Kabanata Kabanata 180 · THE BACK ROOM OF THE CAFÉ MUSAIN

One of the conversations among the young men, at which Marius was

present and in which he sometimes joined, was a veritable shock to his

mind.

This took place in the back room of the Café Musain. Nearly all the

Friends of the A B C had convened that evening. The argand lamp was

solemnly lighted. They talked of one thing and another, without passion

and with noise. With the exception of Enjolras and Marius, who held

their peace, all were haranguing rather at hap-hazard. Conversations

between comrades sometimes are subject to these peaceable tumults. It

was a game and an uproar as much as a conversation. They tossed words

to each other and caught them up in turn. They were chattering in all

quarters.

No woman was admitted to this back room, except Louison, the

dish-washer of the café, who passed through it from time to time, to go

to her washing in the “lavatory.”

Grantaire, thoroughly drunk, was deafening the corner of which he had

taken possession, reasoning and contradicting at the top of his lungs,

and shouting:—

“I am thirsty. Mortals, I am dreaming: that the tun of Heidelberg has

an attack of apoplexy, and that I am one of the dozen leeches which

will be applied to it. I want a drink. I desire to forget life. Life is

a hideous invention of I know not whom. It lasts no time at all, and is

worth nothing. One breaks one’s neck in living. Life is a theatre set

in which there are but few practicable entrances. Happiness is an

antique reliquary painted on one side only. Ecclesiastes says: ‘All is

vanity.’ I agree with that good man, who never existed, perhaps. Zero

not wishing to go stark naked, clothed himself in vanity. O vanity! The

patching up of everything with big words! a kitchen is a laboratory, a

dancer is a professor, an acrobat is a gymnast, a boxer is a pugilist,

an apothecary is a chemist, a wigmaker is an artist, a hodman is an

architect, a jockey is a sportsman, a wood-louse is a pterigybranche.

Vanity has a right and a wrong side; the right side is stupid, it is

the negro with his glass beads; the wrong side is foolish, it is the

philosopher with his rags. I weep over the one and I laugh over the

other. What are called honors and dignities, and even dignity and

honor, are generally of pinchbeck. Kings make playthings of human

pride. Caligula made a horse a consul; Charles II. made a knight of a

sirloin. Wrap yourself up now, then, between Consul Incitatus and

Baronet Roastbeef. As for the intrinsic value of people, it is no

longer respectable in the least. Listen to the panegyric which neighbor

makes of neighbor. White on white is ferocious; if the lily could

speak, what a setting down it would give the dove! A bigoted woman

prating of a devout woman is more venomous than the asp and the cobra.

It is a shame that I am ignorant, otherwise I would quote to you a mass

of things; but I know nothing. For instance, I have always been witty;

when I was a pupil of Gros, instead of daubing wretched little

pictures, I passed my time in pilfering apples; _rapin_24 is the

masculine of _rapine_. So much for myself; as for the rest of you, you

are worth no more than I am. I scoff at your perfections, excellencies,

and qualities. Every good quality tends towards a defect; economy

borders on avarice, the generous man is next door to the prodigal, the

brave man rubs elbows with the braggart; he who says very pious says a

trifle bigoted; there are just as many vices in virtue as there are

holes in Diogenes’ cloak. Whom do you admire, the slain or the slayer,

Cæsar or Brutus? Generally men are in favor of the slayer. Long live

Brutus, he has slain! There lies the virtue. Virtue, granted, but

madness also. There are queer spots on those great men. The Brutus who

killed Cæsar was in love with the statue of a little boy. This statue

was from the hand of the Greek sculptor Strongylion, who also carved

that figure of an Amazon known as the Beautiful Leg, Eucnemos, which

Nero carried with him in his travels. This Strongylion left but two

statues which placed Nero and Brutus in accord. Brutus was in love with

the one, Nero with the other. All history is nothing but wearisome

repetition. One century is the plagiarist of the other. The battle of

Marengo copies the battle of Pydna; the Tolbiac of Clovis and the

Austerlitz of Napoleon are as like each other as two drops of water. I

don’t attach much importance to victory. Nothing is so stupid as to

conquer; true glory lies in convincing. But try to prove something! If

you are content with success, what mediocrity, and with conquering,

what wretchedness! Alas, vanity and cowardice everywhere. Everything

obeys success, even grammar. _Si volet usus_, says Horace. Therefore I

disdain the human race. Shall we descend to the party at all? Do you

wish me to begin admiring the peoples? What people, if you please?

Shall it be Greece? The Athenians, those Parisians of days gone by,

slew Phocion, as we might say Coligny, and fawned upon tyrants to such

an extent that Anacephorus said of Pisistratus: “His urine attracts the

bees.” The most prominent man in Greece for fifty years was that

grammarian Philetas, who was so small and so thin that he was obliged

to load his shoes with lead in order not to be blown away by the wind.

There stood on the great square in Corinth a statue carved by Silanion

and catalogued by Pliny; this statue represented Episthates. What did

Episthates do? He invented a trip. That sums up Greece and glory. Let

us pass on to others. Shall I admire England? Shall I admire France?

