Where the devil did you pick up those young ’uns?


They are some brats that a wig-maker made me a present of.


You recognized me very readily,


That changes you, you are less homely so, you ought to keep them on all the time.


Seriously, how do you like me so?


Oh! Do play Porrichinelle for us!


Listen to what I tell you, boy! if I were on the square with my dog, my knife, and my wife, and if you were to squander ten sous on me, I wouldn’t refuse to work, but this isn’t Shrove Tuesday.


Ah! good! Well, good evening. I’m going off to my elephant with my brats. Supposing that you should need me some night, you can come and hunt me up there. I lodge on the entresol. There is no porter. You will inquire for Monsieur Gavroche.


Very good,


Don’t be scared, infants.


Climb up and go in. You’re afraid, brats! You shall see! Well! climb up, young ’uns! You’ll see how snug it is here! Come up, you! I’ll lend you a hand.


Don’t be afraid!—That’s it!—Come on!—Put your feet there!—Give us your hand here!—Boldly! Nabbed! Now, wait for me. Be so good as to take a seat, Monsieur. I’m going to boost him, do you tug. Here we are! Long live General Lafayette! Now, young ’uns, you are in my house.


Let’s begin, by telling the porter that we are not at home.


It’s black.


What’s that you are gabbling about there? Are you scoffing at me? Are you turning up your noses? Do you want the Tuileries? Are you brutes? Come, say! I warn you that I don’t belong to the regiment of simpletons. Ah, come now, are you brats from the Pope’s establishment? Stupid, it’s outside that it is black. Outside it’s raining, here it does not rain; outside it’s cold, here there’s not an atom of wind; outside there are heaps of people, here there’s no one; outside there ain’t even the moon, here there’s my candle, confound it! Quick,


Down on all fours, brats! Now, go to sleep! I’m going to suppress the candelabra.


Monsieur, what’s that for?


That, is for the rats. Go to sleep! It’s a thing from the Jardin des Plantes. It’s used for fierce animals. There’s a whole shopful of them there. All you’ve got to do is to climb over a wall, crawl through a window, and pass through a door. You can get as much as you want.


Oh! how good that is! It’s warm!


That’s from the Jardin des Plantes, too. I took that from the monkeys. That belonged to the giraffe. The beasts had all these things. I took them away from them. It didn’t trouble them. I told them: ‘It’s for the elephant.’ You crawl over the walls and you don’t care a straw for the government. So there now!


Monsieur, you are not afraid of the police, then?


Brat! Nobody says ‘police,’ they say ‘bobbies.’ Hey! We’re jolly comfortable here, ain’t we?


Ah, yes!


Ah, by the way, what were you bawling about? A mite like that, I’ve nothing to say about, but the idea of a big fellow like you crying! It’s idiotic; you looked like a calf.


Gracious, we have no lodging.


Bother! you don’t say ‘lodgings,’ you say ‘crib.’


And then, we were afraid of being alone like that at night.


You don’t say ‘night,’ you say ‘darkmans.’


Thank you, sir,


Listen, you must never bawl again over anything. I’ll take care of you. You shall see what fun we’ll have. In summer, we’ll go to the Glacière with Navet, one of my pals, we’ll bathe in the Gare, we’ll run stark naked in front of the rafts on the bridge at Austerlitz,—that makes the laundresses raging. They scream, they get mad, and if you only knew how ridiculous they are! We’ll go and see the man-skeleton. And then I’ll take you to the play. I’ll take you to see Frédérick Lemaître. I have tickets, I know some of the actors, I even played in a piece once. There were a lot of us fellers, and we ran under a cloth, and that made the sea. I’ll get you an engagement at my theatre. We’ll go to see the savages. They ain’t real, those savages ain’t. They wear pink tights that go all in wrinkles, and you can see where their elbows have been darned with white. Then, we’ll go to the Opera. We’ll get in with the hired applauders. The Opera claque is well managed. I wouldn’t associate with the claque on the boulevard. At the Opera, just fancy! some of them pay twenty sous, but they’re ninnies. They’re called dishclouts. And then we’ll go to see the guillotine work. I’ll show you the executioner. He lives in the Rue des Marais. Monsieur Sanson. He has a letter-box at his door. Ah! we’ll have famous fun! The deuce! there’s the wick giving out. Attention! I can’t spend more than a sou a month on my lighting. When a body goes to bed, he must sleep. We haven’t the time to read M. Paul de Kock’s romances. And besides, the light might pass through the cracks of the porte-cochère, and all the bobbies need to do is to see it.


a spark might fall in the straw, and we must look out and not burn the house down.


People don’t say ‘burn the house down,’ they say ‘blaze the crib.’ You’re taken in, rain! It amuses me to hear the decanter run down the legs of the house. Winter is a stupid; it wastes its merchandise, it loses its labor, it can’t wet us, and that makes it kick up a row, old water-carrier that it is.


Calm down, children. Don’t topple over the edifice. That’s fine, first-class thunder; all right. That’s no slouch of a streak of lightning. Bravo for the good God! Deuce take it! It’s almost as good as it is at the Ambigu. Since the good God is lighting his candle, I can blow out mine. Now, babes, now, my young humans, you must shut your peepers. It’s very bad not to sleep. It’ll make you swallow the strainer, or, as they say, in fashionable society, stink in the gullet. Wrap yourself up well in the hide! I’m going to put out the light. Are you ready?


Yes,


I’m all right. I seem to have feathers under my head.


People don’t say ‘head,’ they say ‘nut’. Shut your peepers!


Sir? Hey?


What is that?


It’s the rats,


Hey?


What are rats?


They are mice.


Sir?


Why don’t you have a cat?


I did have one. I brought one here, but they ate her.


Monsieur?


Who was it that was eaten?


The cat.


And who ate the cat?


The rats.


The mice?


Yes, the rats.


Sir, would those mice eat us?


Wouldn’t they just! Don’t be afraid. They can’t get in. And besides, I’m here! Here, catch hold of my hand. Hold your tongue and shut your peepers!


Kirikikiou!


Yes!


We need you. Come, lend us a hand.


I’m with you,


What a good night to leg it!


in order to preserve it from the rats,


It would be better to let him have only a wooden spike.


Let’s cut. What are we up to here?


It’s raining hard enough to put out the very devil’s fire. And the bobbies will be along instanter. There’s a soldier on guard yonder. We shall get nabbed here. icigo icicaille


There’s no hurry yet, let’s wait a bit. How do we know that he doesn’t stand in need of us?


What are you jabbering about? The tavern-keeper hasn’t managed to cut his stick. He don’t tumble to the racket, that he don’t! You have to be a pretty knowing cove to tear up your shirt, cut up your sheet to make a rope, punch holes in doors, get up false papers, make false keys, file your irons, hang out your cord, hide yourself, and disguise yourself! The old fellow hasn’t managed to play it, he doesn’t understand how to work the business.


Your tavern-keeper must have been nabbed in the act. You have to be knowing. He’s only a greenhorn. He must have let himself be taken in by a bobby, perhaps even by a sheep who played it on him as his pal. Listen, Montparnasse, do you hear those shouts in the prison? You have seen all those lights. He’s recaptured, there! He’ll get off with twenty years. I ain’t afraid, I ain’t a coward, but there ain’t anything more to do, or otherwise they’d lead us a dance. Don’t get mad, come with us, let’s go drink a bottle of old wine together.


One doesn’t desert one’s friends in a scrape,


I tell you he’s nabbed! At the present moment, the inn-keeper ain’t worth a ha’penny. We can’t do nothing for him. Let’s be off. Every minute I think a bobby has got me in his fist.


A widow,


My tortouse!


The tavern-keeper is there. Quick! have you the other end of the rope, Brujon?


Yes.


Knot the two pieces together, we’ll fling him the rope, he can fasten it to the wall, and he’ll have enough of it to get down with.


I am paralyzed with cold.


We’ll warm you up.


I can’t budge.


Let yourself slide, we’ll catch you.


My hands are benumbed.


Only fasten the rope to the wall.


I can’t.


Then one of us must climb up,


Three stories!


One might get up by the help of that,


By that flue? a grown-up cove, never! it would take a brat.


A brat must be got,


Where are we to find a young ’un?


Wait. I’ve got the very article.


Are you a man, young ’un?


A young ’un like me’s a man, and men like you are babes.


The brat’s tongue’s well hung!


The Paris brat ain’t made of straw,


What do you want?


Climb up that flue.


With this rope,


And fasten it,


To the top of the wall,


To the cross-bar of the window,


And then?


There!


Is that all!


There’s a man up there whom you are to save,


Will you?


Greenhorn!


Hullo! it’s my father! Oh, that won’t hinder.


Now, whom are we to eat?


Let’s get well into a corner. Let’s settle it in three words, and part at once. There was an affair that promised well in the Rue Plumet, a deserted street, an isolated house, an old rotten gate on a garden, and lone women.


Well! why not?


Your girl, Éponine, went to see about the matter,


And she brought a biscuit to Magnon. Nothing to be made there.


The girl’s no fool. Still, it must be seen to.


Yes, yes, it must be looked up.


Is that all? You don’t want any more, my men? Now you’re out of your scrape. I’m off. I must go and get my brats out of bed.


Did you take a good look at that young ’un?


What young ’un?


The one who climbed the wall and carried you the rope.


Not particularly.


Well, I don’t know, but it strikes me that it was your son.


Bah! do you think so?


Vousiergue trouvaille bonorgue ce gigotmuche?


It was the rhymes that kept me up.


It is to see thirty-six candles.


I light my camoufle,


Langleviel La Beaumelle deserves a hundred camouflets.


I do not understand how God, the father of men, can torture his children and his grandchildren and hear them cry, without himself suffering torture.


le Marquis de Pantin.


no


Dost thou know?— Dost thou know? My name is Euphrasie.


Euphrasie? Why, no, thy name is Cosette.


Oh! Cosette is a very ugly name that was given to me when I was a little thing. But my real name is Euphrasie. Dost thou like that name—Euphrasie?


Yes. But Cosette is not ugly.


Do you like it better than Euphrasie?


Why, yes.


Then I like it better too. Truly, it is pretty, Cosette. Call me Cosette. Monsieur, you are handsome, you are good-looking, you are witty, you are not at all stupid, you are much more learned than I am, but I bid you defiance with this word: I love you! Don’t cough, sir; I will not have people cough on my domain without my permission. It’s very naughty to cough and to disturb me. I want you to be well, because, in the first place, if you were not well, I should be very unhappy. What should I do then?


Just imagine, I thought at one time that your name was Ursule. Oh! One day, at the Luxembourg, I had a good mind to finish breaking up a veteran!


