________________________________________________
_ 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. _
Read next: VOLUME V: BOOK FIRST - THE WAR BETWEEN FOUR WALLS: CHAPTER XXIV. Prisoner
Read previous: VOLUME V: BOOK FIRST - THE WAR BETWEEN FOUR WALLS: CHAPTER XXII. Foot to Foot
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