Five of Wands - The Snow Queen
La Fée Verte
Une nouvelle en cinq chapitres
Chapitre premier
La dernière des fées puissantes
Allons-y donc! Let us begin, starting as we must at the start, and when we have reached the end of this story, we shall know so much more than we already know, for we have among our characters, and furthermore in the leading cast, one of the most sinister faeries that there have ever been! I do not need to tell you, dear readers, that there once was a time when faeries, elementals, and other supernatural beings, the so-called Long-Lived Ones, pervaded the whole Earth, not only in the wide open spaces of nature and the countryside, but also on the streets of the towns and even at the royal courts, living in more peaceful communion, or at least coexistence, with all of mortalkind. Even inspiring the people who were inclined towards visual art, literature, music, fashion, and performance to the greatest heights of creative achievement.
The rise of the Church and of science marked the beginning of the decadence, and it seemed that the human species did not know of anything else to invent to bring about the loss of the Fair Folk; but the killing blow came suddenly and surreptitiously with the dawn of the nineteenth century, as old kingdoms were toppled by the rage of the common folk, and dark clouds of steam smoke and gunsmoke clouded the skies both night and day. In the name of progress and revolution, they burned traditions at the stake and trampled honour underfoot, barring the sun from its right to shine in the day sky with the grinding of those dark Satanic mills and the roaring of those railway trains, which, in turn, led to the dwindling population of those blithe spirits that poisoned their perfect world, set right according to the decrees of order and of rationality.
Those stupid mortals, those prodigious wonders of nature who called themselves people or humans, were changing the face of everything in the world. The loveliest landscapes, by the end of the century, would be turned into barren wastelands, or so said those of the Fair Folk who had the gift of foresight. And thus, by the decade of the 1830s, most of the faeries and elementals across Western Europe had become extinct.
But still there were those who survived, and even thrived, in that brave new world that had such people in it. And the most powerful of those who thrived was known simply as the Green Faery. Piercing and green were the eyes of this regal damsel, green as poison, as were the veins through her translucent lilywhite skin, and the blood that coursed through those veins. Unlike other nature spirits who had retreated into the most barren and darkest of wastelands, shunning humankind, the Green Faery did not shy away from contact with mortals, trying every now and then to fight her vanquishers, if not by brute force, at least through ruse and deception. The modus operandi which she employed in that incessant antagonism was none other than that, on the direst and stormiest of the bleak autumn and winter nights, she would wander the streets of the larger towns, even those of the capitals, and sought up wayward young people, who met her by sheer chance; she breathed a vein on her wrist and poured out her sickly-green blood for those striplings and maidens to drink. Better still, she knew, someone might get a sip of the chartreuse-coloured elixir in their heart, and this would be a terrible, wonderful thing, for the poor victim's heart would grow cold and hard, turning at last to a lump of ice.
And that was when things began to look dire, for whoever drank the blood of the Green Faery would be seized with a burning thirst for more of her blood, that nothing else would quench and that more of that green blood would kindle hotter, so that the drinker would not think, not even dream, of love for friends, family, or the motherland, and would do anything, even kill or torture, for more of that cursed draught: and of course that was gruesome indeed... Not only that, but whoever drank of that intoxicating draught became at first furious, then helpless and feeble, an easy prey to dark forces. In that manner, the Green Faery was gathering wayward young people left and right into her lair, whose location was still unknown, to avenge the loss of her kith and kin, and to claim the influence and the worldly power that were hers by right.
People cannot imagine being happy. They have never been happy. How do they know what it is like? They know only desire. And desire is, at least, a familiar thing. How frightened they must be, to think they will lose it, to stretch out their hands... If someone forsook both the world and oneself, then, that person was gone, she had realised. And each and every person was condemned to be free, and thus to experience, in their lifetime, at least a single moment of weakness. That instant in which their emotions or the stress of a situation goes past critical and causes a thoughtless reaction that they would never have if they were thinking clearly. This action almost always causes damage of some kind, most commonly to someone or something they care about.
The same free will that made those paltry humans destroy the environment for profit also made them vulnerable and easy to prey upon. As long as there was free will, there would be darkness in people's hearts, and the spirits who preyed upon that darkness would never die. Humans were and are weak that way; it was a two-edged sword. And that was the reason why she and her equals in approach loved free will so much, as much as they loathed it: because, at the end of the day, humans use it to follow their hearts. And who would not gladly take advantage of that?
Evening by evening, the older generations warned their children about anyone who has at least a drop of the fey blood, which gives them some ability to charm a man or woman if they so desire. Whoever drank of that strong, intoxicating liquid became at first furious, then helpless and feeble, an easy prey to her. Up till now, she'd used her talent only to coax the young lieutenants and captains who had been left for dead upon sunset battlefields to her side when necessary. But her talent was enough to keep any and every young person she had found under pressure, and keep them she would. Now in these restless times of armed peace, as young people moved away into the large towns, science and the fine arts made wuthering progress at the universities, and revolutions were brewing in every nation, the young people eager to topple the ancien régime in favour of something more righteous, the wise upbraidings of the elders were soon lost and forgotten.
All of which, in turn, gave her, during those decades, free berth and full powers to cajole and keep any person who had caught her attention.
This is the tale of a young man who was taken by the Green Faery.
And that of the lover who walked through fire and ice to set him free.
It would have been better if she had never torn the two of them apart, yet by chance there was declenched a chain of events that led to their violent separation and to the subsequent quest.
Now pay heed and listen to how it all occurred!
Upon that we rely, dear readers, and thus, our story proper begins...
Chapitre deuxième
Oreste et Pylade
Oreste et Pylade
In Montmartre, on the Right Bank of the Seine, there dwell countless university students, most of them in humble garrets right under the zinc or slatestone rooftops, their windows peeking through the eaves, with the drainpipe running right beneath the windowsill, and they all live quite crowded without much vital space for a garden; there are so many inhabitants that there is not enough place for everyone to have a little garden of their own, no matter how many flowering plants they were able to grow at home in the provinces.
So many people want to live in the most beautiful seat of learning in this world that the townhouses are packed close together, and there is not room for everyone to have even a small garden of their own. Thus, most of these bohemians have to content themselves, and must be satisfied, with a few potted plants on the windowsills, or perhaps even scraps of forget-me-nots and violets grown in potshards, worst-case scenario. But there lived not long ago, in one of those garrets with a rooftop window on the little narrow Rue des Grés, a pair of young Law students who, in spite of their bohemian life, had found a way to deck their sill with something better than a pair of whole plant pots, nearly a proper garden: a wooden crate which they had filled with soil and improvised into a planter box upon their windowsill, where they grew herbs meant for their kitchen, such as chives, parsley, chervil, carrots... aside from a few edible flowers such as nasturtium, carnations, calabash vines, and pansies, which, all smiling at the sun, filled their little room with scent and colour; and, furthermore, since they had decided to place this crate perpendicular to the drain-pipe and to the windowsill, it looked rather exactly like a redoubt of flowering greenery.
Though they were not brothers by blood, these two loved one another more than even real siblings would (even though one of them was adamant to deny it). And that in spite of that pair of students being as different from one another as night is from day, or as silk is from sackcloth; for one of them was tall and blond and shone like the sun, while the other was shorter and dark-haired with a look in his eyes like black holes in the sky. For three quarters of the year, their little garden was truly a paradise: the vines and tendrils of the calabashes cascaded hung down the side of the crate, into the void and the street below, while the nasturtium entwined around a little trellis, creating a wonderful arch of greenery and flame-like flowers, whose long filaments climbed and trailed around the window frames.
The two would spend their days making their way through University, but each afternoon they would hurry home, climbing the steps to their tiny apartments and opening the windows to let the sunset light in, stepping out onto the balcony and meeting there. They shared the late afternoon sunshine and often stayed late into the evening, eating their supper together under the stars.
Sometimes they tended their nasturtium flowers, encouraging them to twine together into a beautiful arched bower of red and golden fiery blooms, talking of books and philosophy and music; sometimes they would just sit quietly together and read, or play chess by moonlight under the lush span of flaming petals.
At last, these pleasures came to an end, or were at least interrupted, for winter came to Paris and at times the windows were frosted or outright frozen over, filling both of them with white winter awe. Both our roommates were southerners by birth and by blood, and thus, throughout their Mediterranean childhood, they had never experienced a white winter ere they moved into the capital. But still the backstreets of Paris were not bereft of magic or wonder in the coldest of seasons. Also in winter, they had to move the crate indoors, but still everything had a magical air about it, the streets below and the eaves above covered in a white blanket, the icicles along the eaves, the frost etching delicate crystal fractals, more fragile than plant flowers, upon the windowpanes. On days when this happened, the two friends would warm francs or sous on the stove and press them against the frozen panes until a round hole would appear in the frost through which they could signal to one another. Then they would each go down the long staircase and meet in the street, where they would walk together in the falling snow and talk, for they never seemed to run out of subjects that interested them. If it got too cold, a steaming cup of coffee laced with eau-de-vie from a street vendor would be enough to warm them, and off they would go, on some new tangent of conversation.
Then, by the light of crackling embers in the sooty iron stove, after having helped one another with their studies, they would often huddle together and tell one another their favourite poems and classical myths. Or warm a coin (a sou at worst, a franc at best) in their cupped, gloved hands, if not on the rickety iron stove, then hold it upon the frosted windowpane, which made a most adorable little round peephole, from which, watching the snowflakes swirl outside in the dim gaslight, through the window, often a noble steel-blue eye would shine, or equally often an ironic hazel one, fixed upon the sight through the glass: those were the fair student and the dark one, respectively.
One of these two students, surnamed Enjolras, was the dashing, tall, blue-eyed blond we have spoken of, the very likeness of a delicate and fair storybook prince; an only child of privilege, slender of waist, his torso like the stem of a lily and his limbs like the rarest statuary, a golden halo of long crisp curls like a sun framing his rosy, heart-shaped face before cascading down the nape of his neck and his back in a golden queue, neatly tied with a bow, kept out of his soft face by a cherry-red satin ribbon. Upon his proud, high marble brow and fine high Slavic cheekbones it was written of leadership, commanding respect. He was so tall, so handsome and clever; so tall and slender and thin, with his beautiful eyes and angelic mouth! The arch of those firm, fair lips spoke of mildness that was bright, clever, though not bereft of innocence. Though he was in his early twenties, twenty-two to be more exact, Enjolras appeared to be seventeen; his downy, silky face (not even gilt at the upper lip by a fair streak of first facial hair), lilywhite with cheekbones like ripe peaches, still looked like a child's, and his willowy frame and limbs like a stripling's, and there was something waiflike or maidenlike about his whole presence, which would have made him, en travesti, doubtless pass for a beautiful girl... but still he cut a dapper figure in that waistcoat of scarlet brocade, embroidered with gold braid like a hussar's pelisse, that he usually wore. Yet, though many a wench, barmaid, and grisette had sighed upon seeing him amble past them on the street, all those sighs would be spent in vain, for our ephebe did not care at all that there ever were females of his species. Or for anything else that was lovely and wonderful, for that matter. The pretty flowers in the planter boxes were in bloom, but he heeded not the scent. The blue-tits chirped on the windowsills, but he did not even care to hear their song. There were fine books at the windows of old bookshops, on their way to the lecture hall, but he would not even stop for a peek. The naked throat of a chanteuse did not even stir the slightest feelings within him. To Enjolras, like for any veteran warrior, flowers were only good for concealing a sword underneath.
It was as if Enjolras had always been wearing blinkers to the beauty of both art and nature, striding by absorbed in his own reflections, or rêveries, with that vague and aloof air that made an even more dashing impression, and that logical and rational approach... What misfortune awaited any sweetheart who crossed his path! If any barmaid or grisette in the daytime, or any wench in the evening, on Place Cambrai or Rue Saint-Jean-de-Beauvais, upon beholding the figure of that passing-by college-boy, with that shirt collar frilled like a court page's, those long fair eyelashes, those azure irises of his eyes, those stormy long curls fluttering in his wake like a golden flag, those high rosy cheekbones, those flawless lips and sterling white teeth, was instantly smitten with all of that aura, and, after gathering all of her pluck, had sauntered forth to test her charms upon Enjolras, a surprisingly redoubtable, piercing icy blue stare would have shown her the abyss in exchange, and she would have thought twice and never dared to mistake once more that dreadful celestial cherub of prophecy for the ones she had so frequently seen on her childhood's Glanzbilder, or for the English Arthurian poet's "long-hair'd page in crimson clad."
For Enjolras, ut supra diximus, was not given ordinarily to betrayal of any emotion; it was as if he had more relevant things to care for; and he did have more relevant affairs to dwell upon. He had but a single passion, setting things right (that was why he had leaned towards the Law degree in the first place), and but a single thought, that of overturning every obstacle. Little did he care for beauty or pleasure; when confronted with anything that was not the French Republic, he sternly lowered his gaze away. He was the icy or marble lover of Liberty.
Our story begins where this fair and detached young student lived, possibly even where you, dear reader, may reside in; in a certain Right Bank arrondissement of cobblestones up and down steep slopes, of clocktowers and fountains, workshops and marketplaces, cafés and bookshops, bakeries and pawnbrokers, and hasty walks to and from lecture halls, an arrondissement so crowded that the townhouses in the narrowest ruelles leaned out over the streets towards one another, to the point that their respective zinc eaves actually touched, and the rooftops were separated only by the drain-pipe, so that one might cross from one garret to another, or watch a birds'-eye view of the people on the ruelle below by placing one foot on either windowsill, by simply taking one mighty stride. In this arrondissement, which may possibly even be where you, dear reader, may reside in, there lived a fair, icy heartthrob surnamed Enjolras, who was very lonely, even though he was surrounded by people, and even the leader of a secret society of his friends and peers; along with another student from the southern provinces, sharing the same garret beneath humble zinc eaves.
At this point when our story begins, we must relate that the dark-haired, ironic student we have spoken of in our first paragraphs was not, however, the roommate whom Enjolras shared his bed and board with from the start; it was a childhood friend of his, also in his early twenties, and practically the only friend he had ever had back in the southern provinces. Now he studied at the University of Paris as well, though Medicine instead of Law, and he was auburn-haired and honey-eyed, and wore spectacles. Also, he was shorter than his golden-haired heartthrob of an at first only friend. Side by side with the logical and warlike Enjolras, Combeferre was more outspoken and sensitive, more inclined towards philosophy and peacemaking. Every leader's second-in-command tends to have a completely different mindset from the leader's own, in order to balance one another's shortcomings. Around Enjolras' sharp granite peak to pierce the heavens, Combeferre would stretch a vast blue horizon; in all his views, there was something more accessible and practical. If the air around Enjolras felt piercing cold and yet suffocating, around Combeferre the air felt pleasantly temperate and respirable. In comparison to the reserved and aloof blond, Combeferre was more outgoing and willing to interact with other people, to share their lives. If both of these young men had gone down in history, Enjolras would have been remembered as a warlord, and Combeferre as a scholar. The former was more masculine, the latter more neutrally human. Combeferre was as gentle as Enjolras was harsh.
And of course Combeferre loved to read (or maybe here "love" is quite a weak word), like Cervantes, even the labels on products and the scraps of paper on the streets. After class, he frequented the theatres whenever he could afford to see a good classic, attended public courses, learned eagerly about the polarisation of light, was passionate over a lecture where Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire had explained about the double function of the carotid arteries (viz. the common carotid arteries branch off at the thyroid cartilage, the external carotid artery supplies the face with blood, while the internal carotid supplies the brain). He (Combeferre, not Cervantes or Saint-Hilaire) followed every single progress of science, confronted Saint-Simon against Fourier, translated hieroglyphics and runes, and was often seen comparing and contrasting different translators' renditions of the same literary passage... Needless to say how much he fawned when he first saw an etching of a transcription of the Rosetta Stone (which then was kept, as in our days, in the British Museum), which he transcribed into his notebook, writing the whole trilingual text down by heart; the same eidetic memory gave him the skill to draw insects and flowers he might only have seen twice or thrice with pinpoint accuracy, always writing the scientific name at the foot of each drawing, as well as the date of observation of that specimen. He broke the pebbles he found, and observed their geology, especially delighted when he came across fossils; and he even had the boldness to point out whenever there was a grammar or spelling error in the Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française, and write letters to the Académie concerning the correction of the aforementioned errors. He studied Puységur and Deleuze, was a firm non-believer in the supernatural (whether miracles, revenants, or what ever paranormal issues might cross his path); and obviously believed, on the other hand, in all the dreams of progress and science: railways, pain relief during surgery, the fixed images on Daguerre's camera obscura, telegraphy, and the possibility to steer montgolfières (ever since Étienne de Montgolfier had first sent a maiden flight on an uncertain current); and undaunted of every bastion raised by superstition, despotism, and prejudice against humankind. Some days he would shut himself in the University Library, dozing over the philosophical writings of René Descartes. As we have seen, Combeferre was quite the polymath or Renaissance man, eager for knowledge, precise, a perfectionist; he declared: "The future lies in the hands of schoolteachers," and was concerned about the issue of education. He wanted society to give their all to rise their intellectual and moral level, that science was given the recognition it rightfully deserved, the free circulation of ideas, the rise of esprit among the childhood and youth... and he dreaded that the outdated educational methods of his days; the decadence of literature crushing two or three centuries of nigh-forgotten classics; the tyrannical dogmatism, prejudice, and routine of the educational system would turn every seat of learning in France into a "pearl farm" where oysters crowded in muddy waters had irritating grains thrust by force into them against their will (quite obviously, Enjolras never got to grasp the full extent of the pearl farm metaphor). Combeferre was never without a book or a puzzle at hand, and discoursed learnedly on the various subjects which we have mentioned as areas of his expertise, yet were but the tip of the iceberg. He had an answer for everything, and was considered by lecturers and classmates alike to be wondrously learned; his natural modesty could not conceal how much he shone with wit. Long story short, he was one of those who believe that an emphasis on science and educational achievement will make things change for the better.
One would have preferred to fight alongside Enjolras, and to march alongside Combeferre. The former was a warlord, the latter a leader of peace. I am not saying that Combeferre was a complete intellectual, incapable of fighting, for indeed he never refused to come face to face with obstacles and attack them with all his strength, like an explosion. It was not the fact that he shunned confrontation. But he preferred to, little by little, by the teaching of axiomatic truths and positive laws, align the human species with its destiny; that was something he found the best. And, in between a scorching light and one that shines upon others, he definitely preferred the latter. An erupting volcano gives off a certain amount of light, for sure, but a sunrise gives off far more and far better light. A wildfire can turn the night into day, for sure, but why not wait for the day to dawn? A clarity darkened by smoke (whether of guns or factories, or both), a progress bought with violence, only satisfied half of that tender and serious spirit. A second 1793, a storming rush of all the people into the truth, filled him with dread, yet he dreaded stagnation even more; he could already feel decay and death in the air. Still, he preferred white foam to swampy marshes, Niagara Falls to Lake Montfaucon. Long story short, he neither wanted haste nor halt, but simply the middle ground. While Enjolras and the other friends they had made, chivalrously taken with the Absolute, adored and claimed splendid revolutionary feats of derring-do, Combeferre was more on the side of encouraging le bon progrès, maybe cold, and phlegmatic, and rational, yet pure, unshaken, and without reproach. The wish Combeferre made whenever he clasped the palms of his hands together was for the future to arrive in all of its candour, for nothing to interrupt the immense evolution of the people into virtue. "Il faut que le bien soit innocent", he ceaselessly repeated this mantra or motto. "'Tis needed for good to be innocent." And, in fact, if the grandeur of revolution relies on gazing at dazzling ideals and flying through the storm, with fire and blood in one's wake; the beauty of progress relies on being stainless.
Like Enjolras and his second roommate, whom we shall meet very soon enough, Combeferre was as different from our fair hero --not as the night is from the day, or as silk is from sackcloth (like his later roommate would be), but more as firelight is from sunlight, or the sky is from the ground.
The two would spend their days making their way through University, but each afternoon they would hurry home, climbing the steps to their tiny apartments and opening the windows to let the sunset light in, stepping out onto the balcony and meeting there. They shared the late afternoon sunshine and often stayed late into the evening, eating their supper together under the stars.
Sometimes they tended their nasturtium flowers, encouraging them to twine together into a beautiful arched bower of red and golden fiery blooms, talking of books and philosophy and music; sometimes they would just sit quietly together and read, or play chess by moonlight under the lush span of flaming petals.
At last, these pleasures that Mother Nature only offered for three quarters of the year came to an end, or where at least interrupted, for winter came to Paris and at times the windows were frosted or outright frozen over, filling both southerners with white winter awe. But on days when this happened, the two friends would warm francs or sous on the stove and press them against the frozen panes until a round hole would appear in the frost through which they could signal to one another. Then they would each go down the long staircase and meet in the street, where they would walk together in the falling snow and talk, for they never seemed to run out of subjects that interested them. If it got too cold, a steaming cup of coffee laced with eau-de-vie from a street vendor would be enough to warm them, and off they would go, on some new tangent of conversation.
It was from a third childhood friend of theirs, one Jehan Prouvaire (né Jean, but he preferred the archaic orthography), far dreamier than either of them, a southerner and an only child of rank like Enjolras, and also a Law student, but far more sensitive and sweeter: Jehan Prouvaire read Dante and Juvenal in the original language and preferred Corneille to Racine, played the English flute and told fairytales to the children and fond parents of the arrondissement after class, and he would often stroll by day through the open countryside riddled with ears of oats and wildflowers, and by night watch the starry sky with the naked eye through the window of his garret... He loathed the Revolution of 1789 for severing one crowned head in particular, that of André Chénier. It was from this raconteur troubadour born centuries too late that Combeferre got the idea of growing a planter box, which Combeferre himself would tend to, for Prouvaire himself grew one on his own garret windowsill. Jehan Prouvaire, who would soon turn nineteen, was fragile like a little girl, with crisp Titian-blond hair, cut like a medieval page-boy's, that curled up at his neck and shoulders, and a face as silky and rosy, with an upper lip as smooth, as Enjolras' own, and he had large and dreamy eyes as blue as Enjolras', yet not icy at all, and more of a greenish shade; reserved and shy, soft-spoken and prone to hanging his head downwards, and got red as a beetroot or a pompom rose whenever he smiled, so embarrassed he was; he would turn strawberry-red for nothing, and he always had this gauche air about him, his own physique the most fragile and waiflike of them all in that clique of friends (and, almost just like Enjolras, Jehan Prouvaire would pass for the most adorable damsel en travesti, although far less elven and far more human)... A shrinking violet was he indeed, yet after all intrepid, reckless.
And most often he wore in his third buttonhole a fresh and fragrant magenta pompom rose, whose petals were the colour of his face when confidence failed; it was as if he were wearing his heart on the outside. Since pompom roses of that variety could not be picked in any park, or bought at any florist's, in their arrondissement, Combeferre had been intrigued about where these flowers came from, and one afternoon, he asked Jehan Prouvaire the question that weighed him down. And the result of it was that, in spite of his introverted personality, the gentle bard agreed that he would show both roommates where he grew not only his own pompom roses, but also butterfly-like sweetpeas and sundry kitchen herbs.
The day he shyly invited Enjolras and Combeferre to come over to his place, looking down and in a voice that was more of a whisper, after leaving their respective Faculties, and after climbing up all those flights and flights of stairs past the macaronnerie on the ground floor and several petit-bourgeois homes up to the garret at the top of the stairs, both of the visitors were taken aback by the arrangement: a great wooden crate filled with soil, where the young medievalist grew herbs meant for the kitchen, such as parsley, chervil, chives, carrots, radishes... and, besides, a few sweetpeas which were in bloom, for it was mid-springtime, like little fragile butterflies, and blue moonflowers or morning-glories, and a little magenta rosebush which his family had given him as a leave-taking present; a little rosebush which, for half or one third of the year, was full of clusters of pompom-fluffy blooms as magenta as his face whenever he was embarrassed, and that, just like his dreamy and a tad gauche trademark expression, smiled at the bright sun and filled the chamber with the most lovely, intoxicating fragrance.
In time, the rose bushes had shot forth long branches heavy with their huge, rosy blooms, which he trained around the window and into a beautiful, drooping spill over the rusted railing. At times when he felt most alone, he would tend his garden for hours, and then sit reading and watching the roses nod lazily in the breeze, imagining that the flowers were happy, and that they didn't feel the harshness or loneliness of the world, but only how much he loved them.
Jehan Prouvaire himself watered, and pruned, and cared for this bush putting the care of it above the care of his own person, so much did he love his roses.
The flower box had been placed perpendicular to the drainpipe, so that it jutted out half-way to the window across, and the long filaments or tendrils of the beautiful sweetpeas and moonflowers which the young dreamer had sown hung down the side of the crate, into the void and the street below, or climbed and trailed around the window frames, creating something like a wonderful arch of greenery and clustered butterflies and magenta pompoms of petals, while the lovely blue moonflowers formed, all around, just like a fairy woodland.
"I grow all of these plants not only for the table, for their fragrance, and due to the beauty of it all; but also to attract honeybees for the beekeepers out there in the countryside," Jehan Prouvaire had explained, with a downcast look and entwining the fingers of both his hands, in the usual soft-spoken manner. Then, he sat down on the windowsill and played the English flute for the golden bees that buzzed and the blue-tits that chirped on the planter-box, as he poured some sugar into the half-open rosebuds.
"What the...?" asked an astonished Combeferre.
"I want to feed sugar to these half-open rosebuds; I wonder why, if the mother birdies can feed their chicks, why cannot we ourselves feed our roses as well?" the medievalist shyly replied.
And the blue-tits seemed to chirp merrily in response, as Combeferre giggled into his handkerchief.
It should be noted that there were three students in that room at the moment, but also that Jehan Prouvaire had a roommate. "Feuilly is outside, doing the night shift at the mill," the host had explained. This Feuilly could not afford a university degree, and was furthermore illiterate, so he worked for his living at a hand-fan manufacture, though his wages were a paltry three francs a day. A dark, broad-shouldered twentyish orphan who had made it all the long way on foot from his native village on the Italian border up to Paris, and who had lost his parents to Austrian fire during a Carbonaro repression, he had been adopted by the Motherland as a mother, and he wished that there were not a person left stateless, without a country to call their own, upon the face of the Earth. On Feuilly's half of the garret, above his bed, there were nailed an Italian tricolore, the lyrics of the Szózat, and those of the Warszawianka, both in their original language (handwritten with Jehan Prouvaire's calligraphy; the medievalist was even teaching his roommate to read and write in whatever spare time they had left). While everyone else seemed to care about France, Feuilly was concerned with foreign oppression: the Ottomites in Thessaly, the Austrians in most of the Habsburg Empire, the unjust tripartition of Poland... He spoke of those scenarios ceaselessly, with or without a good reason, with the resolve of a man of law. "No despot, no traitor, holding the sway of a European power was bereft of a say in favour, a signature, and a counter-signature of the tripartition of Poland in 1772, which was but foreshadowing. The Congress of Vienna in 1815 was the great stab in the back. Warszaw rightfully deserved being Czarist as much as Budapest rightfully deserved Habsburg rule, as much as Saloniki rightfully deserved the flag of the Crescent Moon. Yet soon the crowned heads would have to fall, lose their glory and their honour, while the sunken motherlands would once more rise to the surface. The theft of a nation by a great power is not illegalised, but rather encouraged, and those high-ranking hoaxes have no future at all. One does not mark the limits of a nation like the limits of a handkerchief," Feuilly would tell all of these students whenever his schedule at the mill allowed him to share some of their evening spare time.
But let us return once more to our story. That day, Enjolras and Combeferre had got to know an old acquaintance better and become aware of the existence of one who would soon become their friend as well. And, on a more realistic level, the young scholar spent the rest of the evening and a while the next day foraging around the arrondissement for a large wooden crate, flower soil, and seeds. From those days on, Combeferre kept his own planter box, which in his case also contained more edible flowers, upon the windowsill. It had been, furthermore, Combeferre's idea to place the crate perpendicular to the drainpipe, so that it jutted out half-way to the window across theirs, and looked exactly like a redoubt of flowering greenery.
"Enjolras," Combeferre supposed, "has never had a garden. He does not look prepared to uproot weeds with his hands; he looks slender, fierce but very small-boned, his hair shining, his coat immaculate. Only-- there is a certain wildness to his eyes, a remote look, like marble, cold and very clean, which makes you think that he could, if he so chose, uproot anything, anything."
Like Enjolras and Jehan Prouvaire, Courfeyrac studied Law as well. He was a real French aristocrat, and his parents' surname was de Courfeyrac; after the restoration of the monarchy, they believed firmly in the particle, but their only child, their only son and heir, felt that his elders loved so much that poor two-letter word that, upon leaving his native château in Gascony for Paris, he "abdicated" the particle, becoming a plain Courfeyrac like any bourgeois. And of course he took to life in the capital like a duck takes to water, but living in a neoclassical Left Bank mansion with some Parisian relatives of his (instead of in a Montmartre garret), and being shuttled in calèche by a private coachman to the Faculty every morning, always sharply dressed and perfectly combed, with impeccably-kept whiskers and a suave attitude to match. His heart was on the left, indeed, but his wallet was on the right (and, more often than not, he had a Montmartre grisette or wench on each arm). Indeed, he was a real viveur and bon vivant, and why have a fortune and not put some of it to a good use? He was a tall, lean man, nearly of a height with Enjolras and equally broad through the shoulders. His hair and neatly trimmed whiskers were dark as ink, and so were his clever, ironic eyes, and his long, clever fingers were covered in impeccable white society gloves, even in a lecture hall; he was slightly duck-footed and already balding in his late twenties (as seen by a prominent widow's peak) but nevertheless dashing, he was always quick with a witty quip or joke and a line of smoke, trading his dwindling health for irony, and his dark eyes laughed incessantly, always reflected or echoed in the chortles of his friends in response to his latest clever lazzi. His fleeting youth was bursting out into laughter, his lungs already tarred with cigarette soot, and one could see nothing but fire within him. Needless to say he wrote satirical verses every now and then, and even one or two risqué plays for the Vaudeville that the director of said theatre refused (for apparently, those shows were even too outrageous for Vaudeville standards). In short, he doubted superiorly of anything and everything. Courfeyrac had that wistful verve of youth that the French still call la beauté de l'esprit; playful and clever as a kitten that has still far to become an adult tomcat when all the gentle kindness and whimsy of youth are quenched by time and one is obliged to put on both physical and social weight, and he was obviously reluctant to the prospect that awaited him in society upon finishing his degree. Thus, being the second eldest and the most ironic, and needless to say the most physically fit (as will be explained below), he would doubtless have been the leader of their company, if Enjolras had never wished to have the leadership thrust upon him.
Though he gave the first impression of a show-off and a scoundrel, the suave Courfeyrac was a good boy through and through, a brave soul with a heart as gold as his pocket-watch. The latent soul within him was that of a paladin, or rather a Cadet of Gascony, born centuries too late. In spite of his fading health, his sculptured torso and powerful limbs gave witness that he was a trained fighter, especially in close quarters combat, and far less likely to waste away on the sickbed than to fall upon the field of battle. Like many other aristocrats, he had been trained by fencing masters in the noble art of swordplay, and made an excellent use of his strength and agility by means of wielding his own canne-épée, a walking stick which concealed a perfectly dissimulated hiltless rapier blade, which Courfeyrac could draw and wield as deftly as any musketeer of the King's Guard could ever have bared and wielded his steel. Like the man who used this sword, its ostensible first impression of a household object as blunt and innocent as a walking stick was not only misleading, but meant to mislead.
Where his childhood friends Enjolras and Combeferre, the leader and the scholar, irradiated more light, Courfeyrac gave more warmth to their circle; indeed, the fact was that he had all the qualities of the centre of a star system: roundness and warmth and radiance and suavity. And thus, he had become the central sun of that after-class system, the one who held them all, regardless of their background and personality, closely knit together.
Rarely seen apart during their spare time were Enjolras and his two lieutenants: the blond, the auburn, and the dark-haired one; the leader, the guide, and the central sun; the spirit, the brains, and the brawn. These three formed the core of the secret society they kept in the evenings of Montmartre, and which still was without a name. Yet the more people they could rally to their cause, the more people who could bring something they lacked to their crusade, the better for the imminent revolution it was.
In each and every lecture hall, there is always someone who sits at the front row and drinks it all in, whatever the lecturer has to say, since their career is their first concern. Enjolras and Courfeyrac had two such classmates, one of whom was a bald northerner from Calais; while Combeferre had only one, the most lovable eccentric you could ever think of. Needless to say that, in due time, our golden-haired leader's lieutenants, each one at his Faculty after class, approached their respective ace students, and the result of it all was that all three of them wound up caught in Enjolras' secret society.
We should therefore shed a little more light upon them, even though they have little to no bearing to the plot of our story...
In those days when our story takes place, there were no elevators, so the bohemians who lived in Right Bank garrets, like most of the students in our story, had to climb down flights and flights of stairs, past the homes of shopkeepers and petits-bourgeois, all the way down to reach ground level and begin the trek to class every day in the morning, and then, hours later, in the evening or late at night, they (obviously) had to climb those same flights and flights of stairs, all the way up, back home and into bed. Not to mention that, after leaving home and after leaving the Faculty, they had to weave through cobblestone streets on slanted hills, past little shops selling chocolate truffles and thick loaves of bread, cafés filled with people sipping their coffee as they watched the rest of the world stroll by (and, every now and then, Combeferre would make both roommates unwillingly late for class, since he'd ducked into a little bookshop with sagging shelves that smelled of paper and leather and dust, before Enjolras, who always felt teary-eyed and runny-nosed in that kind of establishments, entered the bookshop for a while to tug at his lieutenant's sleeve and remind him not to dawdle anymore).
But to that clique of young Law and Medicine students, most of whom were southerners, there was one café in particular where they always were the regular crowd any special evening, and where they all always gathered after class. To be more precise, their rendez-vous point was the backroom of that establishment, the Café Musain, a quaint and cozy little locale in a street corner on Place Saint-Michel, not far from the Panthéon. This café was run by the widowed old lady upstairs, Madame Houcheloup, assisted by two or three barmaids who were like daughters to her, and helped her both with the household chores and attending to the patrons; not to mention Louison, the Café's young dishwasher, who lived across the back entrance on Rue des Grés, in the garret opposite Enjolras' and Combeferre's (and the barmaids, for that reason, often said that Louison was so lucky!). Sometimes the landlady's scruffy Chartreux cat, whose name the students never bothered to know, frequented the locale for a scrape of fish or a chicken bone, or, when it was hot, a nice spot to sun himself.
