Les Misérables, v. 4

About six in the evening the Passage du Saumon became the battle-field; the rioters were at one end and the troops at the other, and they fired from one gate at the other. An observer, a dreamer, the author of this book, who had gone to have a near look at the volcano, found himself caught between two fires in the passage, and had nothing to protect him from the bullets but the projecting semi-columns which used to separate the shops; he was nearly half an hour in this delicate position. In the mean while the tattoo was beaten, the National Guards hurriedly dressed and armed themselves, the legions issued from the Mayoralty, and the regiments from the barracks. Opposite the Passage de l'Ancre a drummer was stabbed; another was attacked in the Rue du Cygne by thirty young men, who ripped up his drum and took his sabre, while a third was killed in the Rue Grenier St. Lazare. In the Rue Michel le Comte three officers fell dead one after the other, and several municipal guards, wounded in the Rue des Lombards, recoiled. In front of the Cour Batave, a detachment of National Guards found a red flag, bearing this inscription, "Republican Revolution, No. 127." Was it really a revolution? The insurrection had made of the heart of Paris a sort of inextricable, tortuous, and colossal citadel; there was the nucleus, there the question would be solved; all the rest was merely skirmishing. The proof that all would be decided there lay in the fact that fighting had not yet begun there.

In some regiments the troops were uncertain, which added to the startling obscurity of the crisis; and they remembered the popular ovation which, in July, 1830, greeted the neutrality of the 53d line. Two intrepid men, tried by the great wars, Marshal de Lobau and General Bugeaud, commanded, – Bugeaud under Lobau. Enormous patrols, composed of battalions of the line enclosed in entire companies of the National Guard, and preceded by the Police Commissary in his scarf, went to reconnoitre the insurgent streets. On their side, the insurgents posted-vedettes at the corner of the streets, and audaciously sent patrols beyond the barricades. Both sides were observing each other; the Government, with an army in its hand, hesitated, night was setting in, and the tocsin of St. Mary was beginning to be heard. Marshal Soult, the Minister of War at that day, who had seen Austerlitz, looked at all this with a gloomy air. These old sailors, habituated to correct manœuvres, and having no other resource and guide but tactics, the compass of battles, are completely thrown out when in the presence of that immense foam which is called the public anger. The wind of revolutions is not favorable for sailing. The National Guards of the suburbs ran up hastily and disorderly; a battalion of the 12th Light Infantry came at the double from St. Denis; the 14th line arrived from Courbevoie, the batteries of the military school had taken up position at the Carrousel, and guns were brought in from Vincennes.

Solitude set in at the Tuileries. Louis Philippe was full of serenity.

CHAPTER V

ORIGINALITY OF PARIS

During the two past years Paris, as we said, had seen more than one insurrection. With the exception of the insurgent districts, as a rule, nothing is more strangely calm than the physiognomy of Paris during a riot. Paris very soon grows accustomed to everything – it is only a riot; and Paris has so much to do that it does not put itself out of the way for such a trifle. These colossal cities alone can offer such spectacles. These immense enclosures alone can contain simultaneously civil war and a strange tranquillity. Usually, when the insurrection begins, when the drum, the tattoo, and the assembly are heard, the shopkeeper confines himself to saying:

"Ah, there seems to be a row in the Rue St. Martin."

Or, —

"The Faubourg St. Antoine."

And he often adds, negligently, —

"Somewhere over that way."

At a later date, when the heart-rending and mournful sound of musketry and platoon fire can be distinguished, the shopkeeper says, —

"Bless me, it is growing hot!"

