2.M.4.4. THE BACK ROOM OF THE CAFE MUSAIN
ONE of the conversations among the young men, at which
Marius was present and in which he sometimes joined, was a
veritable shock to his mind.
This took place in the back room of the Cafe Musain.
Nearly all the Friends of the A B C had convened that evening.
The argand lamp was solemnly lighted. They talked
of one thing and another, without passion and with noise.
With the exception of Enjolras and Marius, who held their
peace, all were haranguing rather at hap-hazard. Conversations
between comrades sometimes are subject to these peaceable
tumults. It was a game and an uproar as much as a
conversation. They tossed words to each other and caught
them up in turn. They were chattering in all quarters.
No woman was admitted to this back room, except Louison,
the dish-washer of the cafe, who passed through it from time
to time, to go to her washing in the "lavatory."
Grantaire, thoroughly drunk, was deafening the corner of
which he had taken possession, reasoning and contradicting
at the top of his lungs, and shouting: —
"I am thirsty. Mortals, I am dreaming: that the tun of
Heidelberg has an attack of apoplexy, and that I am one of the
dozen leeches which will be applied to it. I want a drink. I
desire to forget life. Life is a hideous invention of I know not
whom. It lasts no time at all, and is worth nothing. One
breaks one's neck in living. Life is a theatre set in which
there
are but few practicable entrances. Happiness is an antique
reliquary painted on one side only. Ecclesiastes says: 'All is
vanity.' I agree with that good man, who never existed,
perhaps. Zero not wishing to go stark naked, clothed himself
in vanity. O vanity! The patching up of everything with big
words! a kitchen is a laboratory, a dancer is a professor, an
acrobat is a gymnast, a boxer is a pugilist, an apothecary is
a chemist, a wigmaker is an artist, a hodman is an architect, a
jockey is a sportsman, a wood-louse is a pterigybranche. Vanity
has a right and a wrong side; the right side is stupid, it is
the negro with his glass beads; the wrong side is foolish, it is
the philosopher with his rags. I weep over the one and I
laugh over the other. What are called honors and dignities,
and even dignity and honor, are generally of pinchbeck.
Kings make playthings of human pride. Caligula made a
horse a consul; Charles II. made a knight of a sirloin. Wrap
yourself up now, then, between Consul Incitatus and Baronet
Roastbeef. As for the intrinsic value of people, it is no longer
respectable in the least. Listen to the panegyric which neighbor
makes of neighbor. White on white is ferocious; if the
lily could speak, what a setting down it would give the dove!
A bigoted woman prating of a devout woman is more venomous
than the asp and the cobra. It is a shame that I am
ignorant, otherwise I would quote to you a mass of things;
but I know nothing. For instance, I have always been witty;
when I was a pupil of Gros, instead of daubing wretched
little pictures, I passed my time in pilfering apples;
rapin
is the masculine of rapine.
So much for myself; as for the
rest of you, you are worth no more than I am. I scoff at
your perfections, excellencies, and qualities. Every good
quality tends towards a defect; economy borders on avarice,
the generous man is next door to the prodigal, the brave man
rubs elbows with the braggart; he who says very pious says
a trifle bigoted; there are just as many vices in virtue as there
are holes in Diogenes' cloak. Whom do you admire, the
slain or the slayer, Caesar or Brutus? Generally men are in
favor of the slayer. Long live Brutus, he has slain! There
lies the virtue. Virtue, granted, but madness also. There
are queer spots on those great men. The Brutus who killed
Caesar was in love with the statue of a little boy. This statue
was from the hand of the Greek sculptor Strongylion, who
also carved that figure of an Amazon known as the Beautiful
Leg, Eucnemos, which Nero carried with him in his travels.
This Strongylion left but two statues which placed Nero and
Brutus in accord. Brutus was in love with the one, Nero with
the other. All history is nothing but wearisome repetition.
One century is the plagiarist of the other. The battle of
Marengo copies the battle of Pydna; the Tolbiac of Clovis
and the Austerlitz of Napoleon are as like each other as two
drops of water. I don't attach much importance to victory.
Nothing is so stupid as to conquer; true glory lies in
convincing.
But try to prove something! If you are content with
success, what mediocrity, and with conquering, what wretchedness!
Alas, vanity and cowardice everywhere. Everything
obeys success, even grammar.
Si volet usus, says Horace.
Therefore I disdain the human race. Shall we descend to
the party at all? Do you wish me to begin admiring the
peoples? What people, if you please? Shall it be Greece?
The Athenians, those Parisians of days gone by, slew Phocion,
as we might say Coligny, and fawned upon tyrants to such an
extent that Anacephorus said of Pisistratus: "His urine
attracts the bees." The most prominent man in Greece for
fifty years was that grammarian Philetas, who was so small
and so thin that he was obliged to load his shoes with lead in
order not to be blown away by the wind. There stood on the
great square in Corinth a statue carved by Silanion and
catalogued
by Pliny; this statue represented Episthates. What
did Episthates do? He invented a trip. That sums up Greece
and glory. Let us pass on to others. Shall I admire England?