This backroom where our student clique gathered in the evenings was a long dark corridor away from the Café itself; it had two windows and a single exit door with a hidden private staircase that led to the little Rue des Grés (and, through that door and one of the windows, Enjolras' and Combeferre's garret could not only be seen, but also easily identified thanks to their flower box on the windowsill). There they would spend the evenings in conversation, and studying, and most of them in drinking and playing dominoes or écarté (and the boldest of them, those who drank the hardest, would even gamble for money). Their conversations were shouted out loud about everything under the sun, and whispered quietly about certain other things that were confidential to them. Aside from the usual chairs and tables, and the quinquet lamp, there were, nailed to the wall, an old map of France and a tricolore flag, both of them dating back to the days of the First Republic, before the Thermidor coup.
We should explain, dear readers, that in the decade when our story takes place, France was once more a kingdom ruled by the House of Bourbon, and yet the ghost of the Revolution still haunted the entire nation, even those who had been born after the Congress of Vienna; even the children and the young people, like our fair leader Enjolras and his equally youthful followers.
When R is introduced: saving Enjolras on the street one night from some thugs, with those kicking skills; after the thugs had overpowered Courf' -sprained foot, canne-épée for a crutch-;
One evening, the fair leader and his lieutenants came home together; the two Law students, at sunset, greeting Combeferre, home from a day of prowling the arrondissement bookshops. His arms were empty, for he had little money, but a day spent with books always raised his spirits, and so it was that he really looked forwards to going out onto the balcony with a light heart to greet his herbs and flowers, and to see if any new blooms had opened that day.
A pair of friendly waves of the hand, as Enjolras still kept on gazing into the red evening skies, detachedly as usual, was all that it took for them to carry on their path downhill all three together.
The victorious lush, who now chortled as he saw the troublemakers retreat and turn left at the next ruelle, now turned towards the three students and, in the light of the street-lamp which he was leaning against, resting after the fray, they finally caught a glimpse of what he looked like. Their saviour was a rather ungainly young man with bloodshot hazel eyes, slightly popping like a frog's, flashing wistfully in a stubbled dark face, the shade of café au lait, framed by matted, curly raven hair; furthermore, he was neither too short nor too tall, only slightly chubby around the waist, but still a bruiser to the core; his chest looked like a powerhouse, and the muscles in his long limbs throbbed beneath a humble, worn shirt and pair of trousers. Though in a state of intoxication, he merely swayed from side to side a little, not being drunk enough to stumble on the cobblestones, but still overall steady on his feet, and unusually lithe and strong; how else could he have driven the three friends' assailants, who surely were even more intoxicated, towards a hasty retreat?
In general, overall, the dark face and curly raven hair, and furthermore the physique, of the stranger saviour reminded Combeferre of the Moriscos, those Moors of Siglo de Oro Spain by way of Marseille, who had fought with France's armies against their own Habsburg-ruled nation in the Low Countries, where the great powers of the world were forever fighting their wars; but had never laid eyes on the Kingdom of Valencia, the lands their parents had been born in and then driven out from. Surely, the stranger must be descended from such Moors; for were not some of the kicks he overpowered those three or four thugs with not actually savate, but its primeval form, chausson marseillais? That was the scenario that seemed most likely.
"Enj... Enjolras," the fair stripling in red gently withdrew his lilywhite, lily-petal-fingered hand from that rough and awkward grasp, sun-fire warm against his own icy cold palm. "Enj... Enchanté. Pleased to make your acquaintance..." he sighed, as he bowed from the waist and clicked his heels sharply together.
"That'sh a lovely shurname..." Grantaire slurred, as he thought that the young gentleman whose life he had saved could only be surnamed Enjolras. Yes, he was certainly wonderfully handsome, with his finely-curved scarlet lips, his cornflower-blue eyes, his crisp gold hair. There was something in his face that made Grantaire trust him at once. All the candour of youth was there, as well as all youth's passionate purity. One felt that he had kept himself unspotted from the world. So what... what were he and his little friends of rank up to in a backstreet of Montmartre at this hour of the evening?
"We were heading for the Café Musain, but we seem to have gone the wrong way..."
"Nought to worry, Monshieur Enjolrash, and you too, messieurs; I may 'ave been born an' raished in the Catalan willage, not far from Marsheille, but I know the Right Bank like the palm of my 'and! And beshidesh, I'm dyin' o' thirsht myshelf..." He was not attractive, at least not conventionally, but when he swept off his beret, his hair was a riot of black curls and his eyes penetrating but still warm, grin and teeth crooked as he looked at them.
Courfeyrac elbowed his leader in the ribs, but Enjolras muttered something about "giving him a chance." Having a lush show them the way to their meeting place was already sinister, if not for the fact that the aforementioned lush had swept the floor clean with those scoundrels, and seemed so self-assured of his sense of direction. Or for the fact that he merely swayed from side to side, but his steps were unusually steady, confirming how strong and how lithe he was in that altered state.
During the trek to the Musain, Enjolras and Courfeyrac got to know that their bruiser saviour was not only a countryman of theirs, but also a classmate of theirs. That empty chair by the window in the lecture hall? Well, Grantaire was supposed to sit in it, but he had other, more important things to learn in Paris, and the university degree could wait, for he was one of the students that had learned the most, and the most relevant things, while studying their degrees in Paris, no matter how many lectures he missed and how many exams he had to redo. The best coffee to drink was at the Café Lemblin, he recommended them. The best billiards table? Café Voltaire. The best wenches? Where one could also find the best crêpes and galettes, at L'Ermitage, Boulevard du Maine (here, Courfeyrac's eyes brightened and his lips curled, and he even forgot the pain in his left foot, while Enjolras looked away). The best fried chicken, at Mère Saguet; the best eel stew, Barrière de la Cunette (here, all three of his companions winced); and a white wine worth at least sipping, Barrière du Combat. Long story short, he knew every place to be in the Right Bank, but the Café Musain, in spite of its street-corner locale, was quite an obscure spot, not particularly known for anything worth tasting; still, he just went there for a drink whenever he was thirsty after class, only because it was near the garret where he lived.
Anyway, in spite of that, he knew the way indeed, even though he had been reeling and singing slurred lyrics to lewd songs way out of key; and soon all four young men found themselves at the threshold of the Musain, Enjolras turning to thank Grantaire as well, and inviting him to join them for the evening in the backroom. To which the dark newcomer obviously replied by thanking them for the invitation.
That tricolore flag, that map of Republican France on the walls. That rag-tag band of university students, most of whom were also southerners. Enjolras introduced them to Grantaire, explaining that this coarse young man had saved his life and shown them the way to the Café. Those kicks... that power... "Relying on Courfeyrac alone would be preposterous, as we can see now that he's sitting there all lackadaisy, with his left leg on the table and an ice packet upon the sprain. A single lightweight swordsman is not enough power for us to confront the National Guard. We definitely need a martial artist of your prowess in hand-to-hand and hand-to-foot combat as one of our staff officers." Never had Grantaire been so praised before as by Enjolras, laying a lily-hand on his shoulder, for his fighting skills.
"Ah... for me, it was just a walk back home," he sighed modestly, as Enjolras' lieutenants resumed their reasons why he would soon be one of them. Not only did he know the best places to be, he was also a redoubtable savateur and tireur de chausson marseillais, and was no less formidable as a bâtonniste, demoting Courfeyrac to second place. "Trifles, trifles..." Grantaire smirked. "The martial art at which I excel the most... is the raising of the wrist. Honestly. Right here on the spot, I could quaff all of you under the table." His voice, hoarse from strong drink, sounded like the croak of a frog.
The whole company looked at one another. Courfeyrac smirked as well, Joly and Enjolras sighed and shook their heads, Combeferre wondered how much ethanol the newcomer had in his bloodstream if he had been able to give those thugs what they rightfully deserved.
And Grantaire sighed as well and asked for a glass of Merlot, which a barmaid came to fill up to his side. The stubbly young man drained his cup at one fell swoop, as if it were water, and then asked for a refill. The fight had made him really thirsty... or was it only the fight that had caused his whole self to heat up with such a warm glow...? Was there something more, and what was that in the first place? Was it the strong drink that went to his head, was it the heat of the fight that flustered his face, and was that dizzy feeling caused by all that brisk spinning and whirling to gather momentum for his kicks and bâton thrusts? Or was there something more...? As the barmaid refilled his cup, Grantaire stroked his stubbled chin as he took a glance at the fair leader in scarlet. His head was reeling again... but still he was not sure of the reason why. "Merci, ma'amzelle."
He had never believed in true love, nor in love at first sight, nor in lovesickness. Such unlikely events had always been the stuff of fairytales. He barely managed not to scoff and take a drink instead. "I don't believe in love in first sight. But even if you're right, it can't hurt to take it slow. You have a lot to get used to... There's all the time in the world, and you deserve to take it."
That glass of Merlot felt as weak as lemonade; his threshold had risen, and his system was craving stronger fare. Surely, this was the reason why he felt that ill-at-ease. With a smirk, he told the barmaid that he wished to make the acquaintance of one Marie Brizard. And, as she left to bring him a shot of crystal clear eau-de-vie, everyone else chortled -except Enjolras, whose lips at least merely curled upwards. At least that quip had made him smile for once, Grantaire thought, as the barmaid re-entered with the crystal draught in hand. "Merci, ma'amzelle." He winked an eye at her, making the poor barmaid recoil in response, as he put the cup to his lips and flicked the wrist inward.
(singing off-key)
To such vulgar drinking songs, often sung way too loud and way off key, he knew the lyrics completely by heart, no matter how intoxicated he was. For he was of that kind of people who, when they win, have to toast to their victory; when they lose, they have to sip to console themselves; when they're broke, they quaff even more to drown their sorrows... until they forget their reason at the bottom of the last glass. Not only celebrating in the weekends, but even skipping classes Monday through Friday to live in such constant excitement, to spend in games and strong drink, in song and dance and other pleasures, the time they should better have spent in studying. Indeed, Grantaire was that kind of person, the kind who revel in the bright side of life and completely refuse to acknowledge the existence of the dark side, quaffing life itself at deep draughts at the cost of their health and their future; living among the great ideas that unfurl and develop all around them in the most complete indifference.
Long story short, he was one of those who were known in those days in France as joyeux viveurs. And en even more extreme example of one, that made Courfeyrac look like the upper-class heir he was right from the start.
(Combeferre introduces him to La Marseillaise by singing it; maybe punning on the fact that R is a Marseillais himself)
It was hard for Grantaire to learn this song but in the end he got accustomed to the refrain. Liberté, egalité, fraternité; those were empty words to him, and progress and democracy (just like true love) were really close to not meaning anything. All those hard knocks he had suffered in a short life of struggle, of knowing no childhood due to living in want, having to battle with hardships; of having to be a lot sharper, to be a lot smarter, to be a self-starter, to owe his own education to himself, from learning to read and write and understand basic French... until his wit had crystallised into intelligence and knowledge, had predisposed Grantaire, practically since the cradle, to be a realist, a sceptic, a cynic. He merely smiled at all that, with that ironic smirk of his. This young orphan, just like Enjolras himself, was very lonely, even though he was surrounded by people. He'd had a family once, but it was so long ago that he could barely remember them, and what memories he had were not happy ones, but hazy, and full of grief, and best left alone — many a time he had drawn lovely pictures in the sand of a nearby riverbed, as he dreamed of someday becoming an artist. Now he lived in a tiny garret at the top of one of the tall, narrow houses along the river Seine, with only his books and the stray cats of the arrondissement for company, living on what scraps he could find or earn by his wits. The one source of joy in his life came from whenever any of his odd jobs gave fruit in the form of a few francs he could trade for a shot of eau-de-vie, or some bones he could give for the stray cats to clean of meat, for he cared for all of them. Living so crazy ironic, his motto was: "Il n'y a qu'une certitude: mon verre plein". Of course he was attached to no political party or religion, responding with raillery to devotion to any one of them. "That guy, Robespierre, has advanced a lot for being dead." And, any time he saw a crucifix: "Voilà, a power that has succeeded!" A rambler, a gambler, a libertin, and often intoxicated, he greatly displeased those young dreamers by singing lewd drinking songs, ceaselessly out of key:
Yet, no matter how little Enjolras cared for wenches or good wine, which happened to be as little as much he cared for grammar, he saw something in the wit of the dark Marseillais, in his clever smirk and the look in his eyes, in his skills as a martial artist and knowledge of the finer things in life, that, no matter how vulgar he was, seemed to say that he deserved a chance. A chance to improve himself, to better his grammar and social skills, and to fight with them under their pennant, singing, though out of chorus and out of key:
It was hard to learn, both the tune and the lyrics, indeed; yet soon Grantaire found it easy to sing that song, even though he disbelieved in the Revolution; not only had he become Enjolras' new roommate, and the one who tended to their flowers (for Combeferre had left, to occupy another garret within the same arrondissement, with another friend of theirs); and he even began to read Enjolras' handwritten explanations to the lectures, nonchalantly perched upon the flower box, leaning against the windowpane; and both the fair leader and Grantaire saw their acquaintance develop gradually into friendship; the dark, unkempt, ungainly, rough-and-tough Marseillais had found a seat at their tables in the backroom as a regular, and soon happy days and lovely afternoons way into the evening, shenanigans and battle plans, succeeded one another; the arrival of a new member, and a sceptic to add more fuel to the fire, had barely changed their everyday routine. What's more, the newcomer added to the little secret society something completely different, je ne sais quoi, that made their day to day more worthwhile. And so it came to pass that Grantaire came to be part of that circle of young people, a true satellite to Enjolras, orbiting constantly around the fair leader. Not only had he come to live with the one who always made his knees buckle and his heart rush; he practically lived at the backroom of the Café Musain, without finding pleasure anywhere but in that place, ever following the leader's footsteps everywhere like a shadow... The lecturers at the faculty were soon positively surprised to see Grantaire attending class regularly at last, but he had always been weary of legalese; there was another reason, one he only knew himself, why he entered the lecture hall every day, and the Musain every evening. The reason why, everytime Enjolras handed Grantaire those study notes at class, the dark young man flushed and sighed as he perused those terms, explained in an easy way that Grantaire could understand, penned by the right hand of the one who occupied all his thoughts. His sole joy had become to see, through the haze of strong drink, those silhouettes come and go. Especially a tall, slender silhouette with long golden hair tied at the back with a ribbon. The sheen of his fair hair dazzled him to all other sights, and his face was all Grantaire thought of by day and dreamed of by night, so that he often forgot both his studies and his usual pastimes. He was only a boy, a student, a classmate, but the dark one called him a prince, and even an angel, in his thoughts until he really believed him one (and even believed him Apollo or Frey!). Frequently he sang to himself: "It is for him - for him!"
There had come an uncertainty that outweighed all the others, an uncertainty as sure as that sole certainty of his was a full cup.
Still, Enjolras and his lieutenants, and the rest of their revolutionary friends, tolerated his presence not only because he was a southerner like most of them, and because he could defend them with his prowess in martial arts... but also, and most relevantly, due to his good cheer and mercury-quick wit, always ready with a pun or a quip. For instance, his signature; that unkempt lush never signed with his full surname, but always with a single capital R, "une grande R". Not even Courfeyrac himself could have come up with that pun.
And neither with the idea that they should call themselves, and their little society, "les Amis de l'ABC" as in "les Amis de l'Abaissé", the Friends of the Downtrodden. "We could say, and even make it look like, we keep a little after-class literacy school for the street children of the arrondissement; that way, and fitting the name of our organisation, would always cover up our tracks, right?" In response, Enjolras' lips curled most slightly at the corner, and the witty sceptic, his head reeling with excitement, not even paying heed to Combeferre and all the others clapping their hands and praising the dark lush: "Il a de l'esprit, en verité, il a un esprit extraordinaire..." had to quaff a shot of eau-de-vie to steel himself, and hoping to get to dream finally for once, after so many sleepless nights of rêverie.
Grantaire’s pronouncement was met with silence and then laughter from the others, just as he had intended. He finished his glass with a single swallow and poured himself more to drink, already wholly inebriated. Curled up at his feet, the Chartreux cat snored quietly, his body less able to process alcohol than Grantaire’s.
For his own part, Grantaire was thinking that he'd never before noticed how beautiful and pure anything white could be, and that perhaps he only noticed it now because Enjolras' skin was fair and palely beautiful like the freshest white lily or the sweetest cream. "Enjolras," his heart repeated, turning the surname over and over like a shining quartzy stone found at the bottom of a stream, and, for the first time since he'd had everything he held dear taken from him, he began to think he might learn to laugh in earnest again.
And as Fructidor drew to a close and autumn began to nip at the air, sometimes they found that it was enough just to lean their heads together across the water-pipe and talk quietly. So it was the night that Enjolras confessed to Grantaire how lonely he had been, and how glad he was that he had happened to be saved by the dark young tireur de chausson. So it was the night Grantaire told Enjolras the story of the family that had been taken from him, the guardian brother killed in a duel against an officer at the Catalans' pier, the kind landlady who had adopted him killed brutally in her own tavern. And, though Enjolras knew nothing of lovers or brothers, he held his friend while Grantaire cried, sobbing and flushed with liquor, into his chest, glad to know at last what name to give the sorrow that had always dwelt in his friend's eyes.
And that night, and many nights after, Grantaire waited at the window for the glimmer of the pale summer moonlight on a crown of golden curls, for the sight of slim boyish limbs clad in the long white night-shirt, that only emphasized the grace of every movement, and the beautiful pallor of the little feet speeding across the grass. There at the window, night after night, he waited to feel tender loving arms thrown round his neck, and to feel the intoxicating delight of beautiful boyish lips raining kisses on his own.
Yet it was in vain that he waited, night after night; for the fair leader, so sure of his conviction, spurned that ungainly sceptic; and, for similar reasons, Enjolras, so usually sober, saw that stubbly, dark young man as a lush and a drunkard. All that Grantaire ever got was a tad of ice-cold, haughty mercy, an invitation to join that circle of friends in their secret lair... and nothing more, as revealed by a look over a scarlet-coated shoulder, a piercing stare from icy blue eyes, more the colour of Arctic permafrost than that of the refreshing Mediterranean, or rather more cold steel than ice. Always treated so harshly by Enjolras, so coldly rejected by his beloved, yet always returning to his side, he sighed at the fair marble ephebe whose heart he had claimed by right.
In those days when every upper-class and upper-middle-class lady and not a few gentlemen from the same ranks of society in the Left Bank would kill for a cigarette butt that had been kissed by renowned Magyar composer and virtuoso concert pianist Ferenc Liszt, or even for a strand of his hair, which they would always keep as a memento (and let us face the facts: Courfeyrac was one of them), there were people with affections and convictions that made the reigning Lisztomania grow pale in comparison.
Every affection is a conviction, and Enjolras' affection towards Liberty was evenly matched with Grantaire's towards Enjolras: the only conviction that the ungainly sceptic had ever felt; his own weak and misshapen ideas clung to the self-confidence and ideals of his beloved leader like muscles to a spinal cord, like climbing plants to the walls of a tower. By Enjolras' side, Grantaire could finally become someone. "For he is as different from me as day is from night, as right is from left; for Enjolras is as fair and bright as the sun, and good-looking, and chaste, and sober, and healthy, and austere, and disciplined, and strong-willed, and firm, and innocent, and clever, and mild, and idealistic... and thus, he cannot help but always kindling my flame with his charms..."
Enjolras was the leader, the hero, the role model Grantaire had always aspired to be: the Orestes to his Pylades, the Achilles to his Patroclus, the Henry V to his Falstaff, the Romeo to his Mercutio... long story short, the two of them fit together like a lock and a key, or two sides of a medal; or rather, Enjolras was the firm tower and Grantaire the weak climbing plant that entwined around it, seeking support; yet Enjolras was always as ice-cold towards Grantaire as he was burning with desire for a free tomorrow.
Always spurned by the one he loved, the dark lush would often say to himself in his cups: "Quel beau marbre!"
Sick at heart, stomach churning with hurt and uneasiness, Grantaire turned and went inside his own bed, drawing the covers all the way up to the crown of his dark head. For long hours he couldn't read or even think straight, so surprised and hurt was he, and he only sat in the shadows of his room as night came on, lost in a haze of confusion and fear, and troubled by dark, disturbing memories that he'd thought banished forever. Even the sight of the flaming calyces in the moonlight, which had so often made him warm with happiness, was painful to him now. That night sleep didn't come for a long time, and when at last he sank into an exhausted, fitful doze, old nightmares he'd forgotten woke him in a cold sweat of fright and despair.
"You spurn my natural emotions; you make me feel like dirt, and I'm hurt... and, if I start a commotion, I run the risk of losing you, and that's worse... Ever fallen in love with someone you shouldn't have fallen in love with?" That one thought chafed, like sackcloth against silk. Sunken into these painful reflections one evening in the bleak November, he sat down, weak and weary, in a corner of the Café Musain; a full glass in his grasp, raised to his lips and sipped every now and then. All his friends had already left, and Enjolras already trusted Grantaire to come home on his own, or else he would go down to the café and wake him up ere they both went to class together. Outside, the skies were as gray as the rooftops, as ominous and stormy and cold as the dark student's own mood. "A white winter is coming this year too," he sighed. Not only did he need strong drink to warm himself from within, as a buffer against the cold air; but also to heal those inner wounds that would not cease to bleed... from the cold stream in his heart, the pang of seeing a fair idol fallen down and shattered at his feet; one to whom he had looked up to for every virtue —courtesy, gentleness, integrity, the list was endless—, one whom he had learned to admire and trust more than anyone else he knew... the first friend he had made in the capital, now regarded with a far more ardent and fond regard than a friend's... One swig comforts one; two are better still... but, to one who has become way too inured in the raising of the wrist, even three are not enough. Grantaire sighed, tilted his weary head backwards, and put the cup to his lips, draining it at one deep draught, feeling that warm nectar of a liquor course down his throat, warming his heart and entrails, rising up to his head and dispelling all those thoughts, all those feelings that were connected to Enjolras in some way or another. Turning Grantaire once more into his carefree and merry, eager and mercury-witted old self... Then he rolled his bright hazel eyes with ecstasy, as the last drop trickled down his gullet. Now most strong drinks had lost their potency, and some kind of resistance had developed within him. This was the real amber nectar, something fiery, something akin to Marseillais blood, to fight the fire with fire (for southern blood, and French blood, and southern French blood even more so, is brandy, combustible, intoxicating). For there was no other way. One swig comforts one; two are better still... but, to one who has become way too inured in the raising of the wrist, even three are not enough. Tears could not quench the fire, and thoughts did nothing but kindle it; his brain was already tense with sorrow, and the potations made, thus, an evident impression. No matter if he drowned his hopes along with his sorrows, what did he care, if those hopes were sour to begin with? No matter if he quenched the lights of conscience and reason along with his thirst, no matter if he plunged deeper into misery both social and emotional; deep he drank, he drank deeply, he swilled down the liquor of various kinds, some of which sparkled as it was poured out, and went bubbling down the throat; he listlessly quaffed every drop, quickly he emptied three, four cups, which had lost their potency and were now lemonade to his system; gulped them down and smacked his lips over the sweetness of the draught; he swallowed the precious liquors down to the last drop, until the strong eau-de-vie and brandy finally (finally!) went to the young man's head and made him stupid -though, sadly, not exhilarated-. Soon the drink made him so sleepy that he sank backwards with his face upturned and fell fast asleep, like a bear in winter, surrounded by empty bottles and tankards, his reason left aside somewhere on that glass-crowded table.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ Grantaire thought, drunk on sorrow and on wine, purring desperately as cats do when they wish to soothe and have nothing else; look at me look at me; I am here and I wish you not to cry, look at me and bask in my felonious splendour—
Little by little, he began to come to his senses right before sunrise, his head throbbing with pain and his throat parched with thirst, all the strength sapped from his limbs. His eyelids flickered wearily, until they were fully open, squinting and taking their time to adjust to the light, which fortunately was not that bright to dazzle... and then, an early snowflake that was falling outside, or a spark from the flames in the quinquet, rather larger than the rest, alighted on the edge of the threshold of the door which stood ajar, began to take on a sickly green colour, increasing in size and rounding in shape, taking on a gradually clearer and clearer human shape, and in the end became a lovely, regal-looking young lady, tall and of slender figure, all dressed in a green kirtle glittering like peridot, and composed of trillions of little leaves, dotted with wilted wildflowers here and there. The snowflake or spark, whatever it might be, had grown larger and larger, until it became the figure of a young woman, dressed in garments of dark green gauze, which looked like millions of little fresh leaves woven together. Her face and her arms were as perfect as the moon, and seemed to be of the brightest, purest, most dazzling inland ice, if not of Carrara marble, her green veins seen through the lilywhite, icy cold skin that seemed to shine like moonlight; and, in the middle of that translucent crystal, her poison-green eyes glowed with an eerie light and shone like leaves of wormwood seen through diamonds. That heart-shaped face of hers was framed in locks that looked as raven black as Grantaire's own, but were actually chestnut with streaks of dark green; and pointy ears protruded to left and right of that frame of soft, glittering hair, crowned with a garland of dark green ivy. Furthermore, she didn't seem to be walking, but rather soaring slightly above ground, which made her appear even more ethereal.
She nodded toward the threshold and waved her hand. He was somewhat alarmed, but curious, and it seemed that he heard her speak his name in a Voice that lit a spark deep inside him, making him want to obey her wishes.
The poor innocent soul was all startled and dazzled by her appearance, feeling unworthy of addressing such a person, if she could be called a person, but he still gasped as, after starting up to a sitting posture, scrambling up to sit on the floor, he naïvely dropped his beret and addressed her as Madame in the most courteous way that Enjolras had taught him. Though still ill-at-ease, he scrambled back up on his feet, then recoiled and sat down wearily once more. He felt himself shiver as those eyes burned into his, as if searching into his very soul.
Once she had produced a few mint-sweets from her pocket and they had been consumed, something that was quite an easy affair with such a cheerful lad (and one who seriously needed some of those mints for quickening himself), she drew, with her left hand, a dagger with a black obsidian blade and a hilt of bright green snakeskin. And she slashed her right wrist; the blood that gushed from the wound was transparent, and the same bright green shade as her eyes and the hilt of her blade, proving that the stranger was not human.
Then, holding a little cup of rock crystal, that looked like a shot glass for liquor, with her left hand beneath her right wrist, she let her blood drip into the cup and offered it to the now healthier young fellow, who, watching the little wavelets dance and shine, so limpid and so crystalline, so quick, and tremulous, and bright... fixed his gaze on the liquid, entranced. A thousand different herbal and floral scents did meet and mingle in its rare perfume...
"Drink this, my lad," she told Grantaire with a piercing stare. "And then tell me what you think it tastes like. Never have mortal men or women sold a liquor like this in any shop or tavern, and never will they. This elixir assuages every pain, cures all disease, and crystallises for life the sweet delights of youth... Drink, my warrior, and forget all your sorrows..." And her voice as she spoke was like the faint clinking of bluebells, or the seeds rattling within a capsule. It seemed to the dark young man that that voice rang through the whole world, and his heart gave one sharp, painful throb.
"So much as safely I may drink..." Still thirsty from the liquid he had lost during his intoxication (that thing definitely tipped the scales in favour!), and trusting the one who suddenly gave him a sup for free, the dark student quaffed the liquor at a single draught, wincing as he tore the empty cup away from his lips. Whether his thirst was too great to bear delay, or whether the scent of the tainted draught disturbed his judgement and weakened his power of self-control (in fact, both scenarios were likely), he drank greedily of the intoxicant! It had a scent like perfume, indeed, but when that glittering green liquid passed through his lips, the taste was strong and sharp, stronger than any liquor he had ever tasted, and even made the inside of his mouth tingle, just like limbs that have gone to sleep. And after he swallowed the drink, as it disappeared into him and went deeper down, it was searing his throat so intensely that, when the draught got down to his chest, it seemed to burn his heart to a crisp, or to hollow out his chest from within.
It burned all the way down his throat, making his eyes smart and his vision blur with tears. It settled dense and hot in his stomach but his chest felt scooped out, empty.
"Ewrrgh... This draught is awful, it tastes like weeds... This is poison!"
"'Tis not," the Green Faery said, as she watched him rid himself of the liquor in one quick throw down his throat, then watched his eyes fill with painful tears. "Whoever has drunk this once shall drink it forever, and all their sorrows shall nevermore rise again. Take a second glass; you will find it better than the first."
Once more, she held the cup below her slash wound and refilled it.
The lady was right: as soon as the student had drained the second cup down to the last drop, as soon as the liquor within had passed from the glass to the inside of his chest, he was seized with a burning thirst. A strange new thirst, a craving unfamiliar, entered his body with the draught. He felt no more pain, but the fey blood was there still; the fatal effect was seen only too soon. As the taste flooded him, so did the elation.
"Il me semble que je bois la vie... Encore!" he exclaimed, smacking his lips as he dried up the tears. "Encore! This is like a draught of fire...! Through every vein, I feel again... a rapture that is almost pain throbs in my heart and fills my brain... I feel the bands of steel that so long and heavily have pressed upon my chest uplifted, and the malediction of my affliction is taken from me, and the weary heart within my chest... at last... at length... finds rest... Here is to you, to the health of the greatest lady, and may she live long and prosper!"
So thirsty was he that he felt he had never tasted such a refreshing or such a strong draught before in his short lifetime. But it was something more; the weird juices that are the fey-child's blood entered into him and set the fountains of his life force playing with marvellous power. He was elated. He was full of fight. His eyes sparkled with life; a glowing thrill of happiness swept over him, as if every sorrow and vexation had vanished from his mind; a carefree feeling awoke in him, the enchanted draught coursing like wildfire through every artery in his limbs:
"I am not ill... I am not weak...! The trance, the swoon, the dream is o'er; I feel the chill of death no more! At length... I stand renewed in all my strength!"
And his lilywhite, dry cheekbones regained colour for an instant, a fugitive flash of lightning lit up his weary eyes; but then his face became even more livid, and the sparkles in his eyes died down until they disappeared. Breathing painfully, he put his hardened open palms upon his fluttering chest.
"Je voudrais boire toujours!" he gasped, as if struggling for air. "Quand je ne bois plus, mon souffle s'arrête, et je sens un poids brutal tout près du coeur..." His head bobbled upon his shoulders, and it wearily sank down.
He wished no longer to leave her, nor that she should leave his side. Right before they parted ways, and she turned his back on him, she filled a phial, also of rock crystal, with that wonderful exhilarating draught, and he put it carefully in his pocket, to use as a cure for whatever troubles might cross his path.
Now Grantaire was a very clever and skillful man, and you must not think that what I am about to relate to you was in any way due to carelessness or error on his part (or to any lack of experience on the part of Enjolras either). For the liquor he had drunk was no ordinary liquor, and possessed a malevolent power of its own.
Oh, poor Grantaire! It was a poison he had swallowed, and the most dreadful one of them all. Whoever has drunk the blood of the Green Faery has their heart frozen for as long as the fatal draught remains within their system. They do not longer recognise anything, no longer loving anything, neither their parents, their sweethearts, their friends, nor their country; they think only of themselves; they feel nought but an urge to drink, and would gladly drink, all the blood in this world, without slaking a thirst that nothing at all can quench.
For all the rest of the night, feeling his elation gone, feeling weary and drowsy indeed, he slept as soundly as a dethroned king, dreaming of nothing but his poison-green draught. Enjolras calling his name and shaking him awake lulled Grantaire, at first, like the waves and the breeze if he had been napping on a rowboat, at home in Marseille; it was thus that he perceived his roommate's calls and more physical attempts to rouse him. It took several slowly-dragging hours for him to awaken. Something strange was happening within him; he had had painful, distorted dreams, and sighed listlessly in response, with a heavy head and a far heavier heart, when Enjolras told him that he had stormed down at sunrise to pick him up from the gutter and back home for breakfast before class. When he looked again, the woman was gone, but it seemed as though she had vanished into thin air, just like the stars in the night sky had done at the break of day.
Stripped of what Grantaire's fancy had woven around him, the long-haired stripling page in crimson clad stood as if shorn before him. It was as if a veil had been torn off from his eyes, and he no longer saw the blond as his fond dreams had painted him. No. Grantaire saw Enjolras in all his unworthiness, icy cold and never allowing himself a truce from his duties; and the gold of his youthful love, and the rosy daydreams he had woven to make a high ideal (the only one in his life), lay in tattered shreds at his feet. When he looked at his roommate's eyes like frozen lakes, and saw the mistake he had made and the opportunity he had lost, he covered his face with his rough hands and turned his back to Enjolras, not even daring to address him once on their way to the Faculty.
That day, as Grantaire sat by the window in the lecture hall as usual, he was wearier and more absent than usually. Not only had he skipped his customary class-skipping routine, but spent the class staring at the notes Enjolras had brought him, yet finding it hard to concentrate. One thing was napping off at class for being wearied down by so much legalese and so many Latin terms, but this time it was different. And, every now and then, he knocked back a sip from a little flask full of a bright green liquid and kept on perusing those notes.
The lecturer must have been surprised to see Grantaire paying attention at class, ditto Enjolras and the other classmates, but the dark-haired one cared little to nothing, peering through the dimness and nothing discerning, his heart hardened and frozen, for the lecture. His fevered membranes and burnt stomach began to clamour for more and more of the scorching fluid; while his brain, thrust all awry by the unwonted stimulant, permitted him to go any length to obtain it. And, the shorter the level in that little vial turned, the shorter grew his temper.
In the end, nothing remained to him but his thirst, a prodigious possession in itself that grew more prodigious with every sober breath he drew.
That evening, and three or four evenings more, at the Musain, the others realised that Grantaire behaved no longer like himself. He was not feeling ill-at-ease the least, but the effect of the drug lingered within his system.
