3.V.1.18. THE VULTURE BECOME PREY
WE must insist upon one psychological fact peculiar to
barricades. Nothing which is characteristic of that surprising
war of the streets should be omitted.
Whatever may have been the singular inward tranquillity
which we have just mentioned, the barricade, for those who
are inside it, remains, none the less, a vision.
There is something of the apocalypse in civil war, all the
mists of the unknown are commingled with fierce flashes,
revolutions
are sphinxes, and any one who has passed through a
barricade thinks he has traversed a dream.
The feelings to which one is subject in these places we
have pointed out in the case of Marius, and we shall see the
consequences; they are both more and less than life. On
emerging from a barricade, one no longer knows what one
has seen there. One has been terrible, but one knows it not.
One has been surrounded with conflicting ideas which had
human faces; one's head has been in the light of the future.
There were corpses lying prone there, and phantoms standing
erect. The hours were colossal and seemed hours of eternity.
One has lived in death. Shadows have passed by. What
were they?
One has beheld hands on which there was blood; there was
a deafening horror; there was also a frightful silence; there
were open mouths which shouted, and other open mouths
which held their peace; one was in the midst of smoke, of
night, perhaps. One fancied that one had touched the
sinister ooze of unknown depths; one stares at something red
on one's finger nails. One no longer remembers anything.
Let us return to the Rue de la Chanvrerie.
All at once, between two discharges, the distant sound of
a
clock striking the hour became audible.
"It is midday," said Combeferre.
The twelve strokes had not finished striking when Enjolras
sprang to his feet, and from the summit of the barricade
hurled this thundering shout:
"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."
A squad of sappers and miners, axe on shoulder, had just
made their appearance in battle array at the end of the
street.
This could only be the head of a column; and of what
column?
The attacking column, evidently; the sappers charged
with the demolition of the barricade must always precede the
soldiers who are to scale it.
They were, evidently, on the brink of that moment which
M. Clermont-Tonnerre, in 1822, called "the tug of war."
Enjolras' order was executed with the correct haste which
is peculiar to ships and barricades, the only two scenes of
combat
where escape is impossible. In less than a minute, two
thirds of the stones which Enjolras had had piled up at the
door of Corinthe had been carried up to the first floor and
the attic, and before a second minute had elapsed, these stones,
artistically set one upon the other, walled up the sash-window
on the first floor and the windows in the roof to half their
height. A few loop-holes carefully planned by Feuilly, the
principal architect, allowed of the passage of the gun-barrels.
This armament of the windows could be effected all the more
easily since the firing of grape-shot had ceased. The two
cannons were now discharging ball against the centre of the
barrier in order to make a hole there, and, if possible, a
breach for the assault.
When the stones destined to the final defence were in
place, Enjolras had the bottles which he had set under the
table where Mabeuf lay, carried to the first floor.
"Who is to drink that?" Bossuet asked him.
"They," replied Enjolras.
Then they barricaded the window below, and held in
readiness
the iron cross-bars which served to secure the door of the
wine-shop at night.
The fortress was complete. The barricade was the rampart,
the wine-shop was the dungeon. With the stones which remained
they stopped up the outlet.
As the defenders of a barricade are always obliged to be
sparing of their ammunition, and as the assailants know this,
the assailants combine their arrangements with a sort of
irritating
leisure, expose themselves to fire prematurely, though
in appearance more than in reality, and take their ease. The
preparations for attack are always made with a certain methodical
deliberation; after which, the lightning strikes.
This deliberation permitted Enjolras to take a review of
everything and to perfect everything. He felt that, since
such men were to die, their death ought to be a masterpiece.
He said to Marius: "We are the two leaders. I will give
the last orders inside. Do you remain outside and observe."
Marius posted himself on the lookout upon the crest of the
barricade.
Enjolras had the door of the kitchen, which was the
ambulance,
as the reader will remember, nailed up.
"No splashing of the wounded," he said.
He issued his final orders in the tap-room in a curt, but
profoundly tranquil tone; Feuilly listened and replied in the
name of all.
"On the first floor, hold your axes in readiness to cut
the
staircase. Have you them?"
"Yes," said Feuilly.
"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."
These arrangements made, he turned to Javert and said:
"I am not forgetting you."
And, laying a pistol on the table, he added:
"The last man to leave this room will smash the skull of
this spy."
"Here?" inquired a voice.
"No, let us not mix their corpses with our own. The
little
barricade of the Mondetour lane can be scaled. It is only
four feet high. The man is well pinioned. He shall be taken
thither and put to death."
There was some one who was more impassive at that moment
than Enjolras, it was Javert. Here Jean Valjean made
his appearance.
He had been lost among the group of insurgents. He
stepped forth and said to Enjolras:
"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."
Javert raised his head, saw Jean Valjean, made an almost
imperceptible movement, and said:
"That is just."
As for Enjolras, he had begun to re-load his rifle; he cut
his eyes about him:
"No objections."
And he turned to Jean Valjean:
"Take the spy."
Jean Valjean did, in fact, take possession of Javert, by
seating himself on the end of the table. He seized the pistol,
and a faint click announced that he had cocked it.
Almost at the same moment, a blast of trumpets became
audible.
"Take care!" shouted Marius from the top of the barricade.
Javert began to laugh with that noiseless laugh which was
peculiar to him, and gazing intently at the insurgents, he said
to them:
"You are in no better case than I am."
"All out!" shouted Enjolras.
The insurgents poured out tumultuously, and, as they went,
received in the back, — may we be permitted the expression, —
this sally of Javert's:
"We shall meet again shortly!"