Les Misérables, v. 3

CHAPTER IV

THE BACK ROOM OF THE CAFÉ MUSAIN

One of the conversations among the young men at which Marius was present, and in which he mingled now and then, was a thorough shock for his mind. It came off in the back room of the Café Musain, and nearly all the Friends of the A. B. C. were collected on that occasion, and the chandelier was solemnly lighted. They talked about one thing and another, without passion and with noise, and with the exception of Enjolras and Marius, who were silent, each harangued somewhat hap-hazard. Conversations among chums at times display these peaceful tumults. It was a game and a jumble as much as a conversation; words were thrown and caught up, and students were talking in all the four corners.

No female was admitted into this back room, excepting Louison, the washer-up of caps, who crossed it from time to time to go from the wash-house to the "laboratory." Grantaire, who was perfectly tipsy, was deafening the corner he had seized upon, by shouting things, reasonable and unreasonable, in a thundering voice: —

"I am thirsty, mortals; I have dreamed that the tun of Heidelberg had a fit of apoplexy, and that I was one of the dozen leeches applied to it. I want to drink, for I desire to forget life. Life is a hideous invention of somebody whom I am unacquainted with. It lasts no time and is worth nothing, and a man breaks his neck to live. Life is a scenery in which there are no practicables, and happiness is an old side-scene only painted on one side. Ecclesiastes says, 'All is vanity,' and I agree with the worthy gentleman, who possibly never existed. Zero, not liking to go about naked, clothed itself in vanity. Oh, vanity! the dressing up of everything in big words! A kitchen is a laboratory, a dancer a professor, a mountebank a gymnast, a boxer a pugilist, an apothecary a chemist, a barber an artist, a bricklayer an architect, a jockey a sportsman, and a woodlouse a pterygibranch. Vanity has an obverse and a reverse; the obverse is stupid, – it is the negro with his glass beads; the reverse is ridiculous, – it is the philosopher in his rags. I weep over the one and laugh at the other. What are called honors and dignities, and even honor and dignity, are generally pinchbeck. Kings make a toy of human pride. Caligula made a horse a consul, and Charles II. knighted a sirloin of beef. Drape yourselves, therefore, between the consul Incitatus and the baronet Roastbeef. As to the intrinsic value of people, it is not one bit more respectable; just listen to the panegyric which one neighbor makes of another. White upon white is ferocious. If the lily could talk, how it would run down the dove; and a bigoted woman talking of a pious woman is more venomous than the asp and the whip-snake. It is a pity that I am an ignoramus, for I would quote a multitude of things; but I know nothing. But for all that I have always had sense; when I was a pupil of Gros, instead of daubing sketches, I spent my time in prigging apples. Rapin is the male of rapine. So much for myself; but you others are as good as I, and I laugh at your perfections, excellency, and qualities, for every quality has its defect. The saving man is akin to the miser, the generous man is very nearly related to the prodigal, and the brave man trenches on the braggart. When you call a man very pious, you mean that he is a little bigoted, and there are just as many vices in virtue as there are holes in the mantle of Diogenes. Which do you admire, the killed or the killer, Cæsar or Brutus? People generally stick up for the killer: Long live Brutus! for he was a murderer. Such is virtue; it may be virtue, but it is folly at the same time. There are some queer spots on these great men; the Brutus who killed Cæsar was in love with the statue of a boy. This statue was made by the Greek sculptor Strongylion, who also produced that figure of an Amazon called Finelegs, Euchnemys, which Nero carried about with him when travelling. This Strongylion only left two statues, which brought Brutus and Nero into harmony; Brutus was in love with one and Nero with the other. History is but one long repetition, and one century is a plagiarism of another. The battle of Marengo is a copy of the battle of Pydna; the Tolbiae of Clovis and the Austerlitz of Napoleon are as much alike as two drops of blood. I set but little value on victory. Nothing is so stupid as conquering; the true glory is convincing. But try to prove anything; you satisfy yourself with success; what mediocrity! and with conquering; what a wretched trifle! Alas! vanity and cowardice are everywhere, and everything obeys success, even grammar. Si volet usus, as Horace says. Hence I despise the whole human race. Suppose we descend from universals to particulars? Would you wish me to begin admiring the peoples? What people, if you please? Is it Greece, – the Athenians? Parisians of former time killed Phocion, as you might say Coligny, and adulated tyrants to such a pitch that Anacephorus said of Pisistratus, 'His urine attracts the bees.' The most considerable man in Greece for fifty years was the grammarian Philetas, who was so short and small that he was obliged to put lead in his shoes to keep the wind from blowing him away. On the great square of Corinth there was a statue sculptured by Selamon, and catalogued by Pliny, and it represented Episthatus. What did Episthatus achieve? He invented the cross-buttock. There you have a summary of Greece and glory, and now let us pass to others. Should I admire England? Should I admire France? France, why, – on account of Paris? I have just told you my opinion of the Athenians. England, why, – on account, of London? I hate Carthage, and, besides, Loudon, the metropolis of luxury, is the headquarters of misery: in the single parish of Charing Cross one hundred persons die annually of starvation. Such is Albion, and I will add, as crowning point, that I have seen an Englishwoman dancing in a wreath of roses and with blue spectacles. So, a groan for England. If I do not admire John Bull, ought I to admire Brother Jonathan with his peculiar institution? Take away 'Time is money,' and what remains of England? Take away 'Cotton is king,' and what remains of America? Germany is lymph and Italy bile. Shall we go into ecstasies about Russia? Voltaire admired that country, and he also admired China. I allow that Russia has its beauties, among others a powerful despotism; but I pity the despots, for they have a delicate health. An Alexis decapitated, a Peter stabbed, a Paul strangled, another Paul flattened out with boot-heels, sundry Ivans butchered, several Nicholases and Basils poisoned, – all this proves that the palace of the Emperor of Russia is in a flagrantly unhealthy condition. All the civilized nations offer to the admiration of the thinker one detail, war: now, war, civilized war, exhausts and collects all the forms of banditism, from the brigandages of the trabuceros in the gorges of Mont Jaxa down to the forays of the Comanche Indians in the Doubtful Pass. 'Stuff!' you will say to me, 'Europe is better than Asia after all,' I allow that Asia is absurd, but I do not exactly see what cause you have to laugh at the Grand Lama, you great western nations, who have blended with your fashions and elegances all the complicated filth of majesty, from the dirty chemise of Queen Isabelle down to the chaise percée of the Dauphin. At Brussels the most beer is consumed, at Stockholm the most brandy, at Madrid the most chocolate, at Amsterdam the most gin, at London the most wine, at Constantinople the most coffee, and at Paris the most absinthe, – these are all useful notions. Paris, after all, bears away the bell, for in that city the very rag-pickers are sybarites: and Diogenes would as soon have been a rag-picker on the Place Maubert as a philosopher at the Piræus. Learn this fact also: the wine-shops of the rag-pickers are called 'bibines,' and the most celebrated are the Casserole and the Abattoir. Therefore O restaurants, wine-shops, music-halls, tavern-keepers, brandy and absinthe dispensers, boozing-kens of the rag-pickers, and caravansaries of caliphs, I call you to witness, I am a voluptuary. I dine at Richard's for fifty sous, and I want Persian carpets in which to roll the naked Cleopatra. Where is Cleopatra? Ah, it is you, Louison. Good-evening."