A moment later, if the riot approaches and spreads, he precipitately closes his shop and puts on his uniform; that is to say, places his wares in safety, and risks his person. Men shoot themselves on a square, in a passage, or a blind alley; barricades are taken, lost, and retaken, blood flows, the grape-shot pockmark the fronts of the houses, bullets kill people in their beds, and corpses encumber the pavement. A few yards off you hear the click of the billiard-balls in the coffee-houses. The theatres open their doors and play farces; and gossips talk and laugh two yards from these streets full of war. Hackney coaches roll along, and their fares are going to dine out, sometimes in the very district where the fighting is. In 1831 a fusillade was interrupted in order to let a wedding pass. During the insurrection of May 12, 1839, in the Rue St. Martin, a little old infirm man, dragging a hand-truck surmounted by a tricolor rag, and carrying bottles full of some fluid, came and went from the barricade to the troops, and from the troops to the barricade, impartially offering glasses of cocoa, first to the Government and then to anarchy. Nothing can be stranger; and this is the peculiar character of Parisian riots, which is not found in any other capital, as two things are required for it, – the grandeur of Paris and its gayety, the city of Voltaire and of Napoleon. This time, however, in the insurrection of June 5, 1832, the great city felt something which was perhaps stronger than itself, and was frightened. Everywhere, in the most remote and disinterested districts, doors, windows, and shutters were closed in broad daylight. The courageous armed, the cowardly hid themselves, and the careless and busy passengers disappeared. Many streets were as empty as at four in the morning. Alarming details were hawked about, and fatal news spread, – that they were masters of the Bank; that at the cloisters of St. Merry alone they were six hundred, intrenched with loopholes in a church; that the line was not sure; that Armand Carrel had been to see Marshal Clausel, and the latter said to him, "Have a regiment first;" that Lafayette, though ill, had said to them, "I am with you, and will follow you where-ever there is room for a chair;" that people must be on their guard, for at night burglars would plunder isolated houses in the deserted corners of Paris (in this could be recognized the imagination of the police, that Anne Radcliffe blended with government); that a battery had been established in the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher; that Lobau and Bugeaud were agreed, and that at midnight, or at daybreak at the latest, four columns would march together on the centre of the revolt, the first coming from the Bastille, the second from the Porte St. Martin, the third from the Grève, and the fourth from the Halles that perhaps, too, the troops would evacuate Paris, and retire on the Champ de Mars; that no one knew what would happen, but this time it was certainly very serious. People were alarmed too by the hesitation of Marshal Soult; why did he not attack at once? It is certain that he was greatly absorbed, and the old lion seemed to scent an unknown monster in the darkness.

Night came, and the theatres were not opened, the patrols went their rounds with an air of irritation, passers-by were searched, and suspected persons arrested. At nine o'clock there were more than eight hundred persons taken up, and the Préfecture of Police, the Conciergerie, and La Force were crowded. At the Conciergerie, especially, the long vault called the Rue de Paris was strewn with trusses of straw, on which lay a pile of prisoners, whom Lagrange, the man of Lyons, valiantly harangued. All this straw, moved by all these men, produced the sound of a shower. Elsewhere the prisoners slept in the open air on lawns; there was anxiety everywhere, and a certain trembling, not at all usual to Paris. People barricaded themselves in the houses; wives and mothers were alarmed, and nothing else but this was heard, "Oh heavens! he has not come in!" Only the rolling of a few vehicles could be heard in the distance, and people listened in the doorways to the noises, cries, tumults, and dull, indistinct sounds, of which they said, "That is the cavalry," or, "It is the galloping of tumbrils;" to the bugles, the drums, the firing, and before all to the lamentable tocsin of St. Merry. They waited for the first artillery round, and men rose at the corner of the streets and disappeared, after shouting, "Go in." And they hastened to bolt their doors, saying, "How will it all end?" From moment to moment, as the night became darker, Paris seemed to be more lugubriously colored by the formidable flashes of the revolt.

BOOK XI

THE ATOM FRATERNIZES WITH HURRICANE

CHAPTER I

THE ORIGIN OF THE POETRY OF GAVROCHEAND THE INFLUENCE OF AN ACADEMICIAN UPON IT

At the moment when the insurrection, breaking out through the collision between the people and the troops in front of the Arsenal, produced a retrograde movement in the multitude that followed the hearse, and which pressed with the whole length of the boulevards upon the head of the procession, there was a frightful reflux. The ranks were broken, and all ran or escaped, some with cries of attack, others with the pallor of flight. The great stream which covered the boulevards divided in a second, overflowed on the right and left, and spread in torrents over two hundred streets at once, as if a dyke had burst. At this moment a ragged lad who was coming down the Rue Ménilmontant, holding in his hand a branch of flowering laburnum which he had picked on the heights of Belleville, noticed in the shop of a dealer in bric-à-brac an old hostler pistol. He threw his branch on the pavement, and cried, —

"Mother What's-your-name, I'll borrow your machine."

