Chương Chương 317 · THE VULTURE BECOME PREY

We must insist upon one psychological fact peculiar to barricades.

Nothing which is characteristic of that surprising war of the streets

should be omitted.

Whatever may have been the singular inward tranquillity which we have

just mentioned, the barricade, for those who are inside it, remains,

nonetheless, a vision.

There is something of the apocalypse in civil war, all the mists of the

unknown are commingled with fierce flashes, revolutions are sphinxes,

and any one who has passed through a barricade thinks he has traversed

a dream.

The feelings to which one is subject in these places we have pointed

out in the case of Marius, and we shall see the consequences; they are

both more and less than life. On emerging from a barricade, one no

longer knows what one has seen there. One has been terrible, but one

knows it not. One has been surrounded with conflicting ideas which had

human faces; one’s head has been in the light of the future. There were

corpses lying prone there, and phantoms standing erect. The hours were

colossal and seemed hours of eternity. One has lived in death. Shadows

have passed by. What were they?

One has beheld hands on which there was blood; there was a deafening

horror; there was also a frightful silence; there were open mouths

which shouted, and other open mouths which held their peace; one was in

the midst of smoke, of night, perhaps. One fancied that one had touched

the sinister ooze of unknown depths; one stares at something red on

one’s finger nails. One no longer remembers anything.

Let us return to the Rue de la Chanvrerie.

All at once, between two discharges, the distant sound of a clock

striking the hour became audible.

“It is midday,” said Combeferre.

The twelve strokes had not finished striking when Enjolras sprang to

his feet, and from the summit of the barricade hurled this thundering

shout:

“Carry stones up into the houses; line the windowsills and the roofs

with them. Half the men to their guns, the other half to the

paving-stones. There is not a minute to be lost.”

A squad of sappers and miners, axe on shoulder, had just made their

appearance in battle array at the end of the street.

This could only be the head of a column; and of what column? The

attacking column, evidently; the sappers charged with the demolition of

the barricade must always precede the soldiers who are to scale it.

They were, evidently, on the brink of that moment which M.

Clermont-Tonnerre, in 1822, called “the tug of war.”

Enjolras’ order was executed with the correct haste which is peculiar

to ships and barricades, the only two scenes of combat where escape is

impossible. In less than a minute, two thirds of the stones which

Enjolras had had piled up at the door of Corinthe had been carried up

to the first floor and the attic, and before a second minute had

elapsed, these stones, artistically set one upon the other, walled up

the sash-window on the first floor and the windows in the roof to half

their height. A few loop-holes carefully planned by Feuilly, the

principal architect, allowed of the passage of the gun-barrels. This

armament of the windows could be effected all the more easily since the

firing of grape-shot had ceased. The two cannons were now discharging

ball against the centre of the barrier in order to make a hole there,

and, if possible, a breach for the assault.

When the stones destined to the final defence were in place, Enjolras

had the bottles which he had set under the table where Mabeuf lay,

carried to the first floor.

“Who is to drink that?” Bossuet asked him.

“They,” replied Enjolras.

Then they barricaded the window below, and held in readiness the iron

cross-bars which served to secure the door of the wine-shop at night.

The fortress was complete. The barricade was the rampart, the wine-shop

was the dungeon. With the stones which remained they stopped up the

outlet.

As the defenders of a barricade are always obliged to be sparing of

their ammunition, and as the assailants know this, the assailants

combine their arrangements with a sort of irritating leisure, expose

themselves to fire prematurely, though in appearance more than in

reality, and take their ease. The preparations for attack are always

made with a certain methodical deliberation; after which, the lightning

strikes.

This deliberation permitted Enjolras to take a review of everything and

to perfect everything. He felt that, since such men were to die, their

death ought to be a masterpiece.

He said to Marius: “We are the two leaders. I will give the last orders

inside. Do you remain outside and observe.”

Marius posted himself on the lookout upon the crest of the barricade.

Enjolras had the door of the kitchen, which was the ambulance, as the

reader will remember, nailed up.

“No splashing of the wounded,” he said.

He issued his final orders in the tap-room in a curt, but profoundly

tranquil tone; Feuilly listened and replied in the name of all.

“On the first floor, hold your axes in readiness to cut the staircase.

Have you them?”

“Yes,” said Feuilly.

“How many?”

“Two axes and a pole-axe.”

“That is good. There are now twenty-six combatants of us on foot. How

many guns are there?”

“Thirty-four.”

“Eight too many. Keep those eight guns loaded like the rest and at

hand. Swords and pistols in your belts. Twenty men to the barricade.

Six ambushed in the attic windows, and at the window on the first floor

to fire on the assailants through the loop-holes in the stones. Let not

a single worker remain inactive here. Presently, when the drum beats

the assault, let the twenty below stairs rush to the barricade. The

first to arrive will have the best places.”

These arrangements made, he turned to Javert and said:

“I am not forgetting you.”

And, laying a pistol on the table, he added:

“The last man to leave this room will smash the skull of this spy.”

“Here?” inquired a voice.

“No, let us not mix their corpses with our own. The little barricade of

the Mondétour lane can be scaled. It is only four feet high. The man is

well pinioned. He shall be taken thither and put to death.”

There was some one who was more impassive at that moment than Enjolras,

it was Javert. Here Jean Valjean made his appearance.

He had been lost among the group of insurgents. He stepped forth and

said to Enjolras:

“You are the commander?”

“Yes.”

“You thanked me a while ago.”

“In the name of the Republic. The barricade has two saviors, Marius

Pontmercy and yourself.”

“Do you think that I deserve a recompense?”

“Certainly.”

“Well, I request one.”

“What is it?”

“That I may blow that man’s brains out.”

Javert raised his head, saw Jean Valjean, made an almost imperceptible

movement, and said:

“That is just.”

As for Enjolras, he had begun to re-load his rifle; he cut his eyes

about him:

“No objections.”

And he turned to Jean Valjean:

“Take the spy.”

Jean Valjean did, in fact, take possession of Javert, by seating

himself on the end of the table. He seized the pistol, and a faint

click announced that he had cocked it.

Almost at the same moment, a blast of trumpets became audible.

“Take care!” shouted Marius from the top of the barricade.

Javert began to laugh with that noiseless laugh which was peculiar to

him, and gazing intently at the insurgents, he said to them:

“You are in no better case than I am.”

“All out!” shouted Enjolras.

The insurgents poured out tumultuously, and, as they went, received in

the back,—may we be permitted the expression,—this sally of Javert’s:

“We shall meet again shortly!”