Thus poured forth Grantaire, more than drunk, as he seized the plate-washer as she passed his corner. Bossuet, stretching out his hand toward him, strove to make him be silent, but Grantaire broke out afresh: —

"Eagle of Meaux, down with your paws! You produce no effect upon me with your gesture of Hippocrates refusing the bric-à-brac of Artaxerxes. You need not attempt to calm me; and besides, I am melancholy. What would you have me say? Man is bad, man is a deformity; the butterfly is a success, but man a mistake. God made a failure with that animal. A crowd is a choice of uglinesses: the first comer is a scoundrel. Femme rhymes with infâme. Yes, I have the spleen, complicated with melancholy, home-sickness, and a dash of hypochondria, and I fret, I rage, I yawn, I weary myself, I bore myself, and I find it horribly dull."

"Silence, Big R," Bossuet remarked again, who was discussing a legal point with some chums, and was sunk to his waist in a sentence of judicial slang, of which the following is the end: —

"For my part, although I am scarce an authority, and at the most an amateur lawyer, I assert this, that, according to the terms of the customs of Normandy, upon the Michaelmas day and in every year an equivalent must be paid to the lord of the manor, by all and singular, both by landowners and tenants, and that for every freehold, long lease, mortgage – "

"Echo, plaintive nymph!" Grantaire hummed, dose to Grantaire, at an almost silent table, a quire of paper, an inkstand, and a pen between two small glasses announced that a farce was being sketched out. This great affair was discussed in a low voice, and the heads of the workers almost touched.

"Let us begin with the names, for when you have the names you have the plot."

"That is true: dictate, and I will write."

"Monsieur Dorimon?"

"An annuitant?"

"Of course. His daughter Celestine."

" – tine. Who next?"

"Colonel Sainval."

"Sainval is worn out. Say Valsin."

By the side of these theatrical aspirants another group, which also took advantage of the noise to talk low, were discussing a duel. An old student of thirty was advising a young man of eighteen, and explaining with what sort of adversary he had to deal.

"Hang it! you will have to be careful, for he is a splendid swordsman. He can attack, makes no useless feints, has a strong wrist, brilliancy, and mathematical parries. And then he is left-handed."

