Les Miserables (Movie Tie-in) (9781101612774)

by Hugo, Victor; Donougher, Christine (TRN)

At the same time they heard the clicking of muskets being cocked.

  Enjolras responded in lofty and resonant tones:

  ‘The French Revolution!’

  ‘Fire!’ ordered the voice, and an instant glare of light shone upon the front of the houses as though a furnace-door had been swiftly opened and closed.

  A hideous blow shook the barricade. The red flag fell. So heavy and concentrated was that volley that it carried away the flagstaff – that is to say, the tip of the shaft of the omnibus. Bullets ricocheting back off the houses behind them wounded several of the defenders. The effect of that first discharge was stupefying, its sheer weight enough to make the boldest man think twice. They were evidently confronted by, at the least, a whole regiment.

  ‘Comrades,’ shouted Courfeyrac, ‘don’t waste your powder. Wait till they show themselves before shooting back.’

  ‘And first of all,’ cried Enjolras, ‘we must hoist the flag again.’

  He picked it up from where it had fallen, right at his feet. At the same time they heard the rattle of ramrods in the muskets as the soldiers re-loaded.

  ‘Who is brave enough?’ demanded Enjolras. ‘Who’s going to put back the flag on the barricade?’

  There was no reply. To climb on to the barricade at that moment, when the muskets were again being levelled, was simply to invite death. Enjolras himself trembled at the thought. He repeated:

  ‘Does no one volunteer?’

  II

  The flag – Act Two

  Since they had installed themselves in Corinth and set about building the barricade no one had paid any attention to Père Mabeuf. But he had not deserted the troop. He had found a seat behind the counter on the ground floor of the tavern, and here he had so to speak withdrawn into himself, seeming unaware of what was going on around him. Courfeyrac and others had spoken to him once or twice, warning him of the danger and advising him to get away, but he had seemed not to hear them. His lips moved when no one had spoken to him as though in reply to a question, but when anyone addressed him his lips were still and his eyes vacant. For some hours before the attack on the barricade he had remained seated in the same posture, with his fists clenched on his knees and his head bowed forward as though he were staring over a precipice. Nothing had caused him to change this attitude; it was as though his conscious self were not present within the barricades. After the rest had run out to take up their position only three persons were left in that ground-floor room – Javert, lashed to his pillar, the rebel with a drawn sabre who was mounting guard over him, and Monsieur Mabeuf. But the thunder of that first volley, the physical shock, seemed to bring him to life. He jumped up and crossed the room, and at the moment when Enjolras repeated the words, ‘Does no one volunteer?’ he showed himself in the doorway of the tavern.

  His appearance created a stir among the defenders. Someone shouted:

  ‘That’s the Man of the Convention who voted for the King’s death – the Representative of the People!’

  Probably he did not hear.

  Walking up to Enjolras, while the rebels made way for him with a sort of awe, he snatched the flag from the young man’s startled hands, and, no one venturing to stop him, began slowly to mount the makeshift flight of paving-stones leading to the top of the barricade – an eighty-year-old man, his head swaying on his shoulders but his feet firm. So tragic and noble was the spectacle that the men around cried, ‘Hats off!’ Each step he took was terrifying to watch, the white hair, the shrunken face with its high, wrinkled forehead, the deep-set eyes, the open, astonished mouth, the old arms lifting the red flag on high, these things rose up out of the darkness, seeming to grow larger in the ruddy glare of the torch. It might have been the ghost of ‘93 arising from the tomb and bearing aloft the flag of Terror. When he reached the topmost step, a quivering, terrible ghost, and stood on the pile of rubble facing twelve hundred invisible muskets, facing death as though he were stronger than death, the whole dark barricade acquired a new and awe-inspiring supernatural dimension.

  A silence fell, of the kind that only accompanies some prodigious event; and in the silence the old man flourished the red flag and cried:

  ‘Long live the Revolution! Long live the Republic! Fraternity, Equality – and Death!’

