Les Miserables (Movie Tie-in) (9781101612774)

by Hugo, Victor; Donougher, Christine (TRN)

  ‘Now that the moon is risen high

  Into the forest let us fly,’

  Said Chariot to Charlotte.

  VI

  Reinforcements

  Their numbers were steadily increasing. They were joined in the Rue des Billettes by a tall, grey-haired man whose bold, vigorous appearance impressed Enjolras and his friends, although none of them knew him. Gavroche, still striding along at the head of the column, whistling, humming, and banging on shop-shutters with his hammerless pistol, had not noticed him.

  They went past Courfeyrac’s door in the Rue de la Verrerie. ‘Good,’ said Courfeyrac. ‘I came out without my purse and I’ve lost my hat.’ Leaving the party, he ran upstairs to his room, picked up his purse and an old hat, and also seized a large, square box about the size of a suitcase which was hidden under his dirty linen. As he hurried down again the concierge called to him:

  ‘Monsieur de Courfeyrac!’

  ‘Concierge, what is your name?’ demanded Courfeyrac.

  She was astonished.

  ‘Why, you know it perfectly well. I’m the concierge, Mère Veuvain.’

  ‘Well, if you insist on calling me Monsieur de Courfeyrac I shall have to call you Mère de Veuvain. And now, what is it you want?’

  ‘There’s someone waiting to see you.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, where is he?’

  ‘In my lodge.’

  ‘Damn!’ said Courfeyrac.

  ‘He’s been waiting over an hour,’ said the concierge.

  At this moment a youth who seemed to be some sort of workman, slight of figure, pale-faced and freckled, wearing a torn smock and patched velveteen trousers, looking rather like a girl dressed in man’s garments, came out of the lodge and said in a voice that was not in the least like that of a woman:

  ‘I’m looking for Monsieur Marius.’

  ‘He’s not here.’

  ‘Will he be back this evening?’

  ‘I couldn’t tell you. I certainly shan’t be here myself,’ said Courfeyrac.

  The youth looked hard at him and asked:

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I shan’t.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with you?’

  ‘Would you like me to carry your box?’

  ‘I’m going to the barricades.’

  ‘Shall I come with you?’

  ‘If you want to,’ said Courfeyrac. ‘The streets are open to everyone.’

  He ran off to rejoin his friends, and when he had caught up with them gave two of them his box to carry. It was some time before he noticed that the youth had followed him.

  A makeshift crowd does not always go where it first intended; it is borne on the wind, as we have said. They passed by Saint-Merry and presently, without quite knowing why, found themselves in the Rue Saint-Denis.

  Book Twelve

  Corinth

  I

  History of Corinth from its foundation

  THE PARISIAN of today who enters the Rue Rambuteau from the direction of Les Halles and sees on his right, facing the Rue Mondétour, a basket-maker’s shop bearing as its sign a basket shaped like the great Napoleon with the inscription, ‘Napoleon all made of osier’, can scarcely imagine the terrible events witnessed by that place a bare thirty years ago.

  This was the site of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, spelt Chanverrerie in old documents, and of the celebrated tavern known as Corinthe.

  The reader will recall what has been said about the barricade set up at this point, which was, however, overshadowed by the one at Saint-Merry. It is upon this Rue de la Chanverie barricade, the tale of which has now vanished from memory, that we hope to shed some light.

  For the purpose of clarity we may revert to the method used in our account of the battle of Waterloo. Any person wishing to visualize with some degree of accuracy the situation of the buildings at that time standing round the Pointe Sainte-Eustache, to the northeast of Les Halles, at what is the entrance to the Rue Rambuteau, has only to imagine a letter N, with the Rue Saint-Denis at one end and Les Halles at the other, its two uprights being the Rue de la Grande-Truanderie and the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and the Rue de la Petite-Truanderie its diagonal line. The old Rue Mondétour cut sharply through all three lines, so that the relatively small rectangle between Les Halles and the Rue Saint-Denis on the one side and the Rue du Cygne and the Rue des Prêcheurs on the other, was divided into seven blocks of houses of different styles and sizes, seemingly set up at random and at all angles, and separated, like the blocks of stone in a builder’s yard, by narrow passageways.