In the corner opposite to Grantaire, Joly and Bahorel were playing at dominos and talking of love affairs.

"You are happy," said Joly; "you have a mistress who is always laughing."

"It is a fault she commits," Bahorel answered; "a man's mistress does wrong to laugh, for it encourages him to deceive her, for seeing her gay saves you from remorse. If you see her sad you have scruples of conscience."

"Ungrateful man! a woman who laughs is so nice, and you never quarrel."

"That results from the treaty we made; on forming our little holy alliance, we gave each other a frontier which we never step beyond. Hence comes peace."

"Peace is digesting happiness."

"And you, Jolllly, how does your quarrel stand with Mamselle – you know whom I mean?"

"Oh! she still sulks with a cruel patience."

"And yet you are a lover of most touching thinness."

"Alas!"

"In your place, I would leave her."

"It's easy to say that."

"And to do. Is not her name Musichetta?"

"Yes; ah, my dear Bahorel, she is a superb girl, very literary, with little hands and feet, dresses with taste, is white and plump, and has eyes like a gypsy fortune-teller. I am wild about her."

"My dear boy, you must please her; be fashionable, and make your knees effective. Buy fine trousers of Staub."

"At how much?" cried Grantaire.

In the third corner a poetical, discussion was going on, and Pagan Mythology was quarrelling with Christian Mythology. The point was Olympus, whose defence Jean Prouvaire undertook through his romantic nature. Jean Prouvaire was only timid when in repose; once excited, he broke out into a species of gayety, accentuated his enthusiasm, and he was at once laughing and lyrical.

"Let us not insult the gods," he said, "for perhaps they have not all departed, and Jupiter does not produce the effect of a dead man upon me. The gods are dreams, you say; well, even in nature such as it is at the present day, and after the flight of these dreams, we find again all the old Pagan myths. A mountain with the profile of a citadel, like the Vignemale, for instance, is still for me the head-dress of Cybele. It has not yet been proved to me that Pan does not come at night to whistle in the hollow trunks of the willows, while stopping their holes with his fingers in turn, and I have ever believed that he had some connection with the cascade of Pissevache."

In the last corner politics were being discussed, and the conceded charter was abused. Combeferre supported it feebly, while Courfeyrac attacked it energetically. There was on the table an unlucky copy of the Charte Touquet. Courfeyrac had seized it and was shaking it, mixing with his argument the rustling of this sheet of paper.

"In the first place, I do not want kings; even from the economic point of view alone I do not want them, for a king is a parasite, and there are no gratis monarchs. Listen to this, – kings are an expensive luxury. On the death of Francis I. the public debt of France was thirty thousand livres; on the death of Louis XIV. it was two milliards six hundred millions, at twenty-eight livres the marc, which in 1740 was equivalent, according to Desmarets, to four milliards five hundred millions, and at the present day would be equal to twelve milliards. In the second place, – no offence to Combeferre, – a conceded charter is a bad expedient of civilization, for saving the transaction, softening the passage, deadening the shock, making the nation pass insensibly from monarchy to democracy by the practice of constitutional fictions, – all these are detestable fictions. No, no; let us never give the people a false light, and principles pine and grow pale in your constitutional cellar. No bastardizing, no compromise, no concession, from a king to people! In all these concessions there is an Article XIV., and by the side of the hand that gives is the claw that takes back again. I distinctly refuse your charter; for a charter is a mask, and there is falsehood behind it. A people that accepts a charter abdicates, and right is only right when entire. No charter, then, I say."

It was winter time, and two logs were crackling on the hearth; this was tempting, and Courfeyrac did not resist. He crumpled up the poor Charte Touquet and threw it in the fire; the paper blazed, and Combeferre philosophically watched the masterpiece of Louis XVIII. burning, contenting himself with saying, —

"The charter metamorphosed into flame."

And sarcasms, sallies, jests, that French thing which is called entrain, that English thing which is called humor, good taste and bad, sound and unsound reasoning, all the rockets of dialogue ascending together and crossing each other in all parts of the room, produced above their heads a species of merry explosion.

CHAPTER V

ENLARGEMENT OF THE HORIZON

The collision of young minds has this admirable thing about it, that the spark can never be foreseen or the lightning divined. What will shoot forth presently, no one knows. The burst of laughter is heard, and at the next moment seriousness makes its entrance. The impetus is given by the first word that comes, and everybody's fancy reigns. A joke suffices to open an unforeseen subject. The conversation takes a sudden turn, and the perspective changes all at once. Chance is the scene-shifter of conversations. A stern thought, which strangely issued from a clash of words, suddenly flashed through the medley in which Grantaire, Bahorel, Prouvaire, Bossuet, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac were blindly slashing and pointing. How is it that a phrase suddenly springs up in conversation, and underlines itself at once in the attention of those who trace it? As we have just said, no one knows. In the midst of the general confusion Bossuet concluded some remark he made to Combeferre with the date, "June 18, 1815, Waterloo."

