3.V.1.4. 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 co-religionists
that
sort of omnipotent power which emanates from the absolute.
Still, great as was this omnipotence, a murmur arose. A
leader to the very finger-tips, 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
Mondetour is free, and through the Rue des Precheurs one
can reach the Marche 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 tap-room.
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 to-morrow?
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 passersby, 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."
All dropped their heads with a gloomy air.
Strange contradictions of the human heart at its most
sublime
moments. Combeferre, who spoke thus, was not an
orphan. He recalled the mothers of other men, and forgot his
own. He was about to get himself killed. He was "an
egoist."
Marius, fasting, fevered, having emerged in succession
from
all hope, and having been stranded in grief, the most sombre
of shipwrecks, and saturated with violent emotions and conscious
that the end was near, had plunged deeper and deeper
into that visionary stupor which always precedes the fatal
hour voluntarily accepted.
A physiologist might have studied in him the growing
symptoms of that febrile absorption known to, and classified
by, science, and which is to suffering what voluptuousness is
to pleasure. Despair, also, has its ecstasy. Marius had
reached this point. He looked on at everything as from
without; as we have said, things which passed before him
seemed far away; he made out the whole, but did not perceive
the details. He beheld men going and coming as
through a flame. He heard voices speaking as at the bottom
of an abyss.
But this moved him. There was in this scene a point
which pierced and roused even him. He had but one idea
now, to die; and he did not wish to be turned aside from it,
but he reflected, in his gloomy somnambulism, that while
destroying himself, he was not prohibited from saving some
one else.
He raised his voice.
"Enjolras and Combeferre are right," said he; "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."
No one stirred.
"Married men and the supporters of families, step out of
the ranks!" repeated Marius.
His authority was great. Enjolras was certainly the head
of the barricade, but Marius was its savior.
"I order it," cried Enjolras.
"I entreat you," said Marius.
Then, touched by Combeferre's words, shaken by Enjolras'
order, touched by Marius' entreaty, these heroic men
began to denounce each other. — "It is true," said one young
man to a full grown man, "you are the father of a family.
Go." — "It is your duty rather," retorted the man, "you have
two sisters whom you maintain." — And an unprecedented
controversy
broke forth. Each struggled to determine which
should not allow himself to be placed at the door of the tomb.
"Make haste," said Courfeyrac, "in another quarter of an
hour it will be too late."
"Citizens," pursued Enjolras, "this is the Republic, and
universal suffrage reigns. Do you yourselves designate those
who are to go."
They obeyed. After the expiration of a few minutes, five
were unanimously selected and stepped out of the ranks.
"There are five of them!" exclaimed Marius.
There were only four uniforms.
"Well," began the five, "one must stay behind."
And then a struggle arose as to who should remain, and
who should find reasons for the others not remaining. The
generous quarrel began afresh.
"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."
These great revolutionary barricades were assembling
points
for heroism. The improbable was simple there. These men
did not astonish each other.
"Be quick," repeated Courfeyrac.
Men shouted to Marius from the groups:
"Do you designate who is to remain."
"Yes," said the five, "choose. We will obey you."
Marius did not believe that he was capable of another
emotion.
Still, at this idea, that of choosing a man for death,
his blood rushed back to his heart. He would have turned
pale, had it been possible for him to become any paler.
He advanced towards the five, who smiled upon him, and
each, with his eyes full of that grand flame which one beholds
in the depths of history hovering over Thermopylae, cried to
him:
"Me! me! me!"
And Marius stupidly counted them; there were still five of
them! Then his glance dropped to the four uniforms.
At that moment, a fifth uniform fell, as if from heaven,
upon the other four.
The fifth man was saved.
Marius raised his eyes and recognized M. Fauchelevent.
Jean Valjean had just entered the barricade.
He had arrived by way of Mondetour lane, whither by dint
of inquiries made, or by instinct, or chance. Thanks to his
dress of a National Guardsman, he had made his way without
difficulty.
The sentinel stationed by the insurgents in the Rue
Mondetour
had no occasion to give the alarm for a single National
Guardsman, and he had allowed the latter to entangle himself
in the street, saying to himself: "Probably it is a
reinforcement,
in any case it is a prisoner." The moment was too grave
to admit of the sentinel abandoning his duty and his post of
observation.
At the moment when Jean Valjean entered the redoubt, no
one had noticed him, all eyes being fixed on the five chosen
men and the four uniforms. Jean Valjean also had seen and
heard, and he had silently removed his coat and flung it on the
pile with the rest.
The emotion aroused was indescribable.
"Who is this man?" demanded Bossuet.
"He is a man who saves others," replied Combeferre.
Marius added in a grave voice:
"I know him."
This guarantee satisfied every one.
Enjolras turned to Jean Valjean.
"Welcome, citizen."
And he added:
"You know that we are about to die."
Jean Valjean, without replying, helped the insurgent whom
he was saving to don his uniform.