Les Miserables (Movie Tie-in) (9781101612774)

by Hugo, Victor; Donougher, Christine (TRN)

  Enjolras fell silent rather than ceased to speak; his lips continued to move as though he were still speaking to himself, with the result that his audience continued to regard him, waiting to hear more. There was no applause, but much whispering. Words being but a breath, the stir of awakened minds is like the rustling of leaves.

  VI

  Marius and Javert

  We must describe what was going on in Marius’s mind.

  His general situation we know. We have said already that the world for him had ceased to be real. He no longer grasped things clearly. He was moving, we must repeat, in the shadow of the great dark wings that spread over the dying. He felt that he was already in the grave, that he had crossed over to the other side, whence he could see the faces of the living only with the eyes of the dead.

  How did Monsieur Fauchelevent come to be here? Why was he here? What had he come for? Marius did not ask himself these several questions. In any event, the quality of the state of despair being that we extend it to others besides ourselves, it seemed to him natural that everyone should have come there to die. But the thought of Cosette clutched at his heart.

  Monsieur Fauchelevent did not speak to Marius or even look at him, and seemed not to have heard when Marius said, ‘I know him.’ This was a relief to Marius, and indeed, if the word can be used in such a context, it may be said to have pleased him. He had been always conscious of the impossibility of his addressing a word to this enigmatic figure who was to him both suspect and impressive. Besides, it was a very long time since he had seen him, and to anyone as shy and reserved as Marius this increased the impossibility.

  The five selected men left the stronghold by way of the Rue Mondétour, looking precisely like members of the National Guard. One of them was weeping. Before leaving they embraced all those who were staying behind.

  When the men restored to life had departed, the thoughts of Enjolras turned to the man condemned to death. He went into the tavern and asked:

  ‘Do you want anything?’

  Javert replied:

  ‘When are you going to kill me?’

  ‘You must wait. At the moment we need all our ammunition.’

  ‘Then give me something to drink,’ said Javert.

  Enjolras brought him a glass of water, and, since his arms were bound, held it for him to drink.

  ‘Is that all?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m not at all comfortable,’ said Javert. ‘It was scarcely kind to keep me lashed to this pillar all night. You can tie me up as much as you like, but you might at least let me lie on a table like that other fellow.’ And he nodded in the direction of Monsieur Mabeuf.

  It will be remembered that at the back of the ground-floor room there was a large table that had been used for the making of bullets and cartridges. Now that this was done, and the supply of powder used up, the table was no longer required. At Enjolras’s order, four of the rebels released Javert from the pillar, a fifth holding a bayonet to his breast while they were untying him. Keeping his hands tied behind his back and holding him with a length of stout cord which permitted him to take a pace fifteen inches long, like a man mounting the scaffold, they walked him to the table and, stretching him out on it, tied him to it securely with a rope passed round his body. As a further precaution, to render any attempt at escape impossible, they passed a rope round his neck, ran the two ends between his legs and tied them to his wrists – the device known in prisons as the ‘martingale’.

  While they were doing this a man appeared in the doorway and stood staring with a singular fixity at Javert. The shadow he cast caused Javert to turn his head. He looked round and recognized Jean Valjean. He gave no sign of emotion. Coolly averting his gaze, he simply said, ‘So here we are!’

  VII

  The situation deteriorates

  The sky was growing rapidly lighter: but not a door or a window opened in the street. It was daybreak but not yet the hour of awakening. As we have said, the troops had been withdrawn from the far end of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, opposite the barricade; the street seemed clear, open to the public with a sinister tranquillity. The Rue Saint-Denis was as silent as the Avenue of the Sphinx at Thebes, with not a soul to be seen at the intersections now brightening in the reflected light of the dawn. Nothing is more dreary than this gathering of light in an empty street.

  There was nothing to be seen but something to be heard. Mysterious movements were taking place some distance away. Clearly the crisis was imminent, and the sentries withdrew as they had done on the previous evening; but this time they all went.

