Les Miserables (Movie Tie-in) (9781101612774)

by Hugo, Victor; Donougher, Christine (TRN)

  Enjolras passed him his own, which he had just reloaded.

  Jean Valjean took aim and fired, and one of the cords parted, leaving the mattress hanging by the other. He fired again, and the second cord whipped against the window. The mattress slid between the two poles and fell into the street.

  There was a burst of applause from the defenders and someone cried:

  ‘There’s your mattress.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Combeferre, ‘but who’s going to fetch it?’

  The mattress had fallen outside the barricade, into the no-man’s-land between attackers and defenders. But the soldiers, infuriated by the death of their sergeant, were now lying on their stomachs behind the breastwork of paving-stones and keeping up a steady fire on the barricade while they waited for the gun to come into action again. The defenders had not been returning their fire because of the need to save ammunition. The bullets buried themselves harmlessly in the barricade; but the street in front of it was a place of hideous danger.

  Jean Valjean went out through the breach, dashed through the hail of bullets, picked up the mattress and, carrying it on his back, brought it into the stronghold. He then used it to block the breach, fixing it against the house wall in a position where the gunners could not see it.

  Then the defenders awaited the next salvo of grape, which was not slow in coming. The gun thundered out its charge of smallshot, but this time there was no ricochet. The mattress had had the desired effect; it had damped the spread of the bullets. The stronghold was spared this peril

  ‘Citizen,’ said Enjolras to Jean Valjean, ‘the Republic thanks you.’

  Bossuet was laughing as he marvelled.

  ‘How immoral that a mattress should prove so effective! A triumph of submissiveness over aggression! Glory be to the mattress, which neutralizes cannon!’

  X

  Dawn

  It was at this moment that Cosette awakened.

  Her bedroom was small, clean and modest, with a tall window giving on to the back courtyard of the house.

  Cosette knew nothing of what was happening in Paris. She had retired to bed when Toussaint said, ‘There seems to be trouble.’ She had not slept for very long but she had slept soundly. She had had sweet dreams, which perhaps was due in part to the fact that the narrow bed was very white. A vision of Marius had appeared to her in a glow of light, and when she awoke with the sun in her eyes it was like the continuation of her dream.

  Her first thoughts as she woke up were happy ones. She felt quite reassured. Like Jean Valjean a few hours before, she was experiencing that reaction of the spirit which rejects absolutely the thought of misfortune. She was filled with hope, without knowing why. Then she felt a clutching at her throat. It was three days since she had seen Marius. But she told herself that by now he must have got her letter, so that he knew where she was; and he was so clever that he was sure to find some means of reaching her. What was more, he would certainly come today, perhaps even this morning. Although it was now daylight, the sun was still low. It must be very early in the morning. But still she must get up, to be ready for Marius.

  She knew now that she could not live without Marius, and this in itself was a sufficient reason for his coming. So much was certain. It was bad enough that she should have suffered for three days. Three days without Marius, which was horribly unkind of God. But at least she had survived it, that cruel joke played on her by Heaven, and today Marius would come, bringing good news. Such is youth! It quickly dries its tears and having no use for sorrow refuses to accept it. Youth is the future smiling at a stranger, which is itself. It is natural for youth to be happy. It seems that its very breath is made of happiness.

  Moreover, Cosette could not exactly remember what Marius had told her about his enforced absence, which was to last only one day, or what explanation he had given her. We all know the artfulness with which a dropped coin hides itself, and the job we have to find it again. There are thoughts which play the same trick on us, rolling into a buried corner of our minds; and there it is, they’ve gone for ever, we can’t put our finger on them. Cosette was decidedly vexed by the insufficiency of her memory. It was very wrong of her, and she felt guilty at having forgotten any words spoken by Marius.

  She got out of bed and performed those two ablutions of the spirit and the body – her prayers and her toilet.