Shall I admire France? France? Why? Because
of Paris? I have just told you my opinion of Athens. England?
Why? Because of London? I hate Carthage. And
then, London, the metropolis of luxury, is the headquarters
of wretchedness. There are a hundred deaths a year of
hunger in the parish of Charing-Cross alone. Such is Albion.
I add, as the climax, that I have seen an Englishwoman dancing
in a wreath of roses and blue spectacles. A fig then for
England! If I do not admire John Bull, shall I admire
Brother Jonathan? I have but little taste for that slave-holding
brother. Take away
Time is money, what remains
of England? Take away
Cotton is king, what remains of
America? Germany is the lymph, Italy is the bile. Shall
we go into ecstasies over Russia? Voltaire admired it. He
also admired China. I admit that Russia has its beauties,
among others, a stout despotism; but I pity the despots. Their
health is delicate. A decapitated Alexis, a poignarded Peter,
a strangled Paul, another Paul crushed flat with kicks, divers
Ivans strangled, with their throats cut, numerous Nicholases
and Basils poisoned, all this indicates that the palace of the
Emperors of Russia is in a condition of flagrant insalubrity.
All civilized peoples offer this detail to the admiration of the
thinker; war; now, war, civilized war, exhausts and sums up
all the forms of ruffianism, from the brigandage of the
Trabuceros
in the gorges of Mont Jaxa to the marauding of the
Comanche Indians in the Doubtful Pass. 'Bah!' you will say
to me, 'but Europe is certainly better than Asia?' I admit
that Asia is a farce; but I do not precisely see what you find to
laugh at in the Grand Lama, you peoples of the west, who have
mingled with your fashions and your elegances all the complicated
filth of majesty, from the dirty chemise of Queen Isabella
to the chamber-chair of the Dauphin. Gentlemen of the
human race, I tell you, not a bit of it! It is at Brussels that
the most beer is consumed, at Stockholm the most brandy, at
Madrid the most chocolate, at Amsterdam the most gin, at
London the most wine, at Constantinople the most coffee, at
Paris the most absinthe; there are all the useful notions.
Paris carries the day, in short. In Paris, even the rag-pickers
are sybarites; Diogenes would have loved to be a rag-picker
of the Place Maubert better than to be a philosopher at the
Piraeus. Learn this in addition; the wineshops of the rag-pickers
are called
bibines; the most celebrated are the
Saucepan
and
The Slaughter-House. Hence, tea-gardens, goguettes,
caboulots, bouibuis, mastroquets, bastringues, manezingues,
bibines of the rag-pickers, caravanseries of the caliphs,
I certify to you, I am a voluptuary, I eat at Richard's at forty
sous a head, I must have Persian carpets to roll naked Cleopatra
in! Where is Cleopatra? Ah! So it is you, Louison.
Good day."
Thus did Grantaire, more than intoxicated, launch into
speech, catching at the dish-washer in her passage, from his
corner in the back room of the Cafe Musain.
Bossuet, extending his hand towards him, tried to impose
silence on him, and Grantaire began again worse than ever: —
"Aigle de Meaux, down with your paws. You produce on
me no effect with your gesture of Hippocrates refusing
Artaxerxes'
bric-a-brac. I excuse you from the task of soothing
me. Moreover, I am sad. What do you wish me to say to
you? Man is evil, man is deformed; the butterfly is a success,
man is a failure. God made a mistake with that animal. A
crowd offers a choice of ugliness. The first comer is a wretch,
Femme — woman — rhymes with infame, —
infamous. Yes, I I
have the spleen, complicated with melancholy, with homesickness,
plus hypochondria, and I am vexed and I rage, and I
yawn, and I am bored, and I am tired to death, and I am
stupid! Let God go to the devil!"
"Silence then, capital R!" resumed Bossuet, who was
discussing
a point of law behind the scenes, and who was plunged
more than waist high in a phrase of judicial slang, of which
this is the conclusion: —
" — And as for me, although I am hardly a legist, and at
the most, an amateur attorney, I maintain this: that, in
accordance with the terms of the customs of Normandy, at
Saint-Michel, and for each year, an equivalent must be paid
to the profit of the lord of the manor, saving the rights of
others, and by all and several, the proprietors as well as those
seized with inheritance, and that, for all emphyteuses, leases,
freeholds, contracts of domain, mortgages — "
"Echo, plaintive nymph," hummed Grantaire.
Near Grantaire, an almost silent table, a sheet of paper,
an
inkstand and a pen between two glasses of brandy, announced
that a vaudeville was being sketched out.
This great affair was being discussed in a low voice, and
the
two heads at work touched each other: "Let us begin by finding
names. When one has the names, one finds the subject."
"That is true. Dictate. I will write."
"Monsieur Dorimon."
"An independent gentleman?"
"Of course."
"His daughter, Celestine."
" — tine. What next?"
"Colonel Sainval."