France? Why? Because of Paris? I have just told you my opinion of

Athens. England? Why? Because of London? I hate Carthage. And then,

London, the metropolis of luxury, is the headquarters of wretchedness.

There are a hundred deaths a year of hunger in the parish of

Charing-Cross alone. Such is Albion. I add, as the climax, that I have

seen an Englishwoman dancing in a wreath of roses and blue spectacles.

A fig then for England! If I do not admire John Bull, shall I admire

Brother Jonathan? I have but little taste for that slave-holding

brother. Take away _Time is money_, what remains of England? Take away

_Cotton is king_, what remains of America? Germany is the lymph, Italy

is the bile. Shall we go into ecstasies over Russia? Voltaire admired

it. He also admired China. I admit that Russia has its beauties, among

others, a stout despotism; but I pity the despots. Their health is

delicate. A decapitated Alexis, a poignarded Peter, a strangled Paul,

another Paul crushed flat with kicks, divers Ivans strangled, with

their throats cut, numerous Nicholases and Basils poisoned, all this

indicates that the palace of the Emperors of Russia is in a condition

of flagrant insalubrity. All civilized peoples offer this detail to the

admiration of the thinker; war; now, war, civilized war, exhausts and

sums up all the forms of ruffianism, from the brigandage of the

Trabuceros in the gorges of Mont Jaxa to the marauding of the Comanche

Indians in the Doubtful Pass. ‘Bah!’ you will say to me, ‘but Europe is

certainly better than Asia?’ I admit that Asia is a farce; but I do not

precisely see what you find to laugh at in the Grand Lama, you peoples

of the west, who have mingled with your fashions and your elegances all

the complicated filth of majesty, from the dirty chemise of Queen

Isabella to the chamber-chair of the Dauphin. Gentlemen of the human

race, I tell you, not a bit of it! It is at Brussels that the most beer

is consumed, at Stockholm the most brandy, at Madrid the most

chocolate, at Amsterdam the most gin, at London the most wine, at

Constantinople the most coffee, at Paris the most absinthe; there are

all the useful notions. Paris carries the day, in short. In Paris, even

the rag-pickers are sybarites; Diogenes would have loved to be a

rag-picker of the Place Maubert better than to be a philosopher at the

Piræus. Learn this in addition; the wineshops of the rag-pickers are

called _bibines_; the most celebrated are the _Saucepan_ and _The

Slaughter-House_. Hence, tea-gardens, goguettes, caboulots, bouibuis,

mastroquets, bastringues, manezingues, bibines of the rag-pickers,

caravanseries of the caliphs, I certify to you, I am a voluptuary, I

eat at Richard’s at forty sous a head, I must have Persian carpets to

roll naked Cleopatra in! Where is Cleopatra? Ah! So it is you, Louison.

Good day.”

Thus did Grantaire, more than intoxicated, launch into speech, catching

at the dish-washer in her passage, from his corner in the back room of

the Café Musain.

Bossuet, extending his hand towards him, tried to impose silence on

him, and Grantaire began again worse than ever:—

“Aigle de Meaux, down with your paws. You produce on me no effect with

your gesture of Hippocrates refusing Artaxerxes’ bric-à-brac. I excuse

you from the task of soothing me. Moreover, I am sad. What do you wish

me to say to you? Man is evil, man is deformed; the butterfly is a

success, man is a failure. God made a mistake with that animal. A crowd

offers a choice of ugliness. The first comer is a wretch,

_Femme_—woman—rhymes with _infâme_,—infamous. Yes, I have the spleen,

complicated with melancholy, with homesickness, plus hypochondria, and

I am vexed and I rage, and I yawn, and I am bored, and I am tired to

death, and I am stupid! Let God go to the devil!”

“Silence then, capital R!” resumed Bossuet, who was discussing a point

of law behind the scenes, and who was plunged more than waist high in a

phrase of judicial slang, of which this is the conclusion:—

“—And as for me, although I am hardly a legist, and at the most, an

amateur attorney, I maintain this: that, in accordance with the terms

of the customs of Normandy, at Saint-Michel, and for each year, an

equivalent must be paid to the profit of the lord of the manor, saving

the rights of others, and by all and several, the proprietors as well

as those seized with inheritance, and that, for all emphyteuses,

leases, freeholds, contracts of domain, mortgages—”

“Echo, plaintive nymph,” hummed Grantaire.

Near Grantaire, an almost silent table, a sheet of paper, an inkstand

and a pen between two glasses of brandy, announced that a vaudeville

was being sketched out.

This great affair was being discussed in a low voice, and the two heads

at work touched each other: “Let us begin by finding names. When one

has the names, one finds the subject.”

“That is true. Dictate. I will write.”

“Monsieur Dorimon.”

“An independent gentleman?”

“Of course.”

“His daughter, Célestine.”

“—tine. What next?”

“Colonel Sainval.”

