These words disengaged the thoughts of all from the painful cloud of
individual anxieties, and an enthusiastic shout greeted them. The
name of the man who spoke thus was never known; he was Rome unknown
blouse-wearer, an unknown man, a forgotten man, a passing hero, that
great anonymous always mixed up in human crises and social Geneses,
who at the given moment utters the decisive word in a supreme fashion,
and who fades away into darkness after having represented for a minute,
in the light of a flash, the people and God. This inexorable resolution
was so strongly in the air of June 6, 1832, that almost at the same
hour the insurgents of the St. Merry barricade uttered this cry, which
became historical,--"Whether they come to our help, or whether they do
not, what matter! Let us all fall here, to the last man!" As we see,
the two barricades, though materially isolated, communicated.
CHAPTER IV.
FIVE LESS AND ONE MORE.
After the man, whoever he aright be, who decreed the "protest of
corpses," had spokes, sad given the formula of the common soul, a
strangely satisfied and terrible cry issued from every mouth, funereal
in its meaning and triumphal in its accent.
"Long live death! Let us all remain here."
"Why all?" Enjolras asked.
"All, all!"
Enjolras continued,--
"The position is good and the barricade fine. Thirty men are
sufficient, then why sacrifice forty?"
They replied,--
"Because not one of us will go away."
"Citizens," Enjolras cried, and there was in his voice an almost
irritated vibration, "the republic is not rich enough in men to make
an unnecessary outlay. If it be the duty of some to go away, that duty
must be performed like any other."
Enjolras, the man-principle, had over his co-religionists that kind of
omnipotence which is evolved from the absolute. Still, however great
that omnipotence might be, they murmured. A chief to the tips of his
fingers, Enjolras, on seeing that they murmured, insisted. He continued
haughtily,--
"Let those who are afraid to be only thirty say so."
The murmurs were redoubled.
"Besides," a voice in the throng remarked, "it is easy to say, 'Go
away,' but the barricade is surrounded."
"Not on the side of the markets," said Enjolras. "The Rue Mondétour
is free, and the Marché des Innocents can be reached by the Rue des
Prêcheurs."
"And then," another voice in the group remarked, "we should be caught
by falling in with some grand rounds of the line or the National Guard.
They will see a man passing in blouse and cap: 'Where do you come from?
Don't you belong to the barricade?' and they will look at your hands;
you smell of powder, and will be shot."
Enjolras, without answering, touched Combeferre's shoulder, and both
entered the ground-floor room. They came out again a moment after,
Enjolras holding in his outstretched hands the four uniforms which
he had laid on one side, and Combeferre followed him carrying the
cross-belts and shakos.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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