Oh! how beautiful you are! I dare not look at you. It is all over with me when I contemplate you. You are a grace. I know not what is the matter with me. The hem of your gown, when the tip of your shoe peeps from beneath, upsets me. And then, what an enchanted gleam when you open your thought even but a little! You talk astonishingly good sense. It seems to me at times that you are a dream. Speak, I listen, I admire. Oh Cosette! how strange it is and how charming! I am really beside myself. You are adorable, Mademoiselle. I study your feet with the microscope and your soul with the telescope.


I have been loving a little more all the time that has passed since this morning.


Yes, dear little father.


Why, you have whitewash on your back!


Would you believe it? Marius comes home nowadays at one o’clock in the morning.


What do you expect? There’s always a petard in a seminary fellow.


You are getting irregular in your habits, young man. My dear fellow, you produce upon me the effect of being located in the moon, the realm of dreams, the province of illusions, capital, soap-bubble. Come, be a good boy, what’s her name?


Good evening, Monsieur Marius.


Ah! so it’s you, Éponine?


Why do you call me you? Have I done anything to you?


No,


Say— Well? Good evening, Mr. Marius,


None of that, Lisette!


I’m no longer surprised that he comes here every evening.


This is the place,


Is there a cab in the garden? I don’t know. In any case, I have fetched a ball that we’ll make him eat. Have you some putty to break the pane with?


Yes.


The railing is old,


So much the better. It won’t screech under the saw, and it won’t be hard to cut.


There’s a dog.


What jade is this?


Your daughter.


Ah, see here, what are you about there? What do you want with us? Are you crazy? what have you come here to hinder our work for?


I am here, little father, because I am here. Isn’t a person allowed to sit on the stones nowadays? It’s you who ought not to be here. What have you come here for, since it’s a biscuit? I told Magnon so. There’s nothing to be done here. But embrace me, my good little father! It’s a long time since I’ve seen you! So you’re out?


That’s good. You’ve embraced me. Yes, I’m out. I’m not in. Now, get away with you.


But how did you manage it, little pa? You must have been very clever to get out of that. Tell me about it! And my mother? Where is mother? Tell me about mamma.


She’s well. I don’t know, let me alone, and be off, I tell you.


I won’t go, so there now, you send me off, and it’s four months since I saw you, and I’ve hardly had time to kiss you.


Come, now, this is stupid!


Make haste! the cops may pass.


Nous n’ sommes pas le jour de l’an, A bécoter papa, maman.


This isn’t New Year’s day To peck at pa and ma.


Why, it’s Monsieur Brujon. Good day, Monsieur Babet. Good day, Monsieur Claquesous. Don’t you know me, Monsieur Guelemer? How goes it, Montparnasse?


Yes, they know you! But good day, good evening, sheer off! leave us alone!


It’s the hour for foxes, not for chickens,


You see the job we have on hand here,


Take care, you’ll cut yourself, I’ve a knife open.


My little Montparnasse, you must have confidence in people. I am the daughter of my father, perhaps. Monsieur Babet, Monsieur Guelemer, I’m the person who was charged to investigate this matter. You know well that I’m no fool. Ordinarily, I am believed. I have rendered you service on various occasions. Well, I have made inquiries; you will expose yourselves to no purpose, you see. I swear to you that there is nothing in this house.


There are lone women,


No, the persons have moved away.


The candles haven’t, anyway!


Well, they’re very poor folks, and it’s a hovel where there isn’t a sou.


Go to the devil! When we’ve turned the house upside down and put the cellar at the top and the attic below, we’ll tell you what there is inside, and whether it’s francs or sous or half-farthings.


My good friend, Mr. Montparnasse. I entreat you, you are a good fellow, don’t enter.


Take care, you’ll cut yourself,


Decamp, my girl, and leave men to their own affairs!


So you mean to enter this house?


Rather!


Well, I don’t mean that you shall. Friends! Listen well. This is not what you want. Now I’m talking. In the first place, if you enter this garden, if you lay a hand on this gate, I’ll scream, I’ll beat on the door, I’ll rouse everybody, I’ll have the whole six of you seized, I’ll call the police.


She’d do it, too,


Beginning with my father! Not so close, my good man!


Why, what’s the matter with her? Bitch!


As you like, but you shall not enter here. I’m not the daughter of a dog, since I’m the daughter of a wolf. There are six of you, what matters that to me? You are men. Well, I’m a woman. You don’t frighten me. I tell you that you shan’t enter this house, because it doesn’t suit me. If you approach, I’ll bark. I told you, I’m the dog, and I don’t care a straw for you. Go your way, you bore me! Go where you please, but don’t come here, I forbid it! You can use your knives. I’ll use kicks; it’s all the same to me, come on! Pardine! I’m not afraid. I shall be hungry this summer, and I shall be cold this winter. Aren’t they ridiculous, these ninnies of men, to think they can scare a girl! What! Scare? Oh, yes, much! Because you have finical poppets of mistresses who hide under the bed when you put on a big voice, forsooth! I ain’t afraid of anything, that I ain’t! Not even of you, father! What do I care if I’m picked up to-morrow morning on the pavement of the Rue Plumet, killed by the blows of my father’s club, or whether I’m found a year from now in the nets at Saint-Cloud or the Isle of Swans in the midst of rotten old corks and drowned dogs? I have only to cry out, and people will come, and then slap, bang! There are six of you; I represent the whole world. Don’t approach!


Well, no; I won’t approach, but don’t speak so loud. So you intend to hinder us in our work, my daughter? But we must earn our living all the same. Have you no longer any kind feeling for your father?


You bother me,


But we must live, we must eat—


Burst! Mon bras si dodu, Ma jambe bien faite Et le temps perdu. My arm so plump, My leg well formed, And time wasted.


There’s something the matter with her. A reason. Is she in love with the dog? It’s a shame to miss this, anyway. Two women, an old fellow who lodges in the back-yard, and curtains that ain’t so bad at the windows. The old cove must be a Jew. I think the job’s a good one.


Well, go in, then, the rest of you. Do the job. I’ll stay here with the girl, and if she fails us—


You say nothing, Brujon?


See here; this morning I came across two sparrows fighting, this evening I jostled a woman who was quarrelling. All that’s bad. Let’s quit.


Never mind! if they had wanted, I’d have cut her throat.


I wouldn’t. I don’t hit a lady.


Where shall we go to sleep to-night?


Under Pantin .


Have you the key to the gate, Thénardier?


Pardi.


What is the matter?


This. My father told me this morning to hold myself in readiness, because he has business, and we may go away from here.


I did not understand what you said.


This morning my father told me to settle all my little affairs and to hold myself in readiness, that he would give me his linen to put in a trunk, that he was obliged to go on a journey, that we were to go away, that it is necessary to have a large trunk for me and a small one for him, and that all is to be ready in a week from now, and that we might go to England.


But this is outrageous! And when do you start?


He did not say when.


And when shall you return?


Cosette, shall you go?


Where?


To England. Shall you go?


Why do you say you to me?


I ask you whether you will go?


What do you expect me to do?


So, you will go?


If my father goes.


So, you will go? Very well, then I will go elsewhere.


What do you mean?


Nothing.


How silly we are! Marius, I have an idea.


What is it?


If we go away, do you go too! I will tell you where! Come and join me wherever I am.


Go away with you! Are you mad? Why, I should have to have money, and I have none! Go to England? But I am in debt now, I owe, I don’t know how much, more than ten louis to Courfeyrac, one of my friends with whom you are not acquainted! I have an old hat which is not worth three francs, I have a coat which lacks buttons in front, my shirt is all ragged, my elbows are torn, my boots let in the water; for the last six weeks I have not thought about it, and I have not told you about it. You only see me at night, and you give me your love; if you were to see me in the daytime, you would give me a sou! Go to England! Eh! I haven’t enough to pay for a passport!


Do not weep,


Not when I may be going away, and you cannot come!


Do you love me?


I adore you!


Do not weep. Tell me, will you do this for me, and cease to weep?


Cosette, I have never given my word of honor to any one, because my word of honor terrifies me. I feel that my father is by my side. Well, I give you my most sacred word of honor, that if you go away I shall die. Now, listen, do not expect me to-morrow.


Why?


Do not expect me until the day after to-morrow.


Oh! Why?


You will see.


A day without seeing you! But that is impossible!


Let us sacrifice one day in order to gain our whole lives, perhaps. He is a man who never changes his habits, and he has never received any one except in the evening.


Of what man are you speaking?


I? I said nothing.


What do you hope, then?


Wait until the day after to-morrow.


You wish it?


Yes, Cosette. Now that I think of it, you ought to know my address: something might happen, one never knows; I live with that friend named Courfeyrac, Rue de la Verrerie, No. 16. 16 Rue de la Verrerie.


Tell me your thought, Marius; you have some idea. Tell it to me. Oh! tell me, so that I may pass a pleasant night.


This is my idea: that it is impossible that God should mean to part us. Wait; expect me the day after to-morrow.


What shall I do until then? You are outside, you go, and come! How happy men are! I shall remain entirely alone! Oh! How sad I shall be! What is it that you are going to do to-morrow evening? tell me.


I am going to try something.


Then I will pray to God and I will think of you here, so that you may be successful. I will question you no further, since you do not wish it. You are my master. I shall pass the evening to-morrow in singing that music from Euryanthe that you love, and that you came one evening to listen to, outside my shutters. But day after to-morrow you will come early. I shall expect you at dusk, at nine o’clock precisely, I warn you. Mon Dieu! how sad it is that the days are so long! On the stroke of nine, do you understand, I shall be in the garden.


And I also.


I think the likeness is strong.


To my sister? Yes, certainly.


And to him also.


Father, are you as angry with him as ever?


With whom?


With that poor Marius.


Poor Marius, do you say! That gentleman is a knave, a wretched scoundrel, a vain little ingrate, a heartless, soulless, haughty, and wicked man! I had the honor to ask Mademoiselle Gillenormand never to mention him to me.


My father never cared very much for my sister after her folly. It is clear that he detests Marius.


The Rue Plumet, the Rue Plumet, did you say?—Let us see!—Are there not barracks in that vicinity?—Why, yes, that’s it. Your cousin Théodule has spoken to me about it. The lancer, the officer. A gay girl, my good friend, a gay girl!—Pardieu, yes, the Rue Plumet. It is what used to be called the Rue Blomet.—It all comes back to me now. I have heard of that little girl of the iron railing in the Rue Plumet. In a garden, a Pamela. Your taste is not bad. She is said to be a very tidy creature. Between ourselves, I think that simpleton of a lancer has been courting her a bit. I don’t know where he did it. However, that’s not to the purpose. Besides, he is not to be believed. He brags, Marius! I think it quite proper that a young man like you should be in love. It’s the right thing at your age. I like you better as a lover than as a Jacobin. I like you better in love with a petticoat, sapristi! with twenty petticoats, than with M. de Robespierre. For my part, I will do myself the justice to say, that in the line of sans-culottes, I have never loved any one but women. Pretty girls are pretty girls, the deuce! There’s no objection to that. As for the little one, she receives you without her father’s knowledge. That’s in the established order of things. I have had adventures of that same sort myself. More than one. Do you know what is done then? One does not take the matter ferociously; one does not precipitate himself into the tragic; one does not make one’s mind to marriage and M. le Maire with his scarf. One simply behaves like a fellow of spirit. One shows good sense. Slip along, mortals; don’t marry. You come and look up your grandfather, who is a good-natured fellow at bottom, and who always has a few rolls of louis in an old drawer; you say to him: ‘See here, grandfather.’ And the grandfather says: ‘That’s a simple matter. Youth must amuse itself, and old age must wear out. I have been young, you will be old. Come, my boy, you shall pass it on to your grandson. Here are two hundred pistoles. Amuse yourself, deuce take it!’ Nothing better! That’s the way the affair should be treated. You don’t marry, but that does no harm. You understand me? Booby! make her your mistress.


