These widespread portents, coming at a time when the uprising was thought to have been localized – manifestations of a growing anger, spurts of flame rising here and there out of the great mass of combustible material which is Paris – disquieted the army commander, and great haste was made to put out the fire before it spread. Accordingly the assault on the strongholds of Maubuée, de la Chanvrerie, and Saint-Merry was delayed until these lesser affairs had been dealt with, so that then only the three major outbreaks would remain and they could be crushed in a single operation. Preventive columns were sent through the fermenting streets, clearing the larger and probing the smaller ones to left and right, sometimes slowly and cautiously, sometimes at the double. The doors of houses from which shots had been fired were battered down while at the same time a cavalry operation cleared the gathering groups off the boulevards. The process was not soundless or free from the uproar that accompanies any clash between the army and the people. This was what Enjolras heard in the pauses between gun and musket-fire. Moreover, he saw wounded men on stretchers being carried past the end of the street, and he said to Courfeyrac, ‘Those wounded don’t come from here.’
But the hope did not last for long; the gleam was soon extinguished. Within half an hour the stir had died down as though it were a lightning-flash not followed by thunder, and the rebels again felt the weight of that pall of indifference that the people bestow on zealots whom they have abandoned. The general upheaval which had given signs of taking shape had been frustrated, and the attention of the Minister for War and the strategy of the generals could again be concentrated on the three or four strongholds remaining.
The sun had risen in the sky. A man called to Enjolras: ‘We’re hungry down here. Have we really got to die without getting a bite to eat?’
Crouched in his redoubt, with his eyes intent on the end of the street, Enjolras merely nodded.
XIV
In which we learn the name of Enjolras’s mistress
Seated on a paving-stone near Enjolras, Courfeyrac continued to jeer at the cannon, and every passage of that sinister cloud of projectiles that is called grapeshot, accompanied by its monstrous din, drew from him an ironical comment.
‘You’re wearing yourself out, you poor old brute. You’re getting hoarse. You’re not thundering, only spluttering. It’s breaking my heart.’
His remarks were greeted with laughter. He and Bossuet, whose valiant high spirits increased with danger, like Madame Scarron were substituting pleasantry for nourishment and, since wine was not to be had, spreading gaiety around them.
‘I admire Enjolras,’ said Bossuet. ‘I marvel at his cool steadfastness. He lives alone, and this perhaps makes him unhappy; he resents the greatness which compels him to celibacy. We others have mistresses to rob us of our wits – make us brave, in other words. A man in love is like a tiger, and the least he can do is to fight like a lion. It’s a way of getting our own back for the tricks the wenches play on us. Roland got himself killed to score off Angélique. All our heroism stems from our womenfolk. A man without a woman is like a pistol without a hammer; the woman sparks the charge. But Enjolras has no woman. He contrives to be brave without being in love. It’s a very remarkable thing to be cold as ice and still as hot as fire.’
Enjolras seemed not to be listening, but anyone near enough might have heard him murmur the word Patria.
Bossuet was still laughing when Courfeyrac exclaimed: ‘Here’s another!’ And in the voice of a ceremonial usher he announced: ‘My lord Eight-Pounder!’
And indeed a second cannon had been brought into action. The gunners rapidly manoeuvred it into position alongside the first.
It was the beginning of the end.
A minute later both pieces fired together, accompanied by a volley of musketry from the supporting troops. Gunfire was also to be heard not far off. While the two guns were bombarding the stronghold in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, others, in the Rue Saint-Denis and the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher, were in action against the Saint-Merry redoubt, this simultaneous fire setting up an ominous echo.
Of the two pieces now battering the Rue de la Chanvrerie barricade, one was charged with grape, the other with ball. The one loaded with ball was aimed a little high so as to hit the upper edge of the barricade and fill the air with the splinters of paving-stones, the intention being to drive the defenders off the barricade itself and under cover. It was a preliminary to the main assault. Once the barricade had been cleared by cannon-fire, and musketry had driven the defenders away from the windows of the tavern, it would be possible for the attacking troops to advance along the street without being shot at, possibly without being seen, and over-run the barricade as they had done on the evening before, perhaps even taking it by surprise.
‘We really must abate this nuisance,’ said Enjolras, and he shouted: ‘Open fire on the gunners.’
Everything was in readiness. The barricade, so long silent, burst furiously into flame, six or seven volleys following one another in a mingling of rage and joy. The street was filled with blinding smoke, but after a few minutes the bodies of two-thirds of the gunners could be dimly discerned, prostrate round the gun. Those still on their feet continued with rigid composure to serve the guns, but the rate of fire slackened.
‘Good!’ said Bossuet to Enjolras. ‘A success.’
Enjolras shrugged his shoulders.
‘Another quarter of an hour of that kind of success and we shan’t have ten cartridges left.’
It seemed that Gavroche must have heard those words.
XV
Gavroche
Courfeyrac suddenly perceived someone crouched in the street just beyond the barricade. Gavroche, having fetched a basket from the tavern, had slipped out through the break and was calmly engaged in filling it with ammunition from the pouches of the men killed in the previous assault.