  The reader may at a pinch be introduced into a marital bedchamber, but not into a young girl’s bedroom. This is something that verse scarcely dares; to prose it is utterly forbidden. It is the interior of a bud not yet opened, whiteness in shadow, the secret resort of a closed lily not to be seen by man until it has been looked upon by the sun. A budding woman is sacred. The innocent bed with its coverlet tossed back, the enchanting semi-nudity that is afraid of itself, the white foot taking refuge in a slipper, the bosom that veils itself before a mirror as though the mirror were a watching eye, the chemise hastily pulled up to hide a shoulder from a piece of furniture that creaks as a carriage passes in the street, the ribbons, hooks and laces, the tremors, small shivers of cold and modesty, the exquisite shyness of every movement, the small, mothlike flutterings where there is nothing to be afraid of, the successive donning of garments as charming as the mists of dawn – such matters may not be dwelt upon; even to have hinted at them is too much.

  The masculine gaze must display even more reverence at the rising of a girl from her bed than at the rising of a star; the very possibility that she can be touched should increase our respect. The down on a peach, the dust on a plum, the crystal gleam of snow, the powdered butterfly’s wing, these are gross matters compared with the chastity that does not know that it is chaste. A virgin girl is a vision in a dream, not yet become a thing to be looked at. Her alcove is buried in the depths of the ideal. An indiscreet caress of the eyes is a ravishment of this intangible veil. Even a glance is a profanation. Therefore we shall depict nothing whatever of the soft commotion of Cosette’s uprising. According to an eastern fable, the rose was white when God created it, but when, as it unfolded, it felt Adam’s eyes upon it, it blushed in modesty and turned pink. We are among those who are moved to silence by young girls and flowers, finding them objects of veneration.

  Cosette quickly dressed and did her hair – a simple matter in those days, when women did not pad out their tresses and ringlets, or insert any kind of framework. Then she opened her window and leaned out, hoping to be able to see a small length of street beyond the corner of the house, so that she could keep watch for Marius. But she could not do so. The back courtyard of the house was enclosed in high walls, beyond which were only gardens. She decided that they were hideous; for the first time in her life she found flowers ugly. The least glimpse of the street gutter would have suited her better. So she looked up at the sky, as though hoping that Marius might come that way.

  And suddenly she burst into tears, not from any oversensibility but from disappointed hope and misery of her present situation. She had an obscure sense of disaster. It was in the air about her. She told herself that she could be sure of nothing, that to be lost to sight was to be wholly lost; and the thought that Marius might drop down from the heavens no longer seemed to her charming but most miserable. Then, such are these fantasies, calm returned to her and hopefulness, a sort of unwitting smile of trust in God.

  Everyone was still in bed and a provincial silence reigned in the house. Not a shutter had been thrust open and the porter’s lodge was still closed. Toussaint was not yet up, and Cosette naturally supposed that her father was asleep. She must have suffered greatly, and must still be unhappy, because she told herself that her father had been unkind; but she still relied on Marius. The extinction of that light was quite simply inconceivable. She began to pray. Now and then she heard the sound of thudding some distance away, and she thought it strange that people should be opening and slamming house-doors so early in the morning. In fact, this was the sound of cannon-fire from the barricades.

  A few feet below Cosette’s wind
ow, in the blackened cornice of the wall, there was a nest of house-martins. It stuck out a little beyond the cornice, so that she could see inside it. The mother-bird was there, with her wings spread over her brood, while the father flew back and forth bringing them food. The morning sun gilded that happy sight, that smiling instance of the glory of the morning. Cosette, with her hair in the sunshine and her mind filled with dreams, glowing inwardly with love and outwardly in the dawn, leaned mechanically further forward and, scarcely venturing to admit that she was also thinking of Marius, contemplated that family of birds, male and female, mother and children, with the sense of profound disturbance that a bird’s nest imparts to a virgin girl.

  XI

  A musket-shot that does not miss but does not kill

  The attackers kept up their fire, alternating musketry with grape-shot, but, it must be said, without doing any great damage. Only the upper part of the tavern suffered, the first-floor window and those in the attics gradually crumbling as they were riddled with grape and musket-balls. The men posted there had had to withdraw. In general, this is a tactic commonly used in attacking a street barricade: a steady fire is kept up to draw the fire of the insurgents, if they are so foolish as to return it. When they are seen to be running out of powder and shot the assault goes in. But Enjolras had not fallen into this trap. The fire was not returned.

  At every volley Gavroche thrust his tongue into his cheek in a grimace of lofty disdain and Courfeyrac mocked the gunners – ‘You might be scattering confetti, my good fellows.’