“Sainval is stale. I should say Valsin.”

Beside the vaudeville aspirants, another group, which was also taking

advantage of the uproar to talk low, was discussing a duel. An old

fellow of thirty was counselling a young one of eighteen, and

explaining to him what sort of an adversary he had to deal with.

“The deuce! Look out for yourself. He is a fine swordsman. His play is

neat. He has the attack, no wasted feints, wrist, dash, lightning, a

just parade, mathematical parries, _bigre!_ and he is left-handed.”

In the angle opposite Grantaire, Joly and Bahorel were playing

dominoes, and talking of love.

“You are in luck, that you are,” Joly was saying. “You have a mistress

who is always laughing.”

“That is a fault of hers,” returned Bahorel. “One’s mistress does wrong

to laugh. That encourages one to deceive her. To see her gay removes

your remorse; if you see her sad, your conscience pricks you.”

“Ingrate! a woman who laughs is such a good thing! And you never

quarrel!”

“That is because of the treaty which we have made. On forming our

little Holy Alliance we assigned ourselves each our frontier, which we

never cross. What is situated on the side of winter belongs to Vaud, on

the side of the wind to Gex. Hence the peace.”

“Peace is happiness digesting.”

“And you, Jolllly, where do you stand in your entanglement with

Mamselle—you know whom I mean?”

“She sulks at me with cruel patience.”

“Yet you are a lover to soften the heart with gauntness.”

“Alas!”

“In your place, I would let her alone.”

“That is easy enough to say.”

“And to do. Is not her name Musichetta?”

“Yes. Ah! my poor Bahorel, she is a superb girl, very literary, with

tiny feet, little hands, she dresses well, and is white and dimpled,

with the eyes of a fortune-teller. I am wild over her.”

“My dear fellow, then in order to please her, you must be elegant, and

produce effects with your knees. Buy a good pair of trousers of

double-milled cloth at Staub’s. That will assist.”

“At what price?” shouted Grantaire.

The third corner was delivered up to a poetical discussion. Pagan

mythology was giving battle to Christian mythology. The question was

about Olympus, whose part was taken by Jean Prouvaire, out of pure

romanticism.

Jean Prouvaire was timid only in repose. Once excited, he burst forth,

a sort of mirth accentuated his enthusiasm, and he was at once both

laughing and lyric.

“Let us not insult the gods,” said he. “The gods may not have taken

their departure. Jupiter does not impress me as dead. The gods are

dreams, you say. Well, even in nature, such as it is to-day, after the

flight of these dreams, we still find all the grand old pagan myths.

Such and such a mountain with the profile of a citadel, like the

Vignemale, for example, is still to me the headdress of Cybele; it has

not been proved to me that Pan does not come at night to breathe into

the hollow trunks of the willows, stopping up the holes in turn with

his fingers, and I have always believed that Io had something to do

with the cascade of Pissevache.”

In the last corner, they were talking politics. The Charter which had

been granted was getting roughly handled. Combeferre was upholding it

weakly. Courfeyrac was energetically making a breach in it. On the

table lay an unfortunate copy of the famous Touquet Charter. Courfeyrac

had seized it, and was brandishing it, mingling with his arguments the

rattling of this sheet of paper.

“In the first place, I won’t have any kings; if it were only from an

economical point of view, I don’t want any; a king is a parasite. One

does not have kings gratis. Listen to this: the dearness of kings. At

the death of François I., the national debt of France amounted to an

income of thirty thousand livres; at the death of Louis XIV. it was two

milliards, six hundred millions, at twenty-eight livres the mark, which

was equivalent in 1760, according to Desmarets, to four milliards, five

hundred millions, which would to-day be equivalent to twelve milliards.

In the second place, and no offence to Combeferre, a charter granted is

but a poor expedient of civilization. To save the transition, to soften

the passage, to deaden the shock, to cause the nation to pass

insensibly from the monarchy to democracy by the practice of

constitutional fictions,—what detestable reasons all those are! No! no!

let us never enlighten the people with false daylight. Principles

dwindle and pale in your constitutional cellar. No illegitimacy, no

compromise, no grant from the king to the people. In all such grants

there is an Article 14. By the side of the hand which gives there is

the claw which snatches back. I refuse your charter point-blank. A

charter is a mask; the lie lurks beneath it. A people which accepts a

charter abdicates. The law is only the law when entire. No! no

charter!”

It was winter; a couple of fagots were crackling in the fireplace. This

was tempting, and Courfeyrac could not resist. He crumpled the poor

Touquet Charter in his fist, and flung it in the fire. The paper

flashed up. Combeferre watched the masterpiece of Louis XVIII. burn

philosophically, and contented himself with saying:—

“The charter metamorphosed into flame.”

And sarcasms, sallies, jests, that French thing which is called

_entrain_, and that English thing which is called humor, good and bad

taste, good and bad reasons, all the wild pyrotechnics of dialogue,

mounting together and crossing from all points of the room, produced a

sort of merry bombardment over their heads.