was seething yesterday, today it is not stirring. There is nothing to expect; nothing to hope for. Neither from a faubourg nor from a regiment. You are abandoned.”
These words fell upon the buzzing of the groups, and produced on them the effect caused on a swarm of bees by the first drops of a storm. A moment of indescribable silence ensued, in which death might have been heard flitting by.
This moment was brief.
A voice from the obscurest depths of the groups shouted to Enjolras:
“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.”
These words freed the thought of all from the painful cloud of individual anxieties. It was hailed with an enthusiastic acclamation.
No one ever has known the name of the man who spoke thus; he was some unknown blouse-wearer, a stranger, a man forgotten, a passing hero, that great anonymous, always mingled in human crises and in social geneses who, at a given moment, utters in a supreme fashion the decisive word, and who vanishes into the shadows after having represented for a minute, in a lightning flash, the people and God.
This inexorable resolution so thoroughly impregnated the air of the 6th of June, 1832, that, almost at the very same hour, on the barricade Saint-Merry, the insurgents were raising that clamor which has become a matter of history and which has been consigned to the documents in the case:—“What matters it whether they come to our assistance or not? Let us get ourselves killed here, to the very last man.”
As the reader sees, the two barricades, though materially isolated, were in communication with each other.
IV
Minus Five, Plus One
After the man who decreed the “protest of corpses” had spoken, and had given this formula of their common soul, there issued from all mouths a strangely satisfied and terrible cry, funereal in sense and triumphant in tone:
“Long live death! Let us all remain here!”
“Why all?” said Enjolras.
“All! All!”
Enjolras resumed:
“The position is good; the barricade is fine. Thirty men are enough. Why sacrifice forty?”
They replied:
“Because not one will go away.”
“Citizens,” cried Enjolras, and there was an almost irritated vibration in his voice, “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.”
Enjolras, the man-principle, had over his coreligionists that sort of omnipotent power which emanates from the absolute. Still, great as was this omnipotence, a murmur arose. A leader to the very fingertips, Enjolras, seeing that they murmured, insisted. He resumed haughtily:
“Let those who are afraid of not numbering more than thirty say so.”
The murmurs redoubled.
“Besides,” observed a voice in one group, “it is easy enough to talk about leaving. The barricade is hemmed in.”
“Not on the side of the Halles,” said Enjolras. “The Rue Mondétour is free, and through the Rue des Prêcheurs one can reach the Marché des Innocents.”
“And there,” went on another voice, “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.”
Enjolras, without making any reply, touched Combeferre’s shoulder, and the two entered the taproom.
They emerged thence a moment later. Enjolras held in his outstretched hands the four uniforms which he had laid aside. Combeferre followed, carrying the shoulder-belts and the shakos.
“With this uniform,” said Enjolras, “you can mingle with the ranks and escape; here is enough for four.” And he flung on the ground, deprived of its pavement, the four uniforms.
No wavering took place in his stoical audience. Combeferre took the word.
“Come,” said he, “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