Near the Halles market, among the narrow streets running off the Rue Saint-Denis, was the Rue de la Chanvrerie. It narrowed like a funnel the further you went in, until high houses closed off the end and made it look like a dead end. On the corner at that end, for three hundred years and handed down father to son, stood a wine shop called Corinthe.
The old owner, Hucheloup, had been famous for a carp dish. He painted a sign for it on his wall in his own private spelling, and the rain wore away two letters until it read like a Latin motto. Grantaire was drawn in by that sign the first time and came back for the carp. After that, Corinthe became one of the places where the Friends of the ABC met. Since the old man’s death the cooking had gone to ruin, but the friends kept coming out of loyalty.
At nine in the morning on the fifth of June 1832, Bossuet and Joly came to Corinthe for breakfast. They ordered oysters, cheese and ham. Soon a head popped up through the stairway hatch. It was Grantaire, who said he had smelled Brie from the street as he passed and come in. Seeing him, the maid set two bottles of wine on the table.
Morning at Corinthe
Grantaire began not by eating but by drinking. He grumbled that he had swallowed a bad oyster and now hated the human race. Then he launched into a long speech mocking love, God, revolution and the world in turn. Another revolution, is it? The good Lord must be short of ideas. When he finished his speech with a fit of coughing, Joly, through a heavy head cold, passed on the news that Marius was in love.
Then a little boy not yet ten came up through the hatch. Ragged and soaked, his hair a mop, the boy went straight to Bossuet out of the three. A tall fair fellow on the boulevard had sent him, he said, to tell Monsieur Bossuet at Mother Hucheloup’s: A-B-C. Bossuet borrowed ten sous each from Joly and Grantaire and gave the boy twenty. The boy introduced himself as Navet, Gavroche’s friend, and ran off to join the procession.
A-B-C meant General Lamarque’s funeral. The tall fair fellow was Enjolras. Joly, with the rain and his cold, would not go, and Grantaire said he preferred breakfast to a hearse. Bossuet stayed too, saying they could miss the funeral without missing the riot.
Grantaire drank gloomily. Enjolras despises me. Joly’s ill and Grantaire’s drunk, he says, so he sends the boy only to Bossuet. If he’d come for me, I’d have followed him. By two in the afternoon the table was covered with empty bottles, and Grantaire had moved on from wine to spirits mixed with absinthe.
Here’s the place
Bossuet, sitting on the open window sill in the rain, heard behind him shouts of to arms. He turned and saw a band passing the end of the street in the Rue Saint-Denis. There was Enjolras with his gun, Gavroche with his pistol, Feuilly and Courfeyrac with their blades, and armed men following behind.
Bossuet cupped his hands and called Courfeyrac. Where are you going? To build a barricade, Courfeyrac answered.
Then here, this is the place, build it here!
Courfeyrac waved that it was true, and the band surged into the Rue de la Chanvrerie.
It really was a good spot. The mouth was wide and the end narrow, and the Rue Mondétour could easily be closed on both sides. The only way in was head on, from the Rue Saint-Denis. Drunk as he was, Bossuet had the eye of a sober Hannibal.
Within minutes twenty iron bars were torn from the wine shop’s grilled window and the paving stones dug up. Gavroche and Bahorel overturned a passing lime merchant’s cart and got three barrels of lime. Enjolras opened the cellar trap and rolled out the wine shop’s empty casks. They stopped a passing omnibus, politely helped the passengers down, unharnessed the horses and tipped it on its side. Soon half the street was blocked by a wall higher than a man. Madame Hucheloup, who had fled upstairs, murmured that it was the end of the world.
Grantaire’s sleep
Grantaire had reached the peak of his drunkenness. He seized the stout maid round the waist and roared with laughter at the window, boasting. We’ll bring down the government, not that it matters to me either way!
Enjolras, standing on top of the barricade with his gun, raised his stern face.
Grantaire, go and sleep it off somewhere else. This is a place for exaltation, not drunkenness, so don’t disgrace the barricade!