  Those behind the barricade heard a distant, rapid murmur like that of a hurried priest gabbling a prayer. It was probably the Commissioner of Police delivering the statutory warning from the other end of the street. The stentorian voice which had called to them before now shouted:

  ‘Go away!’

  Monsieur Mabeuf, white and haggard, eyes glowing with the wild light of madness, waved the flag and repeated: ‘Long live the Republic!’

  ‘Fire!’ ordered the voice.

  A second volley, like a charge of grapeshot, crashed into the barricade.

  The old man tottered on his legs, attempted to recover, then let go the flag and fell backwards like a log, to lie full length on the ground with arms outstretched. Blood was pouring from him, and his sad, pale face seemed to be looking up to Heaven.

  The rebels pressed forward, forgetful of their own safety, stirred by feelings loftier than man, and gazed with respectful awe at the dead body.

  ‘They were gallant men, those regicides,’ said Enjolras.

  Courfeyrac drew close and whispered in his ear.

  ‘This is between ourselves – I don’t want to damp the enthusiasm – but no one was ever less of a regicide. I knew him. His name was Mabeuf. I don’t know what got into him today. He was a brave old simpleton. Look at his expression.’

  ‘A simpleton with the heart of a Brutus,’ said Enjolras.

  Then he raised his voice:

  ‘Citizens, this is the example which our elders set the young. While we hesitated he volunteered. We drew back, but he went forward. This is the lesson which those who tremble with age teach those who tremble with fear. This old man is noble in the eyes of his country. He had a long life and a splendid death. Now we must safeguard his body, each of us must defend this dead old man as he would defend his living father, so that his presence among us makes our fortress unconquerable.’

  A murmur of grim approval greeted these words.

  Bending down, Enjolras lifted the old man’s head and kissed him gently on the forehead. Then, handling him with the utmost tenderness, as though he feared to hurt him, he removed his coat and held it up so that all might see its bloodstained holes.

  ‘This is our new flag,’ he said.

  III

  Gavroche’s musket

  A long black shawl belonging to the Widow Hucheloup was draped over Père Mabeuf’s body. Six men made a stretcher of their muskets and, with bared heads, bore him slowly and reverently into the tavern, where they laid him on the big table in the ground-floor room. Wholly intent upon the solemn nature of their task, they gave no thought to their own perilous situation.

  When the body passed by Javert, who remained expressionless as ever, Enjolras said to him:

  ‘You – it won’t be long!’

  Meanwhile Gavroche, who alone had stayed at his post keeping watch, thought he saw men moving stealthily towards the barricade. He shouted:

  ‘Watch out!’

  Courfeyrac, Enjolras, and the others came rushing out of the tavern. They were barely in time. A dense glitter of bayonets was now visible on the other side of the barricade. The tall forms of Municipal Guardsmen surged in, some climbing over the omnibus and others coming by way of the breach. Gavroche was forced to give ground, but he did not run away.

  It was a critical instant, like the moment when floodwaters rise to the topmost level of an embankment and begin to seep over. In another minute the stronghold might have been taken.

  Bahorel sprang towards the first man to enter and shot him at point-blank range; a second man killed him with a bayonet-thrust. Courfeyrac was felled by another man and called for help. The biggest of all the attackers, a giant of a man, bore down with his bayonet on Gavroche. Raising Javert�
��s heavy musket, the boy took aim and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Javert had not loaded the musket. The Municipal Guardsman laughed and thrust at the youngster with his bayonet.

  But before the bayonet could reach Gavroche the musket fell from the man’s hands and he himself fell backwards with a bullet in his forehead. A second bullet took the man assailing Courfeyrac in the chest and laid him low.

  Marius had entered the stronghold.

  IV

  The powder-keg

  Crouched at the turning of the Rue Mondétour, Marius had witnessed the beginning of the battle, still irresolute and trembling. But he had not long been able to withstand that mysterious and everwhelming impulse that may be termed the call of the abyss. The imminence of the peril – the death of Monsieur Mabeuf, that tragic enigma, the killing of Bahorel, Courfeyrac’s call for help, the threat to Gavroche; friends to be rescued or avenged – all this had thrown hesitation to the winds. He had rushed into the mêlée with a pistol in either hand, and one had saved Gavroche, the other Courfeyrac.