Five years ago you insulted my father; to-day you have insulted my wife. I ask nothing more of you, sir. Farewell.


Help! Help! Run after him! Bring him back! What have I done to him? He is mad! He is going away! Ah! my God! Ah! my God! This time he will not come back! Marius! Marius! Marius! Marius!


MOVE AWAY FROM YOUR HOUSE.


Are you coming to General Lamarque’s funeral?


Is there fighting on hand?


She is waiting for me there. What do you want? Cosette! Cosette!


Mr. Marius! Hey? Mr. Marius, are you there? Yes.


Mr. Marius,


your friends are waiting for you at the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie.


I have no money to buy any dinner.


On credit?


You know well that people refuse me. You will get something for dinner.


But I am eighty; I owe five sous,


Why, what! I should think so! An old savant! a botanist! an inoffensive man! Something must be done for him!


We are saved!


Who is that old gentleman?


What is it?


It is the riots.


What riots?


Yes, they are fighting.


Why are they fighting?


Ah, good Heavens!


In what direction?


In the neighborhood of the Arsenal.


Ah! truly!


The riots which complicated the affair of 1830 deprived that great event of a portion of its purity. The Revolution of July had been a fine popular gale, abruptly followed by blue sky. They made the cloudy sky reappear. They caused that revolution, at first so remarkable for its unanimity, to degenerate into a quarrel. In the Revolution of July, as in all progress accomplished by fits and starts, there had been secret fractures; these riots rendered them perceptible. It might have been said: ‘Ah! this is broken.’ After the Revolution of July, one was sensible only of deliverance; after the riots, one was conscious of a catastrophe. All revolt closes the shops, depresses the funds, throws the Exchange into consternation, suspends commerce, clogs business, precipitates failures; no more money, private fortunes rendered uneasy, public credit shaken, industry disconcerted, capital withdrawing, work at a discount, fear everywhere; counter-shocks in every town. Hence gulfs. It has been calculated that the first day of a riot costs France twenty millions, the second day forty, the third sixty, a three days’ uprising costs one hundred and twenty millions, that is to say, if only the financial result be taken into consideration, it is equivalent to a disaster, a shipwreck or a lost battle, which should annihilate a fleet of sixty ships of the line. No doubt, historically, uprisings have their beauty; the war of the pavements is no less grandiose, and no less pathetic, than the war of thickets: in the one there is the soul of forests, in the other the heart of cities; the one has Jean Chouan, the other has a Jeanne. Revolts have illuminated with a red glare all the most original points of the Parisian character, generosity, devotion, stormy gayety, students proving that bravery forms part of intelligence, the National Guard invincible, bivouacs of shopkeepers, fortresses of street urchins, contempt of death on the part of passers-by. Schools and legions clashed together. After all, between the combatants, there was only a difference of age; the race is the same; it is the same stoical men who died at the age of twenty for their ideas, at forty for their families. The army, always a sad thing in civil wars, opposed prudence to audacity. Uprisings, while proving popular intrepidity, also educated the courage of the bourgeois. This is well. But is all this worth the bloodshed? And to the bloodshed add the future darkness, progress compromised, uneasiness among the best men, honest liberals in despair, foreign absolutism happy in these wounds dealt to revolution by its own hand, the vanquished of 1830 triumphing and saying: ‘We told you so!’ Add Paris enlarged, possibly, but France most assuredly diminished. Add, for all must needs be told, the massacres which have too often dishonored the victory of order grown ferocious over liberty gone mad. To sum up all, uprisings have been disastrous.


Death to the salt duties. Long live the King!


Certainly, despotism remains despotism, even under the despot of genius.


Long live the people!


We have seen this.


Whither are you going?


Eh! well, I have no weapons.


What then?


I’m going to my timber-yard to get my compasses.


What for?


I don’t know,


Come here, you! Have you work?


No.


Go to Filspierre, between the Barrière Charonne and the Barrière Montreuil, and you will find work.


Have you your pistol?


Under my blouse.


And you?


Under my shirt.


What is your object?


Insurrection.


I am a Republican,


Long live the Polytechnique! Long live the Republic!


Do you see that fellow with a red beard, he’s the one who will give the word when we are to fire.


Lamarque to the Pantheon! Lafayette to the Town-hall!


The dragoons!


They are beginning too soon!


To arms!


There’s going to be a row!


Republic or Death!


I did not know what cartridges were; it was my husband who told me.


panting men, artisans, students, members of sections

To arms!


The arms have been delivered their names Send for them to-morrow at the Mayor’s office.


Here, this is to pay expenses, wine, et cætera.


Republican revolution, No. 127.


There appears to be a squabble in the Rue Saint-Martin. In the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Or somewhere in that direction.


It’s getting hot! Hullo, it’s getting hot!


Get a regiment first


I am with you. I will follow you wherever there is room for a chair


Ah! my God! He has not come home!


It is cavalry,


Those are the caissons galloping,


Go home!


How will all this end?


Mother What’s-your-name, I’m going to borrow your machine.


La nuit on ne voit rien, Le jour on voit très bien, D’un écrit apocryphe Le bourgeois s’ébouriffe, Pratiquez la vertu, Tutu, chapeau pointu!


I break a cane, otherwise expressed, I cut my stick, or, as they say at the court, I file off. If you don’t find papa and mamma, young ’uns, come back here this evening. I’ll scramble you up some supper, and I’ll give you a shakedown.


Help!


How fat those moneyed men are! They’re drunk! They just wallow in good dinners. Ask ’em what they do with their money. They don’t know. They eat it, that’s what they do! As much as their bellies will hold. All goes well. I suffer a great deal in my left paw, I’m all broken up with rheumatism, but I’m satisfied, citizens. All that the bourgeois have to do is to bear themselves well, I’ll sneeze them out subversive couplets. What are the police spies? Dogs. And I’d just like to have one of them at the end of my pistol. I’m just from the boulevard, my friends. It’s getting hot there, it’s getting into a little boil, it’s simmering. It’s time to skim the pot. Forward march, men! Let an impure blood inundate the furrows! I give my days to my country, I shall never see my concubine more, Nini, finished, yes, Nini? But never mind! Long live joy! Let’s fight, crebleu! I’ve had enough of despotism.


Ah, by the way, is your cat still cross? Good gracious, cats are naturally the enemies of dogs, you know. It’s the dogs who complain. And people also. But the fleas from a cat don’t go after people. That’s not the trouble, dogs are dangerous. I remember one year when there were so many dogs that it was necessary to put it in the newspapers. That was at the time when there were at the Tuileries great sheep that drew the little carriage of the King of Rome. Do you remember the King of Rome? I liked the Duc de Bordeau better. I knew Louis XVIII. I prefer Louis XVIII. Meat is awfully dear, isn’t it, Mother Patagon?


Ah! don’t mention it, the butcher’s shop is a horror. A horrible horror—one can’t afford anything but the poor cuts nowadays.


Ladies, business is dull. The refuse heaps are miserable. No one throws anything away any more. They eat everything.


There are poorer people than you, la Vargoulême.


Ah, that’s true. I have a profession. In the morning, on my return home, I pick over my basket, I sort my things. This makes heaps in my room. I put the rags in a basket, the cores and stalks in a bucket, the linen in my cupboard, the woollen stuff in my commode, the old papers in the corner of the window, the things that are good to eat in my bowl, the bits of glass in my fireplace, the old shoes behind my door, and the bones under my bed.


Old ladies, what do you mean by talking politics?


Here’s another rascal. What’s that he’s got in his paddle? A pistol? Well, I’d like to know what sort of a beggar’s brat this is? That sort of animal is never easy unless he’s overturning the authorities.


You malicious, bare-pawed little wretch!


There’s going to be evil doings, that’s certain. The errand-boy next door has a little pointed beard, I have seen him pass every day with a young person in a pink bonnet on his arm; to-day I saw him pass, and he had a gun on his arm. Mame Bacheux says, that last week there was a revolution at—at—at—where’s the calf!—at Pontoise. And then, there you see him, that horrid scamp, with his pistol! It seems that the Célestins are full of pistols. What do you suppose the Government can do with good-for-nothings who don’t know how to do anything but contrive ways of upsetting the world, when we had just begun to get a little quiet after all the misfortunes that have happened, good Lord! to that poor queen whom I saw pass in the tumbril! And all this is going to make tobacco dearer. It’s infamous! And I shall certainly go to see him beheaded on the guillotine, the wretch!


You’ve got the sniffles, old lady. Blow your promontory. You’re in the wrong to insult the revolutionists, Mother Dust-Heap-Corner. This pistol is in your interests. It’s so that you may have more good things to eat in your basket.


You’re nothing but a bastard.


Oh! Come now. I don’t care a brass farthing for that! Forward march to the battle! I’m going off, but you won’t go off! My poor doggy, you must have gone and swallowed a cask, for all the hoops are visible.


How did the Emperor ride, sir?


Badly. He did not know how to fall—so he never fell.


Did he have fine horses? He must have had fine horses!


Keksekça? He’s an old duffer.


M. Mabeuf, go to your home. Why?


There’s going to be a row.


That’s well.


Thrusts with the sword and firing, M. Mabeuf.


That is well.


Firing from cannon.


That is good. Where are the rest of you going?


We are going to fling the government to the earth.


That is good.


What a fierce old fellow!


Voici la lune qui paraît, Quand irons-nous dans la forêt? Demandait Charlot à Charlotte. Tou tou tou Pour Chatou. Je n’ai qu’un Dieu, qu’un roi, qu’un liard, et qu’une botte.


Pour avoir bu de grand matin La rosée à même le thym, Deux moineaux étaient en ribotte. Zi zi zi Pour Passy. Je n’ai qu’un Dieu, qu’un roi, qu’un liard, et qu’une botte.


Et ces deux pauvres petits loups, Comme deux grives étaient soûls; Un tigre en riait dans sa grotte. Don don don Pour Meudon. Je n’ai qu’un Dieu, qu’un roi, qu’un liard, et qu’une botte.


