Les Miserables (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (108 page)

A bitter emotion came to darken their joy over the redeemed barricade.

They called the roll. One of the insurgents was missing. And who? One of the dearest. One of the most valiant, Jean Prouvaire. They sought him among the wounded, he was not there. They sought him among the dead, he was not there. He was evidently a prisoner.

Combeferre said to Enjolras:

“They have our friend; we have their officer. Have you set your heart on the death of this spy?”

“Yes,” said Enjolras; “but less than on the life of Jean Prouvaire.”

This passed in the basement-room near Javert’s post.

“Well,” replied Combeferre, “I am going to tie my handkerchief to my cane, and go with a flag of truce to offer to give them their man for ours.”

“Listen,” said Enjolras, laying his hand on Combeferre’s arm.

There was a significant clicking of arms at the end of the street.

They heard a manly voice cry:

They recognised Prouvaire’s voice.

There was a flash and an explosion.

Silence reigned again.

“They have killed him,” exclaimed Combeferre.

Enjolras looked at Javert and said to him:

“Your friends have just shot you.”

A PECULIARITY OF THIS KIND Of war is that the attack on the barricades is almost always made in front, and that in general the assailants abstain from turning the positions, whether it be that they dread ambush, or that they fear to become entangled in the crooked streets. The whole attention of the insurgents therefore was directed to the great barricade, which was evidently the point still threatened, and where the struggle must infallibly recommence. Marius, however, thought of the little barricade and went to it. It was deserted, and was guarded only by the lamp which flickered between the stones. The little Rue Mondétour, moreover, and the branch streets de la Petite Truanderie and du Cygne, were perfectly quiet.

As Marius, the inspection made, was retiring, he heard his name faintly pronounced in the darkness:

“Monsieur Marius!”

He shuddered, for he recognised the voice which had called him two hours before, through the grating in the Rue Plumet.

Only this voice now seemed to be but a breath.

He looked about him and saw nobody.

Marius thought he was deceived, and that it was an illusion added by his mind to the extraordinary realities which were thronging about him. He started to leave the retired recess in which the barricade was situated.

“Monsieur Marius!” repeated the voice.

This time he could not doubt, he had heard distinctly; he looked, and saw nothing.

“At your feet,” said the voice.

He stooped and saw a form in the shadow, which was dragging itself towards him. It was crawling along the pavement. It was this that had spoken to him.

The lamp enabled him to distinguish a smock, a pair of torn trousers of coarse velvet, bare feet, and something which resembled a pool of blood. Marius caught a glimpse of a pale face which rose towards him and said to him:

“You do not know me?”

“No.”

“Eponine.”

Marius bent down quickly. It was indeed that unhappy child. She was dressed as a man.

“How came you here? what are you doing there?”

“I am dying,” said she.

There are words and incidents which rouse beings who are crushed. Marius exclaimed, with a start:

“You are wounded! Wait, I will carry you into the room! They will dress your wounds! Is it serious? how shall I take you up so as not to hurt you? Where are you hurt? Help! my God! But what did you come here for?”

And he tried to pass his arm under her to lift her.

In lifting her he touched her hand.

She uttered a feeble cry.

“Have I hurt you?” asked Marius.

“A little.”

“But I have only touched your hand.”

She raised her hand into Marius’ sight, and Marius saw in the centre of that hand a black hole.

“What is the matter with your hand?” said he.

“It is pierced.”

“Pierced?”

“Yes.”

“By what?”

“By a ball.”

“How?”

“Did you see a musket aimed at you?”

“Yes, and a hand which stopped it.”

“That was mine.”

Marius shuddered.

“What madness! Poor child! But that is not so bad, if that is all, it is nothing, let me carry you to a bed. They will care for you, people don’t die from a shot in the hand.”

She murmured:

“The ball passed through my hand, but it went out through my back. It is useless to take me from here. I will tell you how you can care for me, better than a surgeon. Sit down by me on that stone.”