  Inquisitiveness is as much present in battle as at a ball. Probably the muteness of the stronghold was beginning to perturb the attackers, causing them to fear some unforeseen development, so that they were consumed with the desire to know what was going on behind that impressive wall. The rebels suddenly perceived the gleam of a helmet on a near-by roof. A sapper had appeared, standing with his back to a tall chimney, having evidently been posted as a look-out. He could see straight down into the stronghold.

  ‘That’s tiresome,’ said Enjolras.

  Jean Valjean had returned Enjolras’s carbine, but he had his musket. Without speaking he took aim at the sapper, and a moment later the helmet, struck by a bullet, clattered down into the street. The soldier hurriedly retreated.

  Another look-out took his place, this time an officer. Valjean, having reloaded, fired again, and the officer’s helmet went to join that of the first man. The officer was not stubborn; he, too, hastily withdrew. This time the point had been taken. No other observer appeared to spy on the fortress.

  ‘Why did you fire at the helmet instead of killing the man?’ Bossuet asked Valjean.

  He did not reply.

  XII

  Disorder the upholder of order

  Bossuet murmured to Combeferre:

  ‘He didn’t answer my question.’

  ‘He’s a man who does kindness with bullets,’ said Combeferre.

  Those readers with any recollection of that already distant epoch will know that the volunteer Garde Nationale from the districts surrounding Paris, always sturdily opposed to insurrection, were particularly ruthless and intrepid during those days of June 1832. Your honest cabaret proprietor in Pantin or Les Vertus or La Cunette, seeing a threat to the prosperity of his establishment, was lion-hearted in the defence of his dance-floor, ready to risk his life to preserve the state of order in which he flourished. In those days which were both bourgeois and heroic, faced by concepts which had their knightly champions, private profit also had its paladins. Prosaic motives in no way detracted from the gallantry of their conduct. The shrinkage in the value of money caused bankers to sing the ‘Marseillaise’. Blood was lyrically shed to safeguard the cash box, and the shop, that microcosm of the nation, was defended with a Spartan tenacity. It must be said that all this was extremely serious. Two sections of the populace were at war, pending the establishment of a balance between them.

  Another sign of the times was the mingling of anarchy and governmentalism (the barbarous word then used by the orthodox). A mixture of order and indiscipline. The drums beat capriciously at the order of some hot-blooded colonel of the Garde Nationale; the order to fire was given by excited captains, and the men under them fought according to their own ideas and for their own purpose. In moments of crisis, the ‘big days’, instinct was more often consulted than the official leaders. There were freelance warriors in the ranks of order, fighters with the sword, like Fannicot, and fighters with the pen, like the journalist, Henri Fonfrède.

  Civilization, of which the unhappy embodiment at that time was an aggregation of interests rather than a collection of principles, believing itself to be threatened raised a cry of alarm; and the individual, seeing himself as its centre, sought to defend it after his own fashion. Everyman took it upon himself to save society.

  Zeal was sometimes carried to excess. A platoon of the Garde Nationale might constitute itself a court-martial and try and execute a captured rebel in five minutes. It was this kind of improvisation that had caused the death of Jean Prouvaire – a ferocious lynch-law with which neither side is entitled to reproach the other, for it was used by the republicans in America no less than by the monarchists in Europe. It was the source of many blunders. In one uprising, for example, a young poet named Paul-Aimé Garnier was chased across the Place Royale with bayonets at his back and had difficulty in escaping through the doorway of No. 6. He had been mistaken for a ‘Saint-Simonien’, a follower of the radical philosopher, Saint-Simon. The fact is that the book he was carrying under his arm was a volume of the memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon. A member of the Garde Nationale, seeing only the name, had clamoured for his death.*

  On 6 June 1832, a suburban company of the Garde Nationale, commanded by the Captain Fannicot already referred to, allowed itself from pure self-indulgence to be decimated in the Rue de la Chanvrerie. The fact, singular as it is, was established by the judicial inquiry held after the 1832 insurrection. The zealous and hot-blooded captain, a condottiere of troops of the kind we have been describing, and a fanatical and insubordinate supporter of the Government, could not resist the temptation to open fire before the appointed time so as to overthrow the barricade single-handed – that is to say, with his own company. Exasperated by the hoisting of the red flag followed by an old coat which he took to be a black flag, he loudly criticized the authorities and army leaders, then in council, who had decided that the time for the final assault was not yet ripe, and, in the phrase made famous by one of them, were letting the insurrection ‘stew in its own juice’. His own view was that the barricade itself was ripe, and since ripe fruit is ready to fall he put his theory to the test.

