II

PRELIMINARY GAIETY

LAIGLE de Meaux, we know, lived more with Joly than elsewhere. He had a lodging as the bird has a branch. The two friends lived together, ate together, slept together. Everything was in common with them, even Musichetta a little. They were what, among the Chapeau Brothers, are called bini. On the morning of the 5th of June, they went to breakfast at Corinth. Joly, whose head was stopped up, had a bad cold, which Laigle was beginning to share. Laigle’s coat was threadbare, but Joly was well dressed.

It was about nine o’clock in the morning when they opened the door of Corinth.

They went up to the first floor.

Chowder and Fricassee received them: "Oysters, cheese, and ham," said Laigle.

And they sat down at a table.

The wine-shop was empty; they two only were there.

Fricassee recognising Joly and Laigle, put a bottle of wine on the table.

As they were at their first oysters, a head appeared at the hatchway of the stairs, and a voice said:

"I was passing. I smelt in the street a delicious odour of Brie cheese. I have come in."

It was Grantaire.

Grantaire took a stool and sat down at the table.

Fricassee, seeing Grantaire, put two bottles of wine on the table.

That made three.

"Are you going to drink those two bottles?" inquired Laigle of Grantaire.

Grantaire answered:

"All are ingenious, you alone are ingenuous. Two bottles never astonished a man."

The others had begun by eating. Grantaire began by drinking.

A half bottle was quickly swallowed.

"Have you a hole in your stomach?" resumed Laigle.

"You surely have one in your elbow," said Grantaire.

And, after emptying his glass, he added:

"Ah, now, Laigle of the funeral orations, your coat is old."

"I hope so," replied Laigle. "That makes us agree so well, my coat and I. It has got all my wrinkles, it doesn’t bind me anywhere, it has fitted itself to all my deformities, it is complaisant to all my motions; I feel it only because it keeps me warm. Old coats are the same thing as old friends."

"That’s true," exclaimed Joly, joining in the dialogue, "an old habit [coat] is an old abi [friend]."

"Especially," said Grantaire, "in the mouth of a man whose head is stopped up."

"Grantaire," asked Laigle, "do you come from the boulevard?"

"We just saw the head of the procession pass, Joly and I."

"It is a barvellous spectacle," said Joly.

"How quiet this street is!" exclaimed Laigle. "Who would suspect that Paris is all topsy-turvy? You see this was formerly all monasteries about here! Du Breul and Sauval give the list of them, and the Abbe Lebeuf. They were all around here, they swarmed, the shod, the unshod, the shaven, the bearded, the greys, the blacks, the whites, the Franciscans, the Minimi, the Capuchins, the Carmelites, the Lesser Augustines, the Greater Augustines, the Old Augustines. They littered."

"Don’t talk about monks," interrupted Grantaire, "it makes me want to scratch."

Then he exclaimed:

"Peugh! I have just swallowed a bad oyster. Here’s the hypochondria upon me again. The oysters are spoiled, the servants are ugly. I hate human kind. I passed just now in the Rue Richelieu before the great public library. This heap of oyster shells, which they call a library, disgusts me to think of. How much paper! how much ink! how much scribbling! Somebody bas written all that! What booby was it who said that man is a biped with feathers? And then, I met a pretty girl whom I knew, beautiful as Spring, worthy to be called Floreal, and delighted, transported, happy, with the angels, the poor creature, because yesterday a horrid banker, pitted with small-pox deigned to fancy her. Alas! woman watches the publican no less than the fop; cats chase mice as well as birds. This damsel, less than two months ago, was a good girl in a garret, she fixed the little rings of copper in the eyelets of corsets, how do you call it? She sewed, she had a bed, she lived with a flower-pot, she was contented. Now she is a bankeress. This transformation was wrought last night. I met the victim this morning, full of joy. The hideous part of it is, that the wench was quite as pretty to-day as yesterday. Her financier didn’t appear on her face. Roses have this much more or less than women, that the traces which worms leave on them are visible. Ah! there is no morality upon the earth; I call to witness the myrtle, the symbol of love, the laurel, the symbol of war, the olive, that goose, the symbol of peace, the apple, which almost strangled Adam with its seed, and the fig, the grandfather of petticoats. As to rights, do you want to know what rights are? The Gauls covet Clusium, Rome protects Clusium, and asks them what Clusium has done to them. Brennus answers: ’What Alba did to you, what Fidenae did to you, what the Aequi, the Volsci, and the Sabines did to you. They were your neighbours. The Clusians are ours. We understand neighbourhood as you do. You stole Alba, we take Clusium.’ Rome says: ’You will not take Clusium.’ Brennus took Rome. Then he cried: ’Vae victis!’ That is what rights are. Ah! in this world, what beasts of prey! what eagles! it makes me crawl all over."