L’un jurait et l’autre sacrait. Quand irons nous dans la forêt? Demandait Charlot à Charlotte. Tin tin tin Pour Pantin. Je n’ai qu’un Dieu, qu’un roi, qu’un liard, et qu’une botte.


This happens just right. I have forgotten my purse, and I have lost my hat.


Monsieur de Courfeyrac!


What’s your name, portress?


Why, you know perfectly well, I’m the concierge; my name is Mother Veuvain.


Well, if you call me Monsieur de Courfeyrac again, I shall call you Mother de Veuvain. Now speak, what’s the matter? What do you want?


There is some one who wants to speak with you.


Who is it?


I don’t know.


Where is he?


In my lodge.


The devil!


But the person has been waiting your return for over an hour,


Monsieur Marius, if you please.


He is not here.


Will he return this evening?


I know nothing about it. For my part, I shall not return.


Why not?


Because.


Where are you going, then?


What business is that of yours?


Would you like to have me carry your coffer for you?


I am going to the barricades.


Would you like to have me go with you?


If you like! The street is free, the pavements belong to every one.


Oysters, cheese, and ham,


I am passing by. I smell from the street a delicious odor of Brie cheese. I enter.


Are you going to drink those two bottles?


All are ingenious, thou alone art ingenuous. Two bottles never yet astonished a man.


So you have a hole in your stomach?


You have one in your elbow. Ah, by the way, Laigle of the funeral oration, your coat is old.


I should hope so. That’s why we get on well together, my coat and I. It has acquired all my folds, it does not bind me anywhere, it is moulded on my deformities, it falls in with all my movements, I am only conscious of it because it keeps me warm. Old coats are just like old friends.


That’s true, an old goat is an old abi


Especially in the mouth of a man whose head is stuffed up,


Grantaire, have you just come from the boulevard?


No.


We have just seen the head of the procession pass, Joly and I.


It’s a marvellous sight,


How quiet this street is! Who would suspect that Paris was turned upside down? How plainly it is to be seen that in former days there were nothing but convents here! In this neighborhood! Du Breul and Sauval give a list of them, and so does the Abbé Lebeuf. They were all round here, they fairly swarmed, booted and barefooted, shaven, bearded, gray, black, white, Franciscans, Minims, Capuchins, Carmelites, Little Augustines, Great Augustines, old Augustines—there was no end of them.


Don’t let’s talk of monks, it makes one want to scratch one’s self. Bouh! I’ve just swallowed a bad oyster. Now hypochondria is taking possession of me again. The oysters are spoiled, the servants are ugly. I hate the human race. I just passed through the Rue Richelieu, in front of the big public library. That pile of oyster-shells which is called a library is disgusting even to think of. What paper! What ink! What scrawling! And all that has been written! What rascal was it who said that man was a featherless biped?51 And then, I met a pretty girl of my acquaintance, who is as beautiful as the spring, worthy to be called Floréal, and who is delighted, enraptured, as happy as the angels, because a wretch yesterday, a frightful banker all spotted with small-pox, deigned to take a fancy to her! Alas! woman keeps on the watch for a protector as much as for a lover; cats chase mice as well as birds. Two months ago that young woman was virtuous in an attic, she adjusted little brass rings in the eyelet-holes of corsets, what do you call it? She sewed, she had a camp bed, she dwelt beside a pot of flowers, she was contented. Now here she is a bankeress. This transformation took place last night. I met the victim this morning in high spirits. The hideous point about it is, that the jade is as pretty to-day as she was yesterday. Her financier did not show in her face. Roses have this advantage or disadvantage over women, that the traces left upon them by caterpillars are visible. Ah! there is no morality on earth. I call to witness the myrtle, the symbol of love, the laurel, the symbol of air, the olive, that ninny, the symbol of peace, the apple-tree which came nearest rangling Adam with its pips, and the fig-tree, the grandfather of petticoats. As for right, do you know what right is? The Gauls covet Clusium, Rome protects Clusium, and demands what wrong Clusium has done to them. Brennus answers: ‘The wrong that Alba did to you, the wrong that Fidenæ did to you, the wrong that the Eques, the Volsci, and the Sabines have done to you. They were your neighbors. The Clusians are ours. We understand neighborliness just as you do. You have stolen Alba, we shall take Clusium.’ Rome said: ‘You shall not take Clusium.’ Brennus took Rome. Then he cried: ‘Væ victis!’ That is what right is. Ah! what beasts of prey there are in this world! What eagles! It makes my flesh creep. Brennus, who takes Rome, is an eagle; the banker who takes the grisette is an eagle. There is no more modesty in the one case than in the other. So we believe in nothing. There is but one reality: drink. Whatever your opinion may be in favor of the lean cock, like the Canton of Uri, or in favor of the fat cock, like the Canton of Glaris, it matters little, drink. You talk to me of the boulevard, of that procession, et cætera, et cætera. Come now, is there going to be another revolution? This poverty of means on the part of the good God astounds me. He has to keep greasing the groove of events every moment. There is a hitch, it won’t work. Quick, a revolution! The good God has his hands perpetually black with that cart-grease. If I were in his place, I’d be perfectly simple about it, I would not wind up my mechanism every minute, I’d lead the human race in a straightforward way, I’d weave matters mesh by mesh, without breaking the thread, I would have no provisional arrangements, I would have no extraordinary repertory. What the rest of you call progress advances by means of two motors, men and events. But, sad to say, from time to time, the exceptional becomes necessary. The ordinary troupe suffices neither for event nor for men: among men geniuses are required, among events revolutions. Great accidents are the law; the order of things cannot do without them; and, judging from the apparition of comets, one would be tempted to think that Heaven itself finds actors needed for its performance. At the moment when one expects it the least, God placards a meteor on the wall of the firmament. Some queer star turns up, underlined by an enormous tail. And that causes the death of Cæsar. Brutus deals him a blow with a knife, and God a blow with a comet. Crac, and behold an aurora borealis, behold a revolution, behold a great man; ’93 in big letters, Napoleon on guard, the comet of 1811 at the head of the poster. Ah! what a beautiful blue theatre all studded with unexpected flashes! Boum! Boum! extraordinary show! Raise your eyes, boobies. Everything is in disorder, the star as well as the drama. Good God, it is too much and not enough. These resources, gathered from exception, seem magnificence and poverty. My friends, Providence has come down to expedients. What does a revolution prove? That God is in a quandry. He effects a coup d’état because he, God, has not been able to make both ends meet. In fact, this confirms me in my conjectures as to Jehovah’s fortune; and when I see so much distress in heaven and on earth, from the bird who has not a grain of millet to myself without a hundred thousand livres of income, when I see human destiny, which is very badly worn, and even royal destiny, which is threadbare, witness the Prince de Condé hung, when I see winter, which is nothing but a rent in the zenith through which the wind blows, when I see so many rags even in the perfectly new purple of the morning on the crests of hills, when I see the drops of dew, those mock pearls, when I see the frost, that paste, when I see humanity ripped apart and events patched up, and so many spots on the sun and so many holes in the moon, when I see so much misery everywhere, I suspect that God is not rich. The appearance exists, it is true, but I feel that he is hard up. He gives a revolution as a tradesman whose money-box is empty gives a ball. God must not be judged from appearances. Beneath the gilding of heaven I perceive a poverty-stricken universe. Creation is bankrupt. That is why I am discontented. Here it is the 4th of June, it is almost night; ever since this morning I have been waiting for daylight to come; it has not come, and I bet that it won’t come all day. This is the inexactness of an ill-paid clerk. Yes, everything is badly arranged, nothing fits anything else, this old world is all warped, I take my stand on the opposition, everything goes awry; the universe is a tease. It’s like children, those who want them have none, and those who don’t want them have them. Total: I’m vexed. Besides, Laigle de Meaux, that bald-head, offends my sight. It humiliates me to think that I am of the same age as that baldy. However, I criticise, but I do not insult. The universe is what it is. I speak here without evil intent and to ease my conscience. Receive, Eternal Father, the assurance of my distinguished consideration. Ah! by all the saints of Olympus and by all the gods of paradise, I was not intended to be a Parisian, that is to say, to rebound forever, like a shuttlecock between two battledores, from the group of the loungers to the group of the roysterers. I was made to be a Turk, watching oriental houris all day long, executing those exquisite Egyptian dances, as sensuous as the dream of a chaste man, or a Beauceron peasant, or a Venetian gentleman surrounded by gentlewoman, or a petty German prince, furnishing the half of a foot-soldier to the Germanic confederation, and occupying his leisure with drying his breeches on his hedge, that is to say, his frontier. Those are the positions for which I was born! Yes, I have said a Turk, and I will not retract. I do not understand how people can habitually take Turks in bad part; Mohammed had his good points; respect for the inventor of seraglios with houris and paradises with odalisques! Let us not insult Mohammedanism, the only religion which is ornamented with a hen-roost! Now, I insist on a drink. The earth is a great piece of stupidity. And it appears that they are going to fight, all those imbeciles, and to break each other’s profiles and to massacre each other in the heart of summer, in the month of June, when they might go off with a creature on their arm, to breathe the immense heaps of new-mown hay in the meadows! Really, people do commit altogether too many follies. An old broken lantern which I have just seen at a bric-à-brac merchant’s suggests a reflection to my mind; it is time to enlighten the human race. Yes, behold me sad again. That’s what comes of swallowing an oyster and a revolution the wrong way! I am growing melancholy once more. Oh! frightful old world. People strive, turn each other out, prostitute themselves, kill each other, and get used to it!


À propos of revolution, it is decidedly abberent that Barius is in lub.


Do. No?


Marius’ love affairs! I can imagine it. Marius is a fog, and he must have found a vapor. Marius is of the race of poets. He who says poet, says fool, madman, Tymbræus Apollo. Marius and his Marie, or his Marion, or his Maria, or his Mariette. They must make a queer pair of lovers. I know just what it is like. Ecstasies in which they forget to kiss. Pure on earth, but joined in heaven. They are souls possessed of senses. They lie among the stars.


Are you Monsieur Bossuet? That is my nickname. What do you want with me?


This. A tall blonde fellow on the boulevard said to me: ‘Do you know Mother Hucheloup?’ I said: ‘Yes, Rue Chanvrerie, the old man’s widow;’ he said to me: ‘Go there. There you will find M. Bossuet. Tell him from me: “A B C”.’ It’s a joke that they’re playing on you, isn’t it. He gave me ten sous.


Joly, lend me ten sous. Grantaire, lend me ten sous. Thank you, sir. What is your name?


I can’t, I belong in the procession, I’m the one to shout ‘Down with Polignac!’


