END OF THE VERSES OF JEAN PROUVAIRE.
All surrounded Marius, and Courfeyrac fell on his neck.
"Here you are!"
"What happiness!" said Combeferre.
"You arrived just in time," said Bossuet.
"Were it not for you I should be dead!" Courfeyrac remarked.
"Without you I should have been gobbled!" Gavroche added.
Marius asked,—
"Who is the leader?"
"Yourself," Enjolras replied.
Marius the whole day through had had a furnace in his brain, but now it was a whirlwind; and this whirlwind which was in him produced on him the effect of being outside him and carrying him away. It seemed to him as if he were already an immense distance from life, and his two luminous months of joy and love suddenly terminated at this frightful precipice. Cosette lost to him, this barricade, M. Mabœuf letting himself be killed for the Republic, himself chief of the insurgents,—all these things seemed to him a monstrous nightmare, and he was obliged to make a mental effort in order to remind himself that all which surrounded him was real. Marius had not lived long enough yet to know that nothing is so imminent as the impossible, and that what must be always foreseen is the unforeseen. He witnessed the performance of his own drama as if it were a piece of which he understood nothing. In his mental fog he did not recognize Javert, who, fastened to his post, had not made a movement of his head during the attack on the barricade, and saw the revolt buzzing round him with the resignation of a martyr and the majesty of a judge. Marius did not even notice him. In the mean while the assailants no longer stirred; they could be heard marching and moving at the end of the street, but did not venture into it, either because they were waiting for orders, or else required reinforcements, before rushing again upon this impregnable redoubt. The insurgents had posted sentries, and some who were medical students had begun dressing wounds. All the tables had been dragged out of the wine-shop, with the exception of the two reserved for the lint and the cartridges, and the one on which Father Mabœuf lay; they had been added to the barricade, and the mattresses off the beds of Widow Hucheloup and the girls had been put in their place. On these mattresses the wounded were laid; as for the three poor creatures who inhabited Corinth, no one knew what had become of them, but they were at length found hidden in the cellar.
A poignant emotion darkened the joy of the liberated barricade; the roll-call was made, and one of the insurgents was missing. Who was he? One of the dearest and most valiant, Jean Prouvaire. He was sought for among the dead, but was not there; he was sought for among the wounded, and was not there; he was evidently a prisoner. Combeferre said to Enjolras,—
"They have our friend, but we have their agent; do you insist on the death of this spy?"
"Yes," Enjolras replied, "but less than the life of Jean Prouvaire."
This was said in the bar-room close to Javert's post.
"Well," Combeferre continued, "I will fasten a handkerchief to my cane, and go as a flag of truce to offer to give them their man for our man."
"Listen," said Enjolras, as he laid his hand on Combeferre's arm.
There was a meaning click of guns at the end of the street, and a manly voice could be heard crying,—
"Long live France! Long live the future!"
They recognized Prouvaire's voice; a flash passed and a detonation burst forth; then the silence returned.
"They have killed him," Combeferre exclaimed.
Enjolras looked at Javert and said to him,—
"Your friends have just shot you."
CHAPTER VI.
DEATH'S AGONY AFTER LIFE'S AGONY.
It is a singularity of this sort of war, that the attack on barricades is almost always made in the front, and that the assailants generally refrain from turning positions, either because they suspect ambuscades, or are afraid to enter winding streets. The whole attention of the insurgents was, consequently, directed to the great barricade, which was evidently the constantly threatened point, and the contest would infallibly recommence there. Marius, however, thought of the little barricade, and went to it; it was deserted, and only guarded by the lamp which flickered among the paving-stones. However, the Mondétour lane and the branches of the Little Truanderie were perfectly calm. As Marius, after making his inspection, was going back, he heard his name faintly uttered in the darkness,—
"Monsieur Marius!"
He started, for he recognized the voice which had summoned him two hours back through the garden railings in the Rue Plumet, but this voice now only seemed to be a gasp; he looked around him and saw nobody. Marius fancied that he was mistaken, and that it was an illusion added by his mind to the extraordinary realities which were pressing round him. He took a step to leave the remote angle in which the barricade stood.
"Monsieur Marius!" the voice repeated; this time he could not doubt, for he had heard distinctly; he looked around but saw nothing.
"At your feet," the voice said.
He stooped down, and saw in the shadow a form crawling toward him on the pavement. It was the speaker. The lamp enabled him to distinguish a blouse, torn cotton-velvet trousers, bare feet, and something that resembled a pool of blood; Marius also caught a glimpse of a pale face raised to him, and saying,—
"Do you not recognize me?"
"No."
"Éponine."
Marius eagerly stooped down; it was really that hapless girl, dressed in male clothes.
"What brought you here? What are you doing?"
"Dying," she said to him.