And he ran off with the pistol. Two minutes after, a crowd of frightened cits, flying through the Rue Amelot and the Rue Basse, met the lad, who was brandishing his pistol and singing, —

"La nuit on ne voit rien,Le jour on voit très bien,D'un écrit apocrypheLe bourgeois s'ébouriffe,Pratiquez la vertu,Tutu, chapeau pointu!"

It was little Gavroche going to the wars; on the boulevard he noticed that his pistol had no hammer. Who was the composer of this couplet which served to punctuate his march, and all the other songs which he was fond of singing when he had a chance? Who knows? Himself, perhaps. Besides, Gavroche was acquainted with all the popular tunes in circulation, and mingled with them his own chirping, and, as a young vagabond, he made a pot-pourri of the voices of nature and the voices of Paris. He combined, the repertoire of the birds with that of the studios, and he was acquainted with artists' students, a tribe contiguous to his own. He had been for three months, it appears, apprenticed to a painter, and had one day delivered a message for M. Baour Lormian, one of the Forty; Gavroche was a gamin of letters.

Gavroche did not suspect, by the way, that on that wretched rainy night, when he offered the hospitality of his elephant to the two boys, he was performing the offices of Providence to his two brothers. His brothers in the evening, his father in the morning, – such had been his night. On leaving the Rue des Ballets at dawn, he hurried back to the elephant, artistically extracted the two boys, shared with them the sort of breakfast which he had invented, and then went away, confiding them to that good mother, the street, who had almost brought himself up. On leaving them he appointed to meet them on the same spot at night, and left them this speech as farewell, – "I am going to cut my stick, otherwise to say, I intend to bolt, or as they say at court, I shall make myself scarce. My brats, if you do not find papa and mamma, come here again to-night. I will give you your supper and put you to bed." The two lads, picked up by some policeman and placed at the station, or stolen by some mountebank, or simply lost in that Chinese puzzle, Paris, did not return. The substrata of the existing social world are full of such lost traces. Gavroche had not seen them again, and ten or twelve weeks had elapsed since that night. More than once he had scratched his head and asked himself, "Where the deuce are my two children?"

He reached the Rue du Pont aux Choux, and noticed that there was only one shop still open in that street, and it was worthy of reflection that it was a confectioner's. It was a providential opportunity to eat one more apple-puff before entering the unknown. Gavroche stopped, felt in his pockets, turned them inside out, found nothing, not even a sou, and began shouting, "Help!" It is hard to go without the last cake, but for all that Gavroche went on his way. Two minutes after he was in the Rue St. Louis, and on crossing the Rue du Parc Royal he felt the necessity of compensating himself for the impossible apple-puff, and gave himself the immense treat of tearing down in open daylight the play-bills. A little farther on, seeing a party of stout gentry who appeared to him to be retired from business, he shrugged his shoulders and spat out this mouthful of philosophic bile, —

"How fat annuitants are! they wallow in good dinners. Ask them what they do with their money, and they don't know. They eat it, eat their bellyful."

CHAPTER II

GAVROCHE ON THE MARCH

Holding a pistol without a cock in the streets is such a public function, that Gavroche felt his humor increase at every step. He cried between the scraps of the Marseillaise which he sang, —

"All goes well. I suffer considerably in my left paw. I have broken my rheumatism, but I am happy, citizens. The bourgeois have only to hold firm, and I am going to sing them some subversive couplets. What are the police? Dogs. Holy Moses! we must not lack respect for the dogs. Besides, I should be quite willing to have one5 for my pistol. I have just come from the boulevard, my friends, where it's getting warm, and the soup is simmering; it is time to skim the pot. Forward, my men, and let an impure blood inundate the furrows! I give my days for my country. I shall not see my concubine again; it's all over. Well, no matter! Long live joy! Let us fight, crebleu! I have had enough of despotism!"