One night when the sleet was pouring down, he delighted his so-called Friends with the most dreadful thing he could have ever done: noticing the blue, white, and red flag, and the map of the Republic, that were nailed to the walls of the backroom, he saw nothing but dreadful, ridiculous, grotesque signs that were not fit for decoration. And thus, leaping upon a chair, he seized one of the blue corners of the tricolore and pulled it towards him with all his strength, trying to tear the tricolore off the wall and almost succeeded... if Enjolras and Courfeyrac, concerned to the utmost degree about his suffering, had not restrained him and knocked him unconscious, finally tying him to a chair. It was no use arguing with Grantaire when he was in that state.
Even though they finally managed to stop him, the lush was remarkably strong, and had kicked, and writhed, and given those who restrained him bruises everywhere, and shouting in a slurred tone that this was not fair, this was not how a person should be treated:
"Why are you two reshtraining me like that?! I am perfectly aww right, there ish nothing wrong with me!! Sho lishen! LISHEN!! Ewwrgh... That 'flag of freedom' you call ish nothing but a filthy three-coloured rag, A FUCKING THREE-COLOURED RAG, and it'sh even torn at the edgesh!!" His voice was brusque, like the cracking lash of a whip; and, hearing this reproach in the leader's voice, he sneered at Enjolras and all the others, an expression that twisted his uneven yet handsome face into something they barely recognized. Grantaire stood up and tore off another nail that pinned the flag to the wall out of pure spite; before anyone of the other Friends could react, he had scored a savage, vicious kick against the middle of the map, where Paris itself lay, leaving a muddy dark footprint.
"Why do you look so worried?" he said to the others at last, a trace of scorn in his voice. "It makes you look ugly. I'm all right now." He frowned, noticing something. "Well, look at that," he said suddenly, "that rag nailed to the wall is torn at the edges, and this map's boundaries are quite crooked. How ugly they are, after all—just like the backroom in which they stand," and then he reached out and pinched off two of the nails at the corners of the flag with a vicious twist of his hand.
"Grand... R... what are you doing?" Enjolras asked, feeling a dangerous fury stirring in him, the feeling of betrayal as intense as if his friend had struck him in the face. In the end, the fair leader could hold his rage in check no longer.
"What on Earth are you doing now? Grantaire, stop this charade immediately! Tout à l'heure!" Enjolras commanded.
"Well, I tell you that I should have torn that filthy rag off the wall! There'sh no grache, no aeshthetic, no FUCKING MEANING in dishplaying it like a FUCKING TROPHY! Just like thish dirty old-fashioned map on the fucking wall beshide it!" And, furious, he launched a powerful, disdainful kick that left a muddy footprint right in the middle of the map of Republican France.
This sacrilege he had just committed did nothing but redouble the efforts of those who restrained him, lending to Courfeyrac's right arm an unusual strength, by means of which the point of his bâton struck Grantaire in the nape of the neck and knocked him out senseless.
Enjolras could do nothing but watch, without saying or doing anything; his tongue glued to his palate, the blood curdling in his veins... until finally, in a mournful tone, looking down, he ordered listlessly:
"Combeferre, could you please bring some rope?" Enjolras himself cradled the pale, vulnerable, ill-shaven young man and let his heavy form slump down into a chair, as his lieutenant brought a long, sturdy rope to tie Grantaire to the back of it.
Afterwards, though he started up to his knees in wild frenzy, he seemed completely recovered, and assuaged their solicitous concern by swearing that he had never felt better in his life, and that the intoxication was completely healed. But it was not; the blood of the Green Faery had got into his heart, and though he did not know it, it was there still, slowly turning his heart as cold and hard as a frozen crazy diamond. It did not hurt any longer, but there it was. He felt no pain, but the elixir was there still.
From that day on, Grantaire was no longer himself. His usual merry gaiety and good cheer gave way to either furious rage or cynical, sarcastic raillery.
"What do you want?" he asked the fair leader one day while cramming at the lecture hall. Enjolras, hoping that whatever darkness had come over his friend had passed, had called to him from the doorway, but to no avail. "Can't you see I'm busy?"
"I thought..." Enjolras cleared his throat. "I thought you might like to tend a little more to our flowers, or sing a Marseillaise as a duet with me." He thought that maybe the few favourite activities the two of them had in common would bring his friend back to himself.
But Grantaire snorted derisively and knocked back another draught from his flask, the liquor making his throat rise and fall steadily. "Those games are only fit for posh young children, who can't tell their left from their right. Revolution and liberty and equality and such —pure drivel, isn't it?"
Privately, and en tête-a-tête with his roommate, Grantaire had entertained similar thoughts on occasion, but to hear him say it out loud in public made Enjolras feel sick to his stomach.
That was not everything that the new Grantaire did, and there was not much left of his old self. Moreover, now Grantaire was not at all afraid of making piercing, snide remarks, this time of icy sarcasm, detached of joy; the taste for such self-expression had suddenly developed within him. His pastimes, too, were now far more dangerous than they had been before. Passionately he struck at every object that happened to be near - injured himself in a furious rage - reason, conscience, all seemed lost in a moment to the brilliant philosopher and deft martial artist. Whenever he heard clashing and screaming outside the Café, he stormed out to the streets with rolled-up sleeves, in a passionate yearning, often even armed with a billiards cue in his rippling left arm, and would rarely return from the fray without a black eye or a sprained foot, in exchange for serious blows to his opponents, as a way to release all that overwhelming desire. He would also gamble and cheat more frequently at écarté, risking the money Enjolras gave him and told him to be careful about.
Moreover, he listlessly ate little to no solid food, and lived solely upon that rapidly-ebbing enchanted liquor. He was taken with violent shudders, and, every now and then, a burning fever.
And all this seemed the likelier because perchance he was bound by a spell, from which only that sickly green draught could free him. Every night there came an hour when his mind was most horribly changed, and, after his psyche, his body. For first he became furious and wild and would rush upon his dearest friends to kill them, even run any sharp pointed object he could seize through Enjolras himself, the one he once worshipped, and who still pitied him and gave him a second chance, if Grantaire were not bound to a chair.
Losing consciousness, he then began to drift away, and not even the leader and his two closest lieutenants could keep Grantaire bedridden; he said the most outrageous, craziest things he had ever said as he tossed under the covers, keeping them anxious all night long. His whole body burned like a bonfire, and nothing could quench the thirst that wasted him away. He was in a dreadful state; even lukewarm mint tea burned down his throat, as if it had been molten lead.
Though he himself would know nothing of it, for when his hour was past, he would awake forgetful of all that vile fit and in his proper shape and sound mind - saving that he was somewhat wearied, and, with sunken eyes and faded mouth, he had dreamt of a lady in a green kirtle, and of a bitter draught that would utterly darken his mind and harden his heart.
And, when he sobered up, he always awoke looking tired and distraught, his health dwindling like the waning moon burning her fire away. The ordinary eaux-de-vie made no longer an impression upon his system. Threatened by shadows at night and exposed to the light; some said they could see a change in him. There was a look in his eyes like black holes in the sky; a look as of a man who has seen visions, or of a daemon's that is dreaming, and he would be out all day.
But all of that was due to the fey blood in his veins, so seductive in its advances, so insidious in its influence, the fatal draught that he had put into himself, and that was ebbing more and more, that made him even chide Enjolras, even treat with raillery the deity he worshipped, the one he had been sworn to heart and soul, life and limb... and who was still willing to give the dark-haired sceptic a chance to be one of them. He would more than often shove away the fair leader in scarlet, addressing him and the other friends as coldly and harshly as never before, without paying the slightest attention, and, in exchange for such sneers and scorn... something warm and painful stirred within Enjolras himself.
It was a sad, grievous sight to behold in the once faithful, though sceptical, champion the victim of his addiction, either when the poison boiled in his veins, flushed his cheeks, and kindled a wildfire in his eyes; or, when, exhausted by his own passions, he sank down to the ground, helpless, defenceless, with scarcely power to move! In the state to which his own folly had reduced him, he was unable to make any resistance.
Soon, even Grantaire's pastimes turned more serious; he would play rock-paper-scissors against his own shadow, which ensured that he would always win; cheat at cards and at billiards, to revel in winning by unrighteous means; and even provoke other patrons of the Café, both Friends and strangers, to violence on the streets outside; he pursued them in a sort of berserker rage, eager for fight, desperate fight, any fight, fight without hate, that would outlet his dangerous, boiling power, his overflow of energy. Joy and power were possessing his small brain and lusty frame. And the others stood in shock as they saw this very dear one take into his body and his brain a madness that would surely end his life. A slouching, moody, drunken sloven, wasted by intemperance and vice, and with his matted hair and stubbly face in wild disorder; but, with some traces on him, too, of having been a man of good proportion and good features in his youth.
He sat, however, staring vacantly at the floor; with a lustreless and stupid smile. A spectacle of such deep degradation, of such abject hopelessness, of such a miserable downfall, that one would have put their hands before their face and turned away, lest Grantaire himself should see how much it moved one.
He took to drinking, idling: all the fine resources that were to be so much better for him than the home he might have had. He lost his looks, his character, his health, his strength, his friends, his work: everything! This went on for what seemed years and years; he sinking lower and lower... At last, he was so cast down, and cast out, that no one would employ or notice him; and doors were shut upon him, go where he would.
And each and every time he quaffed a dose of the elixir, his weakness increased. After an instant of exhilaration, when he seemed to have been electrified, he plunged back into that heavy state of trance. His spirit and his body wavered at unison, under the spell of profound exhaustion.
In the end, as we have said before, nothing remained to him but his thirst, a prodigious possession in itself that grew more prodigious with every sober breath he drew.
One evening, about a fortnight since his change of heart, with his woolly floppy beret pulled way above his ears and raven curls, Grantaire staggered out of the Café on his own, his back turned to all those he called friends when he was sober. Without even giving a single explanation, he disappeared, dashing off into that stormy evening.
And he took his leave without even saying au revoir.
They were all so annoying, each and every one in his own special way, and that was a night he wanted to spend from dark to dawn on his own, walking the streets of Montmartre as large raindrops whipped his now gaunt, haggard ill-shaven face, mingling with the perspiration that beaded his forehead and rolled down his stubbled cheeks and chin.
As he stormed off, without even waving goodbye for an instant, without even saying au revoir, he never dared to look back over his shoulder. That was all in the past, and there was something far more urgent, that took up all his attention.
He was not only suffering, no, burning with thirst; his head on fire, his throat ablaze, his limbs so cold he could not feel them... He reached for his flacon, but found it empty; he had not given it a thought when he rushed away, and thus he cursed out loud and tore his matted dark hair. He had never felt so ill within his short life, racked with a thirst he saw no way of quenching. Without the burning thirst that seared his throat and consumed him, he would gladly have turned back and retraced his steps. He felt exhausted, and wanted only to lie down and sleep; but the rain was streaming down around him. He tried to pull himself out of it, but every object seemed to dance strangely before his eyes.
Suddenly he became aware of something he had never before seen in that place. No sooner had he got out on the street that he saw the arrival of a magnificent rococo calèche, pulled by two black mares with harnesses all green, that seemed to be made of ivy vines, and caparisoned in the same glittering greenery. In the carriage sat a regal, gorgeously beautiful lady, clad in a pelisse of fresh maidenhair fern and a bonnet made of thickly-knit ivy leaves. The carriage itself was emerald green, its inner upholstery of satin in a peridot shade.
"Surely it is she..." Grantaire muttered to himself. "Voilà mon affaire!" and stared at the only passenger in awe. She was tall and majestic, shining, and wrapped in a thin garment as green as poison, and he stared at her like a man out of his wits. She was tall and of slender figure, with skin of a dazzling white laced with green veins, like polished Carrara marble. She was clothed all in greenery, her kirtle and gauntlets and shapka likewise of ferns and ivy, and her eyes glowed like stars seen through peridot lenses.
As the carriage stopped with its left panel right before Grantaire, the lady turned towards him and adressed him with a friendly sign. One would have said that she knew him already.
The weary student looked at her, and thought that he had never seen anyone so beautiful, or whose face was so clever and whose eyes so wise.
The lady smiled at him serenely, and asked him if it was true that he was a martial artist of great skill, and her voice as she spoke was like the faint clinking of bluebells, or the seeds rattling within a capsule. It seemed to the dark young man that that voice rang through the whole world, and his heart gave one sharp, painful throb.
He recognised that unearthly voice, forgetting for an instant that he was dying of thirst.
The dice had been cast, and thus, as the coachman opened the carriage door, the dark young man got in and took his place by the lady's side.
All of a sudden, as he entered and took his place by her side, she shut the door behind him, and... "Coachman!"... a whiplash... they shot off as if fired from a cannon, crossing the Seine at the Charenton Bridge, past the Champs-Élysées, the Tuileries, the Place de la Concorde; past the splendid mansions and right through the brilliant parks of the Left Bank, and dashing off beyond, into the frosty Île-de-France countryside.
Now the sleet began to fall, so heavily that the young man could not see a hand's breadth before him, but still they drove on. He tried to cry for help, but no one heard him scream. It was even hard to breathe for him, at such breakneck speed they were going forth! The sleet whipped all around, and the carriage seemed to have grown wings. Every now and then it gave a jump as if it were going over maze hedges and deep trenches.
Grantaire felt, time and again, his heart rise up to his throat, until his legs and lungs threatened to give out. It was as if they were darting up and down sharp slopes and over yawning chasms. The Seine, the sights of the Left Bank, the open landscape, everything flitted by as formless blurs. Grantaire was at least slightly frightened, and he would gladly have called for help or sung a little Marseillaise to encourage himself, or called out his beloved's name, but sadly, ever since that night when he had felt his eyes swimming with tears and that burning pain in his heart, ever since he had swallowed that first sip of fey blood, those words could not even choke his throat, for he had forgotten everything he could have done, only being able to recall some notions of legalese that he had been able to retain; and thus, he began to murmur: "In dubio pro reo..."
Suddenly, the lady in the carriage stopped and turned her face towards him. Now that the full moon appeared from behind the clouds, her pelisse and her bonnet, which she had put back on, were of the brightest green. It was only then that Grantaire, having forgotten her with the thrill of the ride, recognised that she was the faery whose blood he had been thirsting, even dying, for!
The fur and the cap, which were made entirely of fresh leaves, fell off, and he saw the woman who had stood at his window that night in the snow, tall and regal with her chestnut hair and white skin, and her pale green eyes like chips of ice.
It was the Green Faery, indeed!
"All right..." She kissed his brow, and then his mouth, toying with his messy raven hair and the rough stubble on his face. "Are you cold still?" Her lips curved upwards in a smile, but her glacial eyes burned into his own as she whispered softly to him in the darkness, her touch as possessive as it had been that first night when she made her overture, both gentle and frightening—for such is the allure of anyone who has at least a drop of the fey blood, which gives them some ability to charm a man or woman if they so desire. And her talent was enough to keep Grantaire, and keep him she would.
"You'll see, mon cher. You're like me. And now you'll stay, and we'll fight together, and everything will be perfect."
"Just one sip of your blood would keep me warm... I would rather die than suffer such unbearable, terrible thirst..." he muttered listlessly, with a kind of drowsy thoughtfulness. It seemed that the vines that the cloak were made of were coils constricting Grantaire's chest, squeezing the air out of his lungs, as she planted that kiss upon his forehead.
Producing her snakeskin dagger, she slashed her right wrist once more, then held a cup of rock crystal to catch the bright green liquid that gushed out of the wound. Once more, he quaffed a deep draught, letting it all disappear from sight into his own insides, with reckless thirst, draining the cup at one fell swoop.
“How good it is!” said he; “I have never before tasted such a warm, invigorating liquor!" And his eyes sparkled with new life; a glow diffused itself over his frame; it seemed as if every sorrow, every oppression were once more banished from his mind, and a fresh, free nature were stirring within him.
“Yes, just so,” said the maiden, as she poured out some more, and held it to his lips. Again he drank, and, as the liquor passed from the cup to the inside of his chest, a living joy streamed through every vein.
The Green Faery smiled in delight, watching him knock back that deep draught down his throat, her fingertips and her lips burning his skin, the liquor searing his throat, and yet at the same time colder than frozen mercury. It seemed to penetrate all through him, and his heart, already cold and hard as a crazy diamond, seemed to grow colder still, until he believed that he would die. The blood froze in his veins, and his heart hardened even more, as everything darkened before his shut eyes. Yet this malaise did not last but an instant, and then, equally suddenly, he felt as right as rain, and it all seemed quite painless, even pleasant, the impression of cold having completely disappeared; and he forgot all about the docks of Marseille, and the hardships of childhood, and the exhausting journey on foot all the way to Paris, and the struggles to enter University, and the Café Musain, and the Amis de l'ABC, and Enjolras, and all those he had ever loved, and everything else that remained of the past was forgotten. The first draught was still searing his throat when he had to down the second, the remembrance of his past life had vanished, and instead, something stirred within him at the sight of the regal, green-eyed lady who stood before him with outstretched hands.
"Et maintenant... And, in the meantime, my lad... you shall not have more of my blood until later on, or that would poison you to death, am I right?"
Grantaire nodded listlessly as he looked at her, having come to his senses once more.
"You look beautiful," he said wonderingly, for now he could hardly look at anything else but her beauty. Her presence felt no longer sinister, but rather soothing instead. Never had such a charming or such an intelligent visage appeared before him (or so he thought, not even being able to recall his fair idol in scarlet), and she seemed no longer made of ice or marble, like she had looked not long ago, when she had made that first overture that had frightened him so much. He was no longer in awe of her, or frightened, and, in his own opinion, this was the most perfect sight that he had hitherto ever seen. One could not even imagine a more seductive visage than that! It only took one instant of looking at her for him to think that he had never seen anyone so beautiful, or whose face was so clever and whose eyes so wise. After all, his mind had been cleansed back to a half-blank slate, and Grantaire found that he couldn't quite remember why he'd left home in the first place, the memory slippery and elusive as a fish.
He told her that not only could he read and write, but also make up the wittiest of quips within the blink of an eye, that he knew the lyrics to all the lewdest drinking songs by heart, and that he was a great savateur and tireur de chausson marseillais, and equally deft at wielding a walking-stick, or bâton, in combat.
The Green Faery smiled in response, and the young man said to himself that maybe it was not because of his fighting experience, which he was so proud of; he thought that he surely did not know enough.
She asked him if he had ever lost a fight, and he shook his head in response.
"And, if you ever stood defeated, would you rather live a broken man than die a hero?"
Grantaire locked eyes with her... and... after a while, replied coldly: "Death above defeat."
Then she burst into a ringing, lilting noblewoman's laugh:
"Hoo hoo hoo! Allons, allons, you are definitely the warrior that I need, mon petit garçon... Would you like to be uniformed in green maidenhair and spider silks, armed with a silver pike, with a breastplate and a backplate brighter than the sun itself?"
Then, refilling the goblet, she held it to his lips, and he drank again. A feeling of joy seemed to flow through his blood. The whole world was his, he seemed to think, so why torture himself! Everything is created for our pleasure and enjoyment. The stream of life is the stream of happiness; let yourself be carried away on it - that is joy. He looked at the young girl. He flung his arms about her and gazed into her marvelously clear eyes. It was only for a second, but how can that second be expressed or described in words? Was it the life of the soul or the life of death that took possession of his being? Was he carried up high, or did he sink down into the deep, always deeper?
And his lilywhite, dry cheekbones regained colour for an instant, a fugitive flash of lightning lit up his weary eyes; but then his face became even more livid, and the sparkles in his eyes died. Breathing painfully, he put his hardened open palms upon his fluttering chest.
And he was, though unfazed, completely devoted to the words of his new mistress, toying with her dark green locks and believing that, the next day, he would awaken as a prince consort on a throne by her side. The moon was new that night, and the sky was clouded, over the Northern moors, and the lady listened with a serene smile on her face. It then seemed to him that what he knew was not enough, and he looked around him at the darkening sky as the carriage flew onwards... really flying, drawn through the air; the silhouettes of the pegasi who pulled the carriage, and whose long tails and manes fluttered in the gale, turned less and less distinct the faster they advanced -it was impossible to discern if they were pegasi or oversized black swans-, till they soon resembled dark cirrus clouds whipped by the wings of the tempest. If Grantaire's heart were not frozen, he would have had vertigo and felt light-headed and nauseated, but now flying through the ice-cold air seemed the most normal thing in the world to him. On they flew over woods and lakes, over many lands, all through that long, long moonless stormy night; he saw cathedral spires appear and disappear below his feet, as well as goblin-like grotesque gargoyles, and gigantic golden archangels that blew their trumpets on the pinnacles of steeples; fortresses on mountains, monasteries in valleys, bridges across rivers and rivers across the countryside; and beneath them a storm brewed, turning the clouds black, the first snow crackled, and no living thing made a sound, yet the tempest whistled, and howled, and roared, ringing in their ears; it was a fierce melody, a dithyramb like the ancient warcries of berserkers or maenads; yet, in that state of trance, all that chaotic chorus was a lullaby to him.
The drugged young man gazed at her, and saw that she was so beautiful, he could not imagine a more lovely and intelligent face; she did not now seem to be made of ice or marble, as she had when he had seen her through the backroom door and she had beckoned to him. In his eyes she was perfect, and he did not even notice as the carriage began once more to cut through the frozen night sky, though around them a deadly storm blew and wolves with teeth like daggers kept pace. He was well and truly lost under the elixir's spell.
One minute after his lips had kissed the lethal draught, he had plunged into some kind of drowsiness, that nevertheless left his consciousness of what was going on around him intact. His weary head, hanging upon his chest, seemed to be supporting an invisible weight and lifted itself, time after time, with a considerable effort. The look in his quenched eyes flitted wearily to and from his lady, until then, his heavy eyelids shut and his head sank down on her lap.
They flew over the packs of wolves, and the gray wolves, that had lain down in ambush awaiting their prey, raised themselves, howling, and followed the dark carriage.
They flew over the dens of bears, and the brown bears, that had lain down to hibernate until springtime, raised themselves, growling, and followed the dark carriage.
They flew along the coast of the Channel, where the seals had lain down to rest on the rocks, and the seals, who had no legs and not enough strength to run, and thus contented themselves to crawl along the ground in the direction of the dark carriage, as they let out long, ominous cries that sounded like groans, and seemed to belong to the world of phantoms or that of merpeople, which Grantaire and the Lady seemed to be approaching.
In the end, when the day was about to dawn once more, Grantaire, exhausted, and lulled by all that softness and that warmth, slumped down and fell asleep at the feet of the Lady in the Green Kirtle.
The evil draught, which he had been made drunk with, had laid hold of him and bound his senses so strongly that he fell senseless upon the carriage floor at her feet, and there he lay insensible, as a living cadaver, her icy cold left hand heavy on his shoulder.
So many people want to live in the most beautiful seat of learning in this world that the townhouses are packed close together, and there is not room for everyone to have even a small garden of their own. Thus, most of these bohemians have to content themselves, and must be satisfied, with a few potted plants on the windowsills, or perhaps even scraps of forget-me-nots and violets grown in potshards, worst-case scenario. But there lived not long ago, in one of those garrets with a rooftop window on the little narrow Rue des Grés, a pair of young Law students who, in spite of their bohemian life, had found a way to deck their sill with something better than a pair of whole plant pots, nearly a proper garden: a wooden crate which they had filled with soil and improvised into a planter box upon their windowsill, where they grew herbs meant for their kitchen, such as chives, parsley, chervil, carrots... aside from a few edible flowers such as nasturtium, carnations, calabash vines, and pansies, which, all smiling at the sun, filled their little room with scent and colour; and, furthermore, since they had decided to place this crate perpendicular to the drain-pipe and to the windowsill, it looked rather exactly like a redoubt of flowering greenery.
Though they were not brothers by blood, these two loved one another more than even real siblings would (even though one of them was adamant to deny it). And that in spite of that pair of students being as different from one another as night is from day, or as silk is from sackcloth; for one of them was tall and blond and shone like the sun, while the other was shorter and dark-haired with a look in his eyes like black holes in the sky. For three quarters of the year, their little garden was truly a paradise: the vines and tendrils of the calabashes cascaded hung down the side of the crate, into the void and the street below, while the nasturtium entwined around a little trellis, creating a wonderful arch of greenery and flame-like flowers, whose long filaments climbed and trailed around the window frames.
The two would spend their days making their way through University, but each afternoon they would hurry home, climbing the steps to their tiny apartments and opening the windows to let the sunset light in, stepping out onto the balcony and meeting there. They shared the late afternoon sunshine and often stayed late into the evening, eating their supper together under the stars.
Sometimes they tended their nasturtium flowers, encouraging them to twine together into a beautiful arched bower of red and golden fiery blooms, talking of books and philosophy and music; sometimes they would just sit quietly together and read, or play chess by moonlight under the lush span of flaming petals.
At last, these pleasures came to an end, or were at least interrupted, for winter came to Paris and at times the windows were frosted or outright frozen over, filling both of them with white winter awe. Both our roommates were southerners by birth and by blood, and thus, throughout their Mediterranean childhood, they had never experienced a white winter ere they moved into the capital. But still the backstreets of Paris were not bereft of magic or wonder in the coldest of seasons. Also in winter, they had to move the crate indoors, but still everything had a magical air about it, the streets below and the eaves above covered in a white blanket, the icicles along the eaves, the frost etching delicate crystal fractals, more fragile than plant flowers, upon the windowpanes. On days when this happened, the two friends would warm francs or sous on the stove and press them against the frozen panes until a round hole would appear in the frost through which they could signal to one another. Then they would each go down the long staircase and meet in the street, where they would walk together in the falling snow and talk, for they never seemed to run out of subjects that interested them. If it got too cold, a steaming cup of coffee laced with eau-de-vie from a street vendor would be enough to warm them, and off they would go, on some new tangent of conversation.
Then, by the light of crackling embers in the sooty iron stove, after having helped one another with their studies, they would often huddle together and tell one another their favourite poems and classical myths. Or warm a coin (a sou at worst, a franc at best) in their cupped, gloved hands, if not on the rickety iron stove, then hold it upon the frosted windowpane, which made a most adorable little round peephole, from which, watching the snowflakes swirl outside in the dim gaslight, through the window, often a noble steel-blue eye would shine, or equally often an ironic hazel one, fixed upon the sight through the glass: those were the fair student and the dark one, respectively.
One of these two students, surnamed Enjolras, was the dashing, tall, blue-eyed blond we have spoken of, the very likeness of a delicate and fair storybook prince; an only child of privilege, slender of waist, his torso like the stem of a lily and his limbs like the rarest statuary, a golden halo of long crisp curls like a sun framing his rosy, heart-shaped face before cascading down the nape of his neck and his back in a golden queue, neatly tied with a bow, kept out of his soft face by a cherry-red satin ribbon. Upon his proud, high marble brow and fine high Slavic cheekbones it was written of leadership, commanding respect. He was so tall, so handsome and clever; so tall and slender and thin, with his beautiful eyes and angelic mouth! The arch of those firm, fair lips spoke of mildness that was bright, clever, though not bereft of innocence. Though he was in his early twenties, twenty-two to be more exact, Enjolras appeared to be seventeen; his downy, silky face (not even gilt at the upper lip by a fair streak of first facial hair), lilywhite with cheekbones like ripe peaches, still looked like a child's, and his willowy frame and limbs like a stripling's, and there was something waiflike or maidenlike about his whole presence, which would have made him, en travesti, doubtless pass for a beautiful girl... but still he cut a dapper figure in that waistcoat of scarlet brocade, embroidered with gold braid like a hussar's pelisse, that he usually wore. Yet, though many a wench, barmaid, and grisette had sighed upon seeing him amble past them on the street, all those sighs would be spent in vain, for our ephebe did not care at all that there ever were females of his species. Or for anything else that was lovely and wonderful, for that matter. The pretty flowers in the planter boxes were in bloom, but he heeded not the scent. The blue-tits chirped on the windowsills, but he did not even care to hear their song. There were fine books at the windows of old bookshops, on their way to the lecture hall, but he would not even stop for a peek. The naked throat of a chanteuse did not even stir the slightest feelings within him. To Enjolras, like for any veteran warrior, flowers were only good for concealing a sword underneath.
It was as if Enjolras had always been wearing blinkers to the beauty of both art and nature, striding by absorbed in his own reflections, or rêveries, with that vague and aloof air that made an even more dashing impression, and that logical and rational approach... What misfortune awaited any sweetheart who crossed his path! If any barmaid or grisette in the daytime, or any wench in the evening, on Place Cambrai or Rue Saint-Jean-de-Beauvais, upon beholding the figure of that passing-by college-boy, with that shirt collar frilled like a court page's, those long fair eyelashes, those azure irises of his eyes, those stormy long curls fluttering in his wake like a golden flag, those high rosy cheekbones, those flawless lips and sterling white teeth, was instantly smitten with all of that aura, and, after gathering all of her pluck, had sauntered forth to test her charms upon Enjolras, a surprisingly redoubtable, piercing icy blue stare would have shown her the abyss in exchange, and she would have thought twice and never dared to mistake once more that dreadful celestial cherub of prophecy for the ones she had so frequently seen on her childhood's Glanzbilder, or for the English Arthurian poet's "long-hair'd page in crimson clad."
For Enjolras, ut supra diximus, was not given ordinarily to betrayal of any emotion; it was as if he had more relevant things to care for; and he did have more relevant affairs to dwell upon. He had but a single passion, setting things right (that was why he had leaned towards the Law degree in the first place), and but a single thought, that of overturning every obstacle. Little did he care for beauty or pleasure; when confronted with anything that was not the French Republic, he sternly lowered his gaze away. He was the icy or marble lover of Liberty.
Our story begins where this fair and detached young student lived, possibly even where you, dear reader, may reside in; in a certain Right Bank arrondissement of cobblestones up and down steep slopes, of clocktowers and fountains, workshops and marketplaces, cafés and bookshops, bakeries and pawnbrokers, and hasty walks to and from lecture halls, an arrondissement so crowded that the townhouses in the narrowest ruelles leaned out over the streets towards one another, to the point that their respective zinc eaves actually touched, and the rooftops were separated only by the drain-pipe, so that one might cross from one garret to another, or watch a birds'-eye view of the people on the ruelle below by placing one foot on either windowsill, by simply taking one mighty stride. In this arrondissement, which may possibly even be where you, dear reader, may reside in, there lived a fair, icy heartthrob surnamed Enjolras, who was very lonely, even though he was surrounded by people, and even the leader of a secret society of his friends and peers; along with another student from the southern provinces, sharing the same garret beneath humble zinc eaves.
At this point when our story begins, we must relate that the dark-haired, ironic student we have spoken of in our first paragraphs was not, however, the roommate whom Enjolras shared his bed and board with from the start; it was a childhood friend of his, also in his early twenties, and practically the only friend he had ever had back in the southern provinces. Now he studied at the University of Paris as well, though Medicine instead of Law, and he was auburn-haired and honey-eyed, and wore spectacles. Also, he was shorter than his golden-haired heartthrob of an at first only friend. Side by side with the logical and warlike Enjolras, Combeferre was more outspoken and sensitive, more inclined towards philosophy and peacemaking. Every leader's second-in-command tends to have a completely different mindset from the leader's own, in order to balance one another's shortcomings. Around Enjolras' sharp granite peak to pierce the heavens, Combeferre would stretch a vast blue horizon; in all his views, there was something more accessible and practical. If the air around Enjolras felt piercing cold and yet suffocating, around Combeferre the air felt pleasantly temperate and respirable. In comparison to the reserved and aloof blond, Combeferre was more outgoing and willing to interact with other people, to share their lives. If both of these young men had gone down in history, Enjolras would have been remembered as a warlord, and Combeferre as a scholar. The former was more masculine, the latter more neutrally human. Combeferre was as gentle as Enjolras was harsh.
And of course Combeferre loved to read (or maybe here "love" is quite a weak word), like Cervantes, even the labels on products and the scraps of paper on the streets. After class, he frequented the theatres whenever he could afford to see a good classic, attended public courses, learned eagerly about the polarisation of light, was passionate over a lecture where Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire had explained about the double function of the carotid arteries (viz. the common carotid arteries branch off at the thyroid cartilage, the external carotid artery supplies the face with blood, while the internal carotid supplies the brain). He (Combeferre, not Cervantes or Saint-Hilaire) followed every single progress of science, confronted Saint-Simon against Fourier, translated hieroglyphics and runes, and was often seen comparing and contrasting different translators' renditions of the same literary passage... Needless to say how much he fawned when he first saw an etching of a transcription of the Rosetta Stone (which then was kept, as in our days, in the British Museum), which he transcribed into his notebook, writing the whole trilingual text down by heart; the same eidetic memory gave him the skill to draw insects and flowers he might only have seen twice or thrice with pinpoint accuracy, always writing the scientific name at the foot of each drawing, as well as the date of observation of that specimen. He broke the pebbles he found, and observed their geology, especially delighted when he came across fossils; and he even had the boldness to point out whenever there was a grammar or spelling error in the Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française, and write letters to the Académie concerning the correction of the aforementioned errors. He studied Puységur and Deleuze, was a firm non-believer in the supernatural (whether miracles, revenants, or what ever paranormal issues might cross his path); and obviously believed, on the other hand, in all the dreams of progress and science: railways, pain relief during surgery, the fixed images on Daguerre's camera obscura, telegraphy, and the possibility to steer montgolfières (ever since Étienne de Montgolfier had first sent a maiden flight on an uncertain current); and undaunted of every bastion raised by superstition, despotism, and prejudice against humankind. Some days he would shut himself in the University Library, dozing over the philosophical writings of René Descartes. As we have seen, Combeferre was quite the polymath or Renaissance man, eager for knowledge, precise, a perfectionist; he declared: "The future lies in the hands of schoolteachers," and was concerned about the issue of education. He wanted society to give their all to rise their intellectual and moral level, that science was given the recognition it rightfully deserved, the free circulation of ideas, the rise of esprit among the childhood and youth... and he dreaded that the outdated educational methods of his days; the decadence of literature crushing two or three centuries of nigh-forgotten classics; the tyrannical dogmatism, prejudice, and routine of the educational system would turn every seat of learning in France into a "pearl farm" where oysters crowded in muddy waters had irritating grains thrust by force into them against their will (quite obviously, Enjolras never got to grasp the full extent of the pearl farm metaphor). Combeferre was never without a book or a puzzle at hand, and discoursed learnedly on the various subjects which we have mentioned as areas of his expertise, yet were but the tip of the iceberg. He had an answer for everything, and was considered by lecturers and classmates alike to be wondrously learned; his natural modesty could not conceal how much he shone with wit. Long story short, he was one of those who believe that an emphasis on science and educational achievement will make things change for the better.