At this name of Waterloo, Marius, who had been leaning over a glass of water, removed his hand from under his chin, and began looking intently at the company.

"Pardieu!" Courfeyrac exclaimed (Parbleu at this period was beginning to grow out of fashion). "That number eighteen is strange, and strikes me, for it is Bonaparte's fatal number. Place Louis before and Brumaire behind, and you have the man's whole destiny, with this expressive peculiarity, that the beginning is closely pursued by the end."

Enjolras, who had hitherto been dumb, now broke the silence, and said, —

"Courfeyrac, you mean the crime by the expiation."

This word crime exceeded the measure which Marius, who was already greatly affected by this sudden reference to Waterloo, could accept. He rose, walked slowly to the map of France hanging on the wall, on the bottom of which could be seen an island in a separate compartment; he placed his finger on this and said, —

"Corsica, a small island which made France very great."

This was the breath of frozen air; all broke off, for they felt that something was about to begin. Bahorel, who was assuming a victorious attitude in answering Bossuet, gave it up in order to listen; and Enjolras, whose blue eye was fixed on no one and seemed to be examining space, answered without looking at Marius, —

"France requires no Corsica to be great. France is great because she is France, quia nominor leo."

Marius felt no desire to give way; he turned to Enjolras, and his voice had a strange vibration, produced by his internal emotion.

"Heaven forbid that I should diminish France; but it is not diminishing her to amalgamate Napoleon with her. Come, let us talk; I am a new-comer among you, but I confess that you astonish me. Where are we? who are we? who are you? who am I? Let us come to an understanding about the Emperor. I hear you call him Buonaparte, laying a stress on the u, like the Royalists, but I must tell you that toy grandfather does better still, for he says, 'Buonaparté'. I fancied you young men, but where do you keep your enthusiasm, and what do you do with it? Whom do you admire, if it is not the Emperor, and what more do you want? If you will not have that great man, what great man would you have? He had everything; he was complete, and in his brain was the cube of human faculties. He made codes like Justinian, and dictated like Cæsar; his conversation blended the lightning of Pascal with the thunder of Tacitus; he made history and wrote it, and his bulletins are Iliads; he combined the figures of Newton with the metaphor of Mahomet. He left behind him in the East words great as the Pyramids; at Tilsit he taught majesty to Emperors; at the Academy of Sciences he answered Laplace; at the Council of State he held his own against Merlin; he gave a soul to the geometry of one and to the sophistry of others; he was legist with the lawyers, sidereal with the astronomers. Like Cromwell, blowing out one of two candles, he went to the Temple to bargain for a curtain tassel; he saw everything, knew everything, but that did not prevent him from laughing heartily by the cradle of his new-born son. And all at once startled Europe listened, armies set out, parks of artillery rolled along, bridges of boats were thrown over rivers, clouds of cavalry galloped in the hurricane, and shouts, bugles, and the crashing of thrones could be heard all around! The frontiers of kingdoms oscillated on the map, the sound of a super-human sword being drawn from its scabbard could be heard, and he was seen, standing erect on the horizon, with a gleam in his hand, and a splendor in his eyes, opening in the thunder his two wings, the grand army and the old Guard. He was the archangel of war!"

All were silent, and Enjolras hung his head. Silence always produces to some extent the effect of acquiescence, or a species of setting the back against the wall. Marius, almost without drawing breath, continued with increased enthusiasm, —

"Let us be just, my friends! What a splendid destiny it is for a people to be the empire of such an Emperor, when that people is France and adds its genius to the genius of that man! To appear and reign; to march and triumph; to have as bivouacs every capital; to select grenadiers and make kings of them; to decree the downfall of dynasties; to transfigure Europe at double-quick step; to feel when you threaten that you lay your hand on the sword-hilt of God; to follow in one man Hannibal, Cæsar, and Charlemagne; to be the people of a ruler who accompanies your every daybreak with the brilliant announcement of a battle gained; to be aroused in the morning by the guns of the Invalides; to cast into the abysses of light prodigious words which are eternally luminous, – Marengo, Areola, Austerlitz, Jena, and Wagram! to produce at each moment on the zenith of centuries constellations of victories: to make the French Empire a counterpart of the Roman Empire; to be the great nation, and give birth to the great army; to send legions all over the world, as the mountain sends its eagles in all directions to conquer, rule, and crush; to be in Europe a people gilded by glory; to sound a Titanic flourish of trumpets through history; to conquer the world twice, by conquest and by amazement, – all this is sublime, and what is there greater?"