  Amid the din of musket-fire and the cries of the wounded the attackers had climbed on to the barricade, the top of which was now occupied by Municipal and Regional Guards and foot-soldiers of the line. They covered two thirds of its length but had not yet jumped down into the enclosure, seeming uncertain, as though they feared a trap. They hesitated, peering into the dark stronghold as they might have peered into a lion’s den. The glare of the torch fell upon bayonets, bearskin caps and the upper part of menacing but apprehensive faces.

  Marius was now weaponless, having flung away his discharged pistols; but he had seen the keg of powder near the door in the lower room of the tavern. While he was looking at it, a soldier levelled his musket at him, but as he was in the act of firing a hand was thrust over the muzzle, diverting it. The person who had flung himself forward was the young workman in corduroy trousers. The ball shattered his hand and perhaps entered his body, for he fell; but it did not touch Marius. It was an episode in misted darkness, half-seen rather than seen. Marius, on his way into the tavern, was scarcely aware of it. He had vaguely seen the musket levelled at him and the hand thrust out to block it, and he had heard the discharge. But at moments such as these, when events follow at breathless speed, we are not to be distracted from whatever purpose we have in mind. We plunge on blindly amid the fog around us.

  The rebels, shaken but not panic-stricken, had rallied. Enjolras shouted, ‘Steady! Don’t fire at random!’ In that first confusion they might indeed have hit each other. The greater number had retreated into the tavern, from the upper windows of which they dominated their assailants; but the most resolute, with Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Jean Prouvaire, and Combeferre, had taken up their stand with their backs to the house at the end of the street, where they stood confronting the soldiers and National Guardsmen on the barricade. All this had been accomplished without undue haste, with the strange and threatening gravity that precedes a set battle. Muskets were levelled on both sides at point-blank range; they were so close that they could talk without shouting. At this point, when the spark was about to be struck, an officer in a stiff collar and large epaulettes raised his sword and said:

  ‘Lay down your arms!’

  ‘Fire!’ ordered Enjolras.

  The two volleys rang out simultaneously, and the scene was enveloped in thick, acrid smoke filled with the groans of the wounded and the dying. When it had cleared both sides could be seen, diminished but still in the same place, re-charging their weapons in silence. But suddenly a ringing voice cried:

  ‘Clear out or I’ll blow up the barricade!’

  All heads were turned to stare in the direction of the voice.

  Marius, seizing the powder-keg in the tavern, had taken advantage of the smoke-filled lull to slip along the barricade until he reached the structure of paving-stones in which the torch was fixed. To detach the torch and set the powder-keg in its place, thrusting aside the paving-stones, had taken him, urged on by a sort of terrible compulsion, only the time he needed to bend down and then stand upright; and now the men grouped at the other end of the barricade, officer’s, soldiers, men of the National and Municipal Guard, stared in stupefaction at the figure holding the flaming torch over the opened keg while he repeated his challenge:

  ‘Clear out or I’ll blow up the whole place!’

  First the octogenarian and then the youthful Marius: it was the revolution of the young following the ghost of the old!

  ‘If you blow up the barricade,’ a sergeant called, ‘you’ll blow up yourself as well!’

  ‘And myself as well,’ said Marius, and lowered the torch towards the keg.

  But there was no longer anyone on the barricade. The attackers had made off in a disorderly stampede, leaving their dead and wounded behind, and were now vanishing into the darkness at the far end of the street It was a rout, and the fortress had been relieved.

  V

  The last poem of Jean Prouvaire

  His friends flocked round Marius, and Courfeyrac flung his arms about his neck.

  ‘So you’ve comge!’ he cried.

  ‘And welcome!’ said Combeferre.

  ‘At the right moment!’ said Bossuet.

  ‘I’d be dead otherwise,’ said Courfeyrac.

  ‘I’d have copped it too,’ said Gavroche.

  ‘Where is the leader?’ Marius asked.

  ‘You’re now the leader,’ Enjolras said.