That is the pure-bred gamin. There are a great many varieties of the gamin species. The notary’s gamin is called Skip-the-Gutter, the cook’s gamin is called a scullion, the baker’s gamin is called a mitron, the lackey’s gamin is called a groom, the marine gamin is called the cabin-boy, the soldier’s gamin is called the drummer-boy, the painter’s gamin is called paint-grinder, the tradesman’s gamin is called an errand-boy, the courtesan gamin is called the minion, the kingly gamin is called the dauphin, the god gamin is called the bambino.


A B C, that is to say: the burial of Lamarque.


The tall blonde, is Enjolras, who is sending you a warning.


Shall we go?


It’s raiding. I have sworn to go through fire, but not through water. I don’t wand to ged a gold.


I shall stay here. I prefer a breakfast to a hearse.


Conclusion: we remain. Well, then, let us drink. Besides, we might miss the funeral without missing the riot.


Ah! the riot, I am with you!


Now we’re going to touch up the revolution of 1830. As a matter of fact, it does hurt the people along the seams.


I don’t think much of your revolution. I don’t execrate this Government. It is the crown tempered by the cotton night-cap. It is a sceptre ending in an umbrella. In fact, I think that to-day, with the present weather, Louis Philippe might utilize his royalty in two directions, he might extend the tip of the sceptre end against the people, and open the umbrella end against heaven.


Is it midday or midnight? You can’t see your hand before your face. Gibelotte, fetch a light.


Enjolras disdains me. Enjolras said: ‘Joly is ill, Grantaire is drunk.’ It was to Bossuet that he sent Navet. If he had come for me, I would have followed him. So much the worse for Enjolras! I won’t go to his funeral.


Let the doors of the palace be thrown open! Let every one be a member of the French Academy and have the right to embrace Madame Hucheloup. Let us drink. Woman ancient and consecrated by use, draw near that I may contemplate thee!


Matelote and Gibelotte, dod’t gib Grantaire anything more to drink. He has already devoured, since this bording, in wild prodigality, two francs and ninety-five centibes.


Who has been unhooking the stars without my permission, and putting them on the table in the guise of candles?


Courfeyrac! Courfeyrac! Hohée!


What do you want? Where are you going? To make a barricade. Well, here! This is a good place! Make it here! That’s true, Aigle,


Ah my God! Ah my God!


Courfeyrac, you ought to have brought an umbrella. You will gatch gold.


Omnibuses, do not pass the Corinthe. Non licet omnibus adire Corinthum.


The end of the world has come,


My dear fellow, I have always regarded a woman’s neck as an infinitely delicate thing.


Matelote is homely! Matelote is of a dream of ugliness! Matelote is a chimæra. This is the secret of her birth: a Gothic Pygmalion, who was making gargoyles for cathedrals, fell in love with one of them, the most horrible, one fine morning. He besought Love to give it life, and this produced Matelote. Look at her, citizens! She has chromate-of-lead-colored hair, like Titian’s mistress, and she is a good girl. I guarantee that she will fight well. Every good girl contains a hero. As for Mother Hucheloup, she’s an old warrior. Look at her moustaches! She inherited them from her husband. A hussar indeed! She will fight too. These two alone will strike terror to the heart of the banlieue. Comrades, we shall overthrow the government as true as there are fifteen intermediary acids between margaric acid and formic acid; however, that is a matter of perfect indifference to me. Gentlemen, my father always detested me because I could not understand mathematics. I understand only love and liberty. I am Grantaire, the good fellow. Having never had any money, I never acquired the habit of it, and the result is that I have never lacked it; but, if I had been rich, there would have been no more poor people! You would have seen! Oh, if the kind hearts only had fat purses, how much better things would go! I picture myself Jesus Christ with Rothschild’s fortune! How much good he would do! Matelote, embrace me! You are voluptuous and timid! You have cheeks which invite the kiss of a sister, and lips which claim the kiss of a lover.


Hold your tongue, you cask!


I am the capitoul52 and the master of the floral games!


Grantaire, go get rid of the fumes of your wine somewhere else than here. This is the place for enthusiasm, not for drunkenness. Don’t disgrace the barricade!


Let me sleep here.


Go and sleep somewhere else,


Let me sleep here,—until I die.


Grantaire, you are incapable of believing, of thinking, of willing, of living, and of dying.


You will see.


Here’s the street in its low-necked dress! How well it looks!


Mother Hucheloup, weren’t you complaining the other day because you had had a notice served on you for infringing the law, because Gibelotte shook a counterpane out of your window?


Yes, my good Monsieur Courfeyrac. Ah! good Heavens, are you going to put that table of mine in your horror, too? And it was for the counterpane, and also for a pot of flowers which fell from the attic window into the street, that the government collected a fine of a hundred francs. If that isn’t an abomination, what is!


Well, Mother Hucheloup, we are avenging you.


Father, you owe my husband affront for affront.


On which cheek did you receive the blow?


On the left cheek.


Now you are satisfied. Go tell your husband that he boxed my daughter’s ears, and that I have accordingly boxed his wife’s.


Let us exterminate them to the last man and die at the point of our bayonet.


Courage! more paving-stones! more casks! more machines! Where are you now? A hod of plaster for me to stop this hole with! Your barricade is very small. It must be carried up. Put everything on it, fling everything there, stick it all in. Break down the house. A barricade is Mother Gibou’s tea. Hullo, here’s a glass door.


A glass door? what do you expect us to do with a glass door, tubercle?


Hercules yourselves! A glass door is an excellent thing in a barricade. It does not prevent an attack, but it prevents the enemy taking it. So you’ve never prigged apples over a wall where there were broken bottles? A glass door cuts the corns of the National Guard when they try to mount on the barricade. Pardi! glass is a treacherous thing. Well, you haven’t a very wildly lively imagination, comrades. A gun, I want a gun! Why don’t you give me a gun?


Give you a gun!


Come now! why not? I had one in 1830 when we had a dispute with Charles X.


When there are enough for the men, we will give some to the children.


If you are killed before me, I shall take yours.


Gamin!


Greenhorn! Come with us, young fellow! well now, don’t we do anything for this old country of ours?


Vous rappelez-vous notre douce vie, Lorsque nous étions si jeunes tous deux, Et que nous n’avions au cœur d’autre envie Que d’être bien mis et d’être amoureux, Lorsqu’en ajoutant votre âge à mon âge, Nous ne comptions pas à deux quarante ans, Et que, dans notre humble et petit ménage, Tout, même l’hiver, nous était printemps? Beaux jours! Manuel était fier et sage, Paris s’asseyait à de saints banquets, Foy lançait la foudre, et votre corsage Avait une épingle où je me piquais. Tout vous contemplait. Avocat sans causes, Quand je vous menais au Prado dîner, Vous étiez jolie au point que les roses Me faisaient l’effet de se retourner. Je les entendais dire: Est elle belle! Comme elle sent bon! Quels cheveux à flots! Sous son mantelet elle cache une aile, Son bonnet charmant est à peine éclos. J’errais avec toi, pressant ton bras souple. Les passants croyaient que l’amour charmé Avait marié, dans notre heureux couple, Le doux mois d’avril au beau mois de mai. Nous vivions cachés, contents, porte close, Dévorant l’amour, bon fruit défendu, Ma bouche n’avait pas dit une chose Que déjà ton cœur avait répondu. La Sorbonne était l’endroit bucolique Où je t’adorais du soir au matin. C’est ainsi qu’une âme amoureuse applique La carte du Tendre au pays Latin. O place Maubert! O place Dauphine! Quand, dans le taudis frais et printanier, Tu tirais ton bas sur ta jambe fine, Je voyais un astre au fond du grenier. J’ai fort lu Platon, mais rien ne m’en reste; Mieux que Malebranche et que Lamennais, Tu me démontrais la bonté céleste Avec une fleur que tu me donnais. Je t’obéissais, tu m’étais soumise; O grenier doré! te lacer! te voir Aller et venir dès l’aube en chemise, Mirant ton jeune front à ton vieux miroir. Et qui donc pourrait perdre la mémoire De ces temps d’aurore et de firmament, De rubans, de fleurs, de gaze et de moire, Où l’amour bégaye un argot charmant? Nos jardins étaient un pot de tulipe; Tu masquais la vitre avec un jupon; Je prenais le bol de terre de pipe, Et je te donnais le tasse en japon. Et ces grands malheurs qui nous faisaient rire! Ton manchon brûlé, ton boa perdu! Et ce cher portrait du divin Shakespeare Qu’un soir pour souper nons avons vendu! J’étais mendiant et toi charitable. Je baisais au vol tes bras frais et ronds. Dante in folio nous servait de table Pour manger gaîment un cent de marrons. La première fois qu’en mon joyeux bouge Je pris un baiser à ta lèvre en feu, Quand tu t’en allais décoiffée et rouge, Je restai tout pâle et je crus en Dieu! Te rappelles-tu nos bonheurs sans nombre, Et tous ces fichus changés en chiffons? Oh que de soupirs, de nos cœurs pleins d’ombre, Se sont envolés dans les cieux profonds!53


You are small, you will not be seen. Go out of the barricade, slip along close to the houses, skirmish about a bit in the streets, and come back and tell me what is going on.


So the little chaps are good for something! that’s very lucky! I’ll go! In the meanwhile, trust to the little fellows, and distrust the big ones. Do you see that big fellow there?


Well?


He’s a police spy.


Are you sure of it?


It isn’t two weeks since he pulled me off the cornice of the Port Royal, where I was taking the air, by my ear.


Who are you?


I see what it is. Well, yes!


You are a police spy?


I am an agent of the authorities.


And your name?


Javert.


It’s the mouse who has caught the cat.


He is a police spy. You will be shot ten minutes before the barricade is taken.


Why not at once?


We are saving our powder.


Then finish the business with a blow from a knife.


Spy, we are judges and not assassins. Here you! go about your business! Do what I told you!


I’m going! By the way, you will give me his gun! I leave you the musician, but I want the clarinet.


Do you know, comrades, it is from that house yonder that we must fire. When we are at the windows, the deuce is in it if any one can advance into the street!


Yes, but the house is closed,


Let us knock!


They will not open.


Let us break in the door!


Is there any one here?


Gentlemen, what do you want?


Open!


That cannot be, gentlemen.


Open, nevertheless.


Impossible, gentlemen.


Will you open, yes or no?


No, gentlemen.


Do you say no?


I say no, my goo—


There!


On your knees. On your knees!


Collect yourself. Think or pray. You have one minute.


Mercy!


Throw that outside. Citizens, what that man did is frightful, what I have done is horrible. He killed, therefore I killed him. I had to do it, because insurrection must have its discipline. Assassination is even more of a crime here than elsewhere; we are under the eyes of the Revolution, we are the priests of the Republic, we are the victims of duty, and must not be possible to slander our combat. I have, therefore, tried that man, and condemned him to death. As for myself, constrained as I am to do what I have done, and yet abhorring it, I have judged myself also, and you shall soon see to what I have condemned myself.


