In the interior of this room, which was scarce lighted by a solitary
candle, the mortuary table at the end being behind the post like a
horizontal bar, a sort of large vague cross resulted from Javert
standing and Mabœuf lying down. Although the pole of the omnibus was
mutilated by the bullets, sufficient remained for a flag to be attached
to it. Enjolras, who possessed that quality of a chief of always doing
what he said, fastened to it the bullet-pierced and blood-stained coat
of the killed old man. No meal was possible, for there was neither
bread nor meat. The fifty men during the sixteen hours they had stood
at the barricade speedily exhausted the scanty provisions of the inn.
At a given moment every barricade that holds out becomes the raft of
the _Méduse_, and the combatants must resign themselves to hunger.
They had reached the early hours of that Spartan day, June 6, when at
the barricade of St. Merry, Jeanne, surrounded by insurgents who cried
for bread, answered, "What for? It is three o'clock; at four we shall
be dead." As they could no longer eat, Enjolras prohibited drinking;
he put the wine under an interdict, and served out the spirits. Some
fifteen full bottles, hermetically sealed, were found in the cellar,
which Enjolras and Combeferre examined. Combeferre on coming up again
said, "It belongs to Father Hucheloup's stock at the time when he was
a grocer." "It must be real wine," Bossuet observed; "it is lucky that
Grantaire is asleep, for if he were up, we should have a difficulty in
saving those bottles." Enjolras, in spite of the murmurs, put his veto
on the fifteen bottles, and in order that no one might touch them, and
that they should be to some extent sacred, he had placed them under the
table on which Father Mabœuf lay.
At about two in the morning they counted their strength; there were
still thirty-seven. Day was beginning to appear, and the torch, which
had been returned to its stone lantern, was extinguished. The interior
of the barricade, that species of small yard taken from the street, was
bathed in darkness, and resembled, through the vague twilight horror,
the deck of a dismasted ship. The combatants moved about like black
forms. Above this frightful nest of gloom the floors of the silent
houses stood out lividly, and above them again the chimney-pots were
assuming a roseate hue. The sky had that charming tint which may be
white and may be blue, and the birds flew about in it with twitterings
of joy. The tall house which formed the background of the barricade
looked to the east, and had a pink reflection on its roof. At the
third-floor window the morning breeze blew about the gray hair on the
head of the dead man.
"I am delighted that the torch is put out," Courfeyrac said to Feuilly.
"That flame flickering in the breeze annoyed me, for it seemed to be
frightened. The light of torches resembles the wisdom of cowards; it
illumines badly because it trembles."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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