One would have preferred to fight alongside Enjolras, and to march alongside Combeferre. The former was a warlord, the latter a leader of peace. I am not saying that Combeferre was a complete intellectual, incapable of fighting, for indeed he never refused to come face to face with obstacles and attack them with all his strength, like an explosion. It was not the fact that he shunned confrontation. But he preferred to, little by little, by the teaching of axiomatic truths and positive laws, align the human species with its destiny; that was something he found the best. And, in between a scorching light and one that shines upon others, he definitely preferred the latter. An erupting volcano gives off a certain amount of light, for sure, but a sunrise gives off far more and far better light. A wildfire can turn the night into day, for sure, but why not wait for the day to dawn? A clarity darkened by smoke (whether of guns or factories, or both), a progress bought with violence, only satisfied half of that tender and serious spirit. A second 1793, a storming rush of all the people into the truth, filled him with dread, yet he dreaded stagnation even more; he could already feel decay and death in the air. Still, he preferred white foam to swampy marshes, Niagara Falls to Lake Montfaucon. Long story short, he neither wanted haste nor halt, but simply the middle ground. While Enjolras and the other friends they had made, chivalrously taken with the Absolute, adored and claimed splendid revolutionary feats of derring-do, Combeferre was more on the side of encouraging le bon progrès, maybe cold, and phlegmatic, and rational, yet pure, unshaken, and without reproach. The wish Combeferre made whenever he clasped the palms of his hands together was for the future to arrive in all of its candour, for nothing to interrupt the immense evolution of the people into virtue. "Il faut que le bien soit innocent", he ceaselessly repeated this mantra or motto. "'Tis needed for good to be innocent." And, in fact, if the grandeur of revolution relies on gazing at dazzling ideals and flying through the storm, with fire and blood in one's wake; the beauty of progress relies on being stainless.
Like Enjolras and his second roommate, whom we shall meet very soon enough, Combeferre was as different from our fair hero --not as the night is from the day, or as silk is from sackcloth (like his later roommate would be), but more as firelight is from sunlight, or the sky is from the ground.
The two would spend their days making their way through University, but each afternoon they would hurry home, climbing the steps to their tiny apartments and opening the windows to let the sunset light in, stepping out onto the balcony and meeting there. They shared the late afternoon sunshine and often stayed late into the evening, eating their supper together under the stars.
Sometimes they tended their nasturtium flowers, encouraging them to twine together into a beautiful arched bower of red and golden fiery blooms, talking of books and philosophy and music; sometimes they would just sit quietly together and read, or play chess by moonlight under the lush span of flaming petals.
At last, these pleasures that Mother Nature only offered for three quarters of the year came to an end, or where at least interrupted, for winter came to Paris and at times the windows were frosted or outright frozen over, filling both southerners with white winter awe. But on days when this happened, the two friends would warm francs or sous on the stove and press them against the frozen panes until a round hole would appear in the frost through which they could signal to one another. Then they would each go down the long staircase and meet in the street, where they would walk together in the falling snow and talk, for they never seemed to run out of subjects that interested them. If it got too cold, a steaming cup of coffee laced with eau-de-vie from a street vendor would be enough to warm them, and off they would go, on some new tangent of conversation.
It was from a third childhood friend of theirs, one Jehan Prouvaire (né Jean, but he preferred the archaic orthography), far dreamier than either of them, a southerner and an only child of rank like Enjolras, and also a Law student, but far more sensitive and sweeter: Jehan Prouvaire read Dante and Juvenal in the original language and preferred Corneille to Racine, played the English flute and told fairytales to the children and fond parents of the arrondissement after class, and he would often stroll by day through the open countryside riddled with ears of oats and wildflowers, and by night watch the starry sky with the naked eye through the window of his garret... He loathed the Revolution of 1789 for severing one crowned head in particular, that of André Chénier. It was from this raconteur troubadour born centuries too late that Combeferre got the idea of growing a planter box, which Combeferre himself would tend to, for Prouvaire himself grew one on his own garret windowsill. Jehan Prouvaire, who would soon turn nineteen, was fragile like a little girl, with crisp Titian-blond hair, cut like a medieval page-boy's, that curled up at his neck and shoulders, and a face as silky and rosy, with an upper lip as smooth, as Enjolras' own, and he had large and dreamy eyes as blue as Enjolras', yet not icy at all, and more of a greenish shade; reserved and shy, soft-spoken and prone to hanging his head downwards, and got red as a beetroot or a pompom rose whenever he smiled, so embarrassed he was; he would turn strawberry-red for nothing, and he always had this gauche air about him, his own physique the most fragile and waiflike of them all in that clique of friends (and, almost just like Enjolras, Jehan Prouvaire would pass for the most adorable damsel en travesti, although far less elven and far more human)... A shrinking violet was he indeed, yet after all intrepid, reckless.
And most often he wore in his third buttonhole a fresh and fragrant magenta pompom rose, whose petals were the colour of his face when confidence failed; it was as if he were wearing his heart on the outside. Since pompom roses of that variety could not be picked in any park, or bought at any florist's, in their arrondissement, Combeferre had been intrigued about where these flowers came from, and one afternoon, he asked Jehan Prouvaire the question that weighed him down. And the result of it was that, in spite of his introverted personality, the gentle bard agreed that he would show both roommates where he grew not only his own pompom roses, but also butterfly-like sweetpeas and sundry kitchen herbs.
The day he shyly invited Enjolras and Combeferre to come over to his place, looking down and in a voice that was more of a whisper, after leaving their respective Faculties, and after climbing up all those flights and flights of stairs past the macaronnerie on the ground floor and several petit-bourgeois homes up to the garret at the top of the stairs, both of the visitors were taken aback by the arrangement: a great wooden crate filled with soil, where the young medievalist grew herbs meant for the kitchen, such as parsley, chervil, chives, carrots, radishes... and, besides, a few sweetpeas which were in bloom, for it was mid-springtime, like little fragile butterflies, and blue moonflowers or morning-glories, and a little magenta rosebush which his family had given him as a leave-taking present; a little rosebush which, for half or one third of the year, was full of clusters of pompom-fluffy blooms as magenta as his face whenever he was embarrassed, and that, just like his dreamy and a tad gauche trademark expression, smiled at the bright sun and filled the chamber with the most lovely, intoxicating fragrance.
In time, the rose bushes had shot forth long branches heavy with their huge, rosy blooms, which he trained around the window and into a beautiful, drooping spill over the rusted railing. At times when he felt most alone, he would tend his garden for hours, and then sit reading and watching the roses nod lazily in the breeze, imagining that the flowers were happy, and that they didn't feel the harshness or loneliness of the world, but only how much he loved them.
Jehan Prouvaire himself watered, and pruned, and cared for this bush putting the care of it above the care of his own person, so much did he love his roses.
The flower box had been placed perpendicular to the drainpipe, so that it jutted out half-way to the window across, and the long filaments or tendrils of the beautiful sweetpeas and moonflowers which the young dreamer had sown hung down the side of the crate, into the void and the street below, or climbed and trailed around the window frames, creating something like a wonderful arch of greenery and clustered butterflies and magenta pompoms of petals, while the lovely blue moonflowers formed, all around, just like a fairy woodland.
"I grow all of these plants not only for the table, for their fragrance, and due to the beauty of it all; but also to attract honeybees for the beekeepers out there in the countryside," Jehan Prouvaire had explained, with a downcast look and entwining the fingers of both his hands, in the usual soft-spoken manner. Then, he sat down on the windowsill and played the English flute for the golden bees that buzzed and the blue-tits that chirped on the planter-box, as he poured some sugar into the half-open rosebuds.
"What the...?" asked an astonished Combeferre.
"I want to feed sugar to these half-open rosebuds; I wonder why, if the mother birdies can feed their chicks, why cannot we ourselves feed our roses as well?" the medievalist shyly replied.
And the blue-tits seemed to chirp merrily in response, as Combeferre giggled into his handkerchief.
It should be noted that there were three students in that room at the moment, but also that Jehan Prouvaire had a roommate. "Feuilly is outside, doing the night shift at the mill," the host had explained. This Feuilly could not afford a university degree, and was furthermore illiterate, so he worked for his living at a hand-fan manufacture, though his wages were a paltry three francs a day. A dark, broad-shouldered twentyish orphan who had made it all the long way on foot from his native village on the Italian border up to Paris, and who had lost his parents to Austrian fire during a Carbonaro repression, he had been adopted by the Motherland as a mother, and he wished that there were not a person left stateless, without a country to call their own, upon the face of the Earth. On Feuilly's half of the garret, above his bed, there were nailed an Italian tricolore, the lyrics of the Szózat, and those of the Warszawianka, both in their original language (handwritten with Jehan Prouvaire's calligraphy; the medievalist was even teaching his roommate to read and write in whatever spare time they had left). While everyone else seemed to care about France, Feuilly was concerned with foreign oppression: the Ottomites in Thessaly, the Austrians in most of the Habsburg Empire, the unjust tripartition of Poland... He spoke of those scenarios ceaselessly, with or without a good reason, with the resolve of a man of law. "No despot, no traitor, holding the sway of a European power was bereft of a say in favour, a signature, and a counter-signature of the tripartition of Poland in 1772, which was but foreshadowing. The Congress of Vienna in 1815 was the great stab in the back. Warszaw rightfully deserved being Czarist as much as Budapest rightfully deserved Habsburg rule, as much as Saloniki rightfully deserved the flag of the Crescent Moon. Yet soon the crowned heads would have to fall, lose their glory and their honour, while the sunken motherlands would once more rise to the surface. The theft of a nation by a great power is not illegalised, but rather encouraged, and those high-ranking hoaxes have no future at all. One does not mark the limits of a nation like the limits of a handkerchief," Feuilly would tell all of these students whenever his schedule at the mill allowed him to share some of their evening spare time.
But let us return once more to our story. That day, Enjolras and Combeferre had got to know an old acquaintance better and become aware of the existence of one who would soon become their friend as well. And, on a more realistic level, the young scholar spent the rest of the evening and a while the next day foraging around the arrondissement for a large wooden crate, flower soil, and seeds. From those days on, Combeferre kept his own planter box, which in his case also contained more edible flowers, upon the windowsill. It had been, furthermore, Combeferre's idea to place the crate perpendicular to the drainpipe, so that it jutted out half-way to the window across theirs, and looked exactly like a redoubt of flowering greenery.
"Enjolras," Combeferre supposed, "has never had a garden. He does not look prepared to uproot weeds with his hands; he looks slender, fierce but very small-boned, his hair shining, his coat immaculate. Only-- there is a certain wildness to his eyes, a remote look, like marble, cold and very clean, which makes you think that he could, if he so chose, uproot anything, anything."
Like Enjolras and Jehan Prouvaire, Courfeyrac studied Law as well. He was a real French aristocrat, and his parents' surname was de Courfeyrac; after the restoration of the monarchy, they believed firmly in the particle, but their only child, their only son and heir, felt that his elders loved so much that poor two-letter word that, upon leaving his native château in Gascony for Paris, he "abdicated" the particle, becoming a plain Courfeyrac like any bourgeois. And of course he took to life in the capital like a duck takes to water, but living in a neoclassical Left Bank mansion with some Parisian relatives of his (instead of in a Montmartre garret), and being shuttled in calèche by a private coachman to the Faculty every morning, always sharply dressed and perfectly combed, with impeccably-kept whiskers and a suave attitude to match. His heart was on the left, indeed, but his wallet was on the right (and, more often than not, he had a Montmartre grisette or wench on each arm). Indeed, he was a real viveur and bon vivant, and why have a fortune and not put some of it to a good use? He was a tall, lean man, nearly of a height with Enjolras and equally broad through the shoulders. His hair and neatly trimmed whiskers were dark as ink, and so were his clever, ironic eyes, and his long, clever fingers were covered in impeccable white society gloves, even in a lecture hall; he was slightly duck-footed and already balding in his late twenties (as seen by a prominent widow's peak) but nevertheless dashing, he was always quick with a witty quip or joke and a line of smoke, trading his dwindling health for irony, and his dark eyes laughed incessantly, always reflected or echoed in the chortles of his friends in response to his latest clever lazzi. His fleeting youth was bursting out into laughter, his lungs already tarred with cigarette soot, and one could see nothing but fire within him. Needless to say he wrote satirical verses every now and then, and even one or two risqué plays for the Vaudeville that the director of said theatre refused (for apparently, those shows were even too outrageous for Vaudeville standards). In short, he doubted superiorly of anything and everything. Courfeyrac had that wistful verve of youth that the French still call la beauté de l'esprit; playful and clever as a kitten that has still far to become an adult tomcat when all the gentle kindness and whimsy of youth are quenched by time and one is obliged to put on both physical and social weight, and he was obviously reluctant to the prospect that awaited him in society upon finishing his degree. Thus, being the second eldest and the most ironic, and needless to say the most physically fit (as will be explained below), he would doubtless have been the leader of their company, if Enjolras had never wished to have the leadership thrust upon him.
Though he gave the first impression of a show-off and a scoundrel, the suave Courfeyrac was a good boy through and through, a brave soul with a heart as gold as his pocket-watch. The latent soul within him was that of a paladin, or rather a Cadet of Gascony, born centuries too late. In spite of his fading health, his sculptured torso and powerful limbs gave witness that he was a trained fighter, especially in close quarters combat, and far less likely to waste away on the sickbed than to fall upon the field of battle. Like many other aristocrats, he had been trained by fencing masters in the noble art of swordplay, and made an excellent use of his strength and agility by means of wielding his own canne-épée, a walking stick which concealed a perfectly dissimulated hiltless rapier blade, which Courfeyrac could draw and wield as deftly as any musketeer of the King's Guard could ever have bared and wielded his steel. Like the man who used this sword, its ostensible first impression of a household object as blunt and innocent as a walking stick was not only misleading, but meant to mislead.
Where his childhood friends Enjolras and Combeferre, the leader and the scholar, irradiated more light, Courfeyrac gave more warmth to their circle; indeed, the fact was that he had all the qualities of the centre of a star system: roundness and warmth and radiance and suavity. And thus, he had become the central sun of that after-class system, the one who held them all, regardless of their background and personality, closely knit together.
Rarely seen apart during their spare time were Enjolras and his two lieutenants: the blond, the auburn, and the dark-haired one; the leader, the guide, and the central sun; the spirit, the brains, and the brawn. These three formed the core of the secret society they kept in the evenings of Montmartre, and which still was without a name. Yet the more people they could rally to their cause, the more people who could bring something they lacked to their crusade, the better for the imminent revolution it was.
In each and every lecture hall, there is always someone who sits at the front row and drinks it all in, whatever the lecturer has to say, since their career is their first concern. Enjolras and Courfeyrac had two such classmates, one of whom was a bald northerner from Calais; while Combeferre had only one, the most lovable eccentric you could ever think of. Needless to say that, in due time, our golden-haired leader's lieutenants, each one at his Faculty after class, approached their respective ace students, and the result of it all was that all three of them wound up caught in Enjolras' secret society.
We should therefore shed a little more light upon them, even though they have little to no bearing to the plot of our story...
In those days when our story takes place, there were no elevators, so the bohemians who lived in Right Bank garrets, like most of the students in our story, had to climb down flights and flights of stairs, past the homes of shopkeepers and petits-bourgeois, all the way down to reach ground level and begin the trek to class every day in the morning, and then, hours later, in the evening or late at night, they (obviously) had to climb those same flights and flights of stairs, all the way up, back home and into bed. Not to mention that, after leaving home and after leaving the Faculty, they had to weave through cobblestone streets on slanted hills, past little shops selling chocolate truffles and thick loaves of bread, cafés filled with people sipping their coffee as they watched the rest of the world stroll by (and, every now and then, Combeferre would make both roommates unwillingly late for class, since he'd ducked into a little bookshop with sagging shelves that smelled of paper and leather and dust, before Enjolras, who always felt teary-eyed and runny-nosed in that kind of establishments, entered the bookshop for a while to tug at his lieutenant's sleeve and remind him not to dawdle anymore).
But to that clique of young Law and Medicine students, most of whom were southerners, there was one café in particular where they always were the regular crowd any special evening, and where they all always gathered after class. To be more precise, their rendez-vous point was the backroom of that establishment, the Café Musain, a quaint and cozy little locale in a street corner on Place Saint-Michel, not far from the Panthéon. This café was run by the widowed old lady upstairs, Madame Houcheloup, assisted by two or three barmaids who were like daughters to her, and helped her both with the household chores and attending to the patrons; not to mention Louison, the Café's young dishwasher, who lived across the back entrance on Rue des Grés, in the garret opposite Enjolras' and Combeferre's (and the barmaids, for that reason, often said that Louison was so lucky!). Sometimes the landlady's scruffy Chartreux cat, whose name the students never bothered to know, frequented the locale for a scrape of fish or a chicken bone, or, when it was hot, a nice spot to sun himself.
This backroom where our student clique gathered in the evenings was a long dark corridor away from the Café itself; it had two windows and a single exit door with a hidden private staircase that led to the little Rue des Grés (and, through that door and one of the windows, Enjolras' and Combeferre's garret could not only be seen, but also easily identified thanks to their flower box on the windowsill). There they would spend the evenings in conversation, and studying, and most of them in drinking and playing dominoes or écarté (and the boldest of them, those who drank the hardest, would even gamble for money). Their conversations were shouted out loud about everything under the sun, and whispered quietly about certain other things that were confidential to them. Aside from the usual chairs and tables, and the quinquet lamp, there were, nailed to the wall, an old map of France and a tricolore flag, both of them dating back to the days of the First Republic, before the Thermidor coup.
We should explain, dear readers, that in the decade when our story takes place, France was once more a kingdom ruled by the House of Bourbon, and yet the ghost of the Revolution still haunted the entire nation, even those who had been born after the Congress of Vienna; even the children and the young people, like our fair leader Enjolras and his equally youthful followers.
When R is introduced: saving Enjolras on the street one night from some thugs, with those kicking skills; after the thugs had overpowered Courf' -sprained foot, canne-épée for a crutch-;
One evening, the fair leader and his lieutenants came home together; the two Law students, at sunset, greeting Combeferre, home from a day of prowling the arrondissement bookshops. His arms were empty, for he had little money, but a day spent with books always raised his spirits, and so it was that he really looked forwards to going out onto the balcony with a light heart to greet his herbs and flowers, and to see if any new blooms had opened that day.
A pair of friendly waves of the hand, as Enjolras still kept on gazing into the red evening skies, detachedly as usual, was all that it took for them to carry on their path downhill all three together.
The victorious lush, who now chortled as he saw the troublemakers retreat and turn left at the next ruelle, now turned towards the three students and, in the light of the street-lamp which he was leaning against, resting after the fray, they finally caught a glimpse of what he looked like. Their saviour was a rather ungainly young man with bloodshot hazel eyes, slightly popping like a frog's, flashing wistfully in a stubbled dark face, the shade of café au lait, framed by matted, curly raven hair; furthermore, he was neither too short nor too tall, only slightly chubby around the waist, but still a bruiser to the core; his chest looked like a powerhouse, and the muscles in his long limbs throbbed beneath a humble, worn shirt and pair of trousers. Though in a state of intoxication, he merely swayed from side to side a little, not being drunk enough to stumble on the cobblestones, but still overall steady on his feet, and unusually lithe and strong; how else could he have driven the three friends' assailants, who surely were even more intoxicated, towards a hasty retreat?
In general, overall, the dark face and curly raven hair, and furthermore the physique, of the stranger saviour reminded Combeferre of the Moriscos, those Moors of Siglo de Oro Spain by way of Marseille, who had fought with France's armies against their own Habsburg-ruled nation in the Low Countries, where the great powers of the world were forever fighting their wars; but had never laid eyes on the Kingdom of Valencia, the lands their parents had been born in and then driven out from. Surely, the stranger must be descended from such Moors; for were not some of the kicks he overpowered those three or four thugs with not actually savate, but its primeval form, chausson marseillais? That was the scenario that seemed most likely.
As he drew out a heavy breath, the dark martial artist cracked his knuckles, with an urge to slake the thirst in his throat. Yet his thirst was soon forgotten, for just as he was about to give in to his fierce curiosity and decide to get acquainted with those he had saved, he turned towards the window across the way, and his eye was caught by the person who would change his life for evermore. There, sitting on his buttocks beneath the window of the macaronnerie, stood a handsome young man, perhaps a little younger than himself, with a kind soft face and sad cornflower-blue eyes that made the fighter's heart squeeze unexpectedly.
That made him approach the golden-haired stripling in red and his companions, one of whom was visibly limping, and reach out the helping hand at the end of a rippling left arm, to lift them up and try to help all three he had saved back on their feet.
The young man who had caught the fighter's attention, the blond who appeared to be the leader of the three, seemed surprised to see him standing there, and a little taken aback, but after a moment he smiled tentatively, and the savateur saw then that, although his azure eyes were sad, when he smiled, fine lines appeared at their corners as if he had once laughed a great deal.
He was an amazingly handsome boy, with fair curly hair tied at the nape of his neck, the colour of summer wheat fields. He was neatly dressed in a scarlet waistcoat, soutached with gold thread like a hussar's pelisse, white trousers, and highly polished riding boots. He was tall and thin, not a wrinkle on his trousers or shirt; that blond hair, spilling over his shoulder as captive sunlight, curled and glittered in a halo of a magnifique golden yellow around his heart-shaped face, which resembled a white lily-bud, due to his fresh, clear pale skin; his high brow and fine high cheekbones commanded respect. His eyes were bright blue, the colour of cornflowers.
Maybe it was in that moment that the martial artist began to fall a little in love with the young man in scarlet, or maybe it was when he (the savateur) reached a strong left arm towards the fair leader to lift him up from the ground, or maybe it was when he heard that dark, velvet voice of heroic tenor range thank him, and then, introduce himself with the loveliest of surnames.
Taking the young blond's soft right hand in his far more callous left, the unkempt, ungainly savateur pulled with all the strength left in those rippling limbs by intoxication and the toil of the fight, and deftly got him back on his feet. "Merci..." Enjolras muttered, wincing, not sure of how to address such a wild-looking person, while the latter, equally flustered, bowed as he slurred: "Grantaire... it has been a pleashure..."The young man who had caught the fighter's attention, the blond who appeared to be the leader of the three, seemed surprised to see him standing there, and a little taken aback, but after a moment he smiled tentatively, and the savateur saw then that, although his azure eyes were sad, when he smiled, fine lines appeared at their corners as if he had once laughed a great deal.
He was an amazingly handsome boy, with fair curly hair tied at the nape of his neck, the colour of summer wheat fields. He was neatly dressed in a scarlet waistcoat, soutached with gold thread like a hussar's pelisse, white trousers, and highly polished riding boots. He was tall and thin, not a wrinkle on his trousers or shirt; that blond hair, spilling over his shoulder as captive sunlight, curled and glittered in a halo of a magnifique golden yellow around his heart-shaped face, which resembled a white lily-bud, due to his fresh, clear pale skin; his high brow and fine high cheekbones commanded respect. His eyes were bright blue, the colour of cornflowers.
Maybe it was in that moment that the martial artist began to fall a little in love with the young man in scarlet, or maybe it was when he (the savateur) reached a strong left arm towards the fair leader to lift him up from the ground, or maybe it was when he heard that dark, velvet voice of heroic tenor range thank him, and then, introduce himself with the loveliest of surnames.
"Enj... Enjolras," the fair stripling in red gently withdrew his lilywhite, lily-petal-fingered hand from that rough and awkward grasp, sun-fire warm against his own icy cold palm. "Enj... Enchanté. Pleased to make your acquaintance..." he sighed, as he bowed from the waist and clicked his heels sharply together.
"That'sh a lovely shurname..." Grantaire slurred, as he thought that the young gentleman whose life he had saved could only be surnamed Enjolras. Yes, he was certainly wonderfully handsome, with his finely-curved scarlet lips, his cornflower-blue eyes, his crisp gold hair. There was something in his face that made Grantaire trust him at once. All the candour of youth was there, as well as all youth's passionate purity. One felt that he had kept himself unspotted from the world. So what... what were he and his little friends of rank up to in a backstreet of Montmartre at this hour of the evening?
"We were heading for the Café Musain, but we seem to have gone the wrong way..."
"Nought to worry, Monshieur Enjolrash, and you too, messieurs; I may 'ave been born an' raished in the Catalan willage, not far from Marsheille, but I know the Right Bank like the palm of my 'and! And beshidesh, I'm dyin' o' thirsht myshelf..." He was not attractive, at least not conventionally, but when he swept off his beret, his hair was a riot of black curls and his eyes penetrating but still warm, grin and teeth crooked as he looked at them.
Courfeyrac elbowed his leader in the ribs, but Enjolras muttered something about "giving him a chance." Having a lush show them the way to their meeting place was already sinister, if not for the fact that the aforementioned lush had swept the floor clean with those scoundrels, and seemed so self-assured of his sense of direction. Or for the fact that he merely swayed from side to side, but his steps were unusually steady, confirming how strong and how lithe he was in that altered state.
During the trek to the Musain, Enjolras and Courfeyrac got to know that their bruiser saviour was not only a countryman of theirs, but also a classmate of theirs. That empty chair by the window in the lecture hall? Well, Grantaire was supposed to sit in it, but he had other, more important things to learn in Paris, and the university degree could wait, for he was one of the students that had learned the most, and the most relevant things, while studying their degrees in Paris, no matter how many lectures he missed and how many exams he had to redo. The best coffee to drink was at the Café Lemblin, he recommended them. The best billiards table? Café Voltaire. The best wenches? Where one could also find the best crêpes and galettes, at L'Ermitage, Boulevard du Maine (here, Courfeyrac's eyes brightened and his lips curled, and he even forgot the pain in his left foot, while Enjolras looked away). The best fried chicken, at Mère Saguet; the best eel stew, Barrière de la Cunette (here, all three of his companions winced); and a white wine worth at least sipping, Barrière du Combat. Long story short, he knew every place to be in the Right Bank, but the Café Musain, in spite of its street-corner locale, was quite an obscure spot, not particularly known for anything worth tasting; still, he just went there for a drink whenever he was thirsty after class, only because it was near the garret where he lived.
Anyway, in spite of that, he knew the way indeed, even though he had been reeling and singing slurred lyrics to lewd songs way out of key; and soon all four young men found themselves at the threshold of the Musain, Enjolras turning to thank Grantaire as well, and inviting him to join them for the evening in the backroom. To which the dark newcomer obviously replied by thanking them for the invitation.
That tricolore flag, that map of Republican France on the walls. That rag-tag band of university students, most of whom were also southerners. Enjolras introduced them to Grantaire, explaining that this coarse young man had saved his life and shown them the way to the Café. Those kicks... that power... "Relying on Courfeyrac alone would be preposterous, as we can see now that he's sitting there all lackadaisy, with his left leg on the table and an ice packet upon the sprain. A single lightweight swordsman is not enough power for us to confront the National Guard. We definitely need a martial artist of your prowess in hand-to-hand and hand-to-foot combat as one of our staff officers." Never had Grantaire been so praised before as by Enjolras, laying a lily-hand on his shoulder, for his fighting skills.
"Ah... for me, it was just a walk back home," he sighed modestly, as Enjolras' lieutenants resumed their reasons why he would soon be one of them. Not only did he know the best places to be, he was also a redoubtable savateur and tireur de chausson marseillais, and was no less formidable as a bâtonniste, demoting Courfeyrac to second place. "Trifles, trifles..." Grantaire smirked. "The martial art at which I excel the most... is the raising of the wrist. Honestly. Right here on the spot, I could quaff all of you under the table." His voice, hoarse from strong drink, sounded like the croak of a frog.
The whole company looked at one another. Courfeyrac smirked as well, Joly and Enjolras sighed and shook their heads, Combeferre wondered how much ethanol the newcomer had in his bloodstream if he had been able to give those thugs what they rightfully deserved.
And Grantaire sighed as well and asked for a glass of Merlot, which a barmaid came to fill up to his side. The stubbly young man drained his cup at one fell swoop, as if it were water, and then asked for a refill. The fight had made him really thirsty... or was it only the fight that had caused his whole self to heat up with such a warm glow...? Was there something more, and what was that in the first place? Was it the strong drink that went to his head, was it the heat of the fight that flustered his face, and was that dizzy feeling caused by all that brisk spinning and whirling to gather momentum for his kicks and bâton thrusts? Or was there something more...? As the barmaid refilled his cup, Grantaire stroked his stubbled chin as he took a glance at the fair leader in scarlet. His head was reeling again... but still he was not sure of the reason why. "Merci, ma'amzelle."
He had never believed in true love, nor in love at first sight, nor in lovesickness. Such unlikely events had always been the stuff of fairytales. He barely managed not to scoff and take a drink instead. "I don't believe in love in first sight. But even if you're right, it can't hurt to take it slow. You have a lot to get used to... There's all the time in the world, and you deserve to take it."
That glass of Merlot felt as weak as lemonade; his threshold had risen, and his system was craving stronger fare. Surely, this was the reason why he felt that ill-at-ease. With a smirk, he told the barmaid that he wished to make the acquaintance of one Marie Brizard. And, as she left to bring him a shot of crystal clear eau-de-vie, everyone else chortled -except Enjolras, whose lips at least merely curled upwards. At least that quip had made him smile for once, Grantaire thought, as the barmaid re-entered with the crystal draught in hand. "Merci, ma'amzelle." He winked an eye at her, making the poor barmaid recoil in response, as he put the cup to his lips and flicked the wrist inward.
(singing off-key)
De verre en bouche,
la voilà la jolie bouche!,
bouchons, bouchons, bouchons le vin,
la voilà la jolie bouche en vin,
la voilà la jolie bouche!
la voilà la jolie bouche!,
bouchons, bouchons, bouchons le vin,
la voilà la jolie bouche en vin,
la voilà la jolie bouche!
De bouche en ventre,
le voilà le joli ventre!,
ventrons, ventrons, ventrons le vin,
le voilà le joli ventre en vin,
le voilà le joli ventre!
le voilà le joli ventre!,
ventrons, ventrons, ventrons le vin,
le voilà le joli ventre en vin,
le voilà le joli ventre!
De ventre en pisse,
la voilà la jolie pisse!,
pissons, pissons, pissons le vin,
la voilà la jolie pisse en vin,
la voilà la jolie pisse!
la voilà la jolie pisse!,
pissons, pissons, pissons le vin,
la voilà la jolie pisse en vin,
la voilà la jolie pisse!
De pisse en terre,
la voilà la jolie terre!
terrons, terrons, terrons le vin,
la voilà la jolie terre en vin,
la voilà la jolie terre!
la voilà la jolie terre!
terrons, terrons, terrons le vin,
la voilà la jolie terre en vin,
la voilà la jolie terre!
Long story short, he was one of those who were known in those days in France as joyeux viveurs. And en even more extreme example of one, that made Courfeyrac look like the upper-class heir he was right from the start.
(Combeferre introduces him to La Marseillaise by singing it; maybe punning on the fact that R is a Marseillais himself)
Allons enfants de la Patrie,
le jour de gloire est arrivé;
contre nous de la tyrannie
l'étendard sanglant est levé,
l'étendard sanglant est levé...
le jour de gloire est arrivé;
contre nous de la tyrannie
l'étendard sanglant est levé,
l'étendard sanglant est levé...
J'aimons les filles et j'aimons le bon vin...
Marchons, marchons,
qu'un sang impur
abreuve nos sillons!
qu'un sang impur
abreuve nos sillons!
It was hard to learn, both the tune and the lyrics, indeed; yet soon Grantaire found it easy to sing that song, even though he disbelieved in the Revolution; not only had he become Enjolras' new roommate, and the one who tended to their flowers (for Combeferre had left, to occupy another garret within the same arrondissement, with another friend of theirs); and he even began to read Enjolras' handwritten explanations to the lectures, nonchalantly perched upon the flower box, leaning against the windowpane; and both the fair leader and Grantaire saw their acquaintance develop gradually into friendship; the dark, unkempt, ungainly, rough-and-tough Marseillais had found a seat at their tables in the backroom as a regular, and soon happy days and lovely afternoons way into the evening, shenanigans and battle plans, succeeded one another; the arrival of a new member, and a sceptic to add more fuel to the fire, had barely changed their everyday routine. What's more, the newcomer added to the little secret society something completely different, je ne sais quoi, that made their day to day more worthwhile. And so it came to pass that Grantaire came to be part of that circle of young people, a true satellite to Enjolras, orbiting constantly around the fair leader. Not only had he come to live with the one who always made his knees buckle and his heart rush; he practically lived at the backroom of the Café Musain, without finding pleasure anywhere but in that place, ever following the leader's footsteps everywhere like a shadow... The lecturers at the faculty were soon positively surprised to see Grantaire attending class regularly at last, but he had always been weary of legalese; there was another reason, one he only knew himself, why he entered the lecture hall every day, and the Musain every evening. The reason why, everytime Enjolras handed Grantaire those study notes at class, the dark young man flushed and sighed as he perused those terms, explained in an easy way that Grantaire could understand, penned by the right hand of the one who occupied all his thoughts. His sole joy had become to see, through the haze of strong drink, those silhouettes come and go. Especially a tall, slender silhouette with long golden hair tied at the back with a ribbon. The sheen of his fair hair dazzled him to all other sights, and his face was all Grantaire thought of by day and dreamed of by night, so that he often forgot both his studies and his usual pastimes. He was only a boy, a student, a classmate, but the dark one called him a prince, and even an angel, in his thoughts until he really believed him one (and even believed him Apollo or Frey!). Frequently he sang to himself: "It is for him - for him!"
There had come an uncertainty that outweighed all the others, an uncertainty as sure as that sole certainty of his was a full cup.
Still, Enjolras and his lieutenants, and the rest of their revolutionary friends, tolerated his presence not only because he was a southerner like most of them, and because he could defend them with his prowess in martial arts... but also, and most relevantly, due to his good cheer and mercury-quick wit, always ready with a pun or a quip. For instance, his signature; that unkempt lush never signed with his full surname, but always with a single capital R, "une grande R". Not even Courfeyrac himself could have come up with that pun.
