الفصل الفصل 280 · NIGHT BEGINS TO DESCEND UPON GRANTAIRE

The spot was, in fact, admirably adapted, the entrance to the street

widened out, the other extremity narrowed together into a pocket

without exit. Corinthe created an obstacle, the Rue Mondétour was

easily barricaded on the right and the left, no attack was possible

except from the Rue Saint-Denis, that is to say, in front, and in full

sight. Bossuet had the comprehensive glance of a fasting Hannibal.

Terror had seized on the whole street at the irruption of the mob.

There was not a passer-by who did not get out of sight. In the space of

a flash of lightning, in the rear, to right and left, shops, stables,

area-doors, windows, blinds, attic skylights, shutters of every

description were closed, from the ground floor to the roof. A terrified

old woman fixed a mattress in front of her window on two clothes-poles

for drying linen, in order to deaden the effect of musketry. The

wine-shop alone remained open; and that for a very good reason, that

the mob had rushed into it.—“Ah my God! Ah my God!” sighed Mame

Hucheloup.

Bossuet had gone down to meet Courfeyrac.

Joly, who had placed himself at the window, exclaimed:—

“Courfeyrac, you ought to have brought an umbrella. You will gatch

gold.”

In the meantime, in the space of a few minutes, twenty iron bars had

been wrenched from the grated front of the wine-shop, ten fathoms of

street had been unpaved; Gavroche and Bahorel had seized in its

passage, and overturned, the dray of a lime-dealer named Anceau; this

dray contained three barrels of lime, which they placed beneath the

piles of paving-stones: Enjolras raised the cellar trap, and all the

widow Hucheloup’s empty casks were used to flank the barrels of lime;

Feuilly, with his fingers skilled in painting the delicate sticks of

fans, had backed up the barrels and the dray with two massive heaps of

blocks of rough stone. Blocks which were improvised like the rest and

procured no one knows where. The beams which served as props were torn

from the neighboring house-fronts and laid on the casks. When Bossuet

and Courfeyrac turned round, half the street was already barred with a

rampart higher than a man. There is nothing like the hand of the

populace for building everything that is built by demolishing.

Matelote and Gibelotte had mingled with the workers. Gibelotte went and

came loaded with rubbish. Her lassitude helped on the barricade. She

served the barricade as she would have served wine, with a sleepy air.

An omnibus with two white horses passed the end of the street.

Bossuet strode over the paving-stones, ran to it, stopped the driver,

made the passengers alight, offered his hand to “the ladies,” dismissed

the conductor, and returned, leading the vehicle and the horses by the

bridle.

“Omnibuses,” said he, “do not pass the Corinthe. _Non licet omnibus

adire Corinthum_.”

An instant later, the horses were unharnessed and went off at their

will, through the Rue Mondétour, and the omnibus lying on its side

completed the bar across the street.

Mame Hucheloup, quite upset, had taken refuge in the first story.

Her eyes were vague, and stared without seeing anything, and she cried

in a low tone. Her terrified shrieks did not dare to emerge from her

throat.

“The end of the world has come,” she muttered.

Joly deposited a kiss on Mame Hucheloup’s fat, red, wrinkled neck, and

said to Grantaire: “My dear fellow, I have always regarded a woman’s

neck as an infinitely delicate thing.”

But Grantaire attained to the highest regions of dithryamb. Matelote

had mounted to the first floor once more, Grantaire seized her round

her waist, and gave vent to long bursts of laughter at the window.

“Matelote is homely!” he cried: “Matelote is of a dream of ugliness!

Matelote is a chimæra. This is the secret of her birth: a Gothic

Pygmalion, who was making gargoyles for cathedrals, fell in love with

one of them, the most horrible, one fine morning. He besought Love to

give it life, and this produced Matelote. Look at her, citizens! She

has chromate-of-lead-colored hair, like Titian’s mistress, and she is a

good girl. I guarantee that she will fight well. Every good girl

contains a hero. As for Mother Hucheloup, she’s an old warrior. Look at

her moustaches! She inherited them from her husband. A hussar indeed!

She will fight too. These two alone will strike terror to the heart of

the banlieue. Comrades, we shall overthrow the government as true as

there are fifteen intermediary acids between margaric acid and formic

acid; however, that is a matter of perfect indifference to me.

Gentlemen, my father always detested me because I could not understand

mathematics. I understand only love and liberty. I am Grantaire, the

good fellow. Having never had any money, I never acquired the habit of

it, and the result is that I have never lacked it; but, if I had been

rich, there would have been no more poor people! You would have seen!

Oh, if the kind hearts only had fat purses, how much better things

would go! I picture myself Jesus Christ with Rothschild’s fortune! How

much good he would do! Matelote, embrace me! You are voluptuous and

timid! You have cheeks which invite the kiss of a sister, and lips

which claim the kiss of a lover.”

“Hold your tongue, you cask!” said Courfeyrac.

Grantaire retorted:—

“I am the capitoul52 and the master of the floral games!”

Enjolras, who was standing on the crest of the barricade, gun in hand,

raised his beautiful, austere face. Enjolras, as the reader knows, had

something of the Spartan and of the Puritan in his composition. He

would have perished at Thermopylæ with Leonidas, and burned at Drogheda

with Cromwell.

“Grantaire,” he shouted, “go get rid of the fumes of your wine

somewhere else than here. This is the place for enthusiasm, not for

drunkenness. Don’t disgrace the barricade!”

This angry speech produced a singular effect on Grantaire. One would

have said that he had had a glass of cold water flung in his face. He

seemed to be rendered suddenly sober.

He sat down, put his elbows on a table near the window, looked at

Enjolras with indescribable gentleness, and said to him:—

“Let me sleep here.”

“Go and sleep somewhere else,” cried Enjolras.

But Grantaire, still keeping his tender and troubled eyes fixed on him,

replied:—

“Let me sleep here,—until I die.”

Enjolras regarded him with disdainful eyes:—

“Grantaire, you are incapable of believing, of thinking, of willing, of

living, and of dying.”

Grantaire replied in a grave tone:—

“You will see.”

He stammered a few more unintelligible words, then his head fell

heavily on the table, and, as is the usual effect of the second period

of inebriety, into which Enjolras had roughly and abruptly thrust him,

an instant later he had fallen asleep.