Having never had any money, I never acquired the habit of it, and the result is that I have never lacked it; but, if I had been rich, there would have been no more poor people!
You would have seen!
Oh, if the kind hearts only had fat purses, how much better things would go!
I picture myself Jesus Christ with Rothschild’s fortune!
How much good he would do!
Matelote, embrace me!
You are voluptuous and timid!
You have cheeks which invite the kiss of a sister, and lips which claim the kiss of a lover.”
“Hold your tongue, you cask!” said Courfeyrac.
Grantaire retorted:— “I am the capitoul52 and the master of the floral games!”
Enjolras, who was standing on the crest of the barricade, gun in hand, raised his beautiful, austere face.
Enjolras, as the reader knows, had something of the Spartan and of the Puritan in his composition.
He would have perished at Thermopyl? with Leonidas, and burned at Drogheda with Cromwell.
“Grantaire,” he shouted, “go get rid of the fumes of your wine somewhere else than here.
This is the place for enthusiasm, not for drunkenness.
Don’t disgrace the barricade!”
This angry speech produced a singular effect on Grantaire.
One would have said that he had had a glass of cold water flung in his face.
He seemed to be rendered suddenly sober. He sat down, put his elbows on a table near the window, looked at Enjolras with indescribable gentleness, and said to him:—
“Let me sleep here.”
“Go and sleep somewhere else,” cried Enjolras.
But Grantaire, still keeping his tender and troubled eyes fixed on him, replied:—
“Let me sleep here,—until I die.”
Enjolras regarded him with disdainful eyes:—
“Grantaire, you are incapable of believing, of thinking, of willing, of living, and of dying.”
Grantaire replied in a grave tone:— “You will see.”
He stammered a few more unintelligible words, then his head fell heavily on the table, and, as is the usual effect of the second period of inebriety, into which Enjolras had roughly and abruptly thrust him, an instant later he had fallen asleep.
CHAPTER IV—AN ATTEMPT TO CONSOLE THE WIDOW HUCHELOUP
Bahorel, in ecstasies over the barricade, shouted:—
“Here’s the street in its low-necked dress!
How well it looks!”
Courfeyrac, as he demolished the wine-shop to some extent, sought to console the widowed proprietress.
“Mother Hucheloup, weren’t you complaining the other day because you had had a notice served on you for infringing the law, because Gibelotte shook a counterpane out of your window?”
“Yes, my good Monsieur Courfeyrac.
Ah! good Heavens, are you going to put that table of mine in your horror, too?
And it was for the counterpane, and also for a pot of flowers which fell from the attic window into the street, that the government collected a fine of a hundred francs.
If that isn’t an abomination, what is!”
“Well, Mother Hucheloup, we are avenging you.”
Mother Hucheloup did not appear to understand very clearly the benefit which she was to derive from these reprisals made on her account.
She was satisfied after the manner of that Arab woman, who, having received a box on the ear from her husband, went to complain to her father, and cried for vengeance, saying:
“Father, you owe my husband affront for affront.”
The father asked:
“On which cheek did you receive the blow?”
“On the left cheek.”
The father slapped her right cheek and said:
“Now you are satisfied.
Go tell your husband that he boxed my daughter’s ears, and that I have accordingly boxed his wife’s.”
The rain had ceased.
Recruits had arrived.
Workmen had brought under their blouses a barrel of powder, a basket containing bottles of vitriol, two or three carnival torches, and a basket filled with fire-pots, “left over from the King’s festival.” This festival was very recent, having taken place on the 1st of May.