The words struck Grantaire’s face like cold water. As if suddenly sober, he sat down at a table by the window, leaned on his elbow, and looked at Enjolras with an inexpressible gentleness.
You know I believe in you.
Go away.
Let me sleep here.
Sleep somewhere else!
Let me sleep here, until I die here.
Enjolras looked at him with contempt. Grantaire, you’re incapable of believing, of thinking, of wanting, of living and of dying.
You’ll see, Grantaire answered in a grave voice. He mumbled a few more words no one could follow, then his head fell on the table and he was soon asleep.
Men first
The rain stopped and more people arrived. Workmen brought a keg of powder, bottles of vitriol and torches hidden under their smocks. Enjolras, Combeferre and Courfeyrac directed everything. The big barricade closed the Rue de la Chanvrerie and a small one closed the Rue Mondétour, the two meeting at a right angle with the wine shop at their back. About fifty people were at work, some thirty of them armed. They did not know one another’s names, yet they worked like brothers.
Gavroche flew everywhere, urging everyone on. More paving stones, more barrels, put the glass door in too, it’ll cut the National Guard’s feet when they climb!
But he was furious about his pistol with no hammer. He went from one to the next, demanding a gun, asking why nobody would give him a gun.
A gun, for you, laughed Combeferre, and Gavroche retorted that he had had one in 1830. Enjolras shrugged.
When there are enough for the men, we’ll give them to the children.
Gavroche lifted his chin. If you get killed before me, I’ll have yours.
When both barricades stood, Courfeyrac climbed onto a table and opened the large box he had carried from his lodgings. It was full of cartridges. Even among the bravest there was a moment’s silence. Each received thirty and they loaded their guns solemnly. A torch in a little shelter of stones lit only the red flag. Some gathered in a corner to hear Jean Prouvaire recite old love poems. And they waited.
The mouse that caught the cat
Night fell and nothing came. Fifty men waited for sixty thousand. Enjolras went to find Gavroche, who was making cartridges downstairs. Just then Gavroche’s mind was on something else.
The tall man who had joined the band near the Rue des Billettes had just come in and sat at the darkest table with his musket between his knees. Gavroche tiptoed round him, pulling faces. Surely not, no, yes, no. That was what his face was saying.
Enjolras spoke to him. You’re small, nobody will see you. Slip out of the barricade, creep along the houses, have a look round and come back and tell me what’s going on.
So small people are good for something! Gavroche lowered his voice and nodded at the man. See that big one? He’s a police spy. Not two weeks ago he pulled me off the parapet of the Pont Royal by my ear, where I was taking the air.
Enjolras called four dockers to stand behind the man, then went up to him and asked: who are you?
The man looked deep into Enjolras’s clear eyes and smiled a smile of utter contempt. I see what this is, yes.
You’re a spy?
I am an officer of the law.
Your name?
Javert.
In the blink of an eye he was seized, thrown down, tied and searched. They found a round card: Javert, inspector of police, fifty-two. They also found an order in the prefect’s own hand. Once his political mission was done, he was to check whether robbers were frequenting the bank of the Seine near the Iéna bridge. They gave him back his watch and his purse with a few gold coins in it, and tied him to the old signpost in the middle of the downstairs room.
Gavroche went up to him and said: the mouse has caught the cat.
Javert had not cried out once. Bound so tight he could not move, he held his head high. Enjolras said to him: you will be shot two minutes before the barricade is taken.
Why not now?
We are saving powder.
Then finish it with a knife.
Spy, we are judges, not murderers.
Going out to scout, Gavroche asked for Javert’s musket to be kept for him. He saluted and slipped out through the gap in the barricade.
The porter who would not open
Soon after Gavroche left, something happened. Among those who had drifted in with the band was a man called Le Cabuc. Even those who claimed to know him did not really know him. Very drunk, or pretending to be, he stared for a while at the tall five-storey house at the far end inside the barricade and shouted: fire from those windows and nobody gets into this street!