  ‘Narrow passageways’ is the best idea we can give of those dark, twisting alleys, running between tenements eight storeys high. The buildings themselves were so decrepit that in the Rue de la Chanvrerie and the Rue de la Petite-Truanderie they were buttressed by wooden beams running from one house-front to the one opposite. The streets were extremely narrow and the central gutters wide, so that the pedestrian, walking along pavements that were always wet, passed shops like cellars, big, ironbound curbstones, over-large garbage heaps and doorways fortified with wrought-iron grilles. All this has now vanished to make way for the Rue Ram-buteau.

  The name ‘Mondétour’ or ‘my detour’ admirably depicts that labyrinth; and a little further on it was even better represented by the Rue Pirouette, which ran into the Rue Mondétour. The pedestrian going from the Rue Saint-Denis into the Rue de la Chanvrerie found the latter narrowing ahead of him as though he had entered a funnel. At the end of the short street he found his passage barred on the side of Les Halles by a block of tall houses, and might have thought himself in a blind alley if he had not discovered dark alleyways like trenches on either side affording him a way out. This was the Rue Mondétour, running from the Rue des Prêcheurs to the Rue du Cygne and the Rue de la Petite-Truanderie. At the end of this seeming blind alley, on the corner of the right-hand trench, there was a house much lower than the rest that formed a kind of break in the street.

  It is in this house, only two storeys high, that three centuries ago a renowned tavern was light-heartedly installed, sounding a note of festivity on a site of which the poet, Théophile, has recorded:

  Here swings the awesome skeleton

  Of a sad lover who hanged himself.

  Being well located, the tavern flourished and was handed down from father to son. In the days of Mathurin Régnier it was known as the Pot-aux-Roses, and, wordplay being fashionable at the time, its sign was a wooden post, or poteau, painted pink. In the last century the estimable Charles-Joseph Natoire, one of those masters of fantasy whose works are despised by our present-day realists, adorned the pink post with a bunch of Corinth grapes in celebration of the fact that he had on numerous occasions got mellow at the table where Régnier had got drunk. The delighted tavern-keeper had accordingly changed the name of his establishment and caused the words Au Raisin de Corinthe to be painted in gold across the top of the sign. Hence the name ‘Corinth’. Nothing pleases the drinking man more than transitions of this kind, mental zig-zags appropriate to the lurching of his homeward-bound feet. The latest tavern-keeper of the dynasty, Père Hucheloup, had so far lost touch with ancient tradition as to have the post painted blue.

  A ground-floor room with a bar and an upstairs room with a billiard-table, a spiral staircase through the ceiling, wine on the tables, smoke on the walls, candles in broad daylight – such was the tavern. A trapdoor in the lower room led to the cellar, and the Hucheloup apartment was on the upper storey, being reached by a flight of stairs that was more like a ladder than a stairway, its only entrance a curtained doorway in the ground-floor room. There were also two attics under the roof where the serving women were housed. The kitchen shared the ground floor with the main room.

  Père Hucheloup may have been born to be a chemist; he was certainly a cook. People came to his establishment to eat as well as drink. He had invented one particu
lar dish which was to be had nowhere else, consisting of stuffed carp, which he called carpes au gras. This was eaten by the light of a tallow candle or a lamp of the Louis XVI period on tables with nailed coverings of waxed muslin in lieu of tablecloths. People came from far and wide. Hucheloup had the notion one day of drawing the attention of the passer-by to his speciality. He dipped his brush in a pot of black paint, and, since his spelling was as original as his cooking, adorned his façade with the following striking announcement: ‘CARPES HO GRAS.’ A freak of heavy rainfall and hail one winter washed out the first S and the G, so that it read CARPE HO RAS. With the aid of wind and weather a plain gastronomic advertisement was thus transformed into the injunction of the poet Horace, ‘Carpe horas’ – profit by the hours. From which it appeared that Père Hucheloup, although ignorant of French, had been a master of Latin, and that in seeking to abolish Lent he had become a philosopher. But it was also a plain invitation to step inside.

  All that has since vanished. The Mondétour labyrinth was largely done away with in 1847, and probably none of it now remains. The Rue de la Chanvrerie and Corinth have vanished under the cobbles of the Rue Rambuteau.