  Throughout that day Marius had had a furnace in his brain, but now it was a whirlwind, a tempest from outside himself that carried him away. He seemed to have been borne a huge distance outside life. The two radiant months of happiness ending abruptly in this inferno, the sight of Monsieur Mabeuf dying for the Republic, himself a rebel leader – all this was like an outrageous nightmare, so that it cost him an effort to realize that what was happening was real. He had not yet lived long enough to have discovered that nothing is more close at hand than the impossible, and that what must be looked for is always the unforeseen. He was observing his own drama as though it were a play he did not understand.

  In his confused state of mind he did not recognize Javert, who, lashed to his pillar, had not turned a hair during the attack on the barricade and was observing the commotion around him with the resignation of a martyr and the detachment of a judge. Marius had not even noticed him.

  The attackers made no further move. Although the sound of them could be heard at the far end of the street, they seemed disinclined to take the initiative, either because they were awaiting fresh orders, or because they were hoping for reinforcements before again assailing that formidable stronghold. The rebels had posted sentries, and the medical students among them were attending to the wounded.

  All the tables had been taken out of the tavern except the two in use for the making of bandages and cartridges and the one on which Monsieur Mabeuf’s body lay; they had been piled on to the barricade, being replaced in the downstairs room by mattresses from the beds of the Widow Hucheloup and her two waitresses. The wounded were laid on these mattresses. As for the three luckless women whose home was Corinth, no one knew what had become of them. They were eventually found huddled in the cellar.

  A sad blow had damped the students’ rejoicing at their temporary triumph. When the roll was called, one of them was found to be missing, one of the bravest and best, Jean Prouvaire. He was not to be found among the wounded or the dead. It seemed, then, that he must have been taken prisoner. Combeferre said to Enjolras:

  ‘They’ve got our friend and we’ve got their agent. Are you really so set on the death of this spy?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Enjolras, ‘but less than on the life of Jean Prouvaire.’

  They were talking in the downstairs room near Javert’s pillar.

  ‘Well then,’ said Combeferre, ‘I’ll tie a handkerchief to my stick and go and bargain with them – their man in exchange for ours.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Enjolras, laying a hand on his. ‘Listen!’

&
nbsp; An ominous rattle of muskets had come from the other end of the street. A brave voice shouted:

  ‘Long live France! Long live the future!’

  It was the voice of Jean Prouvaire.

  ‘They’ve shot him!’ cried Combeferre.

  Enjolras turned to Javert and said:

  ‘Your friends have killed you as well.’

  VI

  The throes of death after the throes of life

  It is a peculiarity of this type of warfare that the attack on a barricade is nearly always delivered from the front and that as a rule the attacker makes no attempt to outflank the defence, either because he fears an ambush or because he is reluctant to engage his forces in narrow, tortuous streets. The rebels’ attention was therefore concentrated on the main barricade which was constantly threatened and where the battle would undoubtedly be resumed. However, Marius thought of the smaller barricade and went to inspect it. It was unguarded except by the lamp flickering on the paving-stones. The Mondétour alleyway, and the small streets running into it, the Petite-Truanderie and the Rue du Cygne, were entirely quiet.

  As he was leaving, having concluded his inspection, he heard his own name faintly spoken in the darkness.

  ‘Monsieur Marius!’

  He started, recognizing the husky voice that two hours previously had called to him through the gate in the Rue Plumet. But now it was scarcely more than a whisper.

  He looked about him, but, seeing no one, thought that he had imagined it, that it was no more than an hallucination to be added to the many extraordinary vicissitudes of that day. He started to move away from the barricade and the voice repeated:

  ‘Monsieur Marius!’

  This time he knew that he had heard it, but although he peered hard into the darkness he could see nothing.

  ‘I’m at your feet,’ the voice said.

  Looking down, Marius saw a dark shape crawling over the cobbles towards him. The gleam of the lamp was enough to enable him to make out a smock, a pair of torn corduroy trousers, two bare feet and something that looked like a trail of blood. A white face was turned towards him and the voice asked: