Les Misérables, v. 4/5: The Idyll and the Epic

  CHAPTER I.

  FROM THE RUE PLUMET TO THE QUARTIER ST. DENIS.

  The voice which summoned Marius through the twilight to the barricadein the Rue de la Chanvrerie had produced on him the effect of the voiceof destiny. He wished to die, and the opportunity offered; he rappedat the door of the tomb, and a hand held out the key to him from theshadows. Such gloomy openings in the darkness just in front of despairare tempting; Marius removed the bar which had so often allowed him topass, left the garden, and said, "I will go." Mad with grief, feelingnothing fixed and solid in his brain, incapable of accepting anythinghenceforth of destiny, after the two months spent in the intoxicationof youth and love, and crushed by all the reveries of despair at once,he had only one wish left,--to finish with it all at once. He beganwalking rapidly, and he happened to be armed, as he had Javert'spistols in his pocket. The young man whom he fancied that he had seenhad got out of his sight in the streets.

  Marius, who left the Rue Plumet by the boulevard, crossed the esplanadeand bridge of the Invalides, the Champs Élysées, the square of LouisXV., and reached the Rue de Rivoli. The shops were open there, the gasblazed under the arcades, ladies were making purchases, and people wereeating ices at the Café Laiter and cakes at the English pastry-cook's.A few post-chaises, however, were leaving at a gallop the Hôtel desPrinces and Meurice's. Marius entered the Rue St. Honoré by the passageDelorme. The shops were closed there, the tradesmen were conversingbefore their open doors, people walked along, the lamps were lighted,and from the first-floor upwards the houses were illumined as usual.Cavalry were stationed on the square of the Palais Royal. Mariusfollowed the Rue St. Honoré, and the farther he got from the PalaisRoyal the fewer windows were lit up; the shops were entirely closed,nobody was conversing on the thresholds, the street grew darker, andat the same time the crowd denser, for the passers-by had now become acrowd. No one could be heard speaking in the crowd, and yet a hollow,deep buzzing issued from it. Near the Fountain of Arbre Sec there weremotionless mobs, and sombre groups standing among the comers and goerslike stones in the middle of a running stream. At the entrance of theRue des Prouvaires, the crowd no longer moved; it was a resisting,solid, compact, almost impenetrable mob of persons packed togetherand conversing in a low voice. There were hardly any black coats orround hats present, only fustian jackets, blouses, caps, and bristlingbeards. This multitude undulated confusedly in the night mist andits whispering had the hoarse accent of a rustling; and though no onemoved, a tramping in the mud could be heard. Beyond this dense crowdthere was not a window lit up in the surrounding streets, and thesolitary and decreasing rows of lanterns could only be seen in them.The street-lanterns of that day resembled large red stars suspendedfrom ropes, and cast on to the pavement a shadow which had the shape ofa large spider. These streets, however, were not deserted, and piledmuskets, moving bayonets, and troops bivouacking could be distinguishedin them. No curious person went beyond this limit, and circulationceased there; there the mob ended and the army began.

  Marius wished with the will of a man who no longer hopes; he had beensummoned and was bound to go. He found means to traverse the crowdand bivouacking troops; he hid himself from the patrols and avoidedthe sentries. He made a circuit, came to the Rue de Béthisy, andproceeded in the direction of the markets; at the corner of the Ruedes Bourdonnais the lanterns ceased. After crossing the zone of themob he passed the border of troops, and now found himself in somethingfrightful. There was not a wayfarer, nor a soldier, nor a light,nothing but solitude, silence, and night, and a strangely-piercingcold; entering a street was like entering a cellar. Still he continuedto advance: Some one ran close past him: was it a man?--a woman? Werethere more than one? He could not have said, for it had passed andvanished. By constant circuits he reached a lane, which he judgedto be the Rue de la Poterie, and toward the middle of that lane cameacross an obstacle. He stretched out his hands and found that it wasan overturned cart, and his feet recognized pools of water, holes,scattered and piled-up paving-stones; it was a barricade which hadbeen begun and then abandoned. He clambered over the stones and soonfound himself on the other side of the obstacle; he walked very closeto the posts, and felt his way along the house walls. A little beyondthe barricade he fancied that he could see something white before him,and on drawing nearer it assumed a form. It was a pair of white horses,the omnibus horses unharnessed by Bossuet in the morning, which hadwandered, haphazard, from street to street all day, and at last stoppedhere, with the stolid patience of animals which no more comprehend theactions of man than man comprehends the actions of Providence. Mariusleft the horses behind him, and as he entered a street which seemed tobe the Rue du Contrat Social, a musket-shot, which came no one couldsay whence, and traversed the darkness at hazard, whizzed close pasthim, and pierced above his head a copper shaving-dish, hanging from ahair-dresser's shop. In 1846 this dish with the hole in it was stillvisible at the corner of the pillars of the markets. This shot wasstill life, but from this moment nothing further occurred; the wholeitinerary resembled a descent down black steps, but for all that Mariusdid not the less advance.