At this moment the horse of a lancer in the National Guard, who was passing, fell. Gavroche laid his pistol on the pavement, helped the man up, and then helped to raise the horse, after which he picked up his pistol and went his way again. In the Rue de Thorigny all was peace and silence; and this apathy, peculiar to the Marais, contrasted with the vast surrounding turmoil. Four gossips were conversing on the step of a door; Scotland has trios of witches, but Paris has quartettes of gossips, and the "Thou shalt be king" would be as lugubriously cast at Bonaparte at the Baudoyer crossway, as to Macbeth on the Highland heath, – it would be much the same croak. The gossips in the Rue Thorigny only troubled themselves about their own affairs; they were three portresses, and a rag-picker with her dorser and her hook. They seemed to be standing all four at the four corners of old age, which are decay, decrepitude, ruin, and sorrow. The rag-picker was humble, for in this open-air world the rag-picker bows, and the portress protects. The things thrown into the street are fat and lean, according to the fancy of the person who makes the pile, and there may be kindness in the broom. This rag-picker was grateful, and she smiled, – what a smile! – at the three portresses. They were making remarks like the following, —

"So your cat is as ill-tempered as ever?"

"Well, good gracious! you know that cats are naturally the enemy of dogs. It's the dogs that complain."

"And people too."

"And yet cats' fleas do not run after people."

"Dogs are really dangerous. I remember one year when there were so many dogs that they were obliged to put it in the papers. It was at that time when there were large sheep at the Tuileries to drag the little carriage of the King of Rome. Do you remember the King of Rome?"

"I preferred the Duc de Bordeaux."

"Well, I know Louis XVII., and I prefer him."

"How dear meat is, Mame Patagon!"

"Oh, dont talk about it! Butcher's meat is a horror, – a horrible horror. It is only possible to buy bones now."

Here the rag-picker interposed, —

"Ladies, trade does not go on well at all, and the rubbish is abominable. People do not throw away anything now, but eat it all."

"There are poorer folk than you, Vargoulême."

"Ah, that's true," the rag-picker replied deferentially, "for I have a profession."

There was a pause, and the rag-picker, yielding to that need of display which is at the bottom of the human heart, added, —

"When I go home in the morning I empty out my basket and sort the articles; that makes piles in my room. I put the rags in a box, the cabbage-stalks in a tub, the pieces of linen in my cupboard, the woollen rags in my chest of drawers, old papers on the corner of the window, things good to eat in my porringer, pieces of glass in the fire-place, old shoes behind the door, and bones under my bed."

Gavroche had stopped, and was listening.

"Aged dames," he said, "what right have you to talk politics?"

A broadside, composed of a quadruple yell, assailed him.

"There's another of the villains."

"What's that he has in his hand, – a pistol?"

"Just think, that rogue of a boy!"

"They are never quiet unless when they are overthrowing the authorities."

Gavroche disdainfully limited his reprisals to lifting the tip of his nose with his thumb, and opening his hand to the full extent. The rag-picker exclaimed, —

"The barefooted scamp!"

The one who answered to the name of Mame Patagon struck her hands together with scandal.

"There are going to be misfortunes, that's sure. The young fellow with the beard round the corner, I used to see him pass every morning with a girl in a pink bonnet on his arm; but this morning I saw him pass, and he was giving his arm to a gun. Mame Bacheux says there was a revolution last week at, at, at, at, – where do the calves come from? – at Pontoise. And then, just look at this atrocious young villain's pistol. It seems that the Célestins are full of cannon. What would you have the Government do with these vagabonds who can only invent ways to upset the world, after we were beginning to get over all the misfortunes which fell – good gracious! – on that poor Queen whom I saw pass in a cart! And all this will raise the price of snuff. It is infamous, and I will certainly go and see you guillotined, malefactor."

"You snuffle, my aged friend," said Gavroche; "blow your promontory."

And he passed on. When he was in the Rue Pavée his thoughts reverted to the rag-picker, and he had this soliloquy, —

"You are wrong to insult the revolutionists, Mother Cornerpost. This pistol is on your behalf, and it is for you to have in your baskets more things good to eat."

All at once he heard a noise behind; it was the portress Patagon, who had followed him, and now shook her fist at him, crying, —

"You are nothing but a bastard."

"At that I scoff with all my heart," said Gavroche.

A little later he passed the Hôtel Lamoignon, where he burst into this appeal, —

"Go on to the battle."

And he was attacked by a fit of melancholy; he regarded his pistol reproachfully, and said to it, —

"I am going off, but you will not go off."

One dog may distract another;6 a very thin whelp passed, and Gavroche felt pity for it.

"My poor little creature," he said to it, "you must have swallowed a barrel, as you show all the hoops."

Then he proceeded toward the Orme St. Gervais.