We will share thy fate,


So be it. One word more. In executing this man, I have obeyed necessity; but necessity is a monster of the old world, necessity’s name is Fatality. Now, the law of progress is, that monsters shall disappear before the angels, and that Fatality shall vanish before Fraternity. It is a bad moment to pronounce the word love. No matter, I do pronounce it. And I glorify it. Love, the future is thine. Death, I make use of thee, but I hate thee. Citizens, in the future there will be neither darkness nor thunderbolts; neither ferocious ignorance, nor bloody retaliation. As there will be no more Satan, there will be no more Michael. In the future no one will kill any one else, the earth will beam with radiance, the human race will love. The day will come, citizens, when all will be concord, harmony, light, joy and life; it will come, and it is in order that it may come that we are about to die.


I will go.


After all, I have had enough of it as it is. I have seen it, that suffices, this is civil war, and I shall take my leave!


March on, you poltroon!


Mon nez est en larmes, Mon ami Bugeaud, Prête moi tes gendarmes Pour leur dire un mot. En capote bleue, La poule au shako, Voici la banlieue! Co-cocorico!


That is Gavroche,


He is warning us,


My gun! Here they are!


Would you like my carbine?


I want a big gun,


Who goes there?


The French Revolution!


Fire!


Comrades! let us not waste our powder. Let us wait until they are in the street before replying.


And, above all, let us raise the flag again. Who is there here with a bold heart? Who will plant the flag on the barricade again? Does no one volunteer?


Does no one volunteer?


It is the voter! It is the member of the Convention! It is the representative of the people!


Off with your hats!


Long live the Revolution! Long live the Republic! Fraternity! Equality! and Death!


Retire!


Long live the Republic!


What men these regicides were!


This is for yourself alone, I do not wish to dampen the enthusiasm. But this man was anything rather than a regicide. I knew him. His name was Father Mabeuf. I do not know what was the matter with him to-day. But he was a brave blockhead. Just look at his head.


The head of a blockhead and the heart of a Brutus. Citizens! This is the example which the old give to the young. We hesitated, he came! We were drawing back, he advanced! This is what those who are trembling with age teach to those who tremble with fear! This aged man is august in the eyes of his country. He has had a long life and a magnificent death! Now, let us place the body under cover, that each one of us may defend this old man dead as he would his father living, and may his presence in our midst render the barricade impregnable! This is our flag now.


It will be your turn presently!


Look out!


Follow me!


Wait! Don’t fire at random!


Lay down your arms!


Fire!


Be off with you, or I’ll blow up the barricade!


Blow up the barricade!


and yourself with it!


And myself also.


Here you are!


What luck!


You came in opportunely!


If it had not been for you, I should have been dead!


If it had not been for you, I should have been gobbled up!


Where is the chief?


You are he!


They have our friend; we have their agent. Are you set on the death of that spy?


Yes, but less so than on the life of Jean Prouvaire.


Well. I am going to fasten my handkerchief to my cane, and go as a flag of truce, to offer to exchange our man for theirs.


Listen,


Vive la France! Long live France! Long live the future!


They have killed him,


Your friends have just shot you.


Monsieur Marius! Monsieur Marius! At your feet. You do not recognize me?


No.


Éponine.


How come you here? What are you doing here?


I am dying,


You are wounded! Wait, I will carry you into the room! They will attend to you there. Is it serious? How must I take hold of you in order not to hurt you? Where do you suffer? Help! My God! But why did you come hither? Have I hurt you?


A little.


But I only touched your hand. What is the matter with your hand?


It is pierced.


Pierced?


Yes.


What with?


A bullet.


How?


Did you see a gun aimed at you?


Yes, and a hand stopping it.


It was mine.


What madness! Poor child! But so much the better, if that is all, it is nothing, let me carry you to a bed. They will dress your wound; one does not die of a pierced hand.


The bullet traversed my hand, but it came out through my back. It is useless to remove me from this spot. I will tell you how you can care for me better than any surgeon. Sit down near me on this stone. Oh! How good this is! How comfortable this is! There; I no longer suffer. Do you know what, Monsieur Marius? It puzzled me because you entered that garden; it was stupid, because it was I who showed you that house; and then, I ought to have said to myself that a young man like you— You thought me ugly, didn’t you? You see, you are lost! Now, no one can get out of the barricade. It was I who led you here, by the way! You are going to die, I count upon that. And yet, when I saw them taking aim at you, I put my hand on the muzzle of the gun. How queer it is! But it was because I wanted to die before you. When I received that bullet, I dragged myself here, no one saw me, no one picked me up, I was waiting for you, I said: ‘So he is not coming!’ Oh, if you only knew. I bit my blouse, I suffered so! Now I am well. Do you remember the day I entered your chamber and when I looked at myself in your mirror, and the day when I came to you on the boulevard near the washerwomen? How the birds sang! That was a long time ago. You gave me a hundred sous, and I said to you: ‘I don’t want your money.’ I hope you picked up your coin? You are not rich. I did not think to tell you to pick it up. The sun was shining bright, and it was not cold. Do you remember, Monsieur Marius? Oh! How happy I am! Every one is going to die. Oh! it is coming again, I am stifling!


En voyant Lafayette, Le gendarme répète:— Sauvons nous! sauvons nous! sauvons nous!


It is he. My brother is here. He must not see me. He would scold me.


Your brother? who is your brother?


That little fellow.


The one who is singing?


Yes. Oh! don’t go away, it will not be long now. Listen, I do not wish to play you a trick. I have a letter in my pocket for you. I was told to put it in the post. I kept it. I did not want to have it reach you. But perhaps you will be angry with me for it when we meet again presently? Take your letter. Take it. Now, for my trouble, promise me—


What?


Promise me!


I promise.


Promise to give me a kiss on my brow when I am dead.—I shall feel it. And by the way, Monsieur Marius, I believe that I was a little bit in love with you.


We set out this evening and we go to the Rue de l’Homme Armé with Toussaint. Next week, we shall be in London.


Carry this letter immediately to its address.


We are going to the barricades,


Will you do something for me?


Anything. Good God! if it had not been for you, I should have been done for.


Do you see this letter?


Yes.


Take it. Take it. Leave the barricade instantly


and to-morrow morning, you will deliver it at its address to Mademoiselle Cosette, at M. Fauchelevent’s, Rue de l’Homme Armé, No. 7.


Well, but! in the meanwhile the barricade will be taken, and I shall not be there.


The barricade will not be attacked until daybreak, according to all appearances, and will not be taken before to-morrow noon.


Well, what if I were to go and carry your letter to-morrow?


It will be too late. The barricade will probably be blockaded, all the streets will be guarded, and you will not be able to get out. Go at once.


All right,


I am made so; I do my work; the rest is no affair of mine.


Monsieur, there is something going on, they are fighting in Paris.


My dearest, alas! my father insists on our setting out immediately. We shall be this evening in the Rue de l’Homme Armé, No. 7. In a week we shall be in England. COSETTE. June 4th.


It comes from there. But this signifies nothing; there is nothing written here.


another is the goal of her heart, another is the wish of her life; there is a dearest one, I am no longer anything but her father, I no longer exist She is going away from me!


It is he.


In what quarter is it? Do you know?


What is it, sir?


Did you not tell me that just now that there is fighting going on?


Ah! yes, sir. It is in the direction of Saint-Merry.


Pardi!


What is the matter with you, my little fellow?


The matter with me is that I am hungry. Little fellow yourself. See here, you still have your lanterns here. You are disobeying the regulations, my friend. This is disorderly. Smash that for me.


There is ‘Ninety-three’ come again.


That’s right, old street, put on your night-cap. What do you call that gigantic monument that you have there at the end of the street? It’s the Archives, isn’t it? I must crumble up those big stupids of pillars a bit and make a nice barricade out of them.


Poor creature, he is hungry.


Let us contemplate the tiger. Bourgeois, I prefer to smash lanterns. Take back your ferocious beast. You can’t bribe me. That has got five claws; but it doesn’t scratch me.


Have you a mother?


More than you have, perhaps.


Well, keep the money for your mother!


Truly, so it wasn’t to keep me from breaking the lanterns?


Break whatever you please.


You’re a fine man. Do you belong in this street?


Yes, why?


Can you tell me where No. 7 is?


What do you want with No. 7?


Ah! Here it is.


Are you the person who is bringing a letter that I am expecting?


You? You are not a woman.


The letter is for Mademoiselle Cosette, is it not?


Cosette. Yes, I believe that is the queer name.


Well. I am the person to whom you are to deliver the letter. Give it here.


In that case, you must know that I was sent from the barricade.


Of course,


Respect for despatches. It comes from the Provisional Government.


Give it to me,


Don’t go and fancy it’s a love letter. It is for a woman, but it’s for the people. We men fight and we respect the fair sex. We are not as they are in fine society, where there are lions who send chickens55 to camels.


Give it to me.


After all, you have the air of an honest man.


Give it to me quick.


Catch hold of it. And make haste, Monsieur What’s-your-name, for Mamselle Cosette is waiting.


Is it to Saint-Merry that the answer is to be sent?


There you are making some of those bits of pastry vulgarly called brioches . This letter comes from the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and I’m going back there. Good evening, citizen.


I die. When thou readest this, my soul will be near thee.


L’oiseau médit dans les charmilles, Et prétend qu’hier Atala Avec un Russe s’en alla. Où vont les belles filles, Lon la. Mon ami Pierrot, tu babilles, Parce que l’autre jour Mila Cogna sa vitre et m’appela, Où vont les belles filles, Lon la. Les drôlesses sont fort gentilles, Leur poison qui m’ensorcela Griserait Monsieur Orfila. Où vont les belles filles, Lon la. J’aime l’amour et les bisbilles, J’aime Agnès, j’aime Paméla, Lise en m’allumant se brûla. Où vont les belles filles, Lon la. Jadis, quand je vis les mantilles De Suzette et de Zéila, Mon âme à leurs plis se mêla, Où vont les belles filles, Lon la. Amour, quand dans l’ombre où tu brilles, Tu coiffes de roses Lola, Je me damnerais pour cela. Où vont les belles filles, Lon la. Jeanne à ton miroir tu t’habilles! Mon cœur un beau jour s’envola. Je crois que c’est Jeanne qui l’a. Où vont les belles filles, Lon la. Le soir, en sortant des quadrilles, Je montre aux étoiles Stella, Et je leur dis: ‘Regardez-la.’ Où vont les belles filles, Lon la. Let us interrupt the romance,


There now, that’s what the summer nights are good for. We’ll take the cart for the Republic, and leave the Auvergnat for the Monarchy. How bully that cart would look on our barricade! French Republic. Received thy cart. GAVROCHE.


There’s a whole band of them there! let us proceed gently.


Hullo, it’s him. Good day, public order.


Where are you going, you rascal?


Citizen. I haven’t called you ‘bourgeois’ yet. Why do you insult me?


Where are you going, you rogue?