  The men under his command were as hot-blooded as himself – ‘wild men’, as a witness described them. His company, which had been responsible for the shooting of Jean Prouvaire, was at the head of the battalion drawn up beyond the corner of the street. At the moment when it was least expected, the captain flung his men against the barricade. The attack, executed with more zeal than military skill, cost the Fannicot company dear. Before it had covered two-thirds of the Rue de la Chanvrerie it was met with a volley from all the defenders. The four boldest men, who were in the forefront, were shot at point-blank range and fell at the foot of the barricade, and the courageous mob of National Guards, men of the utmost bravery but lacking the steadiness of regular soldiers, fell back after some hesitation, leaving fifteen dead bodies in the street. That moment of hesitation gave the rebels time to reload, and a second, murderous volley caught them before they had got round the corner into safety. Indeed they were caught between two fires, because they also received a charge of grapeshot from the cannon, which went on firing, not having been ordered to stop. The bold but rash Fannicot was one of the casualties – killed, that is to say, by the forces of order.

  The attack, which was more hot-headed than serious, annoyed Enjolras.

  ‘The idiots!’ he exclaimed. ‘They’re getting themselves killed and wasting our
ammunition for no reason.’

  Enjolras had spoken like the born rebel leader he was. Insurrection and repression fight with different weapons. Insurrection, with limited resources, can fire only so many shots and lose only so many men. An ammunition-pouch emptied, or a man killed, cannot be replaced. Repression, with the army at its disposal, has no need to spare men or, with its arsenals, to spare bullets; it has as many regiments as there are defenders on the barricades, and as many factories as the barricades have cartridge-cases. So these battles of one against a hundred must always end in the crushing of the rebels unless the spirit of revolution, spontaneously arising, casts its flaming sword into the balance. This can happen. And then it becomes a universal uprising, the very stones rise up, the strongholds of the populace teem with men, all Paris trembles; something more than human is unloosed and it is another 10 August or 29 July. A prodigious light shines, and the gaping jaws of force recoil; the lion which is the army comes face to face with the erect and tranquil figure of the prophet, which is France.

  XIII

  Passing gleams

  All things are to be found in the chaos of sentiment and passions defending a barricade: there is gallantry, youth, honour, enthusiasm, idealism, conviction, the frenzy of the gambler and, above all, the fluctuations of hope.

  One of these fluctuations, one of the vague surges of hope, suddenly, and at the most unforeseeable moment, ran through the defenders of the barricade in the Rue de la Chanvrerie.

  ‘Listen!’ shouted Enjolras, always on the alert. ‘It sounds to me as though Paris were on the move.’

  It is certain that for an hour or two on that morning of 6 June the insurrection gained a degree of impetus. The persistent summons of the Saint-Merry tocsin stirred latent impulses. Barricades went up in the Rue du Poirier and the Rue des Gravilliers. A young man with a carbine launched a single-handed attack on a cavalry squadron at the Porte Saint-Martin. Kneeling without cover on the boulevard, he aimed at, and killed, the squadron commander, saying when he had done so, ‘Well, that’s another who won’t do us any more harm!’ He was cut down with sabres. In the Rue Saint-Denis a woman fired at the National Guard from behind a Venetian blind, of which the slats were seen to tremble with every shot. A boy of fourteen was caught in the Rue de la Cossonerie with his pockets filled with cartridges. A regiment of cuirassiers, with General Cavaignac de Baragne at its head, was greeted as it entered the Rue Bertin-Poirée with a very lively and quite unexpected volley. In the Rue Planche-Mibray pots and pans and other domestic articles were flung at the troops from the roof-tops. A bad sign, this; and when it was reported to Marshal Soult, that Napoleonic veteran looked thoughtful, recalling an observation made by Suchet at Saragossa – ‘When we get the old women emptying chamber-pots on our heads we’re done for.’