‘What are you doing?’ demanded Courfeyrac.
Gavroche looked up perkily.
‘I’m filling my basket.’
‘Haven’t you ever heard of grapeshot?’
‘So it’s raining,’ said Gavroche. ‘So what?’
‘Come back at once!’
‘All in good time,’ said Gavroche, and moved further along the street.
It will be remembered that Fannicot’s retreating company had left a trail of dead behind them. Some twenty corpses were scattered over the length of the street, twenty ammunition pouches to be looted.
Smoke filled the street like a fog. Anyone who has seen low cloud at the bottom of a sheer mountain gorge will be able to picture it, that dense mist eddying and swirling between the two dark lines of tall houses. It slowly rose but was constantly renewed, a dark veil drawn over the face of the sun, so that the combatants at either end of the street, short though it was, could scarcely see each other.
This state of affairs, probably reckoned with and desired by the leaders of the assault, was very helpful to Gavroche. Under cover of the smoke, and thanks to his small size, he could move some distance into the street without being seen. He looted the first seven or eight pouches without being in much danger, creeping along on hands and knees, wriggling from one body to the next and emptying pouches and cartridge-belts like a monkey cracking nuts.
He was still not far from the barricade, but no one dared shout to him to come back for fear of drawing attention to him.
On one body, that of a corporal, he found a powder-flask.
‘Handy in case of thirst,’ he said and put it in his pocket.
As he moved further along the street the veil of smoke grew thinner, so that presently the soldiers of the line behind their breast-work and the men of the Garde Nationale clustered at the corner of the street were able to discern something moving in the haze. He was ransacking the pouch of a sergeant lying near a kerbstone when the body was hit by a bullet.
‘Blazes!’ said Gavroche. ‘Now they’re killing dead men.’
A second bullet struck a spark from the near-by cobbles and a thir
d overturned his basket. Looking up, Gavroche saw that it had come from the street-corner. He got to his feet, and standing erect with his hands on his hips, his eyes fixed on the men of the Garde Nationale, he sang:
They’re ugly at Nanterre,
It’s the fault of Voltaire;
And stupid at Palaiseau,
All because of Rousseau.
Then he picked up his basket, retrieved the cartridges that had fallen out of it without losing one, and moved still nearer to the attackers to loot another pouch. A fourth bullet narrowly missed him. He sang:
I’m no lawyer, I declare,
It’s the fault of Voltaire.
I’m nothing but a sparrow
All because of Rousseau.
A fifth bullet succeeded only in drawing another verse from him:
There’s joy in the air,
Thanks to Voltaire;
But misery below,
So says Rousseau.
This went on for some time, a touching and heartrending scene. Gavroche, being shot at, mocked the shooters. He seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself, a sparrow pecking at the bird-catchers. Every shot inspired him to another verse. They fired again and again at him and missed, and the soldiers and the men of the Garde Nationale laughed as they took aim. He leapt and dodged, ducked into doorways, vanished and reappeared, cocking a snook at the foe, and all the time continued to empty pouches and fill his basket. The rebels watched in breathless anxiety. The barricade trembled, and he sang. He was neither child nor man but a puckish sprite, a dwarf, it seemed, invulnerable in battle. The bullets pursued him, but he was more agile than they. The urchin played his game of hide-and-seek with death, and whenever the dread spectre appeared he tweaked its nose.
But at length a bullet caught him, better aimed or more treacherous than the rest. Gavroche was seen to stagger, and then he collapsed. A cry went up from the barricade. But there was an Antaeus concealed in that pygmy. A Paris urchin touching the pavement is a giant drawing strength from his mother earth. Gavroche had fallen only to rise again. He sat upright with blood streaming down his face, and raising his arms above his head and gazing in the direction of the shot, he again began to sing:
I have fallen, I swear
It’s the fault of Voltaire,
Or else this hard blow
Has been dealt by –
He did not finish the verse. A second ball from the same musket cut him short. This time he fell face down and moved no more. His gallant soul had fled.
XVI
How a brother becomes a father
At that same moment two little boys in the Luxembourg Garden – for the eyes of the dramatist must be everywhere at once – were walking hand in hand. One was perhaps seven years old, the other about five. After being soaked by the downpour they were keeping to the sunnier paths, the elder leading the way. They were ragged and pale, with the look of lost birds. The younger said, ‘I’m very hungry.’
The elder, who was developing a protective attitude, was holding his brother with his left hand while he clutched a stick in his right. The gardens were deserted, the gates having been closed as a precautionary measure in view of the uprising. The troops who had been encamped there during the night had left to go about their duties.
How, then, had those two children got there? They might have slipped through the half-open door of a police-post, or possibly have run away from a party of strolling players who had set up their booth nearby, at the Barrière de l’Enfer or on the Esplanade de l’Observatoire; or perhaps they had escaped the notice of the park-keepers at closing time the evening before, and spent the night in one of those sheltered corners where people sit and read their newspapers. In any event they were wandering at large and seemed unattached. To be astray and free is to be lost, which is what these children were.