  Corinth, as we have said, was a meeting-place, if not a rallying-point, of Courfeyrac and his circle. Grantaire had discovered it. Having been beguiled first by the ‘Carpe horas’ he had gone back for the ‘Carpes au gras’, and to eat and drink and argue with his friends. The price was modest. They paid little and sometimes not at all, but were always welcome. Père Hucheloup was a kindly man.

  He was also a tavern-keeper with a moustache and a quirky nature. He had a surly look, as though to overawe his regular customers, and he scowled at all comers, seeming more ready to quarrel than to serve them with soup. And yet, we must repeat, all were made welcome. His oddities had brought renown to his establishment, so that young men said to one another, ‘Let’s go and watch the old man huff and puff.’ He had been a master-at-arms. But then suddenly he would explode with laughter; a thunderous voice and a good fellow. He was a comic spirit in gloomy guise; and his fondness for intimidating his guests was like those snuff-boxes that are shaped like pistols – the only detonation was a sneeze.

  His wife, Mère Hucheloup, was bearded and extremely ugly.

  Père Hucheloup died in 1830, taking with him the secret of the carpes au gras. His widow, scarcely to be consoled, continued to preside over the tavern. But the cooking degenerated and became lamentable, and the wine, which had always been poor, became even worse. Nevertheless, Courfeyrac and his friends still went there – ‘From piety’, as Bossuet said.

  The widow Hucheloup was short-winded and ill-shaped but she had country memories and country speech. Her manner of telling a tale added a spice to her village and springtime recollections. Her greatest delight, she declared, had been to hear ‘the redbreasts twittering in the bushes’.

  The room on the upper floor housing the ‘restaurant’ was a long place cluttered with tables, benches, chairs, stools, and the ancient ricketty billiard-table. One reached it by way of the spiral staircase, which ended in a square hole in the corner, like a ship’s hatchway. Lighted by a single narrow window and a lamp that was always kept burning, it had the look of a lumber-room. Every article of furniture with four legs behaved as though it had only three. The whitewashed walls were unadorned except for the following verse, dedicated to Mère Hucheloup:

  She startles at ten yards, at two you feel weak.

  There’s a wart at the side of her pendulous beak:

  One is always afraid that if ever she blows it,

  It will come off and fall in her mouth ere she knows it.

  This was inscribed in charcoal on the wall.

  Mère Hucheloup, of whom this was a not unfaithful portrait, spent her days passing unconcernedly in front of this legend. Two waitresses called Matelote and Gibelotte, who had never been known by any other name, helped with laying the tables, fetching the carafes of blue-tinted wine, and dishing up the various messes served to the customers in earthenware pots. Matelote, who was fat, flabby, red-haired and strident of voice, had been the favoured handmaiden of the late Père Hucheloup. Ugly she certainly was, as repulsive as any mythological monster; but, since the servant must always give way to the lady of the house, she was less ugly than Mère Hucheloup. Gibelotte, who was long and thin, pale with a lymphatic pallor, with dark-circled eyes and drooping lids, and was afflicted with what may be termed chronic exhaustion, was always first up in the morning and last to bed at night, gently and silently waiting upon everyone, even her fellow-waitress, and smiling drowsily in her fatigue.

  There was a mirror over the bar-counter.

  On the door of the restaurant were the words, written in chalk by Courfeyrac: ‘Revel if you can and eat if you dare.’

  II

  Preliminary frolics

  Laigle de Meaux, as we know, lodged more often with Joly than elsewhere. He perched there like a bird on a branch. The two friends lived, ate, and slept together, sharing everything, even the girl Musichetta from time to time. On the morning of 5 June they breakfasted at Corinth, Joly with a cold in the head that Laigle was also beginning to share. Laigle’s clothes were the worse for wear, but Joly was neatly dressed. They entered the dining room on the first floor at about nine o’clock in the morning, to be welcomed by Matelote and Gibelotte.

  ‘Oysters, cheese, and ham,’ Laigle ordered as they sat down. The place was empty except for themselves, but as they were starting on their oysters a head appeared through the stairway hatch and Grantaire said:

  ‘I was passing outside when I caught a delicious whiff of Brie, so here I am.’

  Seeing that it was Grantaire, Gibelotte brought two more bottles of wine, making three in all.

  ‘Are you going to drink both bottles?’ Laigle asked.