  The barricade was stronger than it had been at the first assault. After the departure of the five men it had been still further reinforced. Acting on the advice of the scout who was keeping an eye on the Halles area, Enjolras had taken a serious step. He had blocked the narrowest part of the Rue Mondétour, which until then had remained open, uprooting the paving-stones over a length of several more houses for the purpose. The stronghold, being now protected in front by the barricade across the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and on either flank by the barricades across the Rue du Cygne and the Rue Mondétour, had been rendered almost impregnable; but, on the other hand, it was totally enclosed. It had three fighting fronts but no outlet. ‘A fortress, but also a mousetrap,’ said Combeferre, chuckling. Enjolras had had some thirty paving-stones torn up for no reason, as Bossuet said, and piled up by the door of the tavern.

  The silence in the direction from which the main attack was to be expected was now so ominous that Enjolras sent all his men to their action stations and a ration of eau-de-vie was distributed.

  Nothing is more singular than a barricade preparing for an assault. Men take their places as though at the play, jostling and elbowing each other. Some make seats for themselves. The awkward corner is avoided, and the niche which may afford protection is occupied. Left-handed men are invaluable: they can fill places unsuited to the rest. Many men prefer to fight sitting down, to be able to kill and die in comfort. In the savage fighting of June 1848 a renowned marksman operating from a roof-terrace had an armchair of the Voltaire pattern brought up to him: he was caught by a discharge of grapeshot.

  Directly the commander orders the men to action-stations all disorder ceases – the exchange of ribaldries, the gossiping groups, the groups of personal friends. Each man, seized with the common purpose, concentrates his thoughts on the enemy. A barricade not in immediate danger is chaos; but in the face of danger it is disciplined. Peril brings order.

  When Enjolras, with his double-barrelled carbine, took up his position in the sort of redoubt he had reserved for himself, complete silence fell, broken only by a series of clicks along the wall as the men cocked their muskets.

  For the rest, their state of mind was more proud and confident than ever. Extravagance of sacrifice is a stiffener of the spirit. They had nothing to hope for, but they had despair, that last resort which, as Virgil said, sometimes brings victory. Supreme resources may be born of supreme resolution. To plunge into the sea is sometimes to escape shipwreck; a coffin-lid may be a safety plank.

  As on the previous evening, all eyes were intent on the end of the street, which was now bathed in daylight. They did not have long to wait. Sounds of movement were now clearly to be heard from the direction of Saint-Leu; but they were unlike the sounds that had preceded the first attack. There was a rattling of chains and a clatter of massive wheels over the cobbles – a sort of solemn commotion heralding the approach of more sinister ironmongery. And the old streets trembled, built as they were for the fruitful passage of commerce and ideas, not for the monstrous rumbling of engines of war. All eyes widened as the defenders stared through the barricade.

  A piece of artillery came in sight.

  It was being pushed by its gun-crew and was all ready stripped for action, with the front bogey-wheels removed. Two men supported the barrel, four were at the wheels, and the others followed, pulling the ammunition tender. A lighted fuse was visible.

  ‘Fire,’ sho
uted Enjolras.

  The whole barricade flashed fire, and following the thunderous detonations a wave of smoke engulfed the gun and its crew. But when after some moments this cleared the men were seen to be hauling the gun into its position facing the barricade, working without haste, in correct, military fashion. Not one had been hit. The chief gunner, lowering the breech to get the range, was aiming the gun with the gravity of an astronomer adjusting a telescope.

  ‘Well done the gunners!’ cried Bossuet, and all the defenders clapped their hands.

  In a matter of instants the gun was ready for action, its wheels straddling the gutter in the middle of the street, its formidable mouthpiece pointing at the barricade.

  ‘Cheer up!’ said Courfeyrac. ‘This is where it gets rough. First the sparring and now the punch. The army is showing its fist. We are about to be seriously shaken. Musketry paves the way, but artillery does the job.’

