Les Misérables Volume Two by Victor Hugo

Author:Victor Hugo [Hugo, Victor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wordsworth Editions Ltd
Published: 2013-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

3. Night begins to gather over Grantaire

The place was indeed admirably chosen, the entrance of the street wide, the further end contracted and like a cul-de-sac, Corinth throttling it, Rue Mondétour easy to bar at the right and left, no attack possible except from the Rue Saint Denis, that is from the front, and without cover. Bossuet tipsy had the coup d’oeil of Hannibal fasting.

At the irruption of the mob, dismay seized the whole street, not a passer but had gone into eclipse. In a flash, at the end, on the right, on the left, shops, stalls, alley gates, windows, blinds, dormer-windows, shutters of every size, were closed from the ground to the roofs. One frightened old woman had fixed a mattress before her window on two clothes poles, as a shield against the musketry. The wine-shop was the only house which remained open; and that for a good reason, because the band had rushed into it. ‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’ sighed Ma’am Hucheloup.

Bossuet had gone down to meet Courfeyrac.

Joly, who had come to the window, cried:

‘Courfeyrac, you bust take ad ubbrella. You will catch cold.’

Meanwhile, in a few minutes, twenty iron bars had been wrested from the grated front of the wine-shop, twenty yards of pavement had been torn up; Gavroche and Bahorel had seized on its passage and tipped over the dray of a lime merchant named Anceau, this dray contained three barrels full of lime, which they had placed under the piles of paving stones; Enjolras had opened the trap-door of the cellar and all the widow Hucheloup’s empty casks had gone to flank the lime barrels; Feuilly, with his fingers accustomed to colour the delicate folds of fans, had buttressed the barrels and the dray with two massive heaps of stones. Stones improvised like the rest, and obtained nobody knows where. Some shoring-timbers had been pulled down from the front of a neighbouring house and laid upon the casks. When Bossuet and Courfeyrac turned round, half the street was already barred by a rampart higher than a man. There is nothing like the popular hand to build whatever can be built by demolishing.

Chowder and Fricassee had joined the labourers. Fricassee went back and forth loaded with rubbish. Her weariness contributed to the barricade. She served paving stones, as she would have served wine, with a sleepy air.

An omnibus with two white horses passed at the end of the street.

Bossuet sprang over the pavement, ran, stopped the driver, made the passengers get down, gave his hand ‘to the ladies,’ dismissed the conductor, and came back with the vehicle, leading the horses by the bridle.

‘An omnibus,’ said he, ‘doesn’t pass by Corinth. Non licet omnibus adire Corinthum.’ [179]

A moment later the horses were unhitched and going off at will through the Rue Mondetour, and the omnibus, lying on its side, completed the barring of the street.

Ma’am Hucheloup, completely upset, had taken refuge in the first storey.

Her eyes were wandering, and she looked without seeing, crying in a whisper.

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