3.V.1.14. WHEREIN WILL APPEAR THE NAME OF ENJOLRAS' MISTRESS
COURFEYRAC, seated on a paving-stone beside Enjolras,
continued
to insult the cannon, and each time that that gloomy
cloud of projectiles which is called grape-shot passed overhead
with its terrible sound he assailed it with a burst of
irony.
THE WAR BETWEEN TWO WALLS 51
"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."
And the bystanders laughed.
Courfeyrac and Bossuet, whose brave good humor increased
with the peril, like Madame Scarron, replaced nourishment
with pleasantry, and, as wine was lacking, they poured out
gayety to all.
"I admire Enjolras," said Bossuet. "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 Angelique; 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."
Enjolras did not appear to be listening, but had any one
been near him, that person would have heard him mutter in a
low voice: "Patria."
Bossuet was still laughing when Courfeyrac exclaimed:
"News!"
And assuming the tone of an usher making an announcement,
he added:
"My name is Eight-Pounder."
In fact, a new personage had entered on the scene. This
was a second piece of ordnance.
The artillery-men rapidly performed their manoeuvres in
force and placed this second piece in line with the first.
This outlined the catastrophe.
A few minutes later, the two pieces, rapidly served, were
firing point-blank at the redoubt; the platoon firing of the
line and of the soldiers from the suburbs sustained the
artillery.
Another cannonade was audible at some distance. At the
same time that the two guns were furiously attacking the redoubt
from the Rue de la Chanvrerie, two other cannons,
trained one from the Rue Saint-Denis, the other from the Rue
Aubry-le-Boucher, were riddling the Saint-Merry barricade.
The four cannons echoed each other mournfully.
The barking of these sombre dogs of war replied to each
other.
One of the two pieces which was now battering the
barricade
on the Rue de la Chanvrerie was firing grape-shot, the
other balls.
The piece which was firing balls was pointed a little
high,
and the aim was calculated so that the ball struck the extreme
edge of the upper crest of the barricade, and crumbled the
stone down upon the insurgents, mingled with bursts of grape-shot.
The object of this mode of firing was to drive the
insurgents
from the summit of the redoubt, and to compel them to gather
close in the interior, that is to say, this announced the
assault.
The combatants once driven from the crest of the barricade
by balls, and from the windows of the cabaret by grape-shot,
the attacking columns could venture into the street without
being picked off, perhaps, even, without being seen, could
briskly and suddenly scale the redoubt, as on the preceding
evening, and, who knows? take it by surprise.
"It is absolutely necessary that the inconvenience of
those
guns should be diminished," said Enjolras, and he shouted:
"Fire on the artillery-men!"
All were ready. The barricade, which had long been
silent,
poured forth a desperate fire; seven or eight discharges
followed,
with a sort of rage and joy; the street was filled with
blinding smoke, and, at the end of a few minutes, athwart
this mist all streaked with flame, two thirds of the gunners
could be distinguished lying beneath the wheels of the cannons.
Those who were left standing continued to serve
the pieces with severe tranquillity, but the fire had slackened.
"Things are going well now," said Bossuet to Enjolras.
"Success."
Enjolras shook his head and replied:
"Another quarter of an hour of this success, and there
will
not be any cartridges left in the barricade."
It appears that Gavroche overheard this remark.