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

  CHAPTER V.

  END OF THE VERSES OF JEAN PROUVAIRE.

  All surrounded Marius, and Courfeyrac fell on his neck.

  "Here you are!"

  "What happiness!" said Combeferre.

  "You arrived just in time," said Bossuet.

  "Were it not for you I should be dead!" Courfeyrac remarked.

  "Without you I should have been gobbled!" Gavroche added.

  Marius asked,--

  "Who is the leader?"

  "Yourself," Enjolras replied.

  Marius the whole day through had had a furnace in his brain, but nowit was a whirlwind; and this whirlwind which was in him produced onhim the effect of being outside him and carrying him away. It seemedto him as if he were already an immense distance from life, and histwo luminous months of joy and love suddenly terminated at thisfrightful precipice. Cosette lost to him, this barricade, M. Mabœufletting himself be killed for the Republic, himself chief of theinsurgents,--all these things seemed to him a monstrous nightmare, andhe was obliged to make a mental effort in order to remind himself thatall which surrounded him was real. Marius had not lived long enough yetto know that nothing is so imminent as the impossible, and that whatmust be always foreseen is the unforeseen. He witnessed the performanceof his own drama as if it were a piece of which he understood nothing.In his mental fog he did not recognize Javert, who, fastened to hispost, had not made a movement of his head during the attack on thebarricade, and saw the revolt buzzing round him with the resignationof a martyr and the majesty of a judge. Marius did not even noticehim. In the mean while the assailants no longer stirred; they couldbe heard marching and moving at the end of the street, but did notventure into it, either because they were waiting for orders, or elserequired reinforcements, before rushing again upon this impregnableredoubt. The insurgents had posted sentries, and some who were medicalstudents had begun dressing wounds. All the tables had been draggedout of the wine-shop, with the exception of the two reserved for thelint and the cartridges, and the one on which Father Mabœuf lay;they had been added to the barricade, and the mattresses off the bedsof Widow Hucheloup and the girls had been put in their place. On thesemattresses the wounded were laid; as for the three poor creatures whoinhabited Corinth, no one knew what had become of them, but they wereat length found hidden in the cellar.

  A poignant emotion darkened the joy of the liberated barricade; theroll-call was made, and one of the insurgents was missing. Who was he?One of the dearest and most valiant, Jean Prouvaire. He was sought foramong the dead, but was not there; he was sought for among the wounded,and was not there; he was evidently a prisoner. Combeferre said toEnjolras,--

  "They have our friend, but we have their agent; do you insist on thedeath of this spy?"

  "Yes," Enjolras replied, "but less than the life of Jean Prouvaire."

  This was said in the bar-room close to Javert's post.

  "Well," Combeferre continued, "I will fasten a handkerchief to my cane,and go as a flag of truce to offer to give them their man for our man."

  "Listen," said Enjolras, as he laid his hand on Combeferre's arm.

  There was a meaning click of guns at the end of the street, and a manlyvoice could be heard crying,--

  "Long live France! Long live the future!"

  They recognized Prouvaire's voice; a flash passed and a detonationburst forth; then the silence returned.

  "They have killed him," Combeferre exclaimed.

  Enjolras looked at Javert and said to him,--

  "Your friends have just shot you."