"Sainval is stale. I should say Valsin."
Beside the vaudeville aspirants, another group, which was
also taking advantage of the uproar to talk low, was discussing
a duel. An old fellow of thirty was counselling a young
one of eighteen, and explaining to him what sort of an adversary
he had to deal with.
"The deuce! Look out for yourself. He is a fine
swordsman.
His play is neat. He has the attack, no wasted feints,
wrist, dash, lightning, a just parade, mathematical parries,
bigre! and he is left-handed."
In the angle opposite Grantaire, Joly and Bahorel were
playing dominoes, and talking of love.
"You are in luck, that you are," Joly was saying. "You
have a mistress who is always laughing."
"That is a fault of hers," returned Bahorel. "One's
mistress
does wrong to laugh. That encourages one to deceive
her. To see her gay removes your remorse; if you see her
sad, your conscience pricks you."
"Ingrate! a woman who laughs is such a good thing! And
you never quarrel!"
"That is because of the treaty which we have made. On
forming our little Holy Alliance we assigned ourselves each
our frontier, which we never cross. What is situated on the
side of winter belongs to Vaud, on the side of the wind to Gex.
Hence the peace."
"Peace is happiness digesting."
"And you, Jolllly, where do you stand in your entanglement
with Mamselle — you know whom I mean?"
"She sulks at me with cruel patience."
"Yet you are a lover to soften the heart with gauntness."
"Alas!"
"In your place, I would let her alone."
"That is easy enough to say."
"And to do. Is not her name Musichetta?"
"Yes. Ah! my poor Bahorel, she is a superb girl, very
literary, with tiny feet, little hands, she dresses well, and is
white and dimpled, with the eyes of a fortune-teller. I am
wild over her."
"My dear fellow, then in order to please her, you must be
elegant, and produce effects with your knees. Buy a good pair
of trousers of double-milled cloth at Staub's. That will
assist."
"At what price?" shouted Grantaire.
The third corner was delivered up to a poetical
discussion.
Pagan mythology was giving battle to Christian mythology.
The question was about Olympus, whose part was taken by
Jean Prouvaire, out of pure romanticism.
Jean Prouvaire was timid only in repose. Once excited, he
burst forth, a sort of mirth accentuated his enthusiasm, and
he was at once both laughing and lyric.
"Let us not insult the gods," said he. "The gods may not
have taken their departure. Jupiter does not impress me as
dead. The gods are dreams, you say. Well, even in nature,
such as it is to-day, after the flight of these dreams, we still
find all the grand old pagan myths. Such and such a
mountain with the profile of a citadel, like the Vignemale,
for example, is still to me the headdress of Cybele; it has not
been proved to me that Pan does not come at night to breathe
into the hollow trunks of the willows, stopping up the holes
in turn with his fingers, and I have always believed that Io had
something to do with the cascade of Pissevache."
In the last corner, they were talking politics. The
Charter
which had been granted was getting roughly handled. Combeferre
was upholding it weakly. Courfeyrac was energetically
making a breach in it. On the table lay an unfortunate copy
of the famous Touquet Charter. Courfeyrac had seized it,
and was brandishing it, mingling with his arguments the
rattling of this sheet of paper.
"In the first place, I won't have any kings; if it were
only
from an economical point of view, I don't want any; a king is
a parasite. One does not have kings gratis. Listen to this:
the dearness of kings. At the death of Francois I., the
national debt of France amounted to an income of thirty
thousand livres; at the death of Louis XIV. it was two milliards,
six hundred millions, at twenty-eight livres the mark,
which was equivalent in 1760, according to Desmarets, to four
milliards, five hundred millions, which would to-day be
equivalent
to twelve milliards. In the second place, and no offence
to Combeferre, a charter granted is but a poor expedient of
civilization. To save the transition, to soften the passage, to
deaden the shock, to cause the nation to pass insensibly from
the monarchy to democracy by the practice of constitutional
fictions, — what detestable reasons all those are! No! no! let
us never enlighten the people with false daylight. Principles
dwindle and pale in your constitutional cellar. No illegitimacy,
no compromise, no grant from the king to the people.
In all such grants there is an Article 14. By the side of the
hand which gives there is the claw which snatches back. I
refuse your charter point-blank. A charter is a mask; the lie
lurks beneath it. A people which accepts a charter abdicates.
The law is only the law when entire. No! no charter!"
It was winter; a couple of fagots were crackling in the
fireplace.
This was tempting, and Courfeyrac could not resist.
He crumpled the poor Touquet Charter in his fist, and flung
it in the fire. The paper flashed up. Combeferre watched the
masterpiece of Louis XVIII. burn philosophically, and contented
himself with saying: —
"The charter metamorphosed into flame."
And sarcasms, sallies, jests, that French thing which is
called entrain, and that English thing which is called
humor,
good and bad taste, good and bad reasons, all the wild
pyrotechnics
of dialogue, mounting together and crossing from
all points of the room, produced a sort of merry bombardment
over their heads.