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

  CHAPTER IV.

  THE BARREL OF GUNPOWDER.

  Marius, still concealed at the corner of the Rue Mondétour, had watchedthe first phase of the combat with shuddering irresolution. Stillhe was unable to resist for any length of time that mysterious andsovereign dizziness which might be called the appeal from the abyss;and at the sight of the imminence of the peril, of M. Mabœuf'sdeath, that mournful enigma, Bahorel killed, Courfeyrac shouting forhelp, this child menaced, and his friends to succor or revenge, allhesitation vanished, and he rushed into the medley, pistols in hand.With the first shot he saved Gavroche, and with the second deliveredCourfeyrac. On hearing the shots, and the cries of the guards, theassailants swarmed up the intrenchment, over the crest of which couldnow be seen more than half the bodies of Municipal Guards, troops ofthe line, and National Guards from the suburbs, musket in hand. Theyalready covered more than two thirds of the barricade, but no longerleaped down into the enclosure, and hesitated, as if they feared somesnare. They looked down into the gloomy space as they would have peeredinto a lion's den; and the light of the torch only illumined bayonets,bearskin shakos, and anxious and irritated faces.

  Marius had no longer a weapon, as he had thrown away his dischargedpistols; but he had noticed the barrel of gunpowder near the door ofthe ground-floor room. As he half turned to look in that direction asoldier levelled his musket at him, and at the moment when the soldierwas taking steady aim at Marius, a hand was laid on the muzzle of hismusket and stopped it up; the young workman in the velvet trousershad rushed forward. The shot was fired, the bullet passed through thehand, and probably through the workman, for he fell, but it did not hitMarius. Marius, who was entering the wine-shop, hardly noticed this;still he had confusedly seen the gun pointed at him, and the hand laidon the muzzle, and had heard the explosion. But in minutes like thisthings that men see vacillate, and they do not dwell on anything, forthey feel themselves obscurely impelled toward deeper shadows still,and all is mist. The insurgents, surprised but not terrified, hadrallied, and Enjolras cried, "Wait; do not throw away your shots!"and, in truth, in the first moment of confusion they might wound eachother. The majority had gone up to the first-floor and attic windows,whence they commanded the assailants; but the more determined, withEnjolras, Courfeyrac, Jean Prouvaire, and Combeferre, were haughtilystanding against the houses at the end, unprotected, and facing thelines of soldiers and guards who crowned the barricade. All thiswas done without precipitation, and with that strange and menacinggravity which precedes a combat; on both sides men were aiming at eachother within point-blank range, and they were so near that they couldconverse. When they were at the point where the spark was about toshoot forth, an officer wearing a gorget and heavy epaulettes stretchedout his sword and said,--

  "Throw down your arms!"

  "Fire!" Enjolras commanded.

  The two detonations took place at the same moment, and everythingdisappeared in smoke,--a sharp and stifling smoke,--in which the dyingand the wounded writhed, with faint and hollow groans. When the smokedispersed, the two lines of combatants could be seen thinned, butat the same spot, and silently reloading their guns. All at once athundering voice was heard shouting,--

  "Begone, or I will blow up the barricade!"

  All turned to the quarter whence the voice came.

  Marius had entered the wine-shop, fetched the barrel of gunpowder,and then, taking advantage of the smoke and obscure mist whichfilled the intrenched space, glided along the barricade up to thecage of paving-stones in which the torch was fixed. To tear out thetorch, place in its stead the barrel of powder, throw down the pileof paving-stones on the barrel, which was at once unheaded witha sort of terrible obedience, had only occupied so much time asstooping and rising again; and now all, National Guards and MunicipalGuards, officers and privates, collected at the other end of thebarricade, gazed at him in stupor, as he stood with one foot on thepaving-stones, the torch in his hand, his haughty face illumined by afatal resolution, approaching the flame of the torch to the formidableheap, in which the broken powder-barrel could be distinguished, anduttering the terrifying cry,--

  "Begone, or I will blow up the barricade!"

  Marius, on this barricade after the octogenarian, was the vision of theyoung revolution after the apparition of the old one.

  "Blow up the barricade!" a sergeant said, "and yourself too!"

  Marius answered, "And myself too!"

  And he lowered the torch toward the barrel of gunpowder; but there wasno one left on the barricade. The assailants, leaving their dead andtheir wounded, fell back pell-mell and in disorder to the end of thestreet, and disappeared again in the night. It was a _sauve qui peut_.

  The barricade was saved.