And neither with the idea that they should call themselves, and their little society, "les Amis de l'ABC" as in "les Amis de l'Abaissé", the Friends of the Downtrodden. "We could say, and even make it look like, we keep a little after-class literacy school for the street children of the arrondissement; that way, and fitting the name of our organisation, would always cover up our tracks, right?" In response, Enjolras' lips curled most slightly at the corner, and the witty sceptic, his head reeling with excitement, not even paying heed to Combeferre and all the others clapping their hands and praising the dark lush: "Il a de l'esprit, en verité, il a un esprit extraordinaire..." had to quaff a shot of eau-de-vie to steel himself, and hoping to get to dream finally for once, after so many sleepless nights of rêverie.
Grantaire’s pronouncement was met with silence and then laughter from the others, just as he had intended. He finished his glass with a single swallow and poured himself more to drink, already wholly inebriated. Curled up at his feet, the Chartreux cat snored quietly, his body less able to process alcohol than Grantaire’s.
For his own part, Grantaire was thinking that he'd never before noticed how beautiful and pure anything white could be, and that perhaps he only noticed it now because Enjolras' skin was fair and palely beautiful like the freshest white lily or the sweetest cream. "Enjolras," his heart repeated, turning the surname over and over like a shining quartzy stone found at the bottom of a stream, and, for the first time since he'd had everything he held dear taken from him, he began to think he might learn to laugh in earnest again.
And as Fructidor drew to a close and autumn began to nip at the air, sometimes they found that it was enough just to lean their heads together across the water-pipe and talk quietly. So it was the night that Enjolras confessed to Grantaire how lonely he had been, and how glad he was that he had happened to be saved by the dark young tireur de chausson. So it was the night Grantaire told Enjolras the story of the family that had been taken from him, the guardian brother killed in a duel against an officer at the Catalans' pier, the kind landlady who had adopted him killed brutally in her own tavern. And, though Enjolras knew nothing of lovers or brothers, he held his friend while Grantaire cried, sobbing and flushed with liquor, into his chest, glad to know at last what name to give the sorrow that had always dwelt in his friend's eyes.
And that night, and many nights after, Grantaire waited at the window for the glimmer of the pale summer moonlight on a crown of golden curls, for the sight of slim boyish limbs clad in the long white night-shirt, that only emphasized the grace of every movement, and the beautiful pallor of the little feet speeding across the grass. There at the window, night after night, he waited to feel tender loving arms thrown round his neck, and to feel the intoxicating delight of beautiful boyish lips raining kisses on his own.
Yet it was in vain that he waited, night after night; for the fair leader, so sure of his conviction, spurned that ungainly sceptic; and, for similar reasons, Enjolras, so usually sober, saw that stubbly, dark young man as a lush and a drunkard. All that Grantaire ever got was a tad of ice-cold, haughty mercy, an invitation to join that circle of friends in their secret lair... and nothing more, as revealed by a look over a scarlet-coated shoulder, a piercing stare from icy blue eyes, more the colour of Arctic permafrost than that of the refreshing Mediterranean, or rather more cold steel than ice. Always treated so harshly by Enjolras, so coldly rejected by his beloved, yet always returning to his side, he sighed at the fair marble ephebe whose heart he had claimed by right.
In those days when every upper-class and upper-middle-class lady and not a few gentlemen from the same ranks of society in the Left Bank would kill for a cigarette butt that had been kissed by renowned Magyar composer and virtuoso concert pianist Ferenc Liszt, or even for a strand of his hair, which they would always keep as a memento (and let us face the facts: Courfeyrac was one of them), there were people with affections and convictions that made the reigning Lisztomania grow pale in comparison.
Every affection is a conviction, and Enjolras' affection towards Liberty was evenly matched with Grantaire's towards Enjolras: the only conviction that the ungainly sceptic had ever felt; his own weak and misshapen ideas clung to the self-confidence and ideals of his beloved leader like muscles to a spinal cord, like climbing plants to the walls of a tower. By Enjolras' side, Grantaire could finally become someone. "For he is as different from me as day is from night, as right is from left; for Enjolras is as fair and bright as the sun, and good-looking, and chaste, and sober, and healthy, and austere, and disciplined, and strong-willed, and firm, and innocent, and clever, and mild, and idealistic... and thus, he cannot help but always kindling my flame with his charms..."
Enjolras was the leader, the hero, the role model Grantaire had always aspired to be: the Orestes to his Pylades, the Achilles to his Patroclus, the Henry V to his Falstaff, the Romeo to his Mercutio... long story short, the two of them fit together like a lock and a key, or two sides of a medal; or rather, Enjolras was the firm tower and Grantaire the weak climbing plant that entwined around it, seeking support; yet Enjolras was always as ice-cold towards Grantaire as he was burning with desire for a free tomorrow.
Always spurned by the one he loved, the dark lush would often say to himself in his cups: "Quel beau marbre!"
Sick at heart, stomach churning with hurt and uneasiness, Grantaire turned and went inside his own bed, drawing the covers all the way up to the crown of his dark head. For long hours he couldn't read or even think straight, so surprised and hurt was he, and he only sat in the shadows of his room as night came on, lost in a haze of confusion and fear, and troubled by dark, disturbing memories that he'd thought banished forever. Even the sight of the flaming calyces in the moonlight, which had so often made him warm with happiness, was painful to him now. That night sleep didn't come for a long time, and when at last he sank into an exhausted, fitful doze, old nightmares he'd forgotten woke him in a cold sweat of fright and despair.
"You spurn my natural emotions; you make me feel like dirt, and I'm hurt... and, if I start a commotion, I run the risk of losing you, and that's worse... Ever fallen in love with someone you shouldn't have fallen in love with?" That one thought chafed, like sackcloth against silk. Sunken into these painful reflections one evening in the bleak November, he sat down, weak and weary, in a corner of the Café Musain; a full glass in his grasp, raised to his lips and sipped every now and then. All his friends had already left, and Enjolras already trusted Grantaire to come home on his own, or else he would go down to the café and wake him up ere they both went to class together. Outside, the skies were as gray as the rooftops, as ominous and stormy and cold as the dark student's own mood. "A white winter is coming this year too," he sighed. Not only did he need strong drink to warm himself from within, as a buffer against the cold air; but also to heal those inner wounds that would not cease to bleed... from the cold stream in his heart, the pang of seeing a fair idol fallen down and shattered at his feet; one to whom he had looked up to for every virtue —courtesy, gentleness, integrity, the list was endless—, one whom he had learned to admire and trust more than anyone else he knew... the first friend he had made in the capital, now regarded with a far more ardent and fond regard than a friend's... One swig comforts one; two are better still... but, to one who has become way too inured in the raising of the wrist, even three are not enough. Grantaire sighed, tilted his weary head backwards, and put the cup to his lips, draining it at one deep draught, feeling that warm nectar of a liquor course down his throat, warming his heart and entrails, rising up to his head and dispelling all those thoughts, all those feelings that were connected to Enjolras in some way or another. Turning Grantaire once more into his carefree and merry, eager and mercury-witted old self... Then he rolled his bright hazel eyes with ecstasy, as the last drop trickled down his gullet. Now most strong drinks had lost their potency, and some kind of resistance had developed within him. This was the real amber nectar, something fiery, something akin to Marseillais blood, to fight the fire with fire (for southern blood, and French blood, and southern French blood even more so, is brandy, combustible, intoxicating). For there was no other way. One swig comforts one; two are better still... but, to one who has become way too inured in the raising of the wrist, even three are not enough. Tears could not quench the fire, and thoughts did nothing but kindle it; his brain was already tense with sorrow, and the potations made, thus, an evident impression. No matter if he drowned his hopes along with his sorrows, what did he care, if those hopes were sour to begin with? No matter if he quenched the lights of conscience and reason along with his thirst, no matter if he plunged deeper into misery both social and emotional; deep he drank, he drank deeply, he swilled down the liquor of various kinds, some of which sparkled as it was poured out, and went bubbling down the throat; he listlessly quaffed every drop, quickly he emptied three, four cups, which had lost their potency and were now lemonade to his system; gulped them down and smacked his lips over the sweetness of the draught; he swallowed the precious liquors down to the last drop, until the strong eau-de-vie and brandy finally (finally!) went to the young man's head and made him stupid -though, sadly, not exhilarated-. Soon the drink made him so sleepy that he sank backwards with his face upturned and fell fast asleep, like a bear in winter, surrounded by empty bottles and tankards, his reason left aside somewhere on that glass-crowded table.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ Grantaire thought, drunk on sorrow and on wine, purring desperately as cats do when they wish to soothe and have nothing else; look at me look at me; I am here and I wish you not to cry, look at me and bask in my felonious splendour—
Enjolras was always the one with the skill for words; all Grantaire has are his wines and his cat and Enjolras’s shadows on the wall and everyone in the ABC has something of that last, the impressions of the man who would lead the revolution cast up in their hearts and their eyes. But Grantaire has Enjolras in his bed and Grantaire is the one who knows the shape of his face at night when no one can see him, Apollo away from the sun.
Rêveries, and nothing more. Forever beyond his reach.
He was naturally a thirsty soul, and was soon tempted to repeat the draught. Twice and thrice he poured and drank it off. One taste provoked another, the threshold of tolerance having risen so high that he did not know when it would be within his reach, and now he sought the strongest among liquors; and thus he reiterated his visits to the flagon so often that at length his senses were overpowered, his eyes swam in his head, his head gradually declined, and he fell into a deep sleep. As he spoke to himself, his weary head began to droop and his eyes blinked mistily, his sight was troubled, like the red sun looming through a fog, for his wits were clouded with drink, the vertigo of intoxication seized him, and he sank down backward heavily out of his seat and lay prone, stretched along the floor. His eyes shut and he fell asleep. And there he lay, with his head lolling sideways, and his mouth gaping, buried in drunken sleep, in the flickering warm light of the quinquet flame.Little by little, he began to come to his senses right before sunrise, his head throbbing with pain and his throat parched with thirst, all the strength sapped from his limbs. His eyelids flickered wearily, until they were fully open, squinting and taking their time to adjust to the light, which fortunately was not that bright to dazzle... and then, an early snowflake that was falling outside, or a spark from the flames in the quinquet, rather larger than the rest, alighted on the edge of the threshold of the door which stood ajar, began to take on a sickly green colour, increasing in size and rounding in shape, taking on a gradually clearer and clearer human shape, and in the end became a lovely, regal-looking young lady, tall and of slender figure, all dressed in a green kirtle glittering like peridot, and composed of trillions of little leaves, dotted with wilted wildflowers here and there. The snowflake or spark, whatever it might be, had grown larger and larger, until it became the figure of a young woman, dressed in garments of dark green gauze, which looked like millions of little fresh leaves woven together. Her face and her arms were as perfect as the moon, and seemed to be of the brightest, purest, most dazzling inland ice, if not of Carrara marble, her green veins seen through the lilywhite, icy cold skin that seemed to shine like moonlight; and, in the middle of that translucent crystal, her poison-green eyes glowed with an eerie light and shone like leaves of wormwood seen through diamonds. That heart-shaped face of hers was framed in locks that looked as raven black as Grantaire's own, but were actually chestnut with streaks of dark green; and pointy ears protruded to left and right of that frame of soft, glittering hair, crowned with a garland of dark green ivy. Furthermore, she didn't seem to be walking, but rather soaring slightly above ground, which made her appear even more ethereal.
She was dignified and beautiful, with thick chestnut hair and beautiful green eyes, but made of ice or marble—shining and glittering ice, or Carrara marble, dark green veins through translucent skin and all. Her eyes sparkled like bright stars, but there was neither peace nor rest in their glance. Still, she was alive, and more beautiful than anything Grantaire had ever seen, second only to Enjolras, of course. He wondered if perhaps she was an angel.
Upon noticing that the young drunkard at her feet had come to his senses, she lowered her gaze towards him and waved a left hand, as delicate as a lily, to greet him.She nodded toward the threshold and waved her hand. He was somewhat alarmed, but curious, and it seemed that he heard her speak his name in a Voice that lit a spark deep inside him, making him want to obey her wishes.
The poor innocent soul was all startled and dazzled by her appearance, feeling unworthy of addressing such a person, if she could be called a person, but he still gasped as, after starting up to a sitting posture, scrambling up to sit on the floor, he naïvely dropped his beret and addressed her as Madame in the most courteous way that Enjolras had taught him. Though still ill-at-ease, he scrambled back up on his feet, then recoiled and sat down wearily once more. He felt himself shiver as those eyes burned into his, as if searching into his very soul.
Once she had produced a few mint-sweets from her pocket and they had been consumed, something that was quite an easy affair with such a cheerful lad (and one who seriously needed some of those mints for quickening himself), she drew, with her left hand, a dagger with a black obsidian blade and a hilt of bright green snakeskin. And she slashed her right wrist; the blood that gushed from the wound was transparent, and the same bright green shade as her eyes and the hilt of her blade, proving that the stranger was not human.
Then, holding a little cup of rock crystal, that looked like a shot glass for liquor, with her left hand beneath her right wrist, she let her blood drip into the cup and offered it to the now healthier young fellow, who, watching the little wavelets dance and shine, so limpid and so crystalline, so quick, and tremulous, and bright... fixed his gaze on the liquid, entranced. A thousand different herbal and floral scents did meet and mingle in its rare perfume...
"Drink this, my lad," she told Grantaire with a piercing stare. "And then tell me what you think it tastes like. Never have mortal men or women sold a liquor like this in any shop or tavern, and never will they. This elixir assuages every pain, cures all disease, and crystallises for life the sweet delights of youth... Drink, my warrior, and forget all your sorrows..." And her voice as she spoke was like the faint clinking of bluebells, or the seeds rattling within a capsule. It seemed to the dark young man that that voice rang through the whole world, and his heart gave one sharp, painful throb.
"So much as safely I may drink..." Still thirsty from the liquid he had lost during his intoxication (that thing definitely tipped the scales in favour!), and trusting the one who suddenly gave him a sup for free, the dark student quaffed the liquor at a single draught, wincing as he tore the empty cup away from his lips. Whether his thirst was too great to bear delay, or whether the scent of the tainted draught disturbed his judgement and weakened his power of self-control (in fact, both scenarios were likely), he drank greedily of the intoxicant! It had a scent like perfume, indeed, but when that glittering green liquid passed through his lips, the taste was strong and sharp, stronger than any liquor he had ever tasted, and even made the inside of his mouth tingle, just like limbs that have gone to sleep. And after he swallowed the drink, as it disappeared into him and went deeper down, it was searing his throat so intensely that, when the draught got down to his chest, it seemed to burn his heart to a crisp, or to hollow out his chest from within.
It burned all the way down his throat, making his eyes smart and his vision blur with tears. It settled dense and hot in his stomach but his chest felt scooped out, empty.
"Ewrrgh... This draught is awful, it tastes like weeds... This is poison!"
"'Tis not," the Green Faery said, as she watched him rid himself of the liquor in one quick throw down his throat, then watched his eyes fill with painful tears. "Whoever has drunk this once shall drink it forever, and all their sorrows shall nevermore rise again. Take a second glass; you will find it better than the first."
Once more, she held the cup below her slash wound and refilled it.
The lady was right: as soon as the student had drained the second cup down to the last drop, as soon as the liquor within had passed from the glass to the inside of his chest, he was seized with a burning thirst. A strange new thirst, a craving unfamiliar, entered his body with the draught. He felt no more pain, but the fey blood was there still; the fatal effect was seen only too soon. As the taste flooded him, so did the elation.
"Il me semble que je bois la vie... Encore!" he exclaimed, smacking his lips as he dried up the tears. "Encore! This is like a draught of fire...! Through every vein, I feel again... a rapture that is almost pain throbs in my heart and fills my brain... I feel the bands of steel that so long and heavily have pressed upon my chest uplifted, and the malediction of my affliction is taken from me, and the weary heart within my chest... at last... at length... finds rest... Here is to you, to the health of the greatest lady, and may she live long and prosper!"
So thirsty was he that he felt he had never tasted such a refreshing or such a strong draught before in his short lifetime. But it was something more; the weird juices that are the fey-child's blood entered into him and set the fountains of his life force playing with marvellous power. He was elated. He was full of fight. His eyes sparkled with life; a glowing thrill of happiness swept over him, as if every sorrow and vexation had vanished from his mind; a carefree feeling awoke in him, the enchanted draught coursing like wildfire through every artery in his limbs:
"I am not ill... I am not weak...! The trance, the swoon, the dream is o'er; I feel the chill of death no more! At length... I stand renewed in all my strength!"
And his lilywhite, dry cheekbones regained colour for an instant, a fugitive flash of lightning lit up his weary eyes; but then his face became even more livid, and the sparkles in his eyes died down until they disappeared. Breathing painfully, he put his hardened open palms upon his fluttering chest.
"Je voudrais boire toujours!" he gasped, as if struggling for air. "Quand je ne bois plus, mon souffle s'arrête, et je sens un poids brutal tout près du coeur..." His head bobbled upon his shoulders, and it wearily sank down.
He wished no longer to leave her, nor that she should leave his side. Right before they parted ways, and she turned his back on him, she filled a phial, also of rock crystal, with that wonderful exhilarating draught, and he put it carefully in his pocket, to use as a cure for whatever troubles might cross his path.
Now Grantaire was a very clever and skillful man, and you must not think that what I am about to relate to you was in any way due to carelessness or error on his part (or to any lack of experience on the part of Enjolras either). For the liquor he had drunk was no ordinary liquor, and possessed a malevolent power of its own.
Oh, poor Grantaire! It was a poison he had swallowed, and the most dreadful one of them all. Whoever has drunk the blood of the Green Faery has their heart frozen for as long as the fatal draught remains within their system. They do not longer recognise anything, no longer loving anything, neither their parents, their sweethearts, their friends, nor their country; they think only of themselves; they feel nought but an urge to drink, and would gladly drink, all the blood in this world, without slaking a thirst that nothing at all can quench.
For all the rest of the night, feeling his elation gone, feeling weary and drowsy indeed, he slept as soundly as a dethroned king, dreaming of nothing but his poison-green draught. Enjolras calling his name and shaking him awake lulled Grantaire, at first, like the waves and the breeze if he had been napping on a rowboat, at home in Marseille; it was thus that he perceived his roommate's calls and more physical attempts to rouse him. It took several slowly-dragging hours for him to awaken. Something strange was happening within him; he had had painful, distorted dreams, and sighed listlessly in response, with a heavy head and a far heavier heart, when Enjolras told him that he had stormed down at sunrise to pick him up from the gutter and back home for breakfast before class. When he looked again, the woman was gone, but it seemed as though she had vanished into thin air, just like the stars in the night sky had done at the break of day.
Stripped of what Grantaire's fancy had woven around him, the long-haired stripling page in crimson clad stood as if shorn before him. It was as if a veil had been torn off from his eyes, and he no longer saw the blond as his fond dreams had painted him. No. Grantaire saw Enjolras in all his unworthiness, icy cold and never allowing himself a truce from his duties; and the gold of his youthful love, and the rosy daydreams he had woven to make a high ideal (the only one in his life), lay in tattered shreds at his feet. When he looked at his roommate's eyes like frozen lakes, and saw the mistake he had made and the opportunity he had lost, he covered his face with his rough hands and turned his back to Enjolras, not even daring to address him once on their way to the Faculty.
That day, as Grantaire sat by the window in the lecture hall as usual, he was wearier and more absent than usually. Not only had he skipped his customary class-skipping routine, but spent the class staring at the notes Enjolras had brought him, yet finding it hard to concentrate. One thing was napping off at class for being wearied down by so much legalese and so many Latin terms, but this time it was different. And, every now and then, he knocked back a sip from a little flask full of a bright green liquid and kept on perusing those notes.
The lecturer must have been surprised to see Grantaire paying attention at class, ditto Enjolras and the other classmates, but the dark-haired one cared little to nothing, peering through the dimness and nothing discerning, his heart hardened and frozen, for the lecture. His fevered membranes and burnt stomach began to clamour for more and more of the scorching fluid; while his brain, thrust all awry by the unwonted stimulant, permitted him to go any length to obtain it. And, the shorter the level in that little vial turned, the shorter grew his temper.
In the end, nothing remained to him but his thirst, a prodigious possession in itself that grew more prodigious with every sober breath he drew.
That evening, and three or four evenings more, at the Musain, the others realised that Grantaire behaved no longer like himself. He was not feeling ill-at-ease the least, but the effect of the drug lingered within his system.
One night when the sleet was pouring down, he delighted his so-called Friends with the most dreadful thing he could have ever done: noticing the blue, white, and red flag, and the map of the Republic, that were nailed to the walls of the backroom, he saw nothing but dreadful, ridiculous, grotesque signs that were not fit for decoration. And thus, leaping upon a chair, he seized one of the blue corners of the tricolore and pulled it towards him with all his strength, trying to tear the tricolore off the wall and almost succeeded... if Enjolras and Courfeyrac, concerned to the utmost degree about his suffering, had not restrained him and knocked him unconscious, finally tying him to a chair. It was no use arguing with Grantaire when he was in that state.
Even though they finally managed to stop him, the lush was remarkably strong, and had kicked, and writhed, and given those who restrained him bruises everywhere, and shouting in a slurred tone that this was not fair, this was not how a person should be treated:
"Why are you two reshtraining me like that?! I am perfectly aww right, there ish nothing wrong with me!! Sho lishen! LISHEN!! Ewwrgh... That 'flag of freedom' you call ish nothing but a filthy three-coloured rag, A FUCKING THREE-COLOURED RAG, and it'sh even torn at the edgesh!!" His voice was brusque, like the cracking lash of a whip; and, hearing this reproach in the leader's voice, he sneered at Enjolras and all the others, an expression that twisted his uneven yet handsome face into something they barely recognized. Grantaire stood up and tore off another nail that pinned the flag to the wall out of pure spite; before anyone of the other Friends could react, he had scored a savage, vicious kick against the middle of the map, where Paris itself lay, leaving a muddy dark footprint.
"Why do you look so worried?" he said to the others at last, a trace of scorn in his voice. "It makes you look ugly. I'm all right now." He frowned, noticing something. "Well, look at that," he said suddenly, "that rag nailed to the wall is torn at the edges, and this map's boundaries are quite crooked. How ugly they are, after all—just like the backroom in which they stand," and then he reached out and pinched off two of the nails at the corners of the flag with a vicious twist of his hand.
"Grand... R... what are you doing?" Enjolras asked, feeling a dangerous fury stirring in him, the feeling of betrayal as intense as if his friend had struck him in the face. In the end, the fair leader could hold his rage in check no longer.
"What on Earth are you doing now? Grantaire, stop this charade immediately! Tout à l'heure!" Enjolras commanded.
"Well, I tell you that I should have torn that filthy rag off the wall! There'sh no grache, no aeshthetic, no FUCKING MEANING in dishplaying it like a FUCKING TROPHY! Just like thish dirty old-fashioned map on the fucking wall beshide it!" And, furious, he launched a powerful, disdainful kick that left a muddy footprint right in the middle of the map of Republican France.
This sacrilege he had just committed did nothing but redouble the efforts of those who restrained him, lending to Courfeyrac's right arm an unusual strength, by means of which the point of his bâton struck Grantaire in the nape of the neck and knocked him out senseless.
Enjolras could do nothing but watch, without saying or doing anything; his tongue glued to his palate, the blood curdling in his veins... until finally, in a mournful tone, looking down, he ordered listlessly:
"Combeferre, could you please bring some rope?" Enjolras himself cradled the pale, vulnerable, ill-shaven young man and let his heavy form slump down into a chair, as his lieutenant brought a long, sturdy rope to tie Grantaire to the back of it.
Afterwards, though he started up to his knees in wild frenzy, he seemed completely recovered, and assuaged their solicitous concern by swearing that he had never felt better in his life, and that the intoxication was completely healed. But it was not; the blood of the Green Faery had got into his heart, and though he did not know it, it was there still, slowly turning his heart as cold and hard as a frozen crazy diamond. It did not hurt any longer, but there it was. He felt no pain, but the elixir was there still.
From that day on, Grantaire was no longer himself. His usual merry gaiety and good cheer gave way to either furious rage or cynical, sarcastic raillery.
"What do you want?" he asked the fair leader one day while cramming at the lecture hall. Enjolras, hoping that whatever darkness had come over his friend had passed, had called to him from the doorway, but to no avail. "Can't you see I'm busy?"
"I thought..." Enjolras cleared his throat. "I thought you might like to tend a little more to our flowers, or sing a Marseillaise as a duet with me." He thought that maybe the few favourite activities the two of them had in common would bring his friend back to himself.
But Grantaire snorted derisively and knocked back another draught from his flask, the liquor making his throat rise and fall steadily. "Those games are only fit for posh young children, who can't tell their left from their right. Revolution and liberty and equality and such —pure drivel, isn't it?"
Privately, and en tête-a-tête with his roommate, Grantaire had entertained similar thoughts on occasion, but to hear him say it out loud in public made Enjolras feel sick to his stomach.
"You're not going to cut it all back, are you?" he asked at last, trying to keep his tone light, as if he didn't care.
"Why not?" the Marseillais listlessly replied. "It's for the best, powerless as we are. I can't believe I didn't notice it before."
A part of Enjolras wanted to go inside and shut the window and curl up with his pain when Grantaire said that, but he remembered the gallant promise his roommate had made to defend him from the regiments of the ancien régime until the bitter end, and he couldn't just give up. And so all that afternoon all the Friends gathered at the Musain and tried everything they could think of to bring back Grantaire to himself. Courfeyrac and Jehan Prouvaire told fanciful stories that had made the lush smile in the past, and even amused him, but Grantaire would just interrupt them with every now and then with a little "MAIS" that took all the charm away from the poor tales. There was more of that; it was so that not only those stories did not amuse him anymore, but what's more, no matter the occasion, he mocked the narrators themselves; and made fun of poor Courfeyrac himself, mimicking his Gascon accent in voice impressions and poking fun at his foolishness. Then, some of their friends suggested that Enjolras should suggest Grantaire to go out with him, thinking that if they walked along some of their favourite paths, maybe it would help. The cynic agreed to go with him, but instead of taking pleasure in the crisp blue sky and the sweet scent of leaves turning, he began to mimic the speech, accent, and gait of every person on the streets, of all the inhabitants in the arrondissement. All that was peculiar or disagreeable in a person he would imitate directly, and people commented on his cleverness. Any quirk they had which was at least slightly ridiculous, he reproduced it with incredible fidelity, so deftly that everyone said:
– En vérité, ce garçon a un esprit extraordinaire, il faudra en faire un acteur.
This taste for making impressions of the people he came across, for reproducing irreverently their ridiculous quirks, had suddenly developed within him.
But all of that was because of was the fiery elixir in his blood and the coldness in his heart that made him act like this. All of that cruelty came from nothing else but from that lethal green draught that had entered his heart.
– En vérité, ce garçon a un esprit extraordinaire, il faudra en faire un acteur.
This taste for making impressions of the people he came across, for reproducing irreverently their ridiculous quirks, had suddenly developed within him.
But all of that was because of was the fiery elixir in his blood and the coldness in his heart that made him act like this. All of that cruelty came from nothing else but from that lethal green draught that had entered his heart.
In the absence of anyone else to make fun of, he grew bored and left Enjolras standing at one of their favourite coffee-stands, having caught sight of a pretty blonde in a red coat and gone chasing off after her, maybe mistaking an Enjolras-like lady for the real one by his side. The fair leader followed long enough to see Grantaire smile that smile at her, the one that, for some reason he could not understand, always made Enjolras' heart skip a beat; only that the leader knew him well enough to see that the smile did not reach his eyes. It didn't seem to matter; the blonde was quite charmed and let Grantaire lead her away with her hand tucked in his arm.
He lost interest in the pastime of telling stories, and no longer wanted to look at the paintings that Combeferre or Jehan Prouvaire had made. When Combeferre, for instance, showed his latest pieces of art to him, he smirked, and pointed out that this line was crooked, that that angle wasn't true, that the perspective was wrong, or the paint improperly mixed, or the paper or wood or canvas of inferior quality. At Grantaire’s hands, in Grantaire’s eyes, they were all beautiful once. That was not everything that the new Grantaire did, and there was not much left of his old self. Moreover, now Grantaire was not at all afraid of making piercing, snide remarks, this time of icy sarcasm, detached of joy; the taste for such self-expression had suddenly developed within him. His pastimes, too, were now far more dangerous than they had been before. Passionately he struck at every object that happened to be near - injured himself in a furious rage - reason, conscience, all seemed lost in a moment to the brilliant philosopher and deft martial artist. Whenever he heard clashing and screaming outside the Café, he stormed out to the streets with rolled-up sleeves, in a passionate yearning, often even armed with a billiards cue in his rippling left arm, and would rarely return from the fray without a black eye or a sprained foot, in exchange for serious blows to his opponents, as a way to release all that overwhelming desire. He would also gamble and cheat more frequently at écarté, risking the money Enjolras gave him and told him to be careful about.
Moreover, he listlessly ate little to no solid food, and lived solely upon that rapidly-ebbing enchanted liquor. He was taken with violent shudders, and, every now and then, a burning fever.
And all this seemed the likelier because perchance he was bound by a spell, from which only that sickly green draught could free him. Every night there came an hour when his mind was most horribly changed, and, after his psyche, his body. For first he became furious and wild and would rush upon his dearest friends to kill them, even run any sharp pointed object he could seize through Enjolras himself, the one he once worshipped, and who still pitied him and gave him a second chance, if Grantaire were not bound to a chair.
Losing consciousness, he then began to drift away, and not even the leader and his two closest lieutenants could keep Grantaire bedridden; he said the most outrageous, craziest things he had ever said as he tossed under the covers, keeping them anxious all night long. His whole body burned like a bonfire, and nothing could quench the thirst that wasted him away. He was in a dreadful state; even lukewarm mint tea burned down his throat, as if it had been molten lead.
Though he himself would know nothing of it, for when his hour was past, he would awake forgetful of all that vile fit and in his proper shape and sound mind - saving that he was somewhat wearied, and, with sunken eyes and faded mouth, he had dreamt of a lady in a green kirtle, and of a bitter draught that would utterly darken his mind and harden his heart.
And, when he sobered up, he always awoke looking tired and distraught, his health dwindling like the waning moon burning her fire away. The ordinary eaux-de-vie made no longer an impression upon his system. Threatened by shadows at night and exposed to the light; some said they could see a change in him. There was a look in his eyes like black holes in the sky; a look as of a man who has seen visions, or of a daemon's that is dreaming, and he would be out all day.
But all of that was due to the fey blood in his veins, so seductive in its advances, so insidious in its influence, the fatal draught that he had put into himself, and that was ebbing more and more, that made him even chide Enjolras, even treat with raillery the deity he worshipped, the one he had been sworn to heart and soul, life and limb... and who was still willing to give the dark-haired sceptic a chance to be one of them. He would more than often shove away the fair leader in scarlet, addressing him and the other friends as coldly and harshly as never before, without paying the slightest attention, and, in exchange for such sneers and scorn... something warm and painful stirred within Enjolras himself.
It was a sad, grievous sight to behold in the once faithful, though sceptical, champion the victim of his addiction, either when the poison boiled in his veins, flushed his cheeks, and kindled a wildfire in his eyes; or, when, exhausted by his own passions, he sank down to the ground, helpless, defenceless, with scarcely power to move! In the state to which his own folly had reduced him, he was unable to make any resistance.
Soon, even Grantaire's pastimes turned more serious; he would play rock-paper-scissors against his own shadow, which ensured that he would always win; cheat at cards and at billiards, to revel in winning by unrighteous means; and even provoke other patrons of the Café, both Friends and strangers, to violence on the streets outside; he pursued them in a sort of berserker rage, eager for fight, desperate fight, any fight, fight without hate, that would outlet his dangerous, boiling power, his overflow of energy. Joy and power were possessing his small brain and lusty frame. And the others stood in shock as they saw this very dear one take into his body and his brain a madness that would surely end his life. A slouching, moody, drunken sloven, wasted by intemperance and vice, and with his matted hair and stubbly face in wild disorder; but, with some traces on him, too, of having been a man of good proportion and good features in his youth.
He sat, however, staring vacantly at the floor; with a lustreless and stupid smile. A spectacle of such deep degradation, of such abject hopelessness, of such a miserable downfall, that one would have put their hands before their face and turned away, lest Grantaire himself should see how much it moved one.
He took to drinking, idling: all the fine resources that were to be so much better for him than the home he might have had. He lost his looks, his character, his health, his strength, his friends, his work: everything! This went on for what seemed years and years; he sinking lower and lower... At last, he was so cast down, and cast out, that no one would employ or notice him; and doors were shut upon him, go where he would.
And each and every time he quaffed a dose of the elixir, his weakness increased. After an instant of exhilaration, when he seemed to have been electrified, he plunged back into that heavy state of trance. His spirit and his body wavered at unison, under the spell of profound exhaustion.
In the end, as we have said before, nothing remained to him but his thirst, a prodigious possession in itself that grew more prodigious with every sober breath he drew.
One evening, about a fortnight since his change of heart, with his woolly floppy beret pulled way above his ears and raven curls, Grantaire staggered out of the Café on his own, his back turned to all those he called friends when he was sober. Without even giving a single explanation, he disappeared, dashing off into that stormy evening.
And he took his leave without even saying au revoir.
They were all so annoying, each and every one in his own special way, and that was a night he wanted to spend from dark to dawn on his own, walking the streets of Montmartre as large raindrops whipped his now gaunt, haggard ill-shaven face, mingling with the perspiration that beaded his forehead and rolled down his stubbled cheeks and chin.
As he stormed off, without even waving goodbye for an instant, without even saying au revoir, he never dared to look back over his shoulder. That was all in the past, and there was something far more urgent, that took up all his attention.
He was not only suffering, no, burning with thirst; his head on fire, his throat ablaze, his limbs so cold he could not feel them... He reached for his flacon, but found it empty; he had not given it a thought when he rushed away, and thus he cursed out loud and tore his matted dark hair. He had never felt so ill within his short life, racked with a thirst he saw no way of quenching. Without the burning thirst that seared his throat and consumed him, he would gladly have turned back and retraced his steps. He felt exhausted, and wanted only to lie down and sleep; but the rain was streaming down around him. He tried to pull himself out of it, but every object seemed to dance strangely before his eyes.