  ‘We’re all ingenious, but you alone are ingenuous,’ said Gran-taire. ‘Two bottles never hurt anyone.’

  The others had begun by eating, but Grantaire began by drinking and one bottle was soon half empty.

  ‘You must have a hole in your stomach,’ said Laigle.

  ‘You’ve certainly got one in your elbow,’ said Grantaire, and having drained his glass he went on, ‘My dear Laigle of the funeral oration, that’s a very shabby jacket you’re wearing.’

  ‘I hope it is,’ said Laigle. ‘That’s why we get on so well together, my jacket and I. It matches its creases with mine, moulds itself to my deformities, adapts itself to my every movements so that I only know it’s there because it keeps me warm. Old clothes are like old friends. Have you just come from the boulevard?’

  ‘No, I didn’t come that way.’

  ‘Joly and I saw the head of the procession go past.’

  ‘It was a wonderful sight,’ said Joly, speaking for the first time.

  ‘And think how quiet this street is,’ said Laigle. ‘You’d never guess that Paris was being turned upside down. At one time, you know, it was all monasteries round here, monks of all descriptions, bearded and shaven, sandalled and barefooted, black and white, Franciscans, Capuchins, Carmelites, great, small and ancient Augustines… The place swarmed with them.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about monks,’ said Grantaire. ‘The thought of those hair-shirts makes me itch.’

  A moment later he uttered an exclamation of disgust.

  ‘I’ve just swallowed a bad oyster! My hypochondria’s starting again. Bad oysters and ugly waitresses, how I hate the human race! I came by way of the Rue Richelieu, past the big public library. The place is like a pile of oyster-shells. All those books, all that paper and ink, all those scribbled words. Somebody had to write them. Who was the idiot who said that man was a biped without a quill? And then I ran into a girl I know, a girl as lovely as a spring morning, worthy to be called April, and the little wretch was in a transport of delight because some poxed-up old banker has taken a fancy to her. The smell of money attracts women like the scent of lilac; they’re like all the other cats, they don’t care whether th
ey’re killing mice or birds. Two months ago that wench was living virtuously in an attic, sewing metal eye-holes into corsets, sleeping on a truckle-bed and living happily with a flower-pot for company. Now she’s a banker’s doxy. It seems it happened last night, and when I met her this morning she was jubilant. And what’s so disgusting in that she’s just as pretty as ever. Not a sign of high finance on her face. Roses are better or worse than women in this respect, that you can see when the grubs have been at them. There’s no morality in this world. Look at our symbols – myrtle, the symbol of love, laurel, the symbol of war, the fatuous olive-branch, symbol of peace, the apple-tree, which nearly did for Adam with its pips, and the fig-leaf, the first forebear of the petticoat. As for right and justice, shall I tell you what they are? The Gauls wanted Clusium. Rome defended Clusium, asking what harm it had done them. Brennus replied, “The same harm that Alba did you, to say nothing of the Volscians and the Sabines. They were your neighbours; just as the Clusians are ours. Proximity means the same to us as it does to you. You seized Alba and we’re taking Clusium.” Rome would not allow it and so Brennus seized Rome, after which he cried, “Vae victis! – Woe to the conquered.” That’s right and justice for you. A world full of beasts of prey, a world full of eagles! It makes my flesh creep.’

  Grantaire held out his glass to be refilled and then resumed his discourse, all three of them unconscious of the interruption.