They were the two little boys whom Gavroche had once sheltered, as the reader will remember – the Thénardier children, disposed of to La Magnon and attributed by that lady to Monsieur Gillenormand, and now become leaves fallen from those rootless branches, blown helter-skelter by the wind. Their clothes, which had been clean and neat in La Magnon’s day, and had served to justify her in the eye of Monsieur Gillenormand, were now in tatters. In short, they had become a statistic, recorded by the police under the heading Enfants Abandonnés and picked up by them in the streets of Paris.
Only at a time of disorder could outcasts such as these have been found in a place like the Luxembourg; at any other time they would have been turned out. The children of the poor are not allowed in public gardens, although it might be thought that, like any other children, they have a right to flowers.
But there they were, thanks to the closed gates. They had slipped in, regardless of regulations, and had stayed there. The closing of the gates does not relieve the park attendants of their duties. Their supervision is supposed to be maintained, but it tends to grow lax. Besides which the attendants, infected by the disturbance, were more interested in events outside the gardens than in what was going on inside, and failed to notice the delinquents.
It had rained during the night and even a little in the morning; but June showers are no great matter. One scarcely remembers, on a day of radiant sunshine, that an hour ago there was a downpour. The earth in summer dries as quickly as an infant’s cheek. At the summer solstice the noonday sun is, so to speak, grasping. It envelops everything, applying a kind of suction to the earth, as though the sun itself were thirsty. A shower is a mere glass of water; any rainfall is instantly swallowed. The streaming morning becomes the delightful afternoon.
Nothing is more pleasant than greenery washed by the rain and dried by the sun into cleanliness and warmth. Gardens and meadows, with moisture at their roots and sunshine on their blossoms, become jars of incense, each giving out its scent. The world smiles and sings and bestows itself, and we feel a gentle intoxication. Springtime is a foretaste of paradise. The sun teaches men to endure.
At eleven o’clock on that morning of 6 June the Luxembourg, empty of people, was particularly charming. Lawns and flowerbeds mingled their colour and their fragrance, and the branches of trees seemed locked in an extravagant embrace in the warmth of the midday sun. Linnets were chirruping in the sycamores, sparrows flew rejoicing, woodpeckers assiduously tapped the trunks of the chestnut trees. The beds did dutiful obeisance to the legitimate royalty of the lily, the noblest of scents being that which comes from whiteness. Marie de Medici’s old rooks were cawing in the tall trees, and the sun was gliding and crimsoning the tulips, which are simply every hue of flame made into flowers; and over the tulip beds darted the bees, like sparks from flames. All was grace and gaiety and there was no real threat in the shower that was approaching, which would be welcomed by honeysuckle and lily-of-the-valley and was causing the swallows to fly low. Any person there must have breathed happiness, security, innocence and benevolence. The thoughts falling from the sky were as soft as a child’s hand that one bends down to kiss.
The statues under the trees, white and naked, were clad in garments of shadow dappled with light, goddesses in the tattered vesture of sunshine, its rags enclosing them on all sides. The earth around the big pond was already dried and almost scorched, and there was wind enough to cause little scurries of dust to arise. A few yellowed leaves, survivals from the autumn, fluttered gaily in pursuit of one another as though they were at play.
There was an inexpressible reassurance in this lavishness of light, this overflowing of life and sap, perfume and warmth. In the puffs of wind laden with love, the mingling of harmonies and reflections; in the lavish expense of the sun’s gaze, that prodigious outpouring of liquid gold, one had a sense of inexhaustible abundance. And beyond it all, as though beyond a curtain of flames, one sensed the presence of God, that millionaire of the stars.
All had been washed clean, all the magnificence was immaculate so that an army veteran from the near-by barracks, looking through the railing, could proclaim, ‘Nature’s presenting arms in full-
dress uniform’. And in the vast silence of contented Nature all Nature breakfasted. This was the hour. Creation took its seat at table, with a blue cloth in the heavens and a green cloth on earth, sunshine to light the feast. God served a universal repast, in which each creature found its rightful food – hempseed for the dove, millet for the chaffinch, worms for the robin, flowers for the bee, infusoria for the flies – and flies for the linnet. If to some extent one creature preyed upon another, that is a token of the mysterious mingling of bad with good; but no creature went hungry.
The two forlorn little boys had found their way to the pond, and, half-scared by the brilliant light, with the instinct of the poor and weak confronted by magnificence, even when it is impersonal, were crouched behind the swanhouse. Now and then a puff of wind brought distant sounds of tumult to their ears, shouting voices, the rattle of musketry and the heavy thud of cannon-fire. Smoke was rising above the house-tops in the direction of Les Halles; and a bell that sounded like a summons was tolling somewhere far away. The children paid little heed to this. From time to time the younger repeated in a mournful voice, ‘I’m hungry.’
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