The house was shut. Le Cabuc knocked. When no one answered he pounded the door with his musket butt. The oak door, lined with iron, did not budge. At last a candle appeared at a small window on the third floor, and an old grey-haired porter put out a frightened face.
Gentlemen, what is it you want?
Open up!
That cannot be done.
Le Cabuc raised his musket and aimed at the porter. Below it was pitch dark, and the porter never saw it.
Will you open or not?
I cannot.
You say no?
I say no, gentlemen.
The porter never finished. The ball went in under his chin and out through the back of his neck. The old man slumped without a sigh. The candle fell and went out, and all that was left was a motionless head on the window sill and a little white smoke drifting towards the roof.
There, said Le Cabuc, lowering his musket butt to the cobbles.
One minute
He had barely said it when a hand gripped his shoulder like an eagle’s talons. Kneel.
He turned and saw Enjolras, white and cold, with a pistol in his hand. He had come running at the shot. With his left hand Enjolras gathered up Le Cabuc’s collar, shirt and braces in one grip. Kneel.
The slight twenty-year-old bent the stocky labourer like a reed and forced him to his knees in the mud. Le Cabuc tried to resist, but it was as if a more than human hand held him. Everyone at the barricade came running and stood in a circle at a distance. No one could say a word.
Le Cabuc stopped struggling and trembled all over. Enjolras let go of him and took out his watch.
Collect yourself, pray or think. You have one minute.
Mercy, the murderer whispered. Then he hung his head and mumbled curses no one could make out.
Enjolras did not take his eyes off the watch. When the minute had passed, he put it back in his pocket. Then he took Le Cabuc, who clung to his knees howling, by the hair and pressed the pistol against his ear. Several of those fearless men who had entered this fight so calmly turned their heads away.
The shot rang out and the murderer fell face first on the paving. Enjolras straightened up and looked round with a stern face. Then he pushed the body with his foot and spoke.
Throw that outside.
Three men lifted the body and threw it over the small barricade into the Rue Mondétour.
I judged myself too
Enjolras stood lost in thought for a while, then raised his voice. Everyone fell silent.
“Citoyens, ce que cet homme a fait est effroyable et ce que j’ai fait est horrible.” Citizens, what that man did is dreadful, and what I have done is horrible. (Part 4, Book 12, Chapter 8)
He killed, and so I killed him. An insurrection must have discipline, so I had to. Murder here is a greater crime than anywhere else. We cannot let our fight be slandered. So I judged that man and condemned him to death. And I judged myself as well, the man who had to do this and loathes having done it. You will soon see what sentence I have passed on myself.
His listeners shuddered. We will share your fate, cried Combeferre.
So be it, said Enjolras, and went on. Executing this man, I did what necessity demanded. But necessity is a monster from the old world. In the days to come, no one will kill anyone. It is so that those days may come that we are going to die.
He fell silent and stood motionless as marble where he had spilled the blood. Jean Prouvaire and Combeferre silently clasped hands and, leaning on each other at the corner of the barricade, watched him.
After the fighting, the dead were carried to the morgue and searched, and on Le Cabuc they found a police agent’s card. Within the police there is a story that he was really Claquesous, the robber who vanished after the trap in the Gorbeau house. In fact, after Le Cabuc’s death, the name of Claquesous was never heard again.
Everyone was still shaken by what had happened. Courfeyrac then saw again, inside the barricade, the young person who had come to his lodgings that morning asking for Marius. That young person had joined the band after nightfall.
Today, a man at the post and a man on the cobbles
That night, behind the Chanvrerie barricade, two trials were held.
One was the sentence passed on the police inspector tied to the post. Enjolras did not kill him at once, but set his death for two minutes before the barricade fell. The other was the sentence passed on Le Cabuc, who shot the old porter. That trial took one minute.
Both trials had the same judge. He said he had judged himself too, but he has not yet said what that punishment is. That afternoon he had told the drunken Grantaire he could neither believe nor die, and Grantaire had said: you’ll see. And it was the smallest child who first spotted the spy.
Have you ever done something the grown-ups said you were too small to do?