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_ The tragic picture which we have undertaken would not be complete,
the reader would not see those grand moments of social birth-pangs
in a revolutionary birth, which contain convulsion mingled with effort,
in their exact and real relief, were we to omit, in the sketch
here outlined, an incident full of epic and savage horror which
occurred almost immediately after Gavroche's departure.
Mobs, as the reader knows, are like a snowball, and collect
as they roll along, a throng of tumultuous men. These men do not
ask each other whence they come. Among the passers-by who had
joined the rabble led by Enjolras, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac,
there had been a person wearing the jacket of a street porter,
which was very threadbare on the shoulders, who gesticulated
and vociferated, and who had the look of a drunken savage. This man,
whose name or nickname was Le Cabuc, and who was, moreover, an utter
stranger to those who pretended to know him, was very drunk,
or assumed the appearance of being so, and had seated himself
with several others at a table which they had dragged outside
of the wine-shop. This Cabuc, while making those who vied with him
drunk seemed to be examining with a thoughtful air the large house
at the extremity of the barricade, whose five stories commanded
the whole street and faced the Rue Saint-Denis. All at once he exclaimed:--
"Do you know, comrades, it is from that house yonder that we must fire.
When we are at the windows, the deuce is in it if any one can
advance into the street!"
"Yes, but the house is closed," said one of the drinkers.
"Let us knock!"
"They will not open."
"Let us break in the door!"
Le Cabuc runs to the door, which had a very massive knocker, and knocks.
The door opens not. He strikes a second blow. No one answers.
A third stroke. The same silence.
"Is there any one here?" shouts Cabuc.
Nothing stirs.
Then he seizes a gun and begins to batter the door with the butt end.
It was an ancient alley door, low, vaulted, narrow, solid, entirely
of oak, lined on the inside with a sheet of iron and iron stays,
a genuine prison postern. The blows from the butt end of the gun
made the house tremble, but did not shake the door.
Nevertheless, it is probable that the inhabitants were disturbed,
for a tiny, square window was finally seen to open on the third story,
and at this aperture appeared the reverend and terrified face of a
gray-haired old man, who was the porter, and who held a candle.
The man who was knocking paused.
"Gentlemen," said the porter, "what do you want?"
"Open!" said Cabuc.
"That cannot be, gentlemen."
"Open, nevertheless."
"Impossible, gentlemen."
Le Cabuc took his gun and aimed at the porter; but as he was below,
and as it was very dark, the porter did not see him.
"Will you open, yes or no?"
"No, gentlemen."
"Do you say no?"
"I say no, my goo--"
The porter did not finish. The shot was fired; the ball entered
under his chin and came out at the nape of his neck, after traversing
the jugular vein.
The old man fell back without a sigh. The candle fell
and was extinguished, and nothing more was to be seen except
a motionless head lying on the sill of the small window,
and a little whitish smoke which floated off towards the roof.
"There!" said Le Cabuc, dropping the butt end of his gun to the pavement.
He had hardly uttered this word, when he felt a hand laid on his
shoulder with the weight of an eagle's talon, and he heard a voice
saying to him:--
"On your knees."
The murderer turned round and saw before him Enjolras' cold, white face.
Enjolras held a pistol in his hand.
He had hastened up at the sound of the discharge.
He had seized Cabuc's collar, blouse, shirt, and suspender with
his left hand.
"On your knees!" he repeated.
And, with an imperious motion, the frail young man of twenty years
bent the thickset and sturdy porter like a reed, and brought him
to his knees in the mire.
Le Cabuc attempted to resist, but he seemed to have been seized
by a superhuman hand.
Enjolras, pale, with bare neck and dishevelled hair, and his woman's face,
had about him at that moment something of the antique Themis.
His dilated nostrils, his downcast eyes, gave to his implacable Greek
profile that expression of wrath and that expression of Chastity which,
as the ancient world viewed the matter, befit Justice.
The whole barricade hastened up, then all ranged themselves in
a circle at a distance, feeling that it was impossible to utter
a word in the presence of the thing which they were about to behold.
Le Cabuc, vanquished, no longer tried to struggle, and trembled
in every limb.
