3.V.1.23. ORESTES FASTING AND PYLADES DRUNK
AT length, by dint of mounting on each other's backs, aiding
themselves with the skeleton of the staircase, climbing
up the walls, clinging to the ceiling, slashing away at the
very brink of the trap-door, the last one who offered resistance,
a score of assailants, soldiers, National Guardsmen,
municipal guardsmen, in utter confusion, the majority disfigured
by wounds in the face during that redoubtable ascent,
blinded by blood, furious, rendered savage, made an irruption
into the apartment on the first floor. There they found only
one man still on his feet, Enjolras. Without cartridges, without
sword, he had nothing in his hand now but the barrel of
his gun whose stock he had broken over the head of those
who were entering. He had placed the billiard table between
his assailants and himself; he had retreated into the corner
of the room, and there, with haughty eye, and head borne
high, with this stump of a weapon in his hand, he was still
so alarming as to speedily create an empty space around him.
A cry arose:
"He is the leader! It was he who slew the artillery-man.
It is well that he has placed himself there. Let him remain
there. Let us shoot him down on the spot."
"Shoot me," said Enjolras.
And flinging away his bit of gun-barrel, and folding his
arms, he offered his breast.
The audacity of a fine death always affects men. As soon
as Enjolras folded his arms and accepted his end, the din of
strife ceased in the room, and this chaos suddenly stilled into
a sort of sepulchral solemnity. The menacing majesty of
Enjolras disarmed and motionless, appeared to oppress this
tumult, and this young man, haughty, bloody, and charming,
who alone had not a wound, who was as indifferent as an
invulnerable being, seemed, by the authority of his tranquil
glance, to constrain this sinister rabble to kill him
respectfully.
His beauty, at that moment augmented by his pride,
was resplendent, and he was fresh and rosy after the fearful
four and twenty hours which had just elapsed, as though he
could no more be fatigued than wounded. It was of him,
possibly, that a witness spoke afterwards, before the council of
war: "There was an insurgent whom I heard called Apollo."
A National Guardsman who had taken aim at Enjolras, lowered
his gun, saying: "It seems to me that I am about to
shoot a flower."
Twelve men formed into a squad in the corner opposite
Enjolras, and silently made ready their guns.
Then a sergeant shouted:
"Take aim!"
An officer intervened.
"Wait."
And addressing Enjolras:
"Do you wish to have your eyes bandaged?"
"No."
"Was it you who killed the artillery sergeant?"
"Yes."
Grantaire had waked up a few moments before.
Grantaire, it will be remembered, had been asleep ever
since
the preceding evening in the upper room of the wine-shop,
seated on a chair and leaning on the table.
He realized in its fullest sense the old metaphor of "dead
drunk." The hideous potion of absinthe-porter and alcohol
had thrown him into a lethargy. His table being small, and
not suitable for the barricade, he had been left in possession
of it. He was still in the same posture, with his breast bent
over the table, his head lying flat on his arms, surrounded by
glasses, beer-jugs and bottles. His was the overwhelming
slumber of the torpid bear and the satiated leech. Nothing
had had any effect upon it, neither the fusillade, nor the
cannon-balls, nor the grape-shot which had made its way through
the window into the room where he was. Nor the tremendous
uproar of the assault. He merely replied to the cannonade,
now and then, by a snore. He seemed to be waiting there for
a bullet which should spare him the trouble of waking. Many
corpses were strewn around him; and, at the first glance,
there was nothing to distinguish him from those profound
sleepers of death.
Noise does not rouse a drunken man; silence awakens him.
The fall of everything around him only augmented Grantaire's
prostration; the crumbling of all things was his lullaby. The
sort of halt which the tumult underwent in the presence of
Enjolras was a shock to this heavy slumber. It had the effect
of a carriage going at full speed, which suddenly comes to
a dead stop. The persons dozing within it wake up. Grantaire
rose to his feet with a start, stretched out his arms,
rubbed his eyes, stared, yawned, and understood.
A fit of drunkenness reaching its end resembles a curtain
which is torn away. One beholds, at a single glance and as a
whole, all that it has concealed. All suddenly presents itself
to the memory; and the drunkard who has known nothing of
what has been taking place during the last twenty-four hours,
has no sooner opened his eyes than he is perfectly informed.
Ideas recur to him with abrupt lucidity; the obliteration of
intoxication, a sort of steam which has obscured the brain, is
dissipated, and makes way for the clear and sharply outlined
importunity of realities.
Relegated, as he was, to one corner, and sheltered behind
the billiard-table, the soldiers whose eyes were fixed on
Enjolras,
had not even noticed Grantaire, and the sergeant was
preparing to repeat his order: "Take aim!" when all at once,
they heard a strong voice shout beside them:
"Long live the Republic! I'm one of them."
Grantaire had risen. The immense gleam of the whole
combat which he had missed, and in which he had had no
part, appeared in the brilliant glance of the transfigured
drunken man.
He repeated: "Long live the Republic!" crossed the room
with a firm stride and placed himself in front of the guns
beside Enjolras.
"Finish both of us at one blow," said he.
And turning gently to Enjolras, he said to him:
"Do you permit it?"
Enjolras pressed his hand with a smile.
This smile was not ended when the report resounded.
Enjolras, pierced by eight bullets, remained leaning
against
the wall, as though the balls had nailed him there. Only, his
head was bowed.
Grantaire fell at his feet, as though struck by a
thunderbolt.
A few moments later, the soldiers dislodged the last
remaining
insurgents, who had taken refuge at the top of the
house. They fired into the attic through a wooden lattice.
They fought under the very roof. They flung bodies, some
of them still alive, out through the windows. Two light-infantrymen,
who tried to lift the shattered omnibus, were
slain by two shots fired from the attic. A man in a blouse was
flung down from it, with a bayonet wound in the abdomen,
and breathed his last on the ground. A soldier and an insurgent
slipped together on the sloping slates of the roof, and,
as they would not release each other, they fell, clasped in a
ferocious embrace. A similar conflict went on in the cellar.
Shouts, shots, a fierce trampling. Then silence. The barricade
was captured.
The soldiers began to search the houses round about, and
to pursue the fugitives.