He reached his glass to Joly, who filled it again, then he drank, and proceeded, almost without having been interrupted by this glass of wine, which nobody perceived, not even himself.

"Brennus, who takes Rome, is an eagle; the banker, who takes the grisette, is an eagle. No more shame here than there. Then let us believe in nothing. There is but one reality: to drink. Whatever ray be your opinion whether you are for the lean cock, like the Canton of Uri, or for the fat cock, like the Canton of Glaris, matters little, drink. You talk to me of the boulevard, of the procession, et caetera. Ah, now, there is going to be a revolution again, is there? This poverty of means on the part of God astonishes me. He has to keep greasing the grooves of events continually. It hitches, it does not go. Quick, a revolution. God has his hands black with this villanous cart-grease all the time. In his place, I would work more simply, I wouldn’t be winding up my machine every minute, I would lead the human race smoothly, I would knit the facts stitch to stitch, without breaking the thread, I would have no emergency, I would have no extraordinary repertory. What you fellows call progress moves by two springs, men and events. But sad to say, from time to time the exceptional is necessary. For events as well as for men, the stock company is not enough; geniuses are needed among men, and revolutions among events. Great accidents are the law; the order of things cannot get along without them; and, to see the apparitions of comets, one would be tempted to believe that Heaven itself is in need of star actors. At the moment you least expect it, God placards a meteor on the wall of the firmament. Some strange star comes along, underlined by an enormous tail. And that makes Caesar die. Brutus strikes him with a knife, and God with a comet. Crack, there is an aurora borealis, there is a revolution, there is a great man: ’93 in big letters. Napoleon with a line to himself, the comet of 1811 at the top of the poster. Ah! the beautiful blue poster, all studded with unexpected flourishes! Boom! boom! extraordinary spectacle. Look up, loungers. All is dishevelled, the star as well as the drama. Good God, it is too much, and it is not enough. These resources, used in emergency, seem magnificence, and are poverty. My friends, Providence is put to his trumps. A revolution, what does that prove? That God is hard up. He makes a coup d’etat, because there is a solution of continuity and the future, and because he, God, is unable to join the two ends. In fact, that confirms me in my conjectures about the condition of Jehovah’s fortune; and to see so much discomfort above and below, so much rascality and odiousness and stinginess and distress in the heavens and on the earth, from the bird which has not a grain of millet to me who have not a hundred thousand livres of income, to see human destiny, which is very much worn out, and even royal destiny, which shows the warp, witness the Prince of Conde hung, to see winter, which is nothing but a rent in the zenith through which the wind blows, to see so many tatters even in the brand-new purple of the morning on the tops of the hills, to see the dew drops, those false pearls, to see the frost, that paste, to see humanity ripped, and events patched, and so many spots on the sun, and so many holes in the moon, to see so much misery everywhere, I suspect that God is not rich. He keeps up appearances, it is true, but I feel the pinch. He gives a revolution as a merchant, whose credit is low, gives a ball. We must not judge the gods from appearances. Beneath the gilding of the sky I catch a glimpse of a poor universe. Creation is bankrupt. That is why I am a malcontent. See, it is the fifth of June, it is very dark: since morning I have been waiting for the daybreak, it has not come, and I will bet that it won’t come all day. It is a negligence of a badly paid clerk. Yes, everything is badly arranged, nothing fits anything, this old world is all rickety, I range myself with the opposition. Everything goes cross-grained; the universe is a tease. It is like children, those who want it haven’t it, those who don’t want it have it. Total: I scoff. Besides, Laigle de Meaux, that bald-head, afflicts my sight. It humiliates me to think that I am the same age as that knee. Still, I criticise, but I don’t insult. The universe is what it is. I speak here without malice, and to ease my conscience. Receive, Father Eternal, the assurance of my distinguished consideration. Oh! by all saints of Olympus and by all the gods of Paradise, I was not made to be a Parisian, that is to say, to ricochet for ever, like a shuttlecock between two battledores, from the company of loafers to the company of rioters! I was made to be a Turk looking all day long at Oriental jades executing those exquisite dances of Egypt, as lascivious as the dreams of a chaste man, or a Beauce peasant, or a Venetian gentleman surrounded by gentledames, or a little German prince, furnishing the half of a foot soldier to the Germanic Confederation, and occupying his leisure in drying his socks upon his hedge, that is to say, upon his frontier! Such is the destiny for which I was born! Yes, I said Turk, and I don’t unsay it. I don’t understand why the Turks are commonly held in bad repute; there is some good in Mahomet; respect for the inventor of seraglios with houris, and paradises with odalisques! Let us not insult Mahometanism, the only religion that is adorned with a hen-roost! On that, I insist upon drinking. The earth is a great folly. And it appears that they are going to fight, all these idiots, to get their heads broken, to massacre one another, in midsummer, in the month of June, when they might go off with some creature under their arm, to scent in the fields the huge cup of tea of the new mown hay! Really, they are too silly. An old broken lamp which I saw just now at a second-hand shop suggests me a reflection. It is time to enlighten the human race. Yes, here I am again sad. What a thing it is to swallow an oyster or a revolution the wrong way! I am getting dismal. Oh! frightful old world! They strive with one another, they plunder one another, they prostitute one another, they kill one another, they get used to one another!"