Suddenly he became aware of something he had never before seen in that place. No sooner had he got out on the street that he saw the arrival of a magnificent rococo calèche, pulled by two black mares with harnesses all green, that seemed to be made of ivy vines, and caparisoned in the same glittering greenery. In the carriage sat a regal, gorgeously beautiful lady, clad in a pelisse of fresh maidenhair fern and a bonnet made of thickly-knit ivy leaves. The carriage itself was emerald green, its inner upholstery of satin in a peridot shade.
"Surely it is she..." Grantaire muttered to himself. "Voilà mon affaire!" and stared at the only passenger in awe. She was tall and majestic, shining, and wrapped in a thin garment as green as poison, and he stared at her like a man out of his wits. She was tall and of slender figure, with skin of a dazzling white laced with green veins, like polished Carrara marble. She was clothed all in greenery, her kirtle and gauntlets and shapka likewise of ferns and ivy, and her eyes glowed like stars seen through peridot lenses.
As the carriage stopped with its left panel right before Grantaire, the lady turned towards him and adressed him with a friendly sign. One would have said that she knew him already.
The weary student looked at her, and thought that he had never seen anyone so beautiful, or whose face was so clever and whose eyes so wise.
The lady smiled at him serenely, and asked him if it was true that he was a martial artist of great skill, and her voice as she spoke was like the faint clinking of bluebells, or the seeds rattling within a capsule. It seemed to the dark young man that that voice rang through the whole world, and his heart gave one sharp, painful throb.
He recognised that unearthly voice, forgetting for an instant that he was dying of thirst.
The dice had been cast, and thus, as the coachman opened the carriage door, the dark young man got in and took his place by the lady's side.
All of a sudden, as he entered and took his place by her side, she shut the door behind him, and... "Coachman!"... a whiplash... they shot off as if fired from a cannon, crossing the Seine at the Charenton Bridge, past the Champs-Élysées, the Tuileries, the Place de la Concorde; past the splendid mansions and right through the brilliant parks of the Left Bank, and dashing off beyond, into the frosty Île-de-France countryside.
Now the sleet began to fall, so heavily that the young man could not see a hand's breadth before him, but still they drove on. He tried to cry for help, but no one heard him scream. It was even hard to breathe for him, at such breakneck speed they were going forth! The sleet whipped all around, and the carriage seemed to have grown wings. Every now and then it gave a jump as if it were going over maze hedges and deep trenches.
Grantaire felt, time and again, his heart rise up to his throat, until his legs and lungs threatened to give out. It was as if they were darting up and down sharp slopes and over yawning chasms. The Seine, the sights of the Left Bank, the open landscape, everything flitted by as formless blurs. Grantaire was at least slightly frightened, and he would gladly have called for help or sung a little Marseillaise to encourage himself, or called out his beloved's name, but sadly, ever since that night when he had felt his eyes swimming with tears and that burning pain in his heart, ever since he had swallowed that first sip of fey blood, those words could not even choke his throat, for he had forgotten everything he could have done, only being able to recall some notions of legalese that he had been able to retain; and thus, he began to murmur: "In dubio pro reo..."
Suddenly, the lady in the carriage stopped and turned her face towards him. Now that the full moon appeared from behind the clouds, her pelisse and her bonnet, which she had put back on, were of the brightest green. It was only then that Grantaire, having forgotten her with the thrill of the ride, recognised that she was the faery whose blood he had been thirsting, even dying, for!
The fur and the cap, which were made entirely of fresh leaves, fell off, and he saw the woman who had stood at his window that night in the snow, tall and regal with her chestnut hair and white skin, and her pale green eyes like chips of ice.
It was the Green Faery, indeed!
"Don't be afraid, Grantaire," said she. "You are the one I have sought for so long. Don't you know that you're safe with me?"
"How do you know my name?" he asked, surprised that he had the courage to speak at all.
At that, she smiled kindly. "Who else was born to hold my elixir? Come, sit with me under this cloak," quoth she. "I will wrap you in my pelisse of greenery, and that will keep you warm."
And, as if it were impossible for him to make any resistance to that order, the dark young man nestled back into his place by the Green Faery's side in the carriage, as she wrapped him in a pelisse of maidenhair and ivy and other climbing plants...At that, she smiled kindly. "Who else was born to hold my elixir? Come, sit with me under this cloak," quoth she. "I will wrap you in my pelisse of greenery, and that will keep you warm."
"All right..." She kissed his brow, and then his mouth, toying with his messy raven hair and the rough stubble on his face. "Are you cold still?" Her lips curved upwards in a smile, but her glacial eyes burned into his own as she whispered softly to him in the darkness, her touch as possessive as it had been that first night when she made her overture, both gentle and frightening—for such is the allure of anyone who has at least a drop of the fey blood, which gives them some ability to charm a man or woman if they so desire. And her talent was enough to keep Grantaire, and keep him she would.
"You'll see, mon cher. You're like me. And now you'll stay, and we'll fight together, and everything will be perfect."
"Just one sip of your blood would keep me warm... I would rather die than suffer such unbearable, terrible thirst..." he muttered listlessly, with a kind of drowsy thoughtfulness. It seemed that the vines that the cloak were made of were coils constricting Grantaire's chest, squeezing the air out of his lungs, as she planted that kiss upon his forehead.
Producing her snakeskin dagger, she slashed her right wrist once more, then held a cup of rock crystal to catch the bright green liquid that gushed out of the wound. Once more, he quaffed a deep draught, letting it all disappear from sight into his own insides, with reckless thirst, draining the cup at one fell swoop.
“How good it is!” said he; “I have never before tasted such a warm, invigorating liquor!" And his eyes sparkled with new life; a glow diffused itself over his frame; it seemed as if every sorrow, every oppression were once more banished from his mind, and a fresh, free nature were stirring within him.
“Yes, just so,” said the maiden, as she poured out some more, and held it to his lips. Again he drank, and, as the liquor passed from the cup to the inside of his chest, a living joy streamed through every vein.
“The whole world is mine, why therefore should I grieve?” thought he. “Everything is created for our enjoyment and happiness. The stream of life is a stream of happiness; let us flow on with it to joy and elation, to exhilaration!"
He flung his arms round the beautiful being, and gazed into her wonderfully clear eyes,—only for a moment; but in that moment words cannot express the effect of his gaze. Was it the spirit of life or of death that overpowered him? Was he rising higher, or sinking lower and lower into the deep, deadly abyss? He knew not. Twining her own arms and clasping them around his waist, the lady in green kissed him once more on the parted lips, and her kiss sent an icy shiver, a fiery chill like an electric shock, through every vertebra of his spinal column, through his whole frame, searing his throat and every pipe of his lungs; that kiss sank in all the way down to his heart, which was already like a lump of ice... Her kiss was colder than ice. Those caresses went quite through to his heart, which was already almost a crazy diamond; he felt as if he were going to die, but only for a blink of an eye. A cry of agony escaped from him; he struggled to tear himself free from her, but stumbled, falling into her lap. For a moment all was dark before his eyes, but when he opened them again it was light, the light of the moon shining through the soft translucent skin of a lovely heart-shaped face.
The impression of the kiss and the effect of the green liquid, which had plunged down into his half-frozen heart, made him think that the blood was freezing in his veins, that every blood vessel of his was frosted with a cold sweat. All went dark before his eyes, his eyes that began to swim with dizziness, but, within a single instant, he opened them again. The powers of evil had played their game.
For an instant, he thought he was about to die, and he sank down in her arms as his eyes shut... yet that malaise only lasted for an instant, and, equally suddenly, he was feeling all right, completely reassured; the impression of cold, and dread, and awe... had utterly disappeared. He awakened as instantly as he had fallen unconscious. She refilled his cup, and he emptied it as eagerly as always, until the last drop had disappeared from sight into the vitals under his tightly-buttoned tattered green overcoat.The Green Faery smiled in delight, watching him knock back that deep draught down his throat, her fingertips and her lips burning his skin, the liquor searing his throat, and yet at the same time colder than frozen mercury. It seemed to penetrate all through him, and his heart, already cold and hard as a crazy diamond, seemed to grow colder still, until he believed that he would die. The blood froze in his veins, and his heart hardened even more, as everything darkened before his shut eyes. Yet this malaise did not last but an instant, and then, equally suddenly, he felt as right as rain, and it all seemed quite painless, even pleasant, the impression of cold having completely disappeared; and he forgot all about the docks of Marseille, and the hardships of childhood, and the exhausting journey on foot all the way to Paris, and the struggles to enter University, and the Café Musain, and the Amis de l'ABC, and Enjolras, and all those he had ever loved, and everything else that remained of the past was forgotten. The first draught was still searing his throat when he had to down the second, the remembrance of his past life had vanished, and instead, something stirred within him at the sight of the regal, green-eyed lady who stood before him with outstretched hands.
"Et maintenant... And, in the meantime, my lad... you shall not have more of my blood until later on, or that would poison you to death, am I right?"
Grantaire nodded listlessly as he looked at her, having come to his senses once more.
"You look beautiful," he said wonderingly, for now he could hardly look at anything else but her beauty. Her presence felt no longer sinister, but rather soothing instead. Never had such a charming or such an intelligent visage appeared before him (or so he thought, not even being able to recall his fair idol in scarlet), and she seemed no longer made of ice or marble, like she had looked not long ago, when she had made that first overture that had frightened him so much. He was no longer in awe of her, or frightened, and, in his own opinion, this was the most perfect sight that he had hitherto ever seen. One could not even imagine a more seductive visage than that! It only took one instant of looking at her for him to think that he had never seen anyone so beautiful, or whose face was so clever and whose eyes so wise. After all, his mind had been cleansed back to a half-blank slate, and Grantaire found that he couldn't quite remember why he'd left home in the first place, the memory slippery and elusive as a fish.
He told her that not only could he read and write, but also make up the wittiest of quips within the blink of an eye, that he knew the lyrics to all the lewdest drinking songs by heart, and that he was a great savateur and tireur de chausson marseillais, and equally deft at wielding a walking-stick, or bâton, in combat.
The Green Faery smiled in response, and the young man said to himself that maybe it was not because of his fighting experience, which he was so proud of; he thought that he surely did not know enough.
She asked him if he had ever lost a fight, and he shook his head in response.
"And, if you ever stood defeated, would you rather live a broken man than die a hero?"
Grantaire locked eyes with her... and... after a while, replied coldly: "Death above defeat."
Then she burst into a ringing, lilting noblewoman's laugh:
"Hoo hoo hoo! Allons, allons, you are definitely the warrior that I need, mon petit garçon... Would you like to be uniformed in green maidenhair and spider silks, armed with a silver pike, with a breastplate and a backplate brighter than the sun itself?"
Then, refilling the goblet, she held it to his lips, and he drank again. A feeling of joy seemed to flow through his blood. The whole world was his, he seemed to think, so why torture himself! Everything is created for our pleasure and enjoyment. The stream of life is the stream of happiness; let yourself be carried away on it - that is joy. He looked at the young girl. He flung his arms about her and gazed into her marvelously clear eyes. It was only for a second, but how can that second be expressed or described in words? Was it the life of the soul or the life of death that took possession of his being? Was he carried up high, or did he sink down into the deep, always deeper?
And his lilywhite, dry cheekbones regained colour for an instant, a fugitive flash of lightning lit up his weary eyes; but then his face became even more livid, and the sparkles in his eyes died. Breathing painfully, he put his hardened open palms upon his fluttering chest.
And he was, though unfazed, completely devoted to the words of his new mistress, toying with her dark green locks and believing that, the next day, he would awaken as a prince consort on a throne by her side. The moon was new that night, and the sky was clouded, over the Northern moors, and the lady listened with a serene smile on her face. It then seemed to him that what he knew was not enough, and he looked around him at the darkening sky as the carriage flew onwards... really flying, drawn through the air; the silhouettes of the pegasi who pulled the carriage, and whose long tails and manes fluttered in the gale, turned less and less distinct the faster they advanced -it was impossible to discern if they were pegasi or oversized black swans-, till they soon resembled dark cirrus clouds whipped by the wings of the tempest. If Grantaire's heart were not frozen, he would have had vertigo and felt light-headed and nauseated, but now flying through the ice-cold air seemed the most normal thing in the world to him. On they flew over woods and lakes, over many lands, all through that long, long moonless stormy night; he saw cathedral spires appear and disappear below his feet, as well as goblin-like grotesque gargoyles, and gigantic golden archangels that blew their trumpets on the pinnacles of steeples; fortresses on mountains, monasteries in valleys, bridges across rivers and rivers across the countryside; and beneath them a storm brewed, turning the clouds black, the first snow crackled, and no living thing made a sound, yet the tempest whistled, and howled, and roared, ringing in their ears; it was a fierce melody, a dithyramb like the ancient warcries of berserkers or maenads; yet, in that state of trance, all that chaotic chorus was a lullaby to him.
The drugged young man gazed at her, and saw that she was so beautiful, he could not imagine a more lovely and intelligent face; she did not now seem to be made of ice or marble, as she had when he had seen her through the backroom door and she had beckoned to him. In his eyes she was perfect, and he did not even notice as the carriage began once more to cut through the frozen night sky, though around them a deadly storm blew and wolves with teeth like daggers kept pace. He was well and truly lost under the elixir's spell.
One minute after his lips had kissed the lethal draught, he had plunged into some kind of drowsiness, that nevertheless left his consciousness of what was going on around him intact. His weary head, hanging upon his chest, seemed to be supporting an invisible weight and lifted itself, time after time, with a considerable effort. The look in his quenched eyes flitted wearily to and from his lady, until then, his heavy eyelids shut and his head sank down on her lap.
They flew over the packs of wolves, and the gray wolves, that had lain down in ambush awaiting their prey, raised themselves, howling, and followed the dark carriage.
They flew over the dens of bears, and the brown bears, that had lain down to hibernate until springtime, raised themselves, growling, and followed the dark carriage.
They flew along the coast of the Channel, where the seals had lain down to rest on the rocks, and the seals, who had no legs and not enough strength to run, and thus contented themselves to crawl along the ground in the direction of the dark carriage, as they let out long, ominous cries that sounded like groans, and seemed to belong to the world of phantoms or that of merpeople, which Grantaire and the Lady seemed to be approaching.
In the end, when the day was about to dawn once more, Grantaire, exhausted, and lulled by all that softness and that warmth, slumped down and fell asleep at the feet of the Lady in the Green Kirtle.
The evil draught, which he had been made drunk with, had laid hold of him and bound his senses so strongly that he fell senseless upon the carriage floor at her feet, and there he lay insensible, as a living cadaver, her icy cold left hand heavy on his shoulder.
Chapitre troisième
L'héritière et son fiancé
L'héritière et son fiancé
And how do you think, dear readers, that Enjolras reacted after finding that his more-than-friend had not returned home to their garret? And how fared he in Grantaire's absence?
Our fair hero began to feel concerned when two or three days had passed without anyone in their little club knowing the slightest of whither their resident sceptic (and drunkard) had gone.
Combeferre and the others had been looking for information far and wide, but no one had been able to give any news of Grantaire's whereabouts. What had become of him, no one knew, nor could anyone make even a guess as to his whereabouts.
“Est-ce qu'il demeure chez...? Does he live with...? Il demeure chez une...!” Enjolras gasped before he could finish the question, as well as before he could finish uttering the shocking realisation. He felt a sorrowful pang in his heart at the thought that the sceptic might have forgotten him, but he reminded himself that after all, his stubbly friend was most likely straight, no matter how many grisettes and wenches gave him rebukes and thought him homely, but maybe all this frog needed was a kiss from a princess for his true colours to shine through. At the least, it was better to imagine Grantaire living happily somewhere without him than suffering unknown agonies.
The fair leader's heart sank; it was too close to the kind of fear he'd held for a long time, but hadn't really admitted before now. Still, if it meant that Grantaire was safe and sound and well, Enjolras would learn to live with it.
"I do not know exact-ly," Courfeyrac admitted. "He may, but then again, perhaps it is not him. I will explain as well as I can, while you rest yourself and listen as you recover. Écoute. And you will understand it all, certainement. Upon that I rely, and thus, I may now commence en toute tranquillité." Then, he pointed towards the landscaped grounds of a large white neoclassical mansion at the other edge of the village, and, clearing his throat, in a mix of Gascon-accented French, English, and Catalan, he thus began to tell Enjolras what he knew:
"This estate which we presently see was purchased a decade ago by a nouveau riche gentleman from the northern provinces; a rather kind-hearted fellow, who has never left the miserable in pain... and of whose past it is known little to nothing. Single as he was and is, and too old to even have grandchildren, and just longing for a baby he could call both a successor and a companion, he adopted the most wretched orphan he could find, back up north. An indentured maidservant, a frail little blonde whom he rescued from brutal stepparents; and not only did he raise la petite Cosette right, but he made a proper lady out of her, an accomplished debutante of unusual cleverness, a rightful heiress to the fortune he has attained through mysterious means and lavishes still upon charity. In this château you can see across the village, they still live and thrive to this very day. The gentleman made this adopted daughter his sole rightful heir, you see, because of a promise he had made on her real mother's deathbed, and Cosette would always lead a better life here than with her first guardians, so he had her trained in economics and statescraft as well as the usual occupations of young women of rank, such as musical instruments, and dance, and opera song. They say she owns so many books that she cannot count them, and studies philosophy and art and other such things, and speaks Latin and English as easily as you please. As you may realise, not only has her guardian trained her for life as a businesswoman, but also in the usual accomplishments of young women of rank. She often accompanies her guardian beyond the garden walls, to speak to those in needs and give alms and friendly smiles. Much of what she buys, she donates to the poor; she keeps for herself only the items that she considers particularly special.
'Tis as sure as my surname is Courfeyrac that she is as clever as she is beautiful, and that she loves to read; she reads book after book and learns so many interesting things — although most of them she forgets the moment she puts the book down. She reads her books, and then chats excitedly about the things she has read with her ladies-in-waiting. She even reads the newspapers and talks about that. But the ladies just giggle and agree with her — they are only interested in dresses and perfume, and have heads full of air."
"And when does Grantaire feature? If he has just been betrothed to her...?"
"It was a strange thing indeed. I'll never forget how it all happened. You see, this heiress is extraordinarily clever, and no one could possibly have been wise enough for her. Most young men of rank were quite dumb in comparison to her and she didn't like that one bit."
"Was she that smart? I know men like us are trained to be clever..."
"Not as clever as she is," Courfeyrac chuckled. "She is so wonderfully clever, and so incredibly wise, that she has read all the newspapers that are published in France and the United Kingdom, for her guardian is subscribed to all of those papers, and then forgotten them again! 'Tis true that she has so much esprit that she forgets them as soon as she has read them."
"What is so clever about forgetting newspapers?" Enjolras asked, not unkindly.
The darker student gave an understanding look that said he was more than willing to explain. "You see, most people who are smart are smart enough only to learn and then blab information that people really don't want to hear to begin with. But Cosette is so smart that she forgets them until they are needed. Not to mention all these trifles of no consequence which the press constantly publishes about. She is wise as well as smart. Do you see how that works?"
It made sense. Enjolras nodded as Courfeyrac continued: "So this smart heiress decides that she is lonely in all her brilliance and should like to have a husband. But she doesn't know where to find a suitable one..."
Enjolras breathed a heavy sigh and looked the sharply-dressed young gentleman in the eye, then explained, "I can already picture myself what both this heiress and her guardian look like." As a brilliant only child of privilege, he had led a sheltered and lonely childhood as well, eager for the day that the Enjolras estate in the Camargue, whose reach turned more narrow for each year, would be traded for a Parisian lodging, no matter how humble, where he could make true friends and bid his customary weariness farewell. To reinforce those memories, the Château Fauchelevent, white and neoclassical and surrounded by a well-kept French garden, resembled the Manoir Enjolras to such a high degree... Furthermore, like Combeferre, she loved learning, spending her time in the library among thousands of books; how unusual she was!
Our fair hero began to feel concerned when two or three days had passed without anyone in their little club knowing the slightest of whither their resident sceptic (and drunkard) had gone.
Combeferre and the others had been looking for information far and wide, but no one had been able to give any news of Grantaire's whereabouts. What had become of him, no one knew, nor could anyone make even a guess as to his whereabouts.
Eventually, Feuilly, the only member of the Amis who worked for his living instead of studying, and thus spent most of his time at night as a waiter at the Café, behind the counter (for he spent the daytime making hand-fans in a fan manufacture), recalled that, on the evening of Grantaire's disappearance, the half-drunken dark young man had been picked up by a strangely beautiful dark green carriage, that had taken off down the street, then left the district in the direction of the Seine. Others told that they had last seen him riding through the streets in the aforementioned carriage, accompanied by a lady of strange and wondrous beauty. No one knew where the carriage had exactly gone, or who the lady might be.
They waited for a week, then a fortnight, waiting for Grantaire to appear all of a sudden from right around the corner, to take them all by positive surprise.
But even the highest hopes begin to waver, and soon, after weeks went by, the word got round that, doubtlessly, the raven-haired young man, in an intoxicated state, had surely stumbled into the icy Seine and frozen to death before he could drown; thus his friends told themselves. The lifeless form had not been found, claimed by the dark stream for evermore... if he had not been spirited away by the lady in the calèche, which was something far less likely.
That was the subject of many an evening at the Musain throughout those long and empty autumn and winter evenings, in between studying and bedtime. Those "soirées" did seem long and empty without the sound of a drinking song, or a pun, or a quip echoing off the walls of the backroom. These young people had to be rallied, ready to take up arms against the National Guard when the hour would come, Enjolras thought... but something was always ostensibly missing. No matter how many or how diverse they were at the table, they were missing something, and someone relevant amongst all his comrades, the most relevant in fact, or so it seemed to the fair leader. What was missing? He was not entirely sure.
Moreover, all the students now had to return to class after the winter holidays, and thus, among their more pressing concerns at the lecture hall, their odd-one-out companion was soon forgotten by the Friends, as mourning gave way to acceptance... except by Enjolras.
Moreover, all the students now had to return to class after the winter holidays, and thus, among their more pressing concerns at the lecture hall, their odd-one-out companion was soon forgotten by the Friends, as mourning gave way to acceptance... except by Enjolras.
The autumn and winter passed like an age, cold and lonely and without hope, until at last spring came, with its vivifying sunshine and warmth that didn't touch the cold inside him. All winter, he stayed curled up in his bed whenever he could, whenever his spare time from the Law degree and duties of a rebel leader allowed him, wishing sometimes that he could cry to ease the taut pressure in his chest... It didn't seem that there could ever be an end to this pain, so deep did it go, and he wished that he'd never known what it was like to love someone, if this was what it felt like to lose them.
Detaching himself by dedicating himself entirely to his studies and to the Revolution, shielding his chest with a breastplate of learning and warlike austerity, long story short being the usual austere self he had always known, was to no avail; every night, when he lay in bed, the same taut pressure weighed down his chest, constricting his ribcage and ostensibly crushing the lungs, and even the heart, within.
For the fair leader had never fallen in love in his short life, and not realised the feelings of his lover until it seemed to be too late.
Detaching himself by dedicating himself entirely to his studies and to the Revolution, shielding his chest with a breastplate of learning and warlike austerity, long story short being the usual austere self he had always known, was to no avail; every night, when he lay in bed, the same taut pressure weighed down his chest, constricting his ribcage and ostensibly crushing the lungs, and even the heart, within.
For the fair leader had never fallen in love in his short life, and not realised the feelings of his lover until it seemed to be too late.
Then springtime came with its vivifying sun, and, after the equinox, the day-star began to shine warm once more.
And it happened one day, as he looked around, that he realised what was wrong. Now Combeferre had moved into his garret once more, and tended once more to their flower boxes, in Grantaire's place, but it was not exactly the same. Now Courfeyrac came up with some ironic quips or remarks, but it was not exactly the same. Now Lesgle occupied the infamous window seat at class, but it was not exactly the same.
It was only when spring came again, and he stepped outside to feel the first warm rays of the sun on his face, that his restlessness returned, and this time it would not be assuaged by any of his lieutenants' coaxing. He began to question himself about what was missing from their everyday lives that made everything no longer the same.
It was only when spring came again, and he stepped outside to feel the first warm rays of the sun on his face, that his restlessness returned, and this time it would not be assuaged by any of his lieutenants' coaxing. He began to question himself about what was missing from their everyday lives that made everything no longer the same.
How come that there was not a sceptic, not a realist, not someone who disapproved and would rather not care, but was nevertheless under their tricolore flag at the end of the day? Of course the fair leader felt a pang of regret, for he understood very well indeed what loneliness could do to a man, but his heart was too full of anguish and dread at the thought of what might have befallen the one whose disappearance he recalled time and again; and one day when he visited Jehan Prouvaire and looked out of the window, he saw the small green stem of a rosebush poking up out of the dirt in his window box, trying its best to grow in the pale spring sunlight.
Feeling once more encouraged by the presence of the leader, the shy boy, who was curled up in bed in a cocoon of wildflowered sheets, got up at last and padded out onto the balcony with the watering pot, a watering-can made of zinc. Upon closer inspection, he saw that there were several tiny green shoots struggling up through the soil, and showing them to the leader, though he knew how detached and indifferent a person the latter was.
"Oh, Grand... R... How could I have forgotten you?" Enjolras whispered, running his hands over the pompom roses on Jehan Prouvaire's windowsill, heedless of the way the thorns pricked his skin, remembering the touch of a stubble of dark facial hair when he'd held Grantaire as he'd sobbed, drunk as a newt, that night, so long ago. "Now I'll never know if you're dead, or alive somewhere, believing I abandoned you." Heart clenched with grief and remorse, he knelt beside the crumbling wall and restrained the tears, despairing of ever learning what had become of his dear friend.
"No, no, Grantaire is dead and gone, and will never return..." sighed Enjolras to himself aloud, trying on the words for size.
"We don't believe it," seemed to insist the empty chair and the quinquet lamp on an empty table at the backroom of the Café Musain, on the spot where the estranged young man had had the custom of sitting down.
"Grantaire is dead and gone, and will never return..." he said to the torn tricolore flag of freedom that was still nailed to the wall, and to the bâtons and firearms stacked neatly in a corner of the backroom.
"We don't believe it," they seemed to insist, glancing at him reproachfully, their voices fierce and warlike, and at last the fair leader began to doubt it himself.
Feeling once more encouraged by the presence of the leader, the shy boy, who was curled up in bed in a cocoon of wildflowered sheets, got up at last and padded out onto the balcony with the watering pot, a watering-can made of zinc. Upon closer inspection, he saw that there were several tiny green shoots struggling up through the soil, and showing them to the leader, though he knew how detached and indifferent a person the latter was.
"Oh, Grand... R... How could I have forgotten you?" Enjolras whispered, running his hands over the pompom roses on Jehan Prouvaire's windowsill, heedless of the way the thorns pricked his skin, remembering the touch of a stubble of dark facial hair when he'd held Grantaire as he'd sobbed, drunk as a newt, that night, so long ago. "Now I'll never know if you're dead, or alive somewhere, believing I abandoned you." Heart clenched with grief and remorse, he knelt beside the crumbling wall and restrained the tears, despairing of ever learning what had become of his dear friend.
"No, no, Grantaire is dead and gone, and will never return..." sighed Enjolras to himself aloud, trying on the words for size.
"We don't believe it," seemed to insist the empty chair and the quinquet lamp on an empty table at the backroom of the Café Musain, on the spot where the estranged young man had had the custom of sitting down.
"Grantaire is dead and gone, and will never return..." he said to the torn tricolore flag of freedom that was still nailed to the wall, and to the bâtons and firearms stacked neatly in a corner of the backroom.
"We don't believe it," they seemed to insist, glancing at him reproachfully, their voices fierce and warlike, and at last the fair leader began to doubt it himself.
That thought alone made Enjolras waver. The dark-haired lush, whose chair and table at the Café were kept empty as a memorial, and whose footprint was still branded on the map, had to be alive somewhere at the end of the day. By means of noticing the absence of his former roommate over and over again, the fair leader came to doubt that his squire was gone.
And thus, he remembered everything all at once, and was amazed that he had ever forgotten it. He groaned, and scolded himself aloud, appalled at how near he had come to abandoning his friend; and at last, his second-in-command Combeferre, curious and weary of his constant entreaties, gave in and inquired of him what was the matter.
And thus, he remembered everything all at once, and was amazed that he had ever forgotten it. He groaned, and scolded himself aloud, appalled at how near he had come to abandoning his friend; and at last, his second-in-command Combeferre, curious and weary of his constant entreaties, gave in and inquired of him what was the matter.
"I will put on my brand new scarlet waistcoat, the one trimmed with gold braid soutaches that I got for Christmas, the one that Grantaire has never seen yet, and I will go forth into the wide world and ask for him, seek information about his whereabouts, and search for him for as long as my strength holds!" he exclaimed that afternoon at the table.
"Let him do so," Combeferre told the others. "This is surely an inspiration, a sign, a clue... We may miss a dear leader, but I will surely stand in for Enjolras, if the uprising takes place in his absence..." Of course Combeferre knew the broader French meaning of the word "lieutenant", which means more than an officer's rank or a second-in-command; but rather a person standing in for his absent superior, provisionally holding a place which is not his own. And of course he weighed his own strengths and weaknesses against the fair leader's, knowing that maybe, though not as warlike or idealistic as Enjolras, Combeferre himself was wiser and made of the right stuff, and thus, even though he modestly explained his own shortcomings, would prove the best one to pick up the reins of the Friends of the ABC as their provisional lieutenant leader.
And thus, thanking Combeferre and approving of his decision, then waving his friends and comrades goodbye, Enjolras tied the ribbon tighter in his golden queue, donned that scarlet waistcoat of his, and walked quite alone through the streets towards the river, all straight on until he reached the riverbank. When he came to the Charenton Bridge, he decided to follow the course of the Seine up north towards the ocean, all the way up to the English Channel. It was as if something within him clicked... the carriage had seemed to take a northward direction, had not Feuilly said so? And, whatever Grantaire was going to do up north, it had most surely to do with the bright green liquid and with his change of heart.
When he reached the riverbank, it seemed to Enjolras that the sound of the current against the wooden abutments of the old bridge might have been the voice of the Seine, whispering and murmuring to herself, and so he thought it couldn't hurt to try reasoning with his image mirrored within the current.
"Could it be true that the stream took Grantaire away last winter?" he asked his own reflection, elbows prodded on the railing of the bridge. It seemed that the ripples on the murky surface below nodded in a strange manner, replying in strange signs, as if to say it was a lie; especially the gleam in the steel-blue eyes of his own reflection told Enjolras, without words, and seeming to have received that particular mission, that the stream had never claimed the form of the dark lush. By the fixed expression of those eyes, and those mournful lips, that were actually his own, the fair leader realised that it was as if the Seine kept no Grantaire to render in exchange. And, if the stream had not been the one to claim the young lush, Feuilly's account of that calèche speeding up north in the stormy night was most likely to be true...
Perhaps, he thought, he had at last gone mad, and he was not as alarmed at this idea as he perhaps should have been. If this were madness, it was better than the grief and despair that had gripped him all winter.
And thus, Enjolras, who could be very stubborn once he had set upon a course of action, said to himself: "Since he has not drowned or frozen to death... allons plus loin". With a brisk pace, he turned his back to his reflection and crossed the Charenton Bridge. A breeze blew by, over his queue and the nape of his neck, a note of warmth.
Everything on the Left Bank, across the Seine, was bright and festive; throngs of carriages were rolling up and down the Champs-Élysées, the waters of the jet d'eau fountains of the gardens of the Tuileries and the Place de la Concorde were dancing in the sunlight, with children in their finest little clothes playing around the basins, as their nannies listened to the confidences of some dashing young officer in uniform, while old bourgeois sat down on their customary benches, reading their newspapers or smoking their pipes. Enjolras paid no heed to any of these grand sights, not even stopping for an instant, humming La Marseillaise to himself and striding down the wide arcades of the Rue de Rivoli with his usual aloof air, while sometimes adressing a cold, piercing sneer at this splendour and display, and general atmosphere of life and prosperity.
More quickly than he could have thought possible, he had left the town behind, and was rambling past fields and woods and green, mossy riverbanks. Some of the scenery was so beautiful that he wished for Combeferre by his side, with charcoal or ink at hand to draw it, but of course he had none of those things with him, not even Combeferre or Jehan Prouvaire who would have appreciated the beauty of the landscape so much more (any one of those two would doubtless have noticed the banks on either side of the river were actually rather pretty. The green fields had given way to rolling hills, upon which carpets of brilliantly colored wildflowers alternated with thick copses of trees. Here and there he spotted a deer or rabbit, but not a single person did he see; Jehan Prouvaire, indeed, would have watched the clouds pass by against the blue sky, and sometimes the dappled play of sunlight through the arching branches of trees. This stretch of the river seemed to run through a great cherry orchard, its treetops great clouds full of pink and white blossoms, their fragrance filling the air. Enjolras himself had just drawn a deep breath of that sweet odour...), and so he could only sit there and watch. At twilight, after many hours walking without a stop, Enjolras was faint with thirst; but, luckily, he found a spring to refresh himself, a crystal-clear pond with soft spearmint all around instead of reeds or canes, and he quaffed with great pleasure — the water in that spring tasted sweeter than the finest wine, so thirsty was he.
When he had satisfied his thirst, he sat down and, with the warm scarlet waistcoat for a cover against the cold, began to brush his shining gold hair with slender ivory fingers. He closed his eyes and felt the soothing motions of the brushing, and thought that it had been a very long time since someone had been kind to him.
Weary with the long ramble of the day, he fell asleep by the pond, his head resting on his folded arms, and for hours he slept the pleasant sleep of youth and weariedness; and when he woke he was shivering cold, drenched in morning dew, but nevertheless he steeled himself, with the resolution that it was too early to leave the quest; he tied the ribbon in his golden hair, then wiped his face and got to his feet.
When he reached the riverbank, it seemed to Enjolras that the sound of the current against the wooden abutments of the old bridge might have been the voice of the Seine, whispering and murmuring to herself, and so he thought it couldn't hurt to try reasoning with his image mirrored within the current.