Enjolras released him and drew out his watch.
"Collect yourself," said he. "Think or pray. You have one minute."
"Mercy!" murmured the murderer; then he dropped his head
and stammered a few inarticulate oaths.
Enjolras never took his eyes off of him: he allowed a minute to pass,
then he replaced his watch in his fob. That done, he grasped Le
Cabuc by the hair, as the latter coiled himself into a ball at his
knees and shrieked, and placed the muzzle of the pistol to his ear.
Many of those intrepid men, who had so tranquilly entered upon the
most terrible of adventures, turned aside their heads.
An explosion was heard, the assassin fell to the pavement face downwards.
Enjolras straightened himself up, and cast a convinced and severe
glance around him. Then he spurned the corpse with his foot and said:--
"Throw that outside."
Three men raised the body of the unhappy wretch, which was still
agitated by the last mechanical convulsions of the life that had fled,
and flung it over the little barricade into the Rue Mondetour.
Enjolras was thoughtful. It is impossible to say what grandiose
shadows slowly spread over his redoubtable serenity. All at once
he raised his voice.
A silence fell upon them.
"Citizens," said Enjolras, "what that man did is frightful,
what I have done is horrible. He killed, therefore I killed him.
I had to do it, because insurrection must have its discipline.
Assassination is even more of a crime here than elsewhere; we are under
the eyes of the Revolution, we are the priests of the Republic, we are
the victims of duty, and must not be possible to slander our combat.
I have, therefore, tried that man, and condemned him to death.
As for myself, constrained as I am to do what I have done, and yet
abhorring it, I have judged myself also, and you shall soon see to
what I have condemned myself."
Those who listened to him shuddered.
"We will share thy fate," cried Combeferre.
"So be it," replied Enjolras. "One word more. In executing
this man, I have obeyed necessity; but necessity is a monster
of the old world, necessity's name is Fatality. Now, the law
of progress is, that monsters shall disappear before the angels,
and that Fatality shall vanish before Fraternity. It is a bad
moment to pronounce the word love. No matter, I do pronounce it.
And I glorify it. Love, the future is thine. Death, I make use
of thee, but I hate thee. Citizens, in the future there will be
neither darkness nor thunderbolts; neither ferocious ignorance,
nor bloody retaliation. As there will be no more Satan, there will
be no more Michael. In the future no one will kill any one else,
the earth will beam with radiance, the human race will love.
The day will come, citizens, when all will be concord, harmony, light,
joy and life; it will come, and it is in order that it may come
that we are about to die."
Enjolras ceased. His virgin lips closed; and he remained for some time
standing on the spot where he had shed blood, in marble immobility.
His staring eye caused those about him to speak in low tones.
Jean Prouvaire and Combeferre pressed each other's hands silently,
and, leaning against each other in an angle of the barricade,
they watched with an admiration in which there was some compassion,
that grave young man, executioner and priest, composed of light,
like crystal, and also of rock.
Let us say at once that later on, after the action, when the bodies
were taken to the morgue and searched, a police agent's card was found
on Le Cabuc. The author of this book had in his hands, in 1848,
the special report on this subject made to the Prefect of Police
in 1832.
We will add, that if we are to believe a tradition of the police,
which is strange but probably well founded, Le Cabuc was Claquesous.
The fact is, that dating from the death of Le Cabuc, there was no
longer any question of Claquesous. Claquesous had nowhere left
any trace of his disappearance; he would seem to have amalgamated
himself with the invisible. His life had been all shadows, his end
was night.
The whole insurgent group was still under the influence of the
emotion of that tragic case which had been so quickly tried and so
quickly terminated, when Courfeyrac again beheld on the barricade,
the small young man who had inquired of him that morning for Marius.
This lad, who had a bold and reckless air, had come by night to join
the insurgents. _
Read next: VOLUME IV: BOOK THIRTEENTH - MARIUS ENTERS THE SHADOW: CHAPTER I. From the Rue Plumet to the Quartier Saint-Denis
Read previous: VOLUME IV: BOOK TWELFTH - CORINTHE: CHAPTER VII. The Man recruited in the Rue des Billettes
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