CHAPTER II

THE FLAG: ACT SECOND


Since they had arrived at Corinthe, and had begun the construction
of the barricade, no attention had been paid to Father Mabeuf.
M. Mabeuf had not quitted the mob, however; he had entered
the ground-floor of the wine-shop and had seated himself behind
the counter. There he had, so to speak, retreated into himself.
He no longer seemed to look or to think. Courfeyrac and others
had accosted him two or three times, warning him of his peril,
beseeching him to withdraw, but he did not hear them. When they
were not speaking to him, his mouth moved as though he were replying
to some one, and as soon as he was addressed, his lips became
motionless and his eyes no longer had the appearance of being alive.

Several hours before the barricade was attacked, he had assumed an
attitude which he did not afterwards abandon, with both fists planted
on his knees and his head thrust forward as though he were gazing over
a precipice. Nothing had been able to move him from this attitude;
it did not seem as though his mind were in the barricade.
When each had gone to take up his position for the combat,
there remained in the tap-room where Javert was bound to the post,
only a single insurgent with a naked sword, watching over Javert,
and himself, Mabeuf. At the moment of the attack, at the detonation,
the physical shock had reached him and had, as it were, awakened him;
he started up abruptly, crossed the room, and at the instant when
Enjolras repeated his appeal: "Does no one volunteer?" the old man
was seen to make his appearance on the threshold of the wine-shop.
His presence produced a sort of commotion in the different groups.
A shout went up:--

"It is the voter! It is the member of the Convention!
It is the representative of the people!"

It is probable that he did not hear them.

He strode straight up to Enjolras, the insurgents withdrawing
before him with a religious fear; he tore the flag from Enjolras,
who recoiled in amazement and then, since no one dared to stop or to
assist him, this old man of eighty, with shaking head but firm foot,
began slowly to ascend the staircase of paving-stones arranged in
the barricade. This was so melancholy and so grand that all around
him cried: "Off with your hats!" At every step that he mounted,
it was a frightful spectacle; his white locks, his decrepit face,
his lofty, bald, and wrinkled brow, his amazed and open mouth,
his aged arm upholding the red banner, rose through the gloom and
were enlarged in the bloody light of the torch, and the bystanders
thought that they beheld the spectre of '93 emerging from the earth,
with the flag of terror in his hand.

When he had reached the last step, when this trembling and
terrible phantom, erect on that pile of rubbish in the presence
of twelve hundred invisible guns, drew himself up in the face
of death and as though he were more powerful than it, the whole
barricade assumed amid the darkness, a supernatural and colossal form.

There ensued one of those silences which occur only in the presence
of prodigies. In the midst of this silence, the old man waved
the red flag and shouted:--

"Long live the Revolution! Long live the Republic! Fraternity!
Equality! and Death!"

Those in the barricade heard a low and rapid whisper, like the
murmur of a priest who is despatching a prayer in haste.
It was probably the commissary of police who was making the legal
summons at the other end of the street.

Then the same piercing voice which had shouted: "Who goes there?"
shouted:--

"Retire!"

M. Mabeuf, pale, haggard, his eyes lighted up with the mournful
flame of aberration, raised the flag above his head and repeated:--

"Long live the Republic!"

"Fire!" said the voice.

A second discharge, similar to the first, rained down upon the barricade.

The old man fell on his knees, then rose again, dropped the flag
and fell backwards on the pavement, like a log, at full length,
with outstretched arms.

Rivulets of blood flowed beneath him. His aged head, pale and sad,
seemed to be gazing at the sky.

One of those emotions which are superior to man, which make
him forget even to defend himself, seized upon the insurgents,
and they approached the body with respectful awe.

"What men these regicides were!" said Enjolras.

Courfeyrac bent down to Enjolras' ear:--

"This is for yourself alone, I do not wish to dampen the enthusiasm.
But this man was anything rather than a regicide. I knew him.
His name was Father Mabeuf. I do not know what was the matter
with him to-day. But he was a brave blockhead. Just look at
his head."

"The head of a blockhead and the heart of a Brutus," replied Enjolras.

Then he raised his voice:--

"Citizens! This is the example which the old give to the young.
We hesitated, he came! We were drawing back, he advanced! This is
what those who are trembling with age teach to those who tremble
with fear! This aged man is august in the eyes of his country.
He has had a long life and a magnificent death! Now, let us place
the body under cover, that each one of us may defend this old man
dead as he would his father living, and may his presence in our midst
render the barricade impregnable!"

A murmur of gloomy and energetic assent followed these words.

Enjolras bent down, raised the old man's head, and fierce as he was,
he kissed him on the brow, then, throwing wide his arms, and handling
this dead man with tender precaution, as though he feared to hurt it,
he removed his coat, showed the bloody holes in it to all,
and said:--

"This is our flag now."