And Grantaire, after this fit of eloquence, had a fit of coughing, which he deserved.

"Speakig of revolutiod," said Joly, "it appears that Barius is decidedly abourous."

"Does anybody know of whom?" inquired Laigle.

"Do."

"No?"

"Do! I tell you."

"Marius’s amours!" exclaimed Grantaire, "I see them now. Marius is a fog, and he must have found a vapour. Marius is of the race of poets. He who says poet, says fool. Tymbraeus Apollo. Marius and his Mary, or his Maria, or his Marietta, or his Marion, they must make droll lovers. I imagine how it is. Ecstasies where they forget to kiss. Chaste upon the earth, but coupling in the infinite. They are souls which have senses. They sleep together in the stars."

Grantaire was entering on his second bottle, and perhaps his second harangue, when a new actor emerged from the square hole of the stairway. It was a boy of less than ten years, ragged, very small, yellow, a mug of a face, a keen eye, monstrous long hair, wet to the skin, a complacent look.

The child, choosing without hesitation among the three, although he evidently knew none of them, addressed himself to Laigle de Meaux.

"Are you Monsieur Bossuet?" asked he.

"That is my nickname," answered Laigle. "What do you want of me?"

"This is it. A big light-complexioned fellow on the boulevard said to me: Do you know Mother Hucheloup? I said: Yes, Rue Chanvrerie, the widow of the old man. He said to me. Go there. You will find Monsieur Bossuet there, and you will tell him from me: A- B- C. It is a joke that somebody is playing on you, isn’t it? He gave me ten sous."

"Joly, lend me ten sous," said Laigle, and turning towards Grantaire: "Grantaire, lend me ten sous."

This made twenty sous which Laigle gave the child.

"Thank you, monsieur," said the little fellow.

"What is your name?" asked Laigle.

"Navet, Gavroche’s friend."

"Stop with us," said Laigle.

"Breakfast with us," said Grantaire.

The child answered:

"I can’t, I am with the procession, I am the one to cry, Down with Polignac."

And giving his foot a long scrape behind him, which is the most respectful of all possible bows, he went away.

The child gone, Grantaire resumed:

"This is the pure gamin. There are many varieties in the gamin genus. The notary gamin is called saute-ruisseau, the cook gamin is called (r)marmiton, the baker gamin is called mitron, the lackey gamin is called groom, the sailor gamin is called mousse, the soldier gamin is called tapin, the painter gamin is called rapin, the trader gamin is called trottin, the courtier gamin is called menin, the king gamin is called dauphin, the god gamin is called bambino. "

Meanwhile Laigle was meditating; he said in an under tone:

"A- B- C, that is to say: Lamarque’s funeral."

"The big light-complexioned man," observed Grantaire, "is Enjolras, who sent to notify you."

"Shall we go?" said Bossuet.

"It raids," said Joly. "I have sword to go through fire, dot water. I dod’t wadt to catch cold."

"I stay here," said Grantaire. "I prefer a breakfast to a hearse."

"Conclusion: we stay," resumed Laigle. "Well, let us drink then. Besides we can miss the funeral, without missing the emeute."