Monsieur, perhaps you were a man of wit yesterday, but you have degenerated this morning.


I ask you where are you going, you villain?


You speak prettily. Really, no one would suppose you as old as you are. You ought to sell all your hair at a hundred francs apiece. That would yield you five hundred francs.


Where are you going? Where are you going? Where are you going, bandit?


What villainous words! You must wipe your mouth better the first time that they give you suck.


Will you tell me where you are going, you wretch?


General. I’m on my way to look for a doctor for my wife who is in labor.


Ah, by the way, where was I?


How that is built! Not one paving-stone projects beyond its neighbor. It is made of porcelain.


The cowards!


Let them show themselves. Let us see them! They dare not! They are hiding!


This is the hall of the dead,


Something to eat!


Why? It is three o’clock; at four we shall be dead.


It’s the old stock of Father Hucheloup, who began business as a grocer.


It must be real wine. It’s lucky that Grantaire is asleep. If he were on foot, there would be a good deal of difficulty in saving those bottles.


I am delighted that the torch has been extinguished. That torch flickering in the wind annoyed me. It had the appearance of being afraid. The light of torches resembles the wisdom of cowards; it gives a bad light because it trembles.


What is the cat? It is a corrective. The good God, having made the mouse, said: ‘Hullo! I have committed a blunder.’ And so he made the cat. The cat is the erratum of the mouse. The mouse, plus the cat, is the proof of creation revised and corrected.


Harmodius and Aristogiton, Brutus, Chereas, Stephanus, Cromwell, Charlotte Corday, Sand, have all had their moment of agony when it was too late. Our hearts quiver so, and human life is such a mystery that, even in the case of a civic murder, even in a murder for liberation, if there be such a thing, the remorse for having struck a man surpasses the joy of having served the human race. Cæsar, fell justly. Cicero was severe towards Cæsar, and he was right. That severity is not diatribe. When Zoïlus insults Homer, when Mævius insults Virgil, when Visé insults Molière, when Pope insults Shakspeare, when Frederic insults Voltaire, it is an old law of envy and hatred which is being carried out; genius attracts insult, great men are always more or less barked at. But Zoïlus and Cicero are two different persons. Cicero is an arbiter in thought, just as Brutus is an arbiter by the sword. For my own part, I blame that last justice, the blade; but, antiquity admitted it. Cæsar, the violator of the Rubicon, conferring, as though they came from him, the dignities which emanated from the people, not rising at the entrance of the senate, committed the acts of a king and almost of a tyrant, regia ac pene tyrannica. He was a great man; so much the worse, or so much the better; the lesson is but the more exalted. His twenty-three wounds touch me less than the spitting in the face of Jesus Christ. Cæsar is stabbed by the senators; Christ is cuffed by lackeys. One feels the God through the greater outrage.


Oh Cydathenæum, Oh Myrrhinus, Oh Probalinthus, Oh graces of the Æantides! Oh! Who will grant me to pronounce the verses of Homer like a Greek of Laurium or of Edapteon?


The whole army of Paris is to strike. A third of the army is bearing down upon the barricades in which you now are. There is the National Guard in addition. I have picked out the shakos of the fifth of the line, and the standard-bearers of the sixth legion. In one hour you will be attacked. As for the populace, it was seething yesterday, to-day it is not stirring. There is nothing to expect; nothing to hope for. Neither from a faubourg nor from a regiment. You are abandoned.


So be it. Let us raise the barricade to a height of twenty feet, and let us all remain in it. Citizens, let us offer the protests of corpses. Let us show that, if the people abandon the republicans, the republicans do not abandon the people.


What matters it whether they come to our assistance or not? Let us get ourselves killed here, to the very last man.


Long live death! Let us all remain here!


Why all?


All! All!


The position is good; the barricade is fine. Thirty men are enough. Why sacrifice forty?


Because not one will go away.


Citizens, this republic is not rich enough in men to indulge in useless expenditure of them. Vain-glory is waste. If the duty of some is to depart, that duty should be fulfilled like any other. Let those who are afraid of not numbering more than thirty say so.


Besides,


it is easy enough to talk about leaving. The barricade is hemmed in.


Not on the side of the Halles. The Rue Mondétour is free, and through the Rue des Prêcheurs one can reach the Marché des Innocents.


And there,


you would be captured. You would fall in with some grand guard of the line or the suburbs; they will spy a man passing in blouse and cap. ‘Whence come you?’ ‘Don’t you belong to the barricade?’ And they will look at your hands. You smell of powder. Shot.


With this uniform, you can mingle with the ranks and escape; here is enough for four.


Come. Come, you must have a little pity. Do you know what the question is here? It is a question of women. See here. Are there women or are there not? Are there children or are there not? Are there mothers, yes or no, who rock cradles with their foot and who have a lot of little ones around them? Let that man of you who has never beheld a nurse’s breast raise his hand. Ah! you want to get yourselves killed, so do I—I, who am speaking to you; but I do not want to feel the phantoms of women wreathing their arms around me. Die, if you will, but don’t make others die. Suicides like that which is on the brink of accomplishment here are sublime; but suicide is narrow, and does not admit of extension; and as soon as it touches your neighbors, suicide is murder. Think of the little blond heads; think of the white locks. Listen, Enjolras has just told me that he saw at the corner of the Rue du Cygne a lighted casement, a candle in a poor window, on the fifth floor, and on the pane the quivering shadow of the head of an old woman, who had the air of having spent the night in watching. Perhaps she is the mother of some one of you. Well, let that man go, and make haste, to say to his mother: ‘Here I am, mother!’ Let him feel at ease, the task here will be performed all the same. When one supports one’s relatives by one’s toil, one has not the right to sacrifice one’s self. That is deserting one’s family. And those who have daughters! what are you thinking of? You get yourselves killed, you are dead, that is well. And tomorrow? Young girls without bread—that is a terrible thing. Man begs, woman sells. Ah! those charming and gracious beings, so gracious and so sweet, who have bonnets of flowers, who fill the house with purity, who sing and prattle, who are like a living perfume, who prove the existence of angels in heaven by the purity of virgins on earth, that Jeanne, that Lise, that Mimi, those adorable and honest creatures who are your blessings and your pride, ah! good God, they will suffer hunger! What do you want me to say to you? There is a market for human flesh; and it is not with your shadowy hands, shuddering around them, that you will prevent them from entering it! Think of the street, think of the pavement covered with passers-by, think of the shops past which women go and come with necks all bare, and through the mire. These women, too, were pure once. Think of your sisters, those of you who have them. Misery, prostitution, the police, Saint-Lazare—that is what those beautiful, delicate girls, those fragile marvels of modesty, gentleness and loveliness, fresher than lilacs in the month of May, will come to. Ah! you have got yourselves killed! You are no longer on hand! That is well; you have wished to release the people from Royalty, and you deliver over your daughters to the police. Friends, have a care, have mercy. Women, unhappy women, we are not in the habit of bestowing much thought on them. We trust to the women not having received a man’s education, we prevent their reading, we prevent their thinking, we prevent their occupying themselves with politics; will you prevent them from going to the dead-house this evening, and recognizing your bodies? Let us see, those who have families must be tractable, and shake hands with us and take themselves off, and leave us here alone to attend to this affair. I know well that courage is required to leave, that it is hard; but the harder it is, the more meritorious. You say: ‘I have a gun, I am at the barricade; so much the worse, I shall remain there.’ So much the worse is easily said. My friends, there is a morrow; you will not be here to-morrow, but your families will; and what sufferings! See, here is a pretty, healthy child, with cheeks like an apple, who babbles, prattles, chatters, who laughs, who smells sweet beneath your kiss,—and do you know what becomes of him when he is abandoned? I have seen one, a very small creature, no taller than that. His father was dead. Poor people had taken him in out of charity, but they had bread only for themselves. The child was always hungry. It was winter. He did not cry. You could see him approach the stove, in which there was never any fire, and whose pipe, you know, was of mastic and yellow clay. His breathing was hoarse, his face livid, his limbs flaccid, his belly prominent. He said nothing. If you spoke to him, he did not answer. He is dead. He was taken to the Necker Hospital, where I saw him. I was house-surgeon in that hospital. Now, if there are any fathers among you, fathers whose happiness it is to stroll on Sundays holding their child’s tiny hand in their robust hand, let each one of those fathers imagine that this child is his own. That poor brat, I remember, and I seem to see him now, when he lay nude on the dissecting table, how his ribs stood out on his skin like the graves beneath the grass in a cemetery. A sort of mud was found in his stomach. There were ashes in his teeth. Come, let us examine ourselves conscientiously and take counsel with our heart. Statistics show that the mortality among abandoned children is fifty-five per cent. I repeat, it is a question of women, it concerns mothers, it concerns young girls, it concerns little children. Who is talking to you of yourselves? We know well what you are; we know well that you are all brave, parbleu! we know well that you all have in your souls the joy and the glory of giving your life for the great cause; we know well that you feel yourselves elected to die usefully and magnificently, and that each one of you clings to his share in the triumph. Very well. But you are not alone in this world. There are other beings of whom you must think. You must not be egoists.


Enjolras and Combeferre are right; no unnecessary sacrifice. I join them, and you must make haste. Combeferre has said convincing things to you. There are some among you who have families, mothers, sisters, wives, children. Let such leave the ranks. Married men and the supporters of families, step out of the ranks!


I order it,


I entreat you,


It is true,


you are the father of a family. Go.


It is your duty rather,


you have two sisters whom you maintain.


in another quarter of an hour it will be too late.


Citizens, this is the Republic, and universal suffrage reigns. Do you yourselves designate those who are to go.


There are five of them!


Well, one must stay behind. You have a wife who loves you. You have your aged mother. You have neither father nor mother, and what is to become of your three little brothers? You are the father of five children. You have a right to live, you are only seventeen, it is too early for you to die.


Be quick,


Do you designate who is to remain.


Yes, choose. We will obey you. Me! me! me!


Probably it is a reinforcement, in any case it is a prisoner.


Who is this man?


He is a man who saves others,


I know him.


Welcome, citizen. You know that we are about to die.


Do you want anything?


When are you going to kill me? Then give me a drink,


Is that all?


I am uncomfortable against this post. You are not tender to have left me to pass the night here. Bind me as you please, but you surely might lay me out on a table like that other man.


It is perfectly simple.


A fortress but a rat hole too,


Fire!


Bravo for the cannoneers!


Come, merrily now! That’s the brutal part of it. After the fillip on the nose, the blow from the fist. The army is reaching out its big paw to us. The barricade is going to be severely shaken up. The fusillade tries, the cannon takes.