  ‘It’s one of the new model bronze eight-pounders,’ said Combeferre. ‘If the proportion of tin to copper exceeds one tenth, the barrel’s liable to get distorted. Too much tin weakens it, and the whole thing goes out of shape. Perhaps the best way of avoiding this would be to revert to the fourteenth-century practice of hooping – a series of steel rings, not welded to the barrel but encircling it at intervals from end to end. Meanwhile the fault has to be rectified as best it can. One can use a gauge to discover where the inside of the barrel bulges or narrows. But there’s a better method, Gribeaural’s “Moving Star”.’

  ‘They grooved cannon in the sixteenth century,’ said Bossuet.

  ‘Yes. It increased ballistic force but diminished accuracy. Besides, at short range the trajectory isn’t level enough. There’s too much of a curve for the projectile to be able to hit an intermediate object, which is necessary in battle, and the more so according to the proximity of the enemy and the rate of fire. The trouble with those grooved or rifled sixteenth-century cannon was due to the weakness of the charge, which itself was due to practical considerations such as the need to preserve the gun-mounting. In other words, the cannon, that lord of battle, can’t do all it would like to do: its very strength is a weakness. A cannon-ball travels only at the speed of six hundred leagues an hour, whereas light travels at seventy thousand leagues a second – and that is the superiority of God over Napoleon.’

  Enjolras meanwhile had ordered his men to reload, and the artillery men were loading their gun. The question was, however, would the barricade stand up to cannon-fire? Would it be breached? The discharge was awaited with tense anxiety.

  The blow fell, accompanied by a roaring explosion; and a cheerful voice cried:

  ‘I’m back!’

  Gavroche had reappeared at the precise moment that the ball ploughed into the barricade, having come by way of the Rue du Cygne and scrambled over the small barrier confronting the maze of the Petite-Truanderie. His arrival made more impression than did the cannon-ball, which simply buried itself in the rubble, having done nothing worse than shatter a wheel of the omnibus and demolish the old Ancean handcart. Seeing which, the defenders burst out laughing.

  ‘Carry on!’ shouted Bossuet to the gunners.

  VIII

  The gunners show their worth

  The defenders crowded round Gavroche, but he had no time to tell them anything. Marius, trembling, dragged him aside.

  ‘Why have you come back here?’

  ‘If it comes to that,’ said Gavroche, ‘why are you here at all?’ And he surveyed Marius with his customary effrontery, his eyes widening with the glow of his own achievement.

  ‘Who told you to come back?’ Marius demanded sternly. ‘Did you at least deliver my letter?’

  Gavroche was feeling somewhat remorseful about that letter. In his haste to get back to the barricade he had got rid of it rather than delivered it. He was bound to admit to himself that he had behaved casually in bestowing it on an unknown man whose features he had not been able to distinguish. Certainly the man had been hatless, but that in itself was not enough. In short, he was not too pleased with himself in this matter, and he feared Marius’s rebuke. So he took the easiest way out: he lied outrageously.

  ‘Citizen, I gave the letter to the doorkeeper. The lady was asleep. She’ll get it when she wakes up.’

  Marius had sent the letter with two objects in mind, to bid farewell to Cosette and to save Gavroche. He had to content himself with having accomplished only one of them.

  But the thought of the letter reminded him of the presence of Monsieur Fauchelevent in the stronghold, and it occurred to him that the two things might be connected. Pointing to Monsieur Fauchelevent, he asked:

  ‘Do you know that man?’

  ‘No,’ said Gavroche.

  It will be remembered that he had encountered Jean Valjean after dark. Marius’s uneasy suspicions were dispelled. What did he know, after all, of Monsieur Fauchelevent’s political opinions? He might be a convinced republican, which would account for his having come to join them.

  Gavroche, meanwhile, at the other end of the barricade, was demanding, ‘Where’s my musket?’ Courfeyrac had it given back to him. Gavroche went on to tell the ‘comrades’, as he called them, that they were now entirely surrounded. He had had great difficulty in getting back. A battalion of the line, based on the Petite-Truanderie, was keeping a watch round the Rue du Cygne, and the Rue des Prêcheurs, on the other side, was occupied by the Garde Municipale. The main strength of the army was facing them.