There are words and incidents that wake up crushed beings; Marius cried with a start,—
"You are wounded! Wait, I will carry you into the wine-shop! Your wound will be dressed! Is it serious? How shall I catch hold of you so as not to hurt you? Where is it you suffer? Help, good God! But what did you come to do here?"
And he tried to pass his hand under her to lift her, and as he did so he touched her hand; she uttered a faint cry.
"Have I hurt you?" Marius asked.
"A little."
"But I only touched your hand."
She raised her hand to Marius's eyes, and he could see a hole right through it.
"What is the matter with your hand?" he said.
"It is pierced."
"Pierced?"
"Yes."
"What with?"
"A bullet."
"How?"
"Did you see a musket aimed at you?"
"Yes, and a hand laid on the muzzle."
"It was mine."
Marius shuddered.
"What madness! poor child! But all the better; if that is your wound, it is nothing, so let me carry you to a bed. Your wound will be dressed, and people do not die of a bullet through the hand."
She murmured,—
"The bullet passed through my hand but came out of my back, so it is useless to move me from here. I will tell you how you can do me more good than a surgeon; sit down by my side on that stone."
He obeyed; she laid her head on his knees, and without looking at him, said,—
"Oh, how good that is, how comforting! See, I no longer suffer!"
She remained silent for a moment, then turned her head with an effort and gazed at Marius.
"Do you know this, Monsieur Marius? It annoyed me that you entered that garden, though it was very foolish of me, as I showed you the house; and then, too, I ought to have remembered that a young gentleman like you—"
She broke off, and leaping over the gloomy transitions which her mind doubtless contained, she added with a heart-rending smile,—
"You thought me ugly, did you not?"
Then she continued,—
"You are lost, and no one will leave the barricade now. I brought you here, you know, and you are going to die, I feel sure of it. And yet, when I saw the soldier aiming at you, I laid my hand on the muzzle of his gun. How droll that is! But the reason was that I wished to die with you. When I received that bullet I dragged myself here, and as no one saw me I was not picked up. I waited for you and said, 'Will he not come?' Oh, if you only knew how I bit my blouse, for I was suffering so terribly! But now I feel all right. Do you remember the day when I came into your room and looked at myself in your glass, and the day when I met you on the boulevard near the washerwomen? How the birds sang! and it is not so very long ago. You gave me five francs, and I said to you, 'I do not want your money.' I hope you picked up your coin, for you are not rich, and I did not think of telling you to pick it up. The sun was shining and it was not at all cold. Do you remember, Monsieur Marius? Oh, I am so happy, for everybody is going to die!"
She had a wild, grave, and heart-rending look, and her ragged blouse displayed her naked throat. While speaking, she laid her wounded hand on her chest, in which there was another hole, and whence every moment a stream of blood spirted like a jet of wine from an open bung. Marius gazed at this unfortunate creature with profound compassion.
"Oh," she suddenly continued, "it is coming back! I suffocate!"
She raised her blouse and bit it, and her limbs stiffened on the pavement. At this moment Gavroche's crowing voice could be heard from the barricade: the lad had got on to a table to load his musket, and was gayly singing the song so popular at that day,—
"En voyant Lafayette,
Le gendarme répète:
Sauvons-nous! sauvons-nous! sauvons-nous!"
Éponine raised herself and listened; then she muttered,—
"It is he."
And, turning to Marius, added,—
"My brother is here, but he must not see me, or he would scold me."
"Your brother?" Marius asked, as he thought most bitterly and sadly of the duties toward the Thénardiers which his father had left him; "which is your brother?"
"That little fellow."
"The one who is singing?"
"Yes."
Marius made a move.
"Oh, do not go away!" she said; "it will not be long just now."
She was almost sitting up, but her voice was very low, and every now and then interrupted by the death-rattle. She put her face as close as she could to that of Marius, and added with a strange expression,—
"Come, I will not play you a trick: I have had a letter addressed to you in my pocket since yesterday; I was told to put it in the post, but kept it, as I did not wish it to reach you. But perhaps you will not be angry with me when we meet again ere long, for we shall meet again, shall we not? Take your letter."
She convulsively seized Marius's hand with her wounded hand, but seemed no longer to feel the suffering. She placed Marius's hand in her blouse pocket, and he really felt a paper.
"Take it," she said.
Marius took the letter, and she gave a nod of satisfaction and consolation.
"Now, for my trouble, promise me—"
And she stopped.
"What?" Marius asked.
"Promise me!"
"I do promise!"
"Promise to kiss me on the forehead when I am dead; I shall feel it."
She let her head fall again on Marius's knees and her eyes closed; he fancied the poor soul departed. Éponine remained motionless; but all at once, at the moment when Marius believed her eternally asleep, she slowly opened her eyes, on which the gloomy profundity of death was visible, and said to him with an accent whose gentleness seemed already to come from another world,—
"And then, look you, Monsieur Marius, I think that I was a little in love with you."
She tried to smile once more, and expired.