"Could it be true that the stream took Grantaire away last winter?" he asked his own reflection, elbows prodded on the railing of the bridge. It seemed that the ripples on the murky surface below nodded in a strange manner, replying in strange signs, as if to say it was a lie; especially the gleam in the steel-blue eyes of his own reflection told Enjolras, without words, and seeming to have received that particular mission, that the stream had never claimed the form of the dark lush. By the fixed expression of those eyes, and those mournful lips, that were actually his own, the fair leader realised that it was as if the Seine kept no Grantaire to render in exchange. And, if the stream had not been the one to claim the young lush, Feuilly's account of that calèche speeding up north in the stormy night was most likely to be true...
Perhaps, he thought, he had at last gone mad, and he was not as alarmed at this idea as he perhaps should have been. If this were madness, it was better than the grief and despair that had gripped him all winter.
And thus, Enjolras, who could be very stubborn once he had set upon a course of action, said to himself: "Since he has not drowned or frozen to death... allons plus loin". With a brisk pace, he turned his back to his reflection and crossed the Charenton Bridge. A breeze blew by, over his queue and the nape of his neck, a note of warmth.
Everything on the Left Bank, across the Seine, was bright and festive; throngs of carriages were rolling up and down the Champs-Élysées, the waters of the jet d'eau fountains of the gardens of the Tuileries and the Place de la Concorde were dancing in the sunlight, with children in their finest little clothes playing around the basins, as their nannies listened to the confidences of some dashing young officer in uniform, while old bourgeois sat down on their customary benches, reading their newspapers or smoking their pipes. Enjolras paid no heed to any of these grand sights, not even stopping for an instant, humming La Marseillaise to himself and striding down the wide arcades of the Rue de Rivoli with his usual aloof air, while sometimes adressing a cold, piercing sneer at this splendour and display, and general atmosphere of life and prosperity.
More quickly than he could have thought possible, he had left the town behind, and was rambling past fields and woods and green, mossy riverbanks. Some of the scenery was so beautiful that he wished for Combeferre by his side, with charcoal or ink at hand to draw it, but of course he had none of those things with him, not even Combeferre or Jehan Prouvaire who would have appreciated the beauty of the landscape so much more (any one of those two would doubtless have noticed the banks on either side of the river were actually rather pretty. The green fields had given way to rolling hills, upon which carpets of brilliantly colored wildflowers alternated with thick copses of trees. Here and there he spotted a deer or rabbit, but not a single person did he see; Jehan Prouvaire, indeed, would have watched the clouds pass by against the blue sky, and sometimes the dappled play of sunlight through the arching branches of trees. This stretch of the river seemed to run through a great cherry orchard, its treetops great clouds full of pink and white blossoms, their fragrance filling the air. Enjolras himself had just drawn a deep breath of that sweet odour...), and so he could only sit there and watch. At twilight, after many hours walking without a stop, Enjolras was faint with thirst; but, luckily, he found a spring to refresh himself, a crystal-clear pond with soft spearmint all around instead of reeds or canes, and he quaffed with great pleasure — the water in that spring tasted sweeter than the finest wine, so thirsty was he.
When he had satisfied his thirst, he sat down and, with the warm scarlet waistcoat for a cover against the cold, began to brush his shining gold hair with slender ivory fingers. He closed his eyes and felt the soothing motions of the brushing, and thought that it had been a very long time since someone had been kind to him.
Weary with the long ramble of the day, he fell asleep by the pond, his head resting on his folded arms, and for hours he slept the pleasant sleep of youth and weariedness; and when he woke he was shivering cold, drenched in morning dew, but nevertheless he steeled himself, with the resolution that it was too early to leave the quest; he tied the ribbon in his golden hair, then wiped his face and got to his feet.
On Enjolras walked and walked, until he had left the towers and eaves of Paris far behind the horizon. Everything around him was dreary and cold, and the budding shoots that would soon become leaves dripped with fog and rains. He thought about how far he had left to go, and how close it was to winter, and the whole wide world appeared dark and weary to him. The farther he walked, the colder it became, until sleet swirled around him and the sky overhead became the colour of lead. He walked until the soutaches on his red waistcoat began to come off, and his boots were worn and cracked, and his feet surely were sore and blistered.
And so he set off across the fields of freshly turned soil in his bleeding feet. Three times he looked back, fearing that any gendarmes had recognised him and decided to come after him, but no one seemed to be following him.
He slept under hedges and beneath pine boughs, and he ate no food but handfuls of nuts he had brought from the Café, and quenched his thirst in the springs and brooks that crossed his path, having been warned as a child that taverns in the middle of nowhere were most likely to be manned by people of ill repute. He rested but little, fearing to waste any time on his journey lest he arrive wherever Grantaire might be too late, but even the most iron-willed of men may grow tired, and so it was that he found himself, many days after leaving the capital, to the place where the forest ended at low walls that bordered cultivated pastureland, neatly plowed fields rolling away as far as the eye could see. And along the stone wall that divided the farmland from the forest, wild thornroses grew, a tangle of pink and crimson blooms and thorny stems. On that fated day, he found himself compelled to sit on a granite stone by a vast heath, at the edge of a quaint little village, and rest his feet, for the boots were quite battered and abused by now, and the dew was staring to seep in through the cracks in the leather.
For a fortnight he ran, ever further from the lands he knew. Each time he thought he could run no longer and sank down onto a stone to rest, he would look around and the advance of springtime would remind him of how much time he had lost. Then he would leap to his feet again and press onward, determined not to let hunger or thirst or weariness or the bleeding of his feet stop him from finding his friend.
Much later, on that very day on the outskirts of that very village, when Enjolras had reached the northern country (or so he thought, because it was still the Île-de-France, though the border to the North was closer for each day), there came a cold and blustery afternoon when he was obliged once more to rest. It had been two days since he'd had anything to eat, and he thought that maybe he would lie down on the ground for a while. It would be so easy to just lie down, reclining on that stone of dark granite, and wait for the sunlight to fall and cover him in a blanket of warm silence and oblivion.
Somewhere in the months since he had left, the unwelcome idea had occurred to him that perhaps he was partly responsible for the fate that had befallen Grantaire, that if only he had spoken sooner, trusted his roommate more, none of this would have happened. Such thoughts kept him going when nothing else could, when faith and hope deserted him and he was certain that Grantaire must be dead, or lost to him forever; they kept him going now, when every aching muscle argued that he should just drop where he was and not get up again.
And so he set off across the fields of freshly turned soil in his bleeding feet. Three times he looked back, fearing that any gendarmes had recognised him and decided to come after him, but no one seemed to be following him.
He slept under hedges and beneath pine boughs, and he ate no food but handfuls of nuts he had brought from the Café, and quenched his thirst in the springs and brooks that crossed his path, having been warned as a child that taverns in the middle of nowhere were most likely to be manned by people of ill repute. He rested but little, fearing to waste any time on his journey lest he arrive wherever Grantaire might be too late, but even the most iron-willed of men may grow tired, and so it was that he found himself, many days after leaving the capital, to the place where the forest ended at low walls that bordered cultivated pastureland, neatly plowed fields rolling away as far as the eye could see. And along the stone wall that divided the farmland from the forest, wild thornroses grew, a tangle of pink and crimson blooms and thorny stems. On that fated day, he found himself compelled to sit on a granite stone by a vast heath, at the edge of a quaint little village, and rest his feet, for the boots were quite battered and abused by now, and the dew was staring to seep in through the cracks in the leather.
For a fortnight he ran, ever further from the lands he knew. Each time he thought he could run no longer and sank down onto a stone to rest, he would look around and the advance of springtime would remind him of how much time he had lost. Then he would leap to his feet again and press onward, determined not to let hunger or thirst or weariness or the bleeding of his feet stop him from finding his friend.
Much later, on that very day on the outskirts of that very village, when Enjolras had reached the northern country (or so he thought, because it was still the Île-de-France, though the border to the North was closer for each day), there came a cold and blustery afternoon when he was obliged once more to rest. It had been two days since he'd had anything to eat, and he thought that maybe he would lie down on the ground for a while. It would be so easy to just lie down, reclining on that stone of dark granite, and wait for the sunlight to fall and cover him in a blanket of warm silence and oblivion.
Somewhere in the months since he had left, the unwelcome idea had occurred to him that perhaps he was partly responsible for the fate that had befallen Grantaire, that if only he had spoken sooner, trusted his roommate more, none of this would have happened. Such thoughts kept him going when nothing else could, when faith and hope deserted him and he was certain that Grantaire must be dead, or lost to him forever; they kept him going now, when every aching muscle argued that he should just drop where he was and not get up again.
Just opposite the place where he sat, willing himself to get up, a person in black came hopping at him across the path. Right in front of the spot where he was sitting down to rest, there came strolling, at a leisurely pace, a dapper young man in an opera hat and a black three-piece suit. This dashing fellow sauntered towards the fair leader, and, once they stood before each other, he turned his head from right to left, towards the blond, whom he considered curiously, and stood looking at for a long time, until he finally said:
"Quelle surprise, Enjolras! B'jour, b'jour".
He could not express himself any better in those circumstances, but it was not needed; for it was evident that he wanted to do Enjolras good, and he could not be less well-intentioned. He pronounced the words as plainly as he could, because he meant to be kind. The blond, in turn, recognised the dapper features and dashing mien, and the well-kept attire of the dark young gentleman: it was his classmate the suave Gascon aristocrat, whom Enjolras had not seen ever since he left Montmartre (and how long was that?).
After they had recognised one another, Courfeyrac looked at Enjolras again, and inquired what his dear leader was doing out here in the great wide world all alone, instead of rallying the others at the Café Musain."Quelle surprise, Enjolras! B'jour, b'jour".
He could not express himself any better in those circumstances, but it was not needed; for it was evident that he wanted to do Enjolras good, and he could not be less well-intentioned. He pronounced the words as plainly as he could, because he meant to be kind. The blond, in turn, recognised the dapper features and dashing mien, and the well-kept attire of the dark young gentleman: it was his classmate the suave Gascon aristocrat, whom Enjolras had not seen ever since he left Montmartre (and how long was that?).
And thus, the fair leader gave him, in response, a gentle nod of the head as he replied:
"Bonjour, Courfeyrac".
Because he was so tired, and near the end of his strength, Enjolras, realising the meaning of this question, found himself telling the whole story of his journey, which was still an account of but a few adventures, and of their mutual friend who had gone away. "Courfeyrac, mon ami, you are known to ramble criss-crossing all over the wide world, or at least over France," he said, when he had finished his tale. "Perhaps your sharp eyes have seen our friend?"
The socialite nodded his dark head with a grave air and a wistful smirk, and said, "Perhaps I have — it may be. Maybe I have — maybe I have not — maybe I have..."
Hope sparked once more in Enjolras' weary spirit, and he leaned forward, seizing his sharply-dressed lieutenant by the slender waist.
The socialite nodded his dark head with a grave air and a wistful smirk, and said, "Perhaps I have — it may be. Maybe I have — maybe I have not — maybe I have..."
Hope sparked once more in Enjolras' weary spirit, and he leaned forward, seizing his sharply-dressed lieutenant by the slender waist.
"No, do you think you have?" cried the fair leader, and, clasping his more experienced friend and comrade in arms, kissed him, and hugged him almost to death with joy, even fearing that he would suffocate Courfeyrac with that tight clasp of the waist. "Don't toy with me now. Do you really think you have?"
“Gently, gently. Un peu de raison, un peu de calme... Je crois, je crois... cela pourrait bien être. I believe I know. Je crois, c’est-à-dire je suppose, cela pourrait être. Oui, oui, il est possible; I think it may be Grantaire... he is still alive, indeed, je ne dis rien de plus; but in the meantime he has certainly forgotten you by this time for the heiress; for now he thinks of nothing more than of his fiancée.” “Est-ce qu'il demeure chez...? Does he live with...? Il demeure chez une...!” Enjolras gasped before he could finish the question, as well as before he could finish uttering the shocking realisation. He felt a sorrowful pang in his heart at the thought that the sceptic might have forgotten him, but he reminded himself that after all, his stubbly friend was most likely straight, no matter how many grisettes and wenches gave him rebukes and thought him homely, but maybe all this frog needed was a kiss from a princess for his true colours to shine through. At the least, it was better to imagine Grantaire living happily somewhere without him than suffering unknown agonies.
The fair leader's heart sank; it was too close to the kind of fear he'd held for a long time, but hadn't really admitted before now. Still, if it meant that Grantaire was safe and sound and well, Enjolras would learn to live with it.
"I do not know exact-ly," Courfeyrac admitted. "He may, but then again, perhaps it is not him. I will explain as well as I can, while you rest yourself and listen as you recover. Écoute. And you will understand it all, certainement. Upon that I rely, and thus, I may now commence en toute tranquillité." Then, he pointed towards the landscaped grounds of a large white neoclassical mansion at the other edge of the village, and, clearing his throat, in a mix of Gascon-accented French, English, and Catalan, he thus began to tell Enjolras what he knew:
"This estate which we presently see was purchased a decade ago by a nouveau riche gentleman from the northern provinces; a rather kind-hearted fellow, who has never left the miserable in pain... and of whose past it is known little to nothing. Single as he was and is, and too old to even have grandchildren, and just longing for a baby he could call both a successor and a companion, he adopted the most wretched orphan he could find, back up north. An indentured maidservant, a frail little blonde whom he rescued from brutal stepparents; and not only did he raise la petite Cosette right, but he made a proper lady out of her, an accomplished debutante of unusual cleverness, a rightful heiress to the fortune he has attained through mysterious means and lavishes still upon charity. In this château you can see across the village, they still live and thrive to this very day. The gentleman made this adopted daughter his sole rightful heir, you see, because of a promise he had made on her real mother's deathbed, and Cosette would always lead a better life here than with her first guardians, so he had her trained in economics and statescraft as well as the usual occupations of young women of rank, such as musical instruments, and dance, and opera song. They say she owns so many books that she cannot count them, and studies philosophy and art and other such things, and speaks Latin and English as easily as you please. As you may realise, not only has her guardian trained her for life as a businesswoman, but also in the usual accomplishments of young women of rank. She often accompanies her guardian beyond the garden walls, to speak to those in needs and give alms and friendly smiles. Much of what she buys, she donates to the poor; she keeps for herself only the items that she considers particularly special.
'Tis as sure as my surname is Courfeyrac that she is as clever as she is beautiful, and that she loves to read; she reads book after book and learns so many interesting things — although most of them she forgets the moment she puts the book down. She reads her books, and then chats excitedly about the things she has read with her ladies-in-waiting. She even reads the newspapers and talks about that. But the ladies just giggle and agree with her — they are only interested in dresses and perfume, and have heads full of air."
"And when does Grantaire feature? If he has just been betrothed to her...?"
"It was a strange thing indeed. I'll never forget how it all happened. You see, this heiress is extraordinarily clever, and no one could possibly have been wise enough for her. Most young men of rank were quite dumb in comparison to her and she didn't like that one bit."
"Was she that smart? I know men like us are trained to be clever..."
"Not as clever as she is," Courfeyrac chuckled. "She is so wonderfully clever, and so incredibly wise, that she has read all the newspapers that are published in France and the United Kingdom, for her guardian is subscribed to all of those papers, and then forgotten them again! 'Tis true that she has so much esprit that she forgets them as soon as she has read them."
"What is so clever about forgetting newspapers?" Enjolras asked, not unkindly.
The darker student gave an understanding look that said he was more than willing to explain. "You see, most people who are smart are smart enough only to learn and then blab information that people really don't want to hear to begin with. But Cosette is so smart that she forgets them until they are needed. Not to mention all these trifles of no consequence which the press constantly publishes about. She is wise as well as smart. Do you see how that works?"
It made sense. Enjolras nodded as Courfeyrac continued: "So this smart heiress decides that she is lonely in all her brilliance and should like to have a husband. But she doesn't know where to find a suitable one..."
Enjolras breathed a heavy sigh and looked the sharply-dressed young gentleman in the eye, then explained, "I can already picture myself what both this heiress and her guardian look like." As a brilliant only child of privilege, he had led a sheltered and lonely childhood as well, eager for the day that the Enjolras estate in the Camargue, whose reach turned more narrow for each year, would be traded for a Parisian lodging, no matter how humble, where he could make true friends and bid his customary weariness farewell. To reinforce those memories, the Château Fauchelevent, white and neoclassical and surrounded by a well-kept French garden, resembled the Manoir Enjolras to such a high degree... Furthermore, like Combeferre, she loved learning, spending her time in the library among thousands of books; how unusual she was!
"Well, when she came of age, they left the nunnery boarding school where Cosette has learned all the fine arts and the social graces, and came to live at this estate. Now she's of marriageable age, having just turned eighteen, of uncommon talent and renowned for her remarkable cleverness; and, having perused the complete library of the mansion and explored all over the grounds, she was quite unsure of what to do next, and feeling quite lonely in all her brilliance. And thus, a short time ago, while she was listlessly sitting before her piano, to distract herself, she began to chant this little folk song to herself:
'There is something to this song,' she told herself. 'Voilà une chanson qui signifie quelque chose!' She had had enough of weariness. And all she needed was a fiancé. Yet the coda of this song was not as easy to sing as the first verses, for Cosette did not only want a fiancé like there are many others, c'est a dire, one who only knew how to wear fine clothes right and thus look good in uniform and/or civilian attire, how to behave himself in society, smile à propos, and say yes in response to her every opinion; for these fellows come a dime a dozen, and all of them wind up being tiresome at the end of the day. Neither did she want one of those pretentious, stern, and solemn curmudgeons.
She was not interested in someone who would just stand around looking dignified either,
because that would be really dull, nor in one who could only look grand, for that is so tiresome. And so she determined to marry if she could find a husband who knew what to say when he was spoken to, and not one who could only look grand with a distinguished mien, for that would be tiresome. She needed a man who was her equal in wit and knowledge, who could engage in lively conversation with her and keep her company throughout the long winter nights. A man who could give her clever replies, and who would only express himself in well-chosen words, and who would display as much wisdom and wit as elegance in his discourse. Her fiancé should be brave, dashing, intelligent, able to patronise the arts during peacetime, and to lead a regiment at its head in case of war. She needed someone of equal wit and knowledge to talk to her intelligently and keep her company through the long, cold winter nights, as proof that she had completely cut all ties to the tragic past in which she had never been a child. Long story short, she wished like a Prince Charming, such as, among all her male acquaintances in high society, she had never seen anyone. And thus, she made up her mind to marry, if she could find a husband who had an answer ready when a question was put to him, who would know how to respond when spoken to.
'S'il fleurit, je serai reine,
avec mes sabots...
S'il fleurit, je serai reine,
avec mes sabots...
S'il fleurit, je serai reine,
si non, je perdrais ma peine,
oh, oh, oh,
avec mes sabots...'
avec mes sabots...
S'il fleurit, je serai reine,
avec mes sabots...
S'il fleurit, je serai reine,
si non, je perdrais ma peine,
oh, oh, oh,
avec mes sabots...'
'There is something to this song,' she told herself. 'Voilà une chanson qui signifie quelque chose!' She had had enough of weariness. And all she needed was a fiancé. Yet the coda of this song was not as easy to sing as the first verses, for Cosette did not only want a fiancé like there are many others, c'est a dire, one who only knew how to wear fine clothes right and thus look good in uniform and/or civilian attire, how to behave himself in society, smile à propos, and say yes in response to her every opinion; for these fellows come a dime a dozen, and all of them wind up being tiresome at the end of the day. Neither did she want one of those pretentious, stern, and solemn curmudgeons.
She was not interested in someone who would just stand around looking dignified either,
because that would be really dull, nor in one who could only look grand, for that is so tiresome. And so she determined to marry if she could find a husband who knew what to say when he was spoken to, and not one who could only look grand with a distinguished mien, for that would be tiresome. She needed a man who was her equal in wit and knowledge, who could engage in lively conversation with her and keep her company throughout the long winter nights. A man who could give her clever replies, and who would only express himself in well-chosen words, and who would display as much wisdom and wit as elegance in his discourse. Her fiancé should be brave, dashing, intelligent, able to patronise the arts during peacetime, and to lead a regiment at its head in case of war. She needed someone of equal wit and knowledge to talk to her intelligently and keep her company through the long, cold winter nights, as proof that she had completely cut all ties to the tragic past in which she had never been a child. Long story short, she wished like a Prince Charming, such as, among all her male acquaintances in high society, she had never seen anyone. And thus, she made up her mind to marry, if she could find a husband who had an answer ready when a question was put to him, who would know how to respond when spoken to.
Long story short... So this smart heiress decides that she is lonely in all her brilliance and should like to have a husband. But she doesn't know where to find a suitable one. After a lot of thought she came up with a contest. Whichever young man in all the world who didn't cower at her remarkable cleverness, whichever man would talk back to her and not just take everything she said lying down, would be her husband.
She longed to marry. But she did not want an ordinary sort of husband - one who would be charming and handsome and say only what he thought she wanted to hear. No sirrah; she wanted a husband who was as clever as a cat. She wanted a man who knew what to answer for himself.
And thus, having made up her mind, she knocked at the door of her guardian's study one afternoon and told him of her intentions, old M. Fauchelevent reacting with such elation that he had to dry up unchecked tears of joy: 'C'est charmant, ma petite! Why hadn't I thought of that myself? That's exactly the thought that robs me of my sleep every night in bed. I trust you, Cosette, to make a wise choice of spouse.' Of course he was as worried as he was delighted, having grown attached to his little girl ever since he had adopted her, and, though an iron-fisted old tyrant who had clung to her, her guardian knew the moment had to come, and felt thankfully reassured by the conditions she had imposed upon her choice of husband.
Then they assembled their entire entourage together in the palace gardens, and told them of her intentions, to much rejoicing and acclaim.
So her guardian contacted the director of the local newspaper, and the next day an announcement appeared in the press, framed in with borders of filigree shaped like flaming hearts and a garland of white roses, and crowned with the Fauchelevent monogram or initials in silver thread; featuring a proclamation which Cosette had written out herself, as well as her signature. Though her guardian had suggested putting notices in the newspapers, the heiress herself feared that this would attract too many men of the ordinary sort. Though she did not decline M. Fauchelevent's suggestion on the grounds that it would attract too many ordinary suitors, and rather encouraged the publishing, yet she had, in parallel, an agenda of her own; instead, she took that very proclamation which she had written out herself, in French, in English, and in Latin, and had it copied out and affixed to the doors of every Faculty at the University of Paris.
The notice, which was the same one both published on the local press and affixed to the doors of the Faculties, stated and announced that a contest was open to attain the hand of the heiress, and that every young male reader fair of countenance and of age in between twenty and thirty, as long as he was single and attractive enough, was free and welcome to visit the Château Fauchelevent and speak to, and speak with, Mademoiselle Cosette (her name was thus underlined in print), in order to try to win her hand. At the château, she would carry out an interview with each and every suitor, and those could show themselves to be intelligent when spoken to were to make themselves quite at home at the palace; but the one who spoke best, the one who could impress her the most with his wit, knowledge, and discourse, and who could express himself in a way that one could hear that he was the one who felt the most at home there, give her the most sensible replies, and express himself the most confidently as well, wearing his heart upon his sleeve, would win the contest and be chosen by the heiress herself for her lawful wedded spouse. She would give her heart and hand in accord to the one who reunited, in his person, the highest amount of intellectual and moral qualities.
For, as I have said before, looks and wealth were of no interest to her. The suitor who seemed most at home in her company but who was also the best and more interesting talker -- that was the one she meant to choose."
All of that was not that probable, and the fair leader seemed to doubt of the veracity of the account, and wordlessly expressed surprise at this unusual method of selecting a husband, until Courfeyrac said with a touch of annoyance, placing his right hand upon the middle of his own chest:
"You may believe that every word I tell you is true. You may believe it or not, but it's all true. I swear, with my right hand upon my heart, that I am telling nothing but the truth, for I heard it directly, and learned of all of these details, from a sweet little maidservant who lives and works in the very palace garden I just told you of, and whom I am currently in a little liaison with, and she saw the entire thing with her own eyes," he winked at Enjolras wistfully.
Since he had been informed by such a good source, there was nothing to doubt about what he had told.
"Soon, every attractive single young man in the province was queuing or camping at the château gate, all of them dressed in their holiday best and essaying their speeches time after time. The people came in crowds, there was a great deal of pushing and shoving and jostling, there was such running and crushing... Such a rush and a crush! And far more chitchatting than among a murder of crows! Yet no one was able to obtain her heart and hand, no one was fortunate enough to be chosen, neither on the first day nor on the second. The marriageable young men stormed in from all corners of the region, and there was such a crowd that no one could recognise one another, and such a pressure that one could not pass through the streets of the village... yet no one of them succeeded either on the first or on the second day. They all returned home, one right after the other. They were of course all interesting and dashing young men, dressed in their finest three-piece suits or ceremonial dress, and having practised for days for their great chance. All of them spoke quite eloquently, indeed, while on the village streets and on the wide, shady tree-lined promenade on their way up to the wrought-iron gate, even as they stood before the threshold, but, once they had crossed it..."
"What happened once they had crossed the garden gate?" inquired Enjolras, expressing surprise at this unusual method of selecting a husband, and seeing his own privileged childhood, of lonely brilliance, mirrored in that of the heiress.
"The interviews lasted days — you've never seen such a queue as formed outside the palace gates. All the fine single young men of the land turned up from all corners of the province, full of brave talk and dressed in their best finery, but none of them could win the heiress. All the boys could strut like cockerels outside the gates, but as soon as they entered the palace and saw the gold-liveried footmen as they were led up the stairs, and the imposing guards in their silver and blue uniforms standing at attention before each and every door, and the ladies in their green satin costumes, they began to lower their voice and make their pace quieter. And when they saw the beautiful heiress herself on her throne-like chair, they suddenly clammed up. Tongue-tied they were, every one of them, barely managing to grunt a reply to Cosette's questions. Like the foolish ladies-in-waiting, they just nodded dumbly or repeated her own words, the last ones she had said, in response to her questions. She addressed them, but they could not even think of a single word to say, and did nothing but repeat twice or thrice the last syllables that the heiress had uttered... Naturellement, that was not something that piqued her interest...
So, anyhow... They had tonnes of young men waiting in line outside the palace. Scholars and alchemists and theologians and other learned men came in crowds, as well as lordlings, and lieutenants, and young entrepreneurs or industrialists... young men of all ranks, all of them dashing and still single, flocked to the castle, until the château was quite crowded with men in black gowns, and in three-piece suits, and officers in ceremonial dress, but not one of them was able to meet the requirements. They could all speak very well in a lecture hall, or outside on the streets, no, no one had trouble speaking well in those circumstances; but when they entered the castle gates, and saw the guards in blue and silver uniforms, and when they went up the stairs through rows of lackeys or footmen in gold embroidered liveries, their courage forsook them, and they became quite flustered. When they reached the vast brilliantly-lighted reception rooms, and the great halls lit up, and they stood in the great hall of the palace, surrounded by gilded plasterwork, and rose-red tapestries, and great silver mirrors that glowed with the light of a thousand candles, and saw the valets and maids in their best livery, and the counts and barons in all their finery, and more guards in blue and silver uniforms, they grew nervous, and felt themselves shabby, though they all wore their best academic robes of black silk, or ceremonial uniforms, or three-piece suits. And when they had crossed the vast brilliantly-lighted reception rooms, those great halls lit up... when they were called up to stand in front of the heiress herself, seated on her throne-like Louis XV chair with her golden hair as bright as the candles, and addressing them in the sweetest of soprano voices, they couldn't think of a thing to say and repeated the last words she had uttered, which she did not particularly care to hear again. They only echoed her last words, they could do nothing but repeat the last words she had said — and she had no particular wish to hear her own words over again. Of course that was not what she wanted to hear. And so she soon grew weary of each man, already knowing what to expect from the first impression, and sent them away. One by one by one by one right after the other. One might as well say that all those young folks there had taken some kind of narcotic drug which made them lethargic, and deprived them of their reason, lulling it to sleep, while they were in the palace, and they did not recover neither reason nor speech until they left the estate grounds, as if fresh air were the only thing they needed to come to their senses; and then they had plenty to say, for as soon as they were back out they could talk fast enough. As soon as they were back outside, they had no trouble talking, not at all. 'Tis true that, once out there, they regained all their wit, but in excessive quantities; all those suitors began to speak at unison, replying to one another with the words they should have used to reply to the heiress, and that there was such a caquetage that nothing could be heard or understood. There was a regular procession. And there had gathered there, at the garden gate, a whole line of twattical bourgeois who waited for their exit, and who laughed at their disappointment. I was there myself, in the flesh and blood, and I laughed with them at my heart's content," Courfeyrac's lips curled in a wistful smirk.
"Mais... Mais Grantaire..." Enjolras asked, now getting impatient, "tu ne me parles pas de lui".
"Attends donc, attends donc, nous y viendrons... These young men themselves were all idiots more or less. For when they stood before the heiress they said nothing at all but they gaped at her and only repeated the last word she had spoken. And let me tell you, that got old fast.
Before long, the queue of suitors stretched three times around; as soon as they met their prize, each one of them was struck dumb. All they could do was repeat the same few words, over and over again. Of course the heiress was not impressed."
"There was quite a long line of suitors reaching from the village entrance to the palace. There was a regular procession. People were lined up all the way from here to there. I went myself to see them,” here, while Enjolras was reminded of Jehan Prouvaire's gauche attempts to open up, Courfeyrac made a pause for throat-clearing. “They looked very foolish standing there, jabbering away at one another like so many crows, as practice for when they went inside. And all they had been able to get was but an eagerly emptied glass of water from a valet who served as cupbearer, as a cup of kindness from the staff we may say, for all that flustering had made them quite thirsty. Some of the suitors even suspected that they had quaffed the mind-numbing drug with that much-needed draught... while others, more shrewd fellows, had brought their flasks of eau-de-vie, but refused to share even a drop with anyone else. They thought that if the others had drained that drug-laced glass instead of providing themselves with liquid courage, and went in to the heiress looking flustered or lethargic, there would be more chance for themselves to be the chosen ones. Many of the ones who thought themselves smart enough weren't even clever enough to bring lunch with them! Ha ha ha... And none of these young men, smart or not, were most certainly not up for sharing. I suppose they thought a weary-looking man could never win the heiress, and thus they wanted to keep the others as worn-out and as sober as possible to improve their own chances. Not that the liquor helped those bright sparks through the ordeal; in fact, it was to no avail.”
"So many fine gentlemen came to the palace! But when they met her, they couldn't think of anything to say, so she wasn't interested in them. And Grantaire?" Enjolras tied the ribbon in his queue tighter, running out of patience. “Was he amongst the crowd?”
“Oh, very well," said the socialite, sipping from his flask, looking slightly put out to have his tale cut short. "I'm coming to that, don't worry, but we must set the scene first. A storyteller must never leap straight to the main action, or the tale would be over in a moment! Our friend arrived there on the third week of the contest, or at least, someone very like him did. He came on foot, and did not wear a black robe or a ceremonial uniform like the others. Coming from the south, from the direction of Paris, he was tall and thin, with very dark hair. Mademoiselle Cosette, by now, was getting terribly weary of all these tongue-tied young men. She wondered whether the wedding she dreamed of would ever happen. The space outside the garden gates was still packed with carriages full of hopeful suitors with their retinues. Then, 'twas on the third day, voilà that one candidate arrived with no need for fancy carriages or footmen in livery. In he strolled, striding quite briskly, quite merrily, quite cheerfully along, straight towards the château, a most handsome personage of a little whippersnapper; a young bohemian student on foot, without even a single horse, but with a most pleasing burr in his Parisian accent; he was wearing a plain coat, and carrying nothing but a small cloth bundle, a little knapsack, strapped to his back. His hazel eyes shone and sparkled bright with confidence... but also with a hint of irony... and his beautiful, long yet unkempt hair was dark and thick and curling around his neck. His clothes, however, were as worn and shabby as you can expect any bohemian's... though he had creaky spat-boots in better condition than his clothes. His eyes sparkled like diamonds, but his clothes were shabby, rather old, and his shoes creaked. Though his hair was long and dark and glossy, in spite of the tangles, and his eyes sparkled exactly like those of Yours Truly. And he had a little bundle, the aforementioned knapsack, strapped to his back."
“A pleasing burr... could it have sounded more like a croak? Then it is him! Grantaire...” Enjolras gave a gasp for joy. "I have found him at last!" And it seemed to him then that the entire dreary world became brighter; the snow that remained in March up north seemed to sparkle in the sunlight, and the icicles on the bare tree branches to glitter like diamonds.
It did, he had to admit, sound like Grantaire. And a part of him was hopeful, while another part of him almost wished he had been disappointed, for if it were Grantaire whom the aristocrat had seen, then he was betrothed now and would be married quite soon, and had surely forgotten Enjolras. "Perhaps my search has ended," he said to himself, trying to be more pleased than he felt and surprised to learn that his quest to find his friend was not quite so selfless or simple a desire as he had believed.
"So many fine gentlemen came to the palace! But when they met her, they couldn't think of anything to say, so she wasn't interested in them. And Grantaire?" Enjolras tied the ribbon in his queue tighter, running out of patience. “Was he amongst the crowd?”
“Oh, very well," said the socialite, sipping from his flask, looking slightly put out to have his tale cut short. "I'm coming to that, don't worry, but we must set the scene first. A storyteller must never leap straight to the main action, or the tale would be over in a moment! Our friend arrived there on the third week of the contest, or at least, someone very like him did. He came on foot, and did not wear a black robe or a ceremonial uniform like the others. Coming from the south, from the direction of Paris, he was tall and thin, with very dark hair. Mademoiselle Cosette, by now, was getting terribly weary of all these tongue-tied young men. She wondered whether the wedding she dreamed of would ever happen. The space outside the garden gates was still packed with carriages full of hopeful suitors with their retinues. Then, 'twas on the third day, voilà that one candidate arrived with no need for fancy carriages or footmen in livery. In he strolled, striding quite briskly, quite merrily, quite cheerfully along, straight towards the château, a most handsome personage of a little whippersnapper; a young bohemian student on foot, without even a single horse, but with a most pleasing burr in his Parisian accent; he was wearing a plain coat, and carrying nothing but a small cloth bundle, a little knapsack, strapped to his back. His hazel eyes shone and sparkled bright with confidence... but also with a hint of irony... and his beautiful, long yet unkempt hair was dark and thick and curling around his neck. His clothes, however, were as worn and shabby as you can expect any bohemian's... though he had creaky spat-boots in better condition than his clothes. His eyes sparkled like diamonds, but his clothes were shabby, rather old, and his shoes creaked. Though his hair was long and dark and glossy, in spite of the tangles, and his eyes sparkled exactly like those of Yours Truly. And he had a little bundle, the aforementioned knapsack, strapped to his back."