  ‘And I authorize you to give them a boot up the backside,’ said Gavroche, having concluded his report.

  All this time Enjolras in his redoubt was watching and intently listening.

  The enemy, evidently disappointed by the failure of their cannon-ball, had not fired the gun again. A company of infantry of the line had now moved into position at the end of the street, behind the gun. They were digging up the paving-stones and using them to build a low wall, a sort of breastwork not more than eighteen inches high, facing the barricade. At the left-hand end of this breastwork the head of another column of troops, massed along the Rue Saint-Denis, could be seen.

  Enjolras caught a sound that he thought he recognized, the rattle of grape-canisters when they are taken out of the ammunition-tender. He saw the leader of the gun-crew readjust his aim, pointing the gun-muzzle slightly to the left. The crew reloaded the gun, and the leading gunner himself took the linstock and held it over the touch-hole.

  ‘Heads down and get back to the wall,’ shouted Enjolras. ‘All of you down on your knees.’

  The rebels, who had left their posts to listen to Gavroche, dashed frantically back, but the gun was fired before the order could be carried out, and they heard the hideous whistle of grape-shot. The gun was aimed at the narrow breach between the end of the barricade and the house wall. The bullets ricocheted off the wall, killing two men and wounding three. If it went on like that the barricade would cease to be tenable. It was not proof against grape-shot.

  There was a murmur of dismay.

  ‘We must not let that happen again,’ said Enjolras.

  He levelled his carbine at the leading gunner, who, bent over the breach of the gun, was finally adjusting its aim. He was a gunnery sergeant, a fair-haired, handsome young man with a gentle face and the look of intelligence appropriate to that formidable, predestined weapon which, by its very perfection of horror, must finally put an end to war.

  Combeferre, at Enjolras’s side, was staring at him.

  ‘What a shame!’ said Combeferre. ‘How hideous this butchery is! Well, when there are no more kings there will be no more warfare. You’re aiming at that sergeant, Enjolras, but you’re not looking at him. He looks a charming young man, and he is certainly brave. One can see that he thinks – these young artillery-men are highly educated. No doubt he has a family, a father and mother, and probably he’s in love. He can’t be more than twenty-five. He could be your brother.’

  ‘He is,’ said Enjolras.

  ‘Yes,’ said Combe
ferre, ‘and mine too. We mustn’t kill him.’

  ‘We must. It has got to be done.’ A tear rolled slowly down Enjolras’s pallid cheek.

  At the same moment he pressed the trigger. The young gunner spun round twice with arms extended and head flung back as though gasping for air, then fell sideways on to the gun and stayed motion­less. Blood poured from the middle of his back, which was turned towards them.

  His body had to be removed and a relief appointed in his place. It meant that a few minutes had been gained.

  IX

  Use of an old poacher’s talent

  Urgent views were exchanged along the barricade. The gun would soon fire again. They could not survive more than a quarter of an hour against grapeshot. Something had to be done to lessen its effect.

  ‘Stuff that gap with a mattress,’ ordered Enjolras.

  ‘There isn’t one to spare,’ said Combeferre. ‘The wounded are using them all.’

  Jean Valjean, seated on a kerbstone at the corner of the tavern with his musket between his knees, had thus far kept aloof from the rest of the company and taken no part in the proceedings, seeming not to hear the remarks that were being made around him. Now, however, he got to his feet.

  It will be recalled that when the party had entered the Rue de la Chanvrerie an old woman in one of the houses had rigged a mattress outside her window as a precaution against bullets. It was an attic window six storeys above ground, and the house was situated just outside the barricade. The mattress was suspended from two clothes-poles held by two cords running from nails driven into the woodwork of the window. The cords, at that distance, looked no thicker than a hair.

  ‘Will someone lend me a double-barrelled carbine?’ said Valjean.