employing the skeleton of the staircase, by climbing upthe walls, clinging to the ceiling, and killing on the very edge of thetrap the last who resisted, some twenty assailants, soldiers, Nationaland Municipal Guards, mostly disfigured by wounds in the face receivedin this formidable ascent, blinded by blood, furious and savage,burst into the first-floor room. There was only one man standingthere,--Enjolras; without cartridges or sword, he only held in his handthe barrel of his carbine, whose butt he had broken on the heads ofthose who entered. He had placed the billiard-table between himself andhis assailants, he had fallen back to the end of the room, and there,with flashing eye and head erect, holding the piece of a weapon in hishand, he was still sufficiently alarming for a space to be formed roundhim. A cry was raised,--
"It is the chief; it was he who killed the artilleryman; as he hasplaced himself there, we will let him remain there. Shoot him on thespot!"
"Shoot me!" Enjolras said.
And throwing away his weapon and folding his arms, he offered hischest. The boldness of dying bravely always moves men. So soon asEnjolras folded his arms, accepting the end, the din of the struggleceased in the room, and the chaos was suddenly appeased in a species ofsepulchral solemnity. It seemed as if the menacing majesty of Enjolras,disarmed and motionless, produced an effect on the tumult, and thatmerely by the authority of his tranquil glance, this young man, whoalone was unwounded, superb, blood-stained, charming, and indifferentlike one invulnerable, constrained this sinister mob to kill himrespectfully. His beauty, heightened at this moment by his haughtiness,was dazzling, and as if he could be no more fatigued than wounded afterthe frightful four-and-twenty hours which had elapsed, he was fresh androsy. It was to him that the witness referred when he said at a laterdate before the court-martial, "There was an insurgent whom I heardcalled Apollo." A National Guard who aimed at Enjolras lowered hismusket, saying, "I feel as if I were going to kill a flower." Twelvemen formed into a platoon in the corner opposite to the one in whichEnjolras stood, and got their muskets ready in silence. Then a sergeantshouted, "Present!"
An officer interposed.
"Wait a minute."
And, addressing Enjolras,--
"Do you wish to have your eyes bandaged?"
"No."
"It was really you who killed the sergeant of artillery?"
"Yes."
Grantaire had been awake for some minutes past. Grantaire, it willbe remembered, had been sleeping since the past evening in the upperroom, with his head lying on a table. He realized in all its energythe old metaphor, dead drunk. The hideous philter of absinthe, stout,and alcohol, had thrown him into a lethargic state, and, as his tablewas small, and of no use at the barricade, they had left it him. Hewas still in the same posture, with his chest upon the table, hishead reeling on his arms, and surrounded by glasses and bottles. Hewas sleeping the deadly sleep of the hibernating bear or the filledleech. Nothing had roused him,--neither the platoon fire, nor thecannon-balls, nor the canister which penetrated through the windowinto the room where he was, nor the prodigious noise of the assault.Still, he at times responded to the cannon by a snore. He seemed to bewaiting for a bullet to save him the trouble of waking; several corpseslay around him, and at the first glance nothing distinguished him fromthese deep sleepers of death.
Noise does not wake a drunkard, but silence arouses him, and thispeculiarity has been more than once observed. The fall of anything nearhim increased Grantaire's lethargy, and noise lulled him. The speciesof halt which the tumult made before Enjolras was a shock for thisheavy sleep. It is the effect of a galloping coach which stops short.Grantaire started up, stretched out his arms, rubbed his eyes, looked,yawned, and understood. Intoxication wearing off resembles a curtainthat is rent, and a man sees at once, and at a single glance, allthat it concealed. Everything presents itself suddenly to the memory,and the drunkard, who knows nothing of what has happened during thelast twenty-four hours, has scarce opened his eyes ere he understandsit all. Ideas return with a sudden lucidity; the species of sudsthat blinded the brain is dispersed, and makes way for a clear anddistinctive apprehension of the reality.
Concealed, as he was, in a corner, and sheltered, so to speak, by thebilliard-table, the soldiers, who had their eyes fixed on Enjolras, hadnot even perceived Grantaire, and the sergeant was preparing to repeatthe order to fire, when all at once they heard a powerful voice cryingat their side,--
"Long live the Republic! I belong to it."
Grantaire had risen; and the immense gleam of all the combat whichhe had missed appeared in the flashing glance of the transfigureddrunkard. He repeated, "Long live the Republic!" crossed the room witha firm step, and placed himself before the muskets by Enjolras's side.
"Kill us both at once," he said.
And turning gently to Enjolras, he asked him,--
"Do you permit it?"
Enjolras pressed his hand with a smile, and this smile had not passedaway ere the detonation took place. Enjolras, pierced by eight bullets,remained leaning against the wall as if nailed to it; he merely hunghis head. Grantaire was lying stark dead at his feet. A few minuteslater the soldiers dislodged the last insurgents who had taken refugeat the top of the house, and were firing through a partition in thegarret. They fought desperately, and threw bodies out of windows, somestill alive. Two voltigeurs, who were trying to raise the smashedomnibus, were killed by two shots from the attics; a man in a blouserushed out of them, with a bayonet thrust in his stomach, and lay onthe ground expiring. A private and insurgent slipped together downthe tiles of the roof, and as they would not loosen their hold fellinto the street, holding each other in a ferocious embrace. Therewas a similar struggle in the cellar,--cries, shots, and a fierceclashing,--then a silence. The barricade was captured, and the soldiersbegan searching the adjacent houses and pursuing the fugitives.