He obeyed; she laid her head on Marius’ knees, and without looking at him, she said:

“Oh! how good it is! How kind he is! That is it! I don’t suffer any more!”

She remained a moment in silence, then she turned her head with effort and looked at Marius.

“Do you know, Monsieur Marius? It worried me that you should go into that garden, it was silly, since it was I who had shown you the house, and then indeed I ought surely to have known that a young man like you—”

She stopped, and, leaping over the gloomy transitions which were doubtless in her mind, she added with a heartrending smile:

“You thought me ugly, didn’t you?”

She continued:

“See, you are lost! Nobody will get out of the barricade, now. It was I who led you into this, it was! You are going to die, I am sure. And still when I saw him aiming at you, I put up my hand upon the muzzle of the musket. How droll it is! But it was because I wanted to die before you. When I got this ball, I dragged myself here, nobody saw me, nobody picked me up. I waited for you, I said: He will not come then? Oh! if you knew, I bit my smock, I suffered so much! Now I am well. Do you remember the day when I came into your room, and when I looked at myself in your mirror, and the day when I met you on the boulevard near some work-women? How the birds sang! It was not very long ago. You gave me a hundred sous, and I said to you: I don’t want your money. Did you pick up your coin? You are not rich. I didn’t think to tell you to pick it up. The sun shone bright, I was not cold. Do you remember, Monsieur Marius? Oh! I am happy! We are all going to die.”

She had a wandering, grave, and touching air. Her torn smock showed her bare throat. While she was talking she rested her wounded hand upon her breast where there was another hole, from which there came with each pulsation a flow of blood like a jet of wine from an open bung.

Marius gazed upon this unfortunate creature with profound compassion.

“Oh!” she exclaimed suddenly, “it is coming back. I am stifling!”

She seized her smock and bit it, and her legs writhed upon the pavement.

She was sitting almost upright, but her voice was very low and broken by hiccoughs. At intervals the death-rattle interrupted her. She approached her face as near as she could to Marius’ face. She added with a strange expression:

“Listen, I don’t want to deceive you. I have a letter in my pocket for you. Since yesterday. I was told to put it in the post. I kept it. I didn’t want it to reach you. But you would not like it of me perhaps when we meet again so soon. We do meet again, don’t we? Take your letter.”

She grasped Marius’ hand convulsively with her wounded hand, but she seemed no longer to feel the pain. She put Marius’ hand into the pocket of her smock. Marius really felt a paper there.

“Take it,” said she.

Marius took the letter.

She made a sign of satisfaction and of consent.

“Now for my pains, promise me—”

And she hesitated.

“What?” asked Marius.

“Promise me!”

“I promise you.”

“Promise to kiss me on the forehead when I am dead. I shall feel it.”

She let her head fall back upon Marius’ knees and her eyelids closed. He thought that poor soul had gone. Eponine lay motionless; but just when Marius supposed her for ever asleep, she slowly opened her eyes in which the gloomy deepness of death appeared, and said to him with an accent the sweetness of which already seemed to come from another world:

“And then, do you know, Monsieur Marius, I believe I was a little in love with you.”

She essayed to smile again and expired.

MARIUS KEPT his promise. He kissed that livid forehead from which oozed an icy sweat. This was not infidelity to Cosette; it was a thoughtful and gentle farewell to an unhappy soul.

He had not taken the letter which Eponine had given him without a thrill. He had felt at once the presence of an event. He was impatient to read it. The heart of man is thus made; the unfortunate child had hardly closed her eyes when Marius thought to unfold this paper. He laid her gently upon the ground, and went away. Something told him that he could not read that letter in sight of this corpse.

He went to a candle in the basement-room. It was a little note, folded and sealed with the elegant care of a woman. The address was in a woman’s hand, and ran:

“To Monsieur, Monsieur Marius Pontmercy, at M. Courfeyrac‘s, Rue de la Verrerie, No.16.”