"Ah! the ebeute, I am id for that," exclaimed Joly.

Laigle rubbed his hands:

"Now they are going to retouch the Revolution of 1830. In fact, it binds the people in the armholes."

"It don’t make much difference with me, your revolution," said Grantaire. "I don’t execrate this government. It is the crown tempered with the night-cap. It is a sceptre terminating in an umbrella. In fact, to-day, I should think, in this weather Louis Philippe could make good use of his royalty at both ends, extend the sceptre end against the people, and open the umbrella end against the sky."

The room was dark, great clouds were completing the suppression of the daylight. There was nobody in the wine-shop, nor in the street, everybody having gone "to see the events."

"Is it noon or midnight?" cried Bossuet. "We can’t see a speck. Fricassee, a light."

Grantaire, melancholy, was drinking.

"Enjolras despises me," murmured he. "Enjolras said: Joly is sick. Grantaire is drunk. It was to Bossuet that he sent Navet. If he had come for me I would have followed him. So much the worse for Enjolras! I won’t go to his funeral."

This resolution taken, Bossuet, Joly, and Grantaire did not stir from the wine-shop. About two o’clock in the afternoon, the table on which they were leaning was covered with empty bottles. Two candles were burning, one in a perfectly green copper candlestick, the other in the neck of a cracked decanter. Grantaire had drawn Joly and Bossuet towards wine; Bossuet and Joly had led Grantaire towards joy.

As for Grantaire, since noon, he had got beyond wine, an indifferent source of dreams. Wine, with serious drunkards, has only a quiet success. There is, in point of inebriety, black magic and white magic; wine is only white magic. Grantaire was a daring drinker of dreams. The blackness of a fearful drunkenness yawning before him, far from checking him, drew him on. He had left the bottle behind and taken to the jug. The jug is the abyss. Having at his hand neither opium nor hashish, and wishing to fill his brain with mist, he had had recourse to that frightful mixture of brandy, stout, and absinth, which produces such terrible lethargy. It is from these three vapours, beer, brandy, and absinth, that the lead of the soul is formed. They are three darknesses; the celestial butterfly is drowned in them; and there arise, in a membranous smoke vaguely condensed into bat wings, three dumb furies, nightmare, night, death, flitting above the sleeping Psyche.

Grantaire was not yet at this dreary phase; far from it. He was extravagantly gay, and Bossuet and Joly kept pace with him. They touched glasses. Grantaire added to the eccentric accentuation of his words and ideas incoherency of gesture; he rested his left wrist upon his knee with dignity, his arms a-kimbo, and his cravat untied, bestriding a stool, his full glass in his right hand, he threw out to the fat servant Chowder these solemn words:

"Let the palace doors be opened! Let everybody belong to the Acadamie Francaise, and have the right of embracing Madame Hucheloup! let us drink."

And turning towards Ma’am Hucheloup he added:

"Antique woman consecrated by use, approach that I may gaze upon thee!"

And Joly exclaimed:

"Chowder add Fricassee, dod’t give Gradtaire ady bore to drigk. He spedds his bodey foolishly. He has already devoured sidce this bordigg in desperate prodigality two fragcs didety-five cedtibes."

And Grantaire replied:

"Who has been unhooking the stars without my permission to put them on the table in the shape of candles?"

Bossuet, very drunk, had preserved his calmness.

He sat in the open window, wetting his back with the falling rain, and gazed at his two friends.

Suddenly he heard a tumult behind him, hurried steps, cries to arms! He turned, and saw in the Rue Saint Denis, at the end of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, Enjolras passing, carbine in hand, and Gavroche with his pistol, Feuilly with his sabre, Courfeyrac with his sword, Jean Prouvaire with his musketoon, Combeferre with his musket, Bahorel with his musket, and all the armed and stormy gathering which followed them.

The Rue de la Chanvrerie was hardly as long as the range of a carbine. Bossuet improvised a speaking trumpet with his two hands, and shouted:

"Courfeyrac! Courfeyrac! ahoy!"

Courfeyrac heard the call, perceived Bossuet, and came a few steps into the Rue de la Chanvrerie, crying a "what do you want?" which was met on the way by a "where are you going?"

"To make a barricade," answered Courfeyrac.

"Well, here! this is a good place! make it here!"

"That is true, Eagle," said Courfeyrac.

And at a sign from Courfeyrac, the band rushed into the Rue de la Chanvrerie.