It is a piece of eight, new model, brass. Those pieces are liable to burst as soon as the proportion of ten parts of tin to one hundred of brass is exceeded. The excess of tin renders them too tender. Then it comes to pass that they have caves and chambers when looked at from the vent hole. In order to obviate this danger, and to render it possible to force the charge, it may become necessary to return to the process of the fourteenth century, hooping, and to encircle the piece on the outside with a series of unwelded steel bands, from the breech to the trunnions. In the meantime, they remedy this defect as best they may; they manage to discover where the holes are located in the vent of a cannon, by means of a searcher. But there is a better method, with Gribeauval’s movable star.


In the sixteenth century, they used to rifle cannon.


Yes, that augments the projectile force, but diminishes the accuracy of the firing. In firing at short range, the trajectory is not as rigid as could be desired, the parabola is exaggerated, the line of the projectile is no longer sufficiently rectilinear to allow of its striking intervening objects, which is, nevertheless, a necessity of battle, the importance of which increases with the proximity of the enemy and the precipitation of the discharge. This defect of the tension of the curve of the projectile in the rifled cannon of the sixteenth century arose from the smallness of the charge; small charges for that sort of engine are imposed by the ballistic necessities, such, for instance, as the preservation of the gun-carriage. In short, that despot, the cannon, cannot do all that it desires; force is a great weakness. A cannon-ball only travels six hundred leagues an hour; light travels seventy thousand leagues a second. Such is the superiority of Jesus Christ over Napoleon.


Reload your guns,


Present!


Go on!


What are you doing here?


Hullo! what are you doing here yourself?


Who told you to come back? Did you deliver my letter at the address?


Citizen, I delivered the letter to the porter. The lady was asleep. She will have the letter when she wakes up.


Do you know that man?


No. My gun! I authorize you to hit ’em a tremendous whack.


Down with your heads, hug the wall! and all on your knees along the barricade!


Let us prevent the second discharge,


What a pity! What hideous things these butcheries are! Come, when there are no more kings, there will be no more war. Enjolras, you are taking aim at that sergeant, you are not looking at him. Fancy, he is a charming young man; he is intrepid; it is evident that he is thoughtful; those young artillery-men are very well educated; he has a father, a mother, a family; he is probably in love; he is not more than five and twenty at the most; he might be your brother.


He is,


Yes, he is mine too. Well, let us not kill him.


Let me alone. It must be done.


We must place a mattress there.


We have none, the wounded are lying on them.


Here is a gun that is doing nothing.


Can some one lend me a double-barrelled rifle?


Here is a mattress!


Yes, but who will go and fetch it?


Citizen, the Republic thanks you.


It is immoral that a mattress should have so much power. Triumph of that which yields over that which strikes with lightning. But never mind, glory to the mattress which annuls a cannon!


It appears that there is a row.


It is odd that people should be opening and shutting their carriage gates so early.


Good for you, rip up the cloth. We want some lint.


You are growing diffuse, my good fellow.


There’s an embarrassing watcher,


Why did you not kill the man? He did not answer my question.


He is a man who does good by gun-shots,


There’s another of those Saint-Simonians!


Death!


The fools! They are getting their own men killed and they are using up our ammunition for nothing.


Listen, it seems to me that Paris is waking up.


There’s another who will do us no more harm.


We are lost when the old women empty their pots de chambre on our heads.


Those wounded do not come from us.


We are hungry here. Are we really going to die like this, without anything to eat?


You are wearing out your lungs, poor, brutal, old fellow, you pain me, you are wasting your row. That’s not thunder, it’s a cough.


I admire Enjolras. His impassive temerity astounds me. He lives alone, which renders him a little sad, perhaps; Enjolras complains of his greatness, which binds him to widowhood. The rest of us have mistresses, more or less, who make us crazy, that is to say, brave. When a man is as much in love as a tiger, the least that he can do is to fight like a lion. That is one way of taking our revenge for the capers that mesdames our grisettes play on us. Roland gets himself killed for Angélique; all our heroism comes from our women. A man without a woman is a pistol without a trigger; it is the woman that sets the man off. Well, Enjolras has no woman. He is not in love, and yet he manages to be intrepid. It is a thing unheard of that a man should be as cold as ice and as bold as fire.


Patria.


News! My name is Eight-Pounder.


It is absolutely necessary that the inconvenience of those guns should be diminished. Fire on the artillery-men!


Things are going well now. Success.


Another quarter of an hour of this success, and there will not be any cartridges left in the barricade.


What are you doing there?


I’m filling my basket, citizen.


Don’t you see the grape-shot?


Well, it is raining. What then?


Come in!


Instanter,


For thirst,


Fichtre! They are killing my dead men for me. On est laid à Nanterre, C’est la faute à Voltaire; Et bête à Palaiseau, C’est la faute à Rousseau. Men are ugly at Nanterre, ’Tis the fault of Voltaire; And dull at Palaiseau, ’Tis the fault of Rousseau. Je ne suis pas notaire, C’est la faute à Voltaire; Je suis un petit oiseau, C’est la faute à Rousseau. I am not a notary, ’Tis the fault of Voltaire; I’m a little bird, ’Tis the fault of Rousseau. Joie est mon caractère, C’est la faute à Voltaire; Misère est mon trousseau, C’est la faute à Rousseau. Joy is my character, ’Tis the fault of Voltaire; Misery is my trousseau, ’Tis the fault of Rousseau.


Je suis tombé par terre, C’est la faute à Voltaire; Le nez dans le ruisseau, C’est la faute à . . . I have fallen to the earth, ’Tis the fault of Voltaire; With my nose in the gutter, ’Tis the fault of . . .


I am very hungry.


It is enough!


Here is the Spring presenting arms and in full uniform.


I am hungry.


The sage lives content with little. Look at me, my son. I do not love pomp. I am never seen in clothes decked with gold lace and stones; I leave that false splendor to badly organized souls.


What is that?


It is the Saturnalia. There is the beginning. Anarchy is entering this garden. What are you crying about?


I am not hungry any more,


One does not need to be hungry in order to eat a cake.


My cake tires me. It is stale.


Don’t you want any more of it?


No.


Throw it to those palmipeds. Be humane. You must have compassion on animals.


The swans understand signs ,


Let us return home, they are attacking the Tuileries. From the Tuileries to the Luxembourg, there is but the distance which separates Royalty from the peerage; that is not far. Shots will soon rain down. Perhaps it is rain itself that is about to shower down; the sky is joining in; the younger branch is condemned. Let us return home quickly.


I should like to see the swans eat the brioche,


That would be imprudent.


Ram that into your muzzle.


Alas!


Here’s a rare eccentric. He finds a way of not fighting in this barricade.


Which does not prevent him from defending it,


Heroism has its originals,


He is another sort from Father Mabeuf.


We are here as at a bachelor breakfast.


We are soon to take the diligence for another planet


for fear of sun-stroke,


It is midday,


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.


Who is to drink that?


They,


We are the two leaders. I will give the last orders inside. Do you remain outside and observe. No splashing of the wounded. On the first floor, hold your axes in readiness to cut the staircase. Have you them?


Yes,


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. I am not forgetting you. The last man to leave this room will smash the skull of this spy.


Here?


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.


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.


That is just.


No objections. Take the spy.


Take care!


You are in no better case than I am.


All out!


We shall meet again shortly!


It strikes me that I know that girl.


Javert, it is I.


Take your revenge. A clasp-knife! you are right. That suits you better.


You are free. I do not think that I shall escape from this place. But if, by chance, I do, I live, under the name of Fauchelevent, in the Rue de l’Homme Armé, No. 7.


Have a care.


Go,


Thou saidst Fauchelevent, Rue de l’Homme Armé?


Number 7.


Number 7. You annoy me. Kill me, rather.


Be off with you. It is done.


Is not that the inspector of police who told me that his name was Javert? Enjolras!


What?


What is the name of yonder man?


What man?


The police agent. Do you know his name?


Of course. He told us.


What is it?


Javert.


It is done.


The enraged moderates.


What do these people want? What have they come there to do? Let them get out of the scrape. So much the worse for them. It is their fault. They are only getting what they deserve. It does not concern us. Here is our poor street all riddled with balls. They are a pack of rascals. Above all things, don’t open the door.


God is dead, perhaps,


I exist. I am young and in love, I am old and I wish to repose, I am the father of a family, I toil, I prosper, I am successful in business, I have houses to lease, I have money in the government funds, I am happy, I have a wife and children, I have all this, I desire to live, leave me in peace.


You are tearing up the pavements of hell!


That is because our barricade is made of good intentions.


Because I love statesmen.


What have you done with your hat?


They have finally taken it away from me with cannon-balls.


Can any one understand, those men—who had promised to join us, and taken an oath to aid us, and who had pledged their honor to it, and who are our generals, and who abandon us!


There are people who observe the rules of honor as one observes the stars, from a great distance.


Don’t advance! There is but one door open; this one.


I am taken prisoner. I shall be shot.


Let us sell our lives dearly.


He is the leader! It was he who slew the artillery-man. It is well that he has placed himself there. Let him remain there. Let us shoot him down on the spot.


Shoot me,


It seems to me that I am about to shoot a flower.


Take aim!


Wait. Do you wish to have your eyes bandaged?


No.


Was it you who killed the artillery sergeant?


Yes.


Long live the Republic! I’m one of them. Long live the Republic! Finish both of us at one blow. Do you permit it?


The reader will recall this angle which formed a sort of cape on the street; it afforded shelter from the bullets, the grape-shot, and all eyes, and a few square feet of space. There is sometimes a chamber which does not burn in the midst of a conflagration, and in the midst of raging seas, beyond a promontory or at the extremity of a blind alley of shoals, a tranquil nook. It was in this sort of fold in the interior trapezium of the barricade, that Éponine had breathed her last.


The sewers of Rome, have absorbed all the well-being of the Roman peasant.


Sire, yesterday I saw the most intrepid man in your Empire.


What man is that? and what has he done?


He wants to do something, Sire.


What is it?


To visit the sewers of Paris.


Let us confess, that, taking it all in all, this sweeping is a homage which the sewer pays to civilization, and as, from this point of view, Tartuffe’s conscience is a progress over the Augean stables, it is certain that the sewers of Paris have been improved.


He was directing his course towards the belt sewer; he was on the right path. But he did not know it.


That is too much! A government key! Come! Come! Come! Come!


In the night.


My name is Marius Pontmercy. Carry my body to my grandfather, M. Gillenormand, Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, No. 6, in the Marais.


Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, number 6, Monsieur Gillenormand.


Phew!


Half shares.


How are you going to manage to get out? It’s impossible to pick the lock of that gate. But still you must get out of this.


That is true,


Well, half shares then.


What do you mean by that?


You have killed that man; that’s all right. I have the key. I don’t know you, but I want to help you. You must be a friend. Listen, comrade. You didn’t kill that man without looking to see what he had in his pockets. Give me my half. I’ll open the door for you. Do you want to see how a key to liberty is made? Look here. Hold on. I’ll give you the rope to boot.


What is the rope for?


You will need a stone also, but you can find one outside. There’s a heap of rubbish.


What am I to do with a stone?