  ‘Brennus, who captured Rome, was an eagle. The banker who captures a grisette is an eagle of another kind, but one is as shameless as the other. So there is nothing for us to believe in. Drink is the only reality. It makes no odds what your opinions are – whether you’re on the side of the skinny fowl, like the Canton d’Uri, or the plump fowl, like the Canton de Glaris – drink. You were talking about the boulevard and the procession and all that. So what of it? There’s going to be another revolution. What astounds me is the clumsy means that God employs. He’s always having to grease the wheels of events. There’s a hitch, the machine isn’t working, so quick, let’s have a revolution! God’s hands are always blackened with that particular grease. If I were he I’d do things more straightforwardly. I wouldn’t be for ever tinkering with the works; I’d keep the human race in order and string the facts together so that they made sense – no ifs and buts, and no miracles. The thing you call “progress” is driven by two motors, men and events. But unfortunately it happens now and then that something exceptional is called for. Whether it’s men or events, the run-of-the-mill is not enough; you need geniuses in terms of men, and revolutions in terms of events. Huge accidents are the law, and the natural order of things can’t do without them – and when you think of comets you can’t help feeling that Heaven itself needs its star performers. God puts up a meteor when you least expect it, like a poster on a wall, or a weird star with an enormous tail attached to it for emphasis. And so Caesar dies. Brutus gives him a dagger-thrust and God sends a comet. Bingo! – And you have the aurora borealis or a revolution or a great man. You have the year ’93 in capital letters, Napoleon the star and 1811 at the top of the bill. And a very fine poster it is, midnight blue and studded with tongues of fire. “This remarkable spectacle!” But watch out, you groundlings, because suddenly the whole thing’s in ruins, the star and the drama as well. Good God, that’s too much – and still it’s not enough! These devices, snatched haphazard, they look magnificent but they’re really feeble. The fact is Providence is simply playing tricks. What does a revolution prove? – simply that God’s at his wits’ end. He brings about a coup d’état because there’s a break in continuity between the present and the future that He hasn’t known how to mend. Which only confirms my theory about the unhappy state of Jehovah’s fortunes. When I think of the unease up aloft and here below, the baseness and rascality and misery in Heaven and on earth, extending from the bird that can’t find a grain of corn to me that can’t find an income of a hundred thousand livres; when I think of human destiny, which is wearing very thin, even the destiny of kings, haunted by the rope like the hanged Prince de Condé; when I think of winter, which is nothing but a rift in the firmament through which the winds break loose, the shreds of cloud over the hilltops in the new blue of the morning – and dew-drops, those false pearls, and frost, that beauty powder, and mankind in disarray and events out of joint, and so many spots on the sun and so many craters in the moon and so much wretchedness everywhere – when I think of of all this I can’t help feeling that God is not rich. He has the appearance of riches, certainly, but I can feel his embarrassment. He gives us a revolution the way a bankrupt merchant gives a ball. We must not judge any god by appearances. I see a shoddy universe beyond the splendour of the sky. Creation itself is bankrupt, and that’s why I’m a malcontent. Today is the fifth of June and it’s almost dark; I’ve been waiting since early morning for the sun to shine. But it hasn’t shone yet, and I’ll bet you it won’t shine all day – an oversight, no doubt, on the part of some underpaid subordinate. Yes, everything is badly managed, nothing fits with anything else, this old world is in a mess and I’ve joined the opposition. Everything’s at odds, and the whole world is exasperating. It’s like with children: those that ask don’t get, and those that don’t need, do. So I’m opting out. Besides, the sight of Laigle de Meaux’s bald head afflicts me; it’s humiliating to think that I’m the same age as that shiny pate. Well, I may criticize but I don’t abuse. The world’s what it is. I’m talking without malice, simply to relieve my mind. Be assured, Eternal Father, of my distinguished sentiments. Alas, by all the saints of Olympus and all the gods in Paradise, I was not born to be a Parisian – that is to say, to hover indefinitely, like a shuttlecock bouncing between two rackets, between the lookers-on and the activists. I was born to be a Turk and spend my days watching exquisite girls perform those lubricious oriental dances that are like the dreams of virtuous men; or a well-to-do countryman; or a gentleman of Venice attended by fair ladies; or a German princeling contributing half an infantry soldier to the German Confederation and occupying his spare time with drying his socks on his hedge, that is to say, his frontier. That’s what I was really born for. I said a Turk, and I’m not gainsaying it. I don’t know why people should be so against the Turks. There was good in Muhammad. The invention of the seraglio with houris and a paradise with odalisques is deserving of our respect. Let us not abuse Muhammadanism, the only creed that includes a hen-roost. I insist on drinking to it. This earth is a great imbecility. And now it seems the fools are going to fight one another, bash one another’s heads in, in this month of high summer, when they might be out with a wench in the fields, breathing the scent of new-mown hay. Really people are too stupid. An old broken lantern that I saw the other day in an antique shop put a thought in my mind – it’s time to bring light to the human race. And that thought has made me unhappy again. What good does it do to gulp down an oyster or a revolution? Again I’m growing dismal. This hideous old world. We struggle and fall destitute, we prostitute ourselves, we kill each other – and in the end we swallow it all!’