CHAPTER III

JUST INDIGNATION OF A BARBER

The worthy barber who had turned out the two children for whom Gavroche had opened the elephant's paternal intestines, was at this moment in his shop, engaged in shaving an old legionary who had served under the Empire. The barber had naturally spoken to the veteran about the riot, then about General Lamarque, and from Lamarque they had come to the Emperor. Hence arose a conversation between the barber and the soldier which Prudhomme, had he been present, would have enriched with arabesques, and entitled, "A dialogue between a razor and a sabre."

"How did the Emperor ride, sir?" the barber asked.

"Badly. He did not know how to fall off, and so he never fell off."

"Had he fine horses? He must have had fine horses!"

"On the day when he gave me the cross I noticed his beast. It was a white mare. It had its ears very far apart, a deep saddle, a fine head marked with a black star, a very long neck, prominent knees, projecting flanks, oblique shoulders, and a strong crupper. It was a little above fifteen hands high."

"A fine horse," said the barber.

"It was His Majesty's beast."

The barber felt that after this remark a little silence was befitting; then he went on, —

"The Emperor was wounded only once, I believe, sir?"

The old soldier replied, with the calm and sovereign accent of the man who has felt wounds, —

"In the heel, at Ratisbon. I never saw him so well dressed as on that day. He was as clean as a halfpenny."

"And you, sir, I suppose, have received sword-wounds?"

"I," said the soldier; "oh, a mere flea-bite. I received two sabre-cuts on my neck at Marengo; I got a bullet in my right arm at Jena, another in the left hip at Jena; at Friedland a bayonet-thrust, – there; at the Muskowa seven or eight lance-prods, never mind where; at Lützen, a piece of shell carried off a finger, and – oh, yes! at Waterloo a bullet from a case-shot in my thigh. That's all."

"How glorious it is," the barber exclaimed, with a Pindaric accent, "to die on the battle-field! On my word of honor, sooner than die on a bed of disease, slowly, a bit every day, with drugs, cataplasms, clysters, and medicine, I would sooner have a cannon-ball in my stomach!"

"And you're right," said the soldier. He had scarce ended ere a frightful noise shook the shop; a great pane of glass was suddenly smashed, and the barber turned livid.

"Good Lord!" he cried, "it is one."

"What?"

"A cannon-ball."

"Here it is."

And he picked up something which was rolling on the ground; it was a pebble. The barber ran to his broken pane, and saw Gavroche flying at full speed towards the Marché St. Jean. On passing the barber's shop Gavroche, who had the two lads at his heart, could not resist the desire of wishing him good-evening, and threw a stone through his window.

"Just look," the barber yelled, who had become blue instead of livid, "he does harm for harm's sake. What had I done to that villain?"

CHAPTER IV

THE CHILD ASTONISHES THE OLD MAN

On reaching St. Jean market, the post at which had been disarmed already, Gavroche proceeded "to effect his junction" with a band led by Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Combeferre, and Feuilly. They were all more or less armed, and Bahorel and Prouvaire had joined them, and swelled the group. Enjolras had a double-barrelled fowling-piece, Combeferre a National Guard's musket bearing the number of a legion, and in his waist-belt two pistols, which his unbuttoned coat allowed to be seen; Jean Prouvaire an old cavalry carbine, and Bahorel a rifle; Courfeyrac brandished a sword drawn from a cane, while Feuilly with a naked sabre in his hand walked along shouting. "Long live Poland! They reached the Quai Morland without neck-cloths or hats, panting for breath, drenched with rain, but with lightning in their eyes. Gavroche calmly approached them, —

"Where are we going?"

"Come," said Courfeyrac.

Behind Feuilly marched or rather bounded Bahorel, a fish in the water of revolt. He had a crimson waistcoat, and uttered words which smash everything. His waistcoat upset a passer-by, who cried wildly, "Here are the reds!"

"The reds, the reds!" Bahorel answered; "that's a funny fear, citizen. For my part, I do not tremble at a poppy, and the little red cap does not inspire me with any terror. Citizen, believe me, we had better leave a fear of the red to horned cattle."

He noticed a corner wall, on which was placarded the most peaceful piece of paper in the world, a permission to eat eggs, a Lent mandamus addressed by the Archbishop of Paris to his "flock." Bahorel exclaimed, —

"A flock! a polite way of saying geese." And he tore the paper down. This conquered Gavroche, and from this moment he began studying Bahorel.