“How many?”
“Two axes and a pole-axe.”
“That is good.
There are now twenty-six combatants of us on foot.
How many guns are there?”
“Thirty-four.”
“Eight too many.
Keep those eight guns loaded like the rest and at hand.
Swords and pistols in your belts.
Twenty men to the barricade.
Six ambushed in the attic windows, and at the window on the first floor to fire on the assailants through the loop-holes in the stones.
Let not a single worker remain inactive here.
Presently, when the drum beats the assault, let the twenty below stairs rush to the barricade.
The first to arrive will have the best places.”
These arrangements made, he turned to Javert and said:
“I am not forgetting you.”
And, laying a pistol on the table, he added:
“The last man to leave this room will smash the skull of this spy.”
“Here?” inquired a voice.
“No, let us not mix their corpses with our own.
The little barricade of the Mondetour lane can be scaled.
It is only four feet high.
The man is well pinioned.
He shall be taken thither and put to death.”
There was some one who was more impassive at that moment than Enjolras, it was Javert.
Here Jean Valjean made his appearance.
He had been lost among the group of insurgents.
He stepped forth and said to Enjolras:
“You are the commander?”
“Yes.”
“You thanked me a while ago.”
“In the name of the Republic.
The barricade has two saviors, Marius Pontmercy and yourself.”
“Do you think that I deserve a recompense?”
“Certainly.”
“Well, I request one.”
“What is it?”
“That I may blow that man’s brains out.”
Javert raised his head, saw Jean Valjean, made an almost imperceptible movement, and said:
“That is just.”
As for Enjolras, he had begun to re-load his rifle; he cut his eyes about him:
“No objections.”
And he turned to Jean Valjean:
“Take the spy.”
Jean Valjean did, in fact, take possession of Javert, by seating himself on the end of the table.
He seized the pistol, and a faint click announced that he had cocked it.
Almost at the same moment, a blast of trumpets became audible.
“Take care!” shouted Marius from the top of the barricade.
Javert began to laugh with that noiseless laugh which was peculiar to him, and gazing intently at the insurgents, he said to them:
“You are in no better case than I am.”