He broke the seal and read:

“My beloved, alas! my father wishes to start immediately. We shall be to-night in the Rue de l‘Homme Armé, No.7. In a week we shall be in England. COSETTE June 4th.”

Such was the innocence of this love that Marius did not even know Cosette’s handwriting.

What happened may be told in a few words. Eponine had done it all. After the evening of the 3rd of June, she had had a double thought, to thwart the projects of her father and the bandits upon the house in the Rue Plumet, and to separate Marius from Cosette. She had changed rags with the first young rogue who thought it amusing to dress as a woman while Eponine disguised herself as a man. It was she who, in the Champ de Mars, had given Jean Valjean the expressive warning:
Move out.
Jean Valjean returned home, and said to Cosette:
we start to-night, and we are going to the Rue de l‘Homme Armé with Toussaint. Next week we shall be in

London.
Cosette, prostrated by this unexpected blow, had hastily written two lines to Marius. But how should she get the letter to the post? She did not go out alone, and Toussaint, surprised at such an errand, would surely show the letter to M. Fauchelevent. In this anxiety, Cosette saw, through the grating, Eponine in men’s clothes, who was now prowling continually about the garden. Cosette called “this young working-man” and handed him five francs and the letter, saying to him: “carry this letter to its address right away.” Eponine put the letter in her pocket. The next day, June 5th, she went to Courfeyrac’s to ask for Marius, not to give him the letter, but, a thing which every jealous and loving soul will understand, “to see.” There she waited for Marius, or, at least, for Courfeyrac—still to see. When Courfeyrac said to her: we are going to the barricades, an idea flashed across her mind. To throw herself into that death as she would have thrown herself into any other, and to push Marius into it. She followed Courfeyrac, made sure of the post where they were building the barricade; and very sure, since Marius had received no notice, and she had intercepted the letter, that he would at nightfall be at his usual evening rendezvous, she went to the Rue Plumet, waited there for Marius, and sent him, in the name of his friends, that appeal which must, she thought, lead him to the barricade. She counted upon Marius’ despair when he should not find Cosette; she was not mistaken. She returned herself to the Rue de la Chanvrerie. We have seen what she did there. She died with that tragic joy of jealous hearts which drag the being they love into death with them, saying: nobody shall have him!

Marius covered Cosette’s letter with kisses. She loved him then? He had for a moment the idea that now he need not die. Then he said to himself: “She is going away. Her father takes her to England and my grandfather refuses to consent to the marriage. Nothing is changed in our fate.” Dreamers, like Marius, have these supreme depressions, and paths hence are chosen in despair. The fatigue of life is unbearable; death is sooner over. Then he thought that there were two duties remaining for him to fulfil: to inform Cosette of his death and to send her a last farewell, and to save from the imminent catastrophe which was approaching, this poor child, Eponine’s brother and Thénardier’s son.

He had a pocket-book with him; the same that had contained the pages upon which he had written so many thoughts of love for Cosette. He tore out a leaf and wrote with a pencil these few lines:

“Our marriage was impossible. I have asked my grandfather, he has refused; I am without fortune, and you also. I ran to your house, I did not find you, you know the promise that I gave you? I keep it, I die, I love you. When you read this, my soul will be near you, and will smile upon you.”

Having nothing to seal this letter with, he merely folded the paper, and wrote upon it this address:

“To Mademoiselle Cosette Fauchelevent, at M. Fauchelevent‘s, Rue de l’Homme Armé, No. 7.
”

The letter folded, he remained a moment in thought, took his pocket-book again, opened it, and wrote these four lines on the first page with the same pencil:

“My name is Marius Pontmercy. Carry my corpse to my grandfather‘s, M. Gillenormand, Rue des Filles du Calvaire, No. 6, in the Marais.”

He put the book into his coat-pocket, then he called Gavroche. The
gamin,
at the sound of Marius’ voice, ran up with his joyous and devoted face:

“Will you do something for me?”