“A pleasing burr... could it have sounded more like a croak? Then it is him! Grantaire...” Enjolras gave a gasp for joy. "I have found him at last!" And it seemed to him then that the entire dreary world became brighter; the snow that remained in March up north seemed to sparkle in the sunlight, and the icicles on the bare tree branches to glitter like diamonds.
It did, he had to admit, sound like Grantaire. And a part of him was hopeful, while another part of him almost wished he had been disappointed, for if it were Grantaire whom the aristocrat had seen, then he was betrothed now and would be married quite soon, and had surely forgotten Enjolras. "Perhaps my search has ended," he said to himself, trying to be more pleased than he felt and surprised to learn that his quest to find his friend was not quite so selfless or simple a desire as he had believed.
"I am not finished," Courfeyrac said. "I know from first hand that he passed through the palace gates, saw the guards in their silver-laced and blue uniforms and the servants in their liveries at the stairs and the nobles in all their splendour, but was not the least embarrassed, not the least abashed, though his own clothes were faded and worn. This young man wasn't put off at all by the silver-laced guards and gold-laced footmen and ornate wrought-iron gates. He nodded to the guards, and cheekily told them he wouldn't want their job, standing around in hot uniforms all day! And he walks up to the gates and sees the royal guards covered in medals and silver threads. And does he feel intimidated by them at all? No! He simply says, 'Que j'ai pitié de vous! Comme ce doit être ennuyeux de rester sur l'escalier tout le jour, j'aime mieux entrer!' and the guards took a liking to him at once they said you could see he was quite witty once you got passed his awful clothing. When he climbed the stairs and saw the ushers dressed in livery of gold, he did not seem to be the least intimidated either; when he was told that he had to wait for the next interview, he shrugged and nodded at the ushers in gold-laced livery, giving them a little friendly salute, and said that it would weary him to wait standing there on the steps for hours... 'C’est trop ennuyeux de rester sur l’escalier à attendre, moi, j’entre!' He strolled straight into the palace, through the halls blazing with lights, and up the stairs. The salons were brilliantly illuminated. The rooms were blazing with light. Cupbearers walked about in satin slippers, with catlike tread, carrying golden vessels. It was enough to make anyone feel overwhelmed. There where advisors walked about all dressed in their finest three-piece suits, and also shod with satin slippers not to make a sound, he sauntered forth and his own spats creaked loudly as he walked, and yet he was not at all uneasy. All the liveried servants were struck down at his nonchalance, the ladies dressed in embroidered silks whispered behind his back at his lack of manners, and all you could hear was the squeaking of his spat-boots, and they did creak loudly, but he wasn't at all afraid! Yet he was not the slightest upset. No sirrah."
"It must be Grantaire..." Enjolras replied, feeling a little faint. "I know he had new spats on. I bought a pair for each of us last Christmas."
"They really did creak, yet still, nothing daunted, he went boldly straight up to the heiress herself, who was seated on a throne-like Louis XV chair with sky blue velvet cushions, and all the ladies of her bevy were present with their maids, and all the counts and barons and chevaliers that frequented her with their servants; and every one of them was dressed so finely that they shone as brightly as the mirrors. The poor, simple lad! All her socialite friends, ladies and gentlemen, and all their attendants, were standing round at attention, lining the walls of the hall, ordered according to their ranks; and, the closer they were to the entrance door of the parlour, the lower was their rank and the haughtier was the look in their eyes, the greater was their haughtiness; till the valet de chambre, who always wore slippers and stood in the doorway, was almost too swollen with pride that one hardly dared to look at him. Even the servants wore cloth of gold, and they were all so proud that they would not even look at him, because he had the boldness of coming to the château with ink on his fingers."
"It must be Grantaire..." Enjolras replied, feeling a little faint. "I know he had new spats on. I bought a pair for each of us last Christmas."
"They really did creak, yet still, nothing daunted, he went boldly straight up to the heiress herself, who was seated on a throne-like Louis XV chair with sky blue velvet cushions, and all the ladies of her bevy were present with their maids, and all the counts and barons and chevaliers that frequented her with their servants; and every one of them was dressed so finely that they shone as brightly as the mirrors. The poor, simple lad! All her socialite friends, ladies and gentlemen, and all their attendants, were standing round at attention, lining the walls of the hall, ordered according to their ranks; and, the closer they were to the entrance door of the parlour, the lower was their rank and the haughtier was the look in their eyes, the greater was their haughtiness; till the valet de chambre, who always wore slippers and stood in the doorway, was almost too swollen with pride that one hardly dared to look at him. Even the servants wore cloth of gold, and they were all so proud that they would not even look at him, because he had the boldness of coming to the château with ink on his fingers."
"Surely that was exactly how Grantaire would... he's left-handed and all that... Even though it must have been quite impressive, quite imposing, filling the air with awe... But tell me," he went on, "and yet he has won the heiress? Tell me, did he win her?” and found himself listening anxiously for the answer.
"To continue..." the socialite fixed Enjolras with a beady eye, daring him to interrupt again, but the blond nodded for him to carry on. "The young man walked through the crowd with not a care, smiling and nodding pleasantly at all who caught his eye. At last he stood before Cosette; she looked radiant, her long golden hair washed and combed, her lashes fluttering above her sparkling eyes. She was reading a thousand-page book, as eagerly as if she were relishing the most delicious, the most scrumptious among desserts. She was so tired of listening to so much foolishness in a row that she didn't hear him come, nor notice that he had arrived. If I were not such a promiscuous person, I might as well have... I would have married him, I mean, I would have married her mysel-..." Here Courfeyrac broke off at a cough from the fair leader.
"But... if he really won her... was he not disconcerted for a single instant?"
"But... if he really won her... was he not disconcerted for a single instant?"
"Not for an instant. I am getting to that," said the socialite. "But, nothing daunted, he went straight up to the heiress. He cleared his throat and, without bending the knee or dropping the hat before her, he began to speak French in a fine tenor voice and a Parisian Left Bank accent, speaking almost as well as I do myself in the company of ladies. Then, retaining the same confident stance, he asked her a question in English, with a Queen's English accent not unlike mine own, and she immediately replied in the same language and the same accent, delighted and struggling to keep her elation in check. He was dashing and cheerful and charming, quite solemn and not at all afraid, quite free and quite agreeable, merry and witty, and completely passionate about his studies... and, what was even better luck, he said he had not come with any idea to propose marriage, he wasn't there to court her, but to hear how clever he was, to appreciate her conversation, to listen to her wise words, to confirm if she was as bright as they said; he found her bright, and she thought he was as well, and he was as pleased with her as she was with him. This he liked, and she liked him. It was then that her heart was suddenly given a jolt. There followed an hour of the most brilliant and witty conversation. Every remark of Cosette's drew a reply from the young man, usually embellished with a compliment. So he found her charming, and she found him after his taste. He was brilliant — a true picture of good manners and gallantry, he spoke as elegantly as someone I know all too well can... reminded me a little of myself whenever Yours Truly cuts a figure in any soirée — turns out he was an orphan as well, and that he had to struggle a lot to study that Law degree. His story being done, she gave him for the tears a world of sighs, and told him her own childhood, of the innkeepers who had beaten her black and blue, and forced her to fetch water and firewood, to run errands, to do the floors and the dishes and the laundry, to clear the snow before the front entrance and the stables, while their own daughters went to school in the village, back up north... Her story being done, he gave her for her pains a world of sighs, and swore in sooth it was strange, 'twas passing strange; it was pitiful, wondrously pitiful. So he wished he had never heard it, but he wished that he had been made such a damsel as well, instead of a pampered and sheltered lordling. He liked what he heard, and she took a shine to him too! He loved her for all of her distresses, and his compassion made his heart be hers. And he admired her as much as she admired him! When he spoke, Cosette fell under his spell. But he wanted to hear what she had to say, too, which made her love him all the more."
“Oh, certainly that young man was Grantaire,” Enjolras sighed. He knew that his drunken friend was most likely straight, no matter how many grisettes and wenches gave him rebukes and thought him homely, but maybe all this frog needed was a kiss from a princess for his true colours to shine through. "And did he win Mademoiselle?"
"Well, he talked to the heiress in such a friendly way, and she likes him so much that now he is her fiancé. It pleased him -- and he pleased her! He did win her, indeed, and they will soon get married, and live at the Château Fauchelevent together, and like each other very much; et naturellement, he is the one she has chosen for a spouse. And the old Master, with a worthy in-law, can rest on his laurels at last."
"Oh, that is most surely Grantaire... il avait tant d'esprit! He was so clever, though he skipped classes most frequently; he knows where the best wenches in Montmartre can be found, and the best wines, and the best entertainment, and he knows all the drinking songs by heart... Not to mention all the quips he's improvised... Surely he must have picked up the Queen's English and polished himself a little; of that he is perfectly capable. It must be him. Though, no matter how much courtesy I have taught him, he would be so gauche in high society... still learning his court manners, eh?" Enjolras stifled a chortle. "Hope his fiancée shows him how to behave, for I never had the time to teach him all the etiquette. But anyway, Courfeyrac, you have always been more of a man of the world than I ever have been. Couldn't you please show me the way to the château, Your Lordlingship?" the blond asked at last, knowing that he would not be able to rest until he had seen the fiancé with his own eyes and spoken to him."It's an easy enough thing to ask me that," replied Courfeyrac. " I must tell you it will be very difficult to gain permission for someone without an invitation like you to enter the palace. Luckily, you have connections," he smirked and winked an eye. "You will surely enter the palace by the front entrance," he said, "for the soldiers in their blue and silver uniforms would never try and stop a young man of rank like you; for here I need to tell you that there are examples that a lad of your age and social standing, even one without an invitation, may enter the château. As long as he has connections, that is. For 'Enjolras' is a household surname in the South, isn't it? Stock breeders of horses in the Camargue, right? And furthermore, we two are friends, of equal rank, and I have this invite... And thus, even if you have not received a formal invitation, the garden gates will be as open to you as they are to me for this evening's soirée. The one that is held to celebrate their engagement, as well as the debut of both the heiress and her fiancé in society. Both of the fiancés and their engagement are the talk of the region," Courfeyrac produced an envelope with a seal of cherry-red wax to prove it.
"Well, Grantaire will come out and meet me when he hears that I have come," Enjolras insisted, though he was not half so sure as he sounded.
It was late in the evening and very cold out by the time the two of them set forth. "It's quite possible to go in at the gate," Courfeyrac reiterated. "The guards and servants wouldn't allow it until I introduce you to them. But worry not, Yours Truly will manage to get you in. I know the shortest way that leads to the gate, and I also where to find the key. And the key is called Connections." And with that the two of them headed away towards the palace.
They came onto the palace grounds along a great, wide avenue lined with linden trees, the dew glistening like diamonds; past the village inn where the last brokenhearted suitors were drowning their sorrows or dozing off at the tables, reminding Enjolras of the unkempt Marseillais, and making him wonder about his future in high society. And thus Courfeyrac led the fair leader to the gate, which stood ajar, and which two guards in blue livery, armed with bayonets, flanked to the left and right.The moon was high overhead when the two of them reached the palace gardens, its light so bright that they could see perfectly well, and so they had no trouble at all finding the gate in the garden wall, and showing the guards the invitation.
"Enjolras," Courfeyrac, introducing his fair-haired companion, told the officer of the few guards who kept the door, nodding to the palace guards to gain entry. "Not formally invited, but nevertheless a friend of mine I wish to bring to the soirée. Not only is his a household surname in the South, but the fiancé, him, and I have been all three at University together, back in Paris."
The guards in blue and silver-laced uniforms nodded back, and opened the wrought-iron gate, whose two halves were tied with a loose chain, to let the two guests in.
The gardens were full of moonlight, turning the flowerbeds into great sheets of silver. The fountains were casting jets d'eau and tossing a glittering crystal spray in the light of the moon, and the petals of chestnut blossoms along the wide tree-lined promenade —which the two students where ambling down— were falling one by one, squishing beneath their feet, until they reached the austere, yet grand front door to the mansion, which resembled the Parthenon or another Greek shrine, with Dorian columns and a pediment whose relief represented Charity as a matron surrounded by children she embraced, clothed, and fed.
That evening the whole castle was bustling with excitement. Upon the master's orders a ball was being organized and it was supposed to be an important occasion.
The last of the chestnut blossoms were drifting to the ground as they fell from the branches.
That evening the whole castle was bustling with excitement. Upon the master's orders a ball was being organized and it was supposed to be an important occasion.
The last of the chestnut blossoms were drifting to the ground as they fell from the branches.
Enjolras' heart raced swiftly, impatiently with anxiety and longing, pounding against the ribs of his left side; he felt as if he were to fall from grace for all time, attending a society event without a formal invite like this in the dead of night, yet all he had come for was to see Grantaire.
"It must be him," he thought. "With those ink-smudged hands, and dark hair."He could not doubt anymore: the signalement he had been given did not seem to be appliable to anyone else. Those bright, ironic hazel eyes; that curly dark hair; that humble background and the carefree, easy way with which he had strolled into the château... There was no doubt, and he already half-fancied he saw Grantaire smiling at him already, the way he had used to do before he fell ill; he saw every detail of that dark young man in his mind's eye; that ironic sneer on his lips, and that stubbled chin, and those gauche, uneven features... as if they were seeing one another eye to eye once more, like so many times before at the Café Musain and in their humble garret.Enjolras couldn't help the way his heart pounded, his stomach twisted up into a knot of hope and anxiety and longing. He was afraid of what he would find when he looked into those ironic hazel eyes, but at the same time the thought of being able to see him again made him feel weak with hope. "It must be him," he said to himself, "with that long dark hair and the croak or burr in his voice, and that charm that can win even a princess. It must be." He tried not to let himself hope for too much as the Gascon lordling hopped up the narrow stairs ahead of him, but he couldn't help the fantasy that played itself out in his thoughts. Couldn't help imagining that Grantaire would embrace him, those hazel eyes full of sadness and remorse for the way they had parted. That when Cosette's fiancé learned how far the fair leader had come for his sake, his eyes would glisten and he would say Enjolras' name with love and relief that they were safe and together once more, princesses (or heiresses) notwithstanding.
He would certainly be glad to see him, and to hear what a long distance his beloved had come for his sake, and to know how empty and barren it had been at the Café without him.
Such thoughts occupied Enjolras the entire length of the stair, until he and Courfeyrac reached the first landing, where, in a small closet at the top of the stairs, the candles in a pair of silver candlesticks were burning. Beside it, on a bust of the goddess Minerva, also known as Athena, was a wreath of blue and white flowers, with Cosette's name embroidered with silver thread on the satin ribbon.
“This staircase leads all the way up to the ballroom. Anyway... Myself, I think you're very silly to come all this way from a fellow who would run off and leave you to marry an heiress," Courfeyrac suddenly said with a sneer, "but I suppose I may as well show you in. Allons-y, and we will go straight up the stair. And I hope that when you friend recognizes you, and you gain the 'royal couple's' favor, you will thank me properly."
“You may be quite sure of that,” Enjolras replied. "He is generous to a fault."
"Who?"
"Her guardian, of course... for all you have said about the Fauchelevents, and the pediment being in honour of Charity, speak for themselves and are certainly not for show."
"The flower wreath, and the flower beds in the garden outside, are surely also his work. I've heard he gets better along with plants than with people, but still kind-hearted and generous to a fault. Otherwise, for instance, he would have left la petite Cosette with her old guardians..."
Courfeyrac led his fair friend up the long staircase, all the way up to the ballroom. Another door at the top of the staircase opened onto a grand corridor with a rich, red carpet and fine velvet hangings on the walls. They followed down the corridor and through a beautiful drawing-room full of expensive furniture and lined with portraits of beautiful ladies and stern old gentlemen in powdered wigs. Their eyes would stick like glue to the extravagant walls and tapestries as they make their way inside, Courfeyrac nodding to the palace guards to gain entry. Then they entered a great hall, the walls of which were hung with rose-coloured satin embroidered with flowers. The two of them passed through a series of halls, each grander than the last. First came a hall with a floor of white marble, hung with tapestries of crimson silk. Then a hall with a floor of pink marble, whose walls, decked in rose-red silk embroidered with artificial flowers, were hung with paintings of such size and magnificence that Enjolras and Courfeyrac would ordinarily have stopped to admire them. Such was their eagerness to see Grantaire, however, that they rushed past them without a thought for the richness of the tints, or the skill of the brush strokes, until they reached a third hall, which had a floor of black and white marble laid in squares like a chessboard, and which was hung with mirrors in gilded frames. All of these interiors were so beautiful, so wonderful, that neither of the young men, despite their high rank, had ever seen their equal until then, not even in their dreams.
Each room they passed seemed grander than the last, and it was more than enough one was overwhelmed by the size and grandeur of the palace. They were relieved when they came, at last, into a blue ballroom at the end of the most gaily decorated corridor of all. Both students walked through many rooms with silk drapes, satin sofas, and velvet lined walls. Following Courfeyrac's lead, they came to be in front of two big carved wooden doors inlaid with golden spirals; the entrance to the ballroom where the engagement soirée was held. Their hands trembled as they reached out to push open the heavy doors.
At last they had reached the ballroom, which was more magnificent still, the curtains thickly embroidered with gold and silver thread.
It was by far the grandest and the finest room they had ever been in, for all that both students had been born into privilege and swaddled in silks ever since the first cradle, but all the gold and silk and marble was nothing to them, as they walked across the velvet carpeting past clear cream-coloured satin curtains, and sought through the crowd of ballgowns and suits and uniforms a familiar head of dark hair, one that was certainly of a fellow far more likely to be dressed in a black three-piece suit than in a ceremonial uniform.
All through the ballroom, there was heard the sound of dancing. Un-deux-trois, un-deux-trois, all the men but three of them led their lady-loves' feet to the tune of a Viennese waltz. The eyes of most of them turned towards the dashing newcomers, among sparkling eyes and sighs; Enjolras had donned his usual metaphorical blinkers and paid as little heed as usual to the admirers he had made at first sight. Some other ladies and lords of the court were sitting on red-silk cushions listening to the flute players they hired to entertain them. A beautiful girl came out on the balcony with her lover. The young betrothed couple had been given everything positive this world has to offer, everything good that one could wish for: health, good cheer, a fortune, a thorough education, and an honourable reputation.
Every little detail was important to Cosette, she didn’t allow her guardian nor their retainers to come in between with their suggestions. Lot of people were invited, many meals were prepared in the huge château kitchen and any passerby would salivate just from catching a little whiff of the prepared delicacies. Even fireworks were planned as the highlight of the party and, the way Courfeyrac had explained it to his leader during their upstairs ascent, those had special meaning for Cosette and her fiancé, being something like an anniversary.
The closer the evening neared, the more restless the bridegroom was growing. Once it all begun, he has no thought to loose on his own, since anyone who was in his presence grabbed him in their embrace and he was twirled in a dance the whole night. He barely stopped to get a drink. Everyone wanted to talk or catch even a minute of his time, but once he got a hold of Cosette, none of their whining helped.
And... like... too, he was trapped by those azure eyes, which got a strange luster and feigned distance. It was clear they got very close; the many nights they shared kisses with each other, meant at least that they were friends who trusted each other enough to share that kind of intimacy.
Every little detail was important to Cosette, she didn’t allow her guardian nor their retainers to come in between with their suggestions. Lot of people were invited, many meals were prepared in the huge château kitchen and any passerby would salivate just from catching a little whiff of the prepared delicacies. Even fireworks were planned as the highlight of the party and, the way Courfeyrac had explained it to his leader during their upstairs ascent, those had special meaning for Cosette and her fiancé, being something like an anniversary.
The closer the evening neared, the more restless the bridegroom was growing. Once it all begun, he has no thought to loose on his own, since anyone who was in his presence grabbed him in their embrace and he was twirled in a dance the whole night. He barely stopped to get a drink. Everyone wanted to talk or catch even a minute of his time, but once he got a hold of Cosette, none of their whining helped.
And... like... too, he was trapped by those azure eyes, which got a strange luster and feigned distance. It was clear they got very close; the many nights they shared kisses with each other, meant at least that they were friends who trusted each other enough to share that kind of intimacy.
"How wonderful the stars are," he said to her, "and how wonderful is the power of love!"
"I hope Grandpapa will not leave if we find out the whole truth," she answered; "I have been so lucky to be rescued from a dire fate by a worthy caregiver; but he seems to be weighed down by some dark secret, which he has never wanted even me to know..."
To reassure her, the dark-haired fiancé she had found tucked a wisp of her golden hair, that had slipped out of the chignon, behind her ear, and she planted a peck on his lips in response.
"Life is a gift of love," he sighed in a sweet tenor voice. "Yet it will all be hubris at the end of the day. Isn't it a dreadful display of pride to believe that we shall live forever?"
"You doubt that there may be an afterlife?" Cosette asked, clasping his slender waist in fair lilywhite arms, her face nearly grazing her sweetheart's.
"Yet in all of my happiness," the young man replied, "I feel, and I realise, that it cannot be anything but hubris to wish for another life after this one, and happiness in the afterlife! Back when I lived with my own Grandpapa, I was made much of and always bowed to by the servants, ladies-in-waiting, and visitors to the castle. Yet I always felt empty at the end of the day... Hasn't this existence given both of us so much that we could, and we should, feel contented?"
Here, he stole a passionate kiss from her, and, as soon as her lips parted, she locked eyes with him, azure eye to eye with hazel, and sighed:
"Of course, we have been given so much... but for how many thousands of people has this life been a heavy trial! How many are thrust by chance into this world to a fate of want, of shame, disease, and misfortune... and thus know no childhood, forced to battle with hardships, to grow up against their will! If that as you say were the case, if there were nothing more to wish for, everything in this world would have been too unequally shared... and there would be no righteousness... It is not so easy to remember when you are always covered with fancy garments and have twenty-five playrooms set aside just for you. Remember, I told you... I was once one of those! And I believe that Grandpapa... for the secret he is hiding..." Her earnest sapphire eyes grew teary as he produced from his pocket a lacy handkerchief, gently drying up her tears.
"Did not that orphan indentured servant find any joys of her own, that were to her as happy as those enjoyed in these grand mansions?" the young man asked. "Cosette... do you believe that, for all those beatings, and starving, and straining, you should have no recollection of those heavy days of squalour, of living in want, in endless battle with hardships, bereft of a decent childhood?"
"It was the way I was made, and the way that I am; we cannot escape the past, mon cher... and still we can learn many a lesson from what once occurred. Love is infinite, and eternal. And no life shall ever be lost, but rather win all the happiness we can receive, and be contented with our lot, no matter how paltry or how grand, staking our own future, right?"
Her fiancé nodded in response, drawing her closer. "This world is good enough for me!" And, once more, he flung his arms around her slender waist, clad in royal blue satin, around his lovely, adorable sweetheart. On the open balcony, the fresh air was intoxicating with the scent of roses and lilacs and carnations, Romantic music could be heard from the ballroom behind them, the stars glittered high above in the clear night sky, and two eyes full of love, brighter than Venus, his dear Cosette's eyes, were looking at him with the everlasting life of love.
"A single moment like this," he said, "makes being born worthwhile... just to experience, to seize such a moment, and... and then vanish! If I were to die, it were to be most happy! Indeed, I fear that I should never be given another such sacred instant within my unknown future destiny..." He smiled, and his fiancée shook her index finger reprovingly, as if to say wordlessly how brokenhearted she would be in that case. The dark clouds in their minds had lifted; they were much too happy.
Yet the two young lovers' privacy on the balcony would not last much longer, for they had caught the attention of someone on the ballroom. It was Courfeyrac who was first shown, upon asking some young lieutenants about Mademoiselle Fauchelevent and her fiancé, a golden-haired debutante in sky-blue petticoats leading by the hand, out to the balcony, a dark-haired young man in a black suit. Taking his blond friend by the wrist, Courfeyrac showed Enjolras in that direction, and, through a narrow gap in the balcony curtains, they could see a head of dark hair, quite black in the dim flicker of the lamplight that illuminated the balcony outside. The fair leader's heart was beating very hard indeed as he went towards the curtains, seeking to look on the fiancé's countenance and see if it was, indeed, Grantaire.
Pushing the balcony curtain back, Enjolras found the heiress and her fiancé in one another's arms, his face quite hidden in her golden hair. He pushed one of the leaves aside, and his eyes fell upon soft, dark hair spread across the nape of a neck. Then he saw a strong hand, curled lightly against the waist of Mademoiselle. Turned away from him, the handsome face was still in repose—but it was not Grantaire's face.
"Grantaire..." the fiancés heard someone call out, in a heroic tenor voice barely above a whisper, so much did emotion choke his throat, and leaned closer to them; the rustling of the curtain as it was pushed back caught the attention of the fiancé.
To reassure her, the dark-haired fiancé she had found tucked a wisp of her golden hair, that had slipped out of the chignon, behind her ear, and she planted a peck on his lips in response.
"Life is a gift of love," he sighed in a sweet tenor voice. "Yet it will all be hubris at the end of the day. Isn't it a dreadful display of pride to believe that we shall live forever?"
"You doubt that there may be an afterlife?" Cosette asked, clasping his slender waist in fair lilywhite arms, her face nearly grazing her sweetheart's.
"Yet in all of my happiness," the young man replied, "I feel, and I realise, that it cannot be anything but hubris to wish for another life after this one, and happiness in the afterlife! Back when I lived with my own Grandpapa, I was made much of and always bowed to by the servants, ladies-in-waiting, and visitors to the castle. Yet I always felt empty at the end of the day... Hasn't this existence given both of us so much that we could, and we should, feel contented?"
Here, he stole a passionate kiss from her, and, as soon as her lips parted, she locked eyes with him, azure eye to eye with hazel, and sighed:
"Of course, we have been given so much... but for how many thousands of people has this life been a heavy trial! How many are thrust by chance into this world to a fate of want, of shame, disease, and misfortune... and thus know no childhood, forced to battle with hardships, to grow up against their will! If that as you say were the case, if there were nothing more to wish for, everything in this world would have been too unequally shared... and there would be no righteousness... It is not so easy to remember when you are always covered with fancy garments and have twenty-five playrooms set aside just for you. Remember, I told you... I was once one of those! And I believe that Grandpapa... for the secret he is hiding..." Her earnest sapphire eyes grew teary as he produced from his pocket a lacy handkerchief, gently drying up her tears.
"Did not that orphan indentured servant find any joys of her own, that were to her as happy as those enjoyed in these grand mansions?" the young man asked. "Cosette... do you believe that, for all those beatings, and starving, and straining, you should have no recollection of those heavy days of squalour, of living in want, in endless battle with hardships, bereft of a decent childhood?"
"It was the way I was made, and the way that I am; we cannot escape the past, mon cher... and still we can learn many a lesson from what once occurred. Love is infinite, and eternal. And no life shall ever be lost, but rather win all the happiness we can receive, and be contented with our lot, no matter how paltry or how grand, staking our own future, right?"
Her fiancé nodded in response, drawing her closer. "This world is good enough for me!" And, once more, he flung his arms around her slender waist, clad in royal blue satin, around his lovely, adorable sweetheart. On the open balcony, the fresh air was intoxicating with the scent of roses and lilacs and carnations, Romantic music could be heard from the ballroom behind them, the stars glittered high above in the clear night sky, and two eyes full of love, brighter than Venus, his dear Cosette's eyes, were looking at him with the everlasting life of love.
"A single moment like this," he said, "makes being born worthwhile... just to experience, to seize such a moment, and... and then vanish! If I were to die, it were to be most happy! Indeed, I fear that I should never be given another such sacred instant within my unknown future destiny..." He smiled, and his fiancée shook her index finger reprovingly, as if to say wordlessly how brokenhearted she would be in that case. The dark clouds in their minds had lifted; they were much too happy.
Yet the two young lovers' privacy on the balcony would not last much longer, for they had caught the attention of someone on the ballroom. It was Courfeyrac who was first shown, upon asking some young lieutenants about Mademoiselle Fauchelevent and her fiancé, a golden-haired debutante in sky-blue petticoats leading by the hand, out to the balcony, a dark-haired young man in a black suit. Taking his blond friend by the wrist, Courfeyrac showed Enjolras in that direction, and, through a narrow gap in the balcony curtains, they could see a head of dark hair, quite black in the dim flicker of the lamplight that illuminated the balcony outside. The fair leader's heart was beating very hard indeed as he went towards the curtains, seeking to look on the fiancé's countenance and see if it was, indeed, Grantaire.
Pushing the balcony curtain back, Enjolras found the heiress and her fiancé in one another's arms, his face quite hidden in her golden hair. He pushed one of the leaves aside, and his eyes fell upon soft, dark hair spread across the nape of a neck. Then he saw a strong hand, curled lightly against the waist of Mademoiselle. Turned away from him, the handsome face was still in repose—but it was not Grantaire's face.
"Grantaire..." the fiancés heard someone call out, in a heroic tenor voice barely above a whisper, so much did emotion choke his throat, and leaned closer to them; the rustling of the curtain as it was pushed back caught the attention of the fiancé.
He noticed the presence of the third party behind them, and turned his head round, unwrapping his arms from around the heiress, and it was not Grantaire at all! He was quite another man, clean shaven, though he was still young. And definitely more svelte and attractive, better-looking, and more boyish in appearance with a slender waist and limbs, even features, and a smattering of freckles across a face as silky as Enjolras' own. Another young man was the one who lay standing there, clasping the fair Cosette, and it was only in his dark hair and strong hands, and the hazel colour of his eyes, that he looked like Grantaire at all.
He was only like Grantaire from the back, because the part of his hair that was not nutbrown was so dark. Notwithstanding, he was a handsome young man. He was remarkably handsome with bright friendly eyes that looked very surprised and confused to see both Enjolras and Courfeyrac standing on the threshold of the balcony behind him and his fiancée.
It must have been the involuntary sound of disappointment the two students made that startled him, for the fiancé had turned around abruptly and gasped with surprise to see two familiar faces bending over him.
He was only like Grantaire from the back, because the part of his hair that was not nutbrown was so dark. Notwithstanding, he was a handsome young man. He was remarkably handsome with bright friendly eyes that looked very surprised and confused to see both Enjolras and Courfeyrac standing on the threshold of the balcony behind him and his fiancée.
It must have been the involuntary sound of disappointment the two students made that startled him, for the fiancé had turned around abruptly and gasped with surprise to see two familiar faces bending over him.
In fact, his face looked quite familiar to both Enjolras and Courfeyrac... what-was-his-name, that classmate, that Parisian from the Left Bank, that young translator whom Courfeyrac had introduced to the others not long ago, last year; and who had asked not long ago, last year, to become one of them?
Marius. Marius Pontmercy, the son of Colonel Pontmercy and Mademoiselle Gillenormand. To think that it was Marius out of all suitors, and not Grantaire (a far less suave and far less convenient party, obviously, actually), who had won such a prize...
The blond young man fell back a step, disappointed and ashamed, his voice deserting him entirely. At that, Cosette turned around as well, and looked out towards the embroidered curtains to ask what was the matter; and she asked what had happened. She was a beautiful blonde-haired girl, delicate and small-boned like a porcelain doll; the most beautiful young woman ever seen with mortal eyes. She was pale and delicate with long wavy hair that was spread out in a loose chignon on the nape of her neck. No wonder the young men had been so dumb-struck in front of her. She was stunning as well as remarkably smart.
Feeling as though he might weep from sheer weariness, the fair leader begged forgiveness of the heiress and her fiancé and started to go, but Marius laid a hand against his arm and urged him to sit on the edge of the balcony railing. "Please," he said, "stay and tell us what you're doing here. I can see that you two have travelled a long way, and that you are near the end of your strength." And his voice did, indeed, sound like Grantaire's, deep and velvety with compassion and that faint, pleasing croaklike burr the fair leader missed so much. "Perhaps we can help," Cosette added, and her kindness was almost more than Enjolras could bear.
Enjolras, in a torment of embarrassment, told his story, and Courfeyrac supplied more details about the misunderstanding. When the tale was done, Marius and Cosette looked quite sorrowful, for learned as they both were, neither of them knew any more about Grantaire's whereabouts than his former classmates, though the fiancé asked with a keen interest after Combeferre, and Prouvaire, and Lesgle, and more old friends, for they had been at University together once.
"Once you see her, you cannot doubt that I love her," Marius Pontmercy said, eyes shining, after he had got to know about his classmates. His fiancée replied merely by clasping the young translator's neck in her arms and, with an expression of most passionate tenderness, gaze into his bright eyes.
“I didn’t want to approach you with my request, when you were preparing this ball. It looked very important to you.” Enjolras threw them a confident look from the side, as if it was a report on the state of the weather.
In response, Marius clicked his tongue, but his cheeks also reddened and he leaned in closer whispering into Cosette's ear, so others wouldn’t eavesdrop.
When he had made himself at home in the spare bedchamber, Cosette's guardian had showed him the way and told Enjolras that he should lie down and rest, for he could plainly go no farther that night.
Laying in bed only allowed as much, he’d knew each corner of the room by heart. While at first the sight was wondrous, it quickly lost its luster. It was a pretty and rich chamber, but it served as a time capsule, preserving the sleeper in its comfortable bed, keeping him tucked and sweating in the thick covers.
The blond young man fell back a step, disappointed and ashamed, his voice deserting him entirely. At that, Cosette turned around as well, and looked out towards the embroidered curtains to ask what was the matter; and she asked what had happened. She was a beautiful blonde-haired girl, delicate and small-boned like a porcelain doll; the most beautiful young woman ever seen with mortal eyes. She was pale and delicate with long wavy hair that was spread out in a loose chignon on the nape of her neck. No wonder the young men had been so dumb-struck in front of her. She was stunning as well as remarkably smart.
Feeling as though he might weep from sheer weariness, the fair leader begged forgiveness of the heiress and her fiancé and started to go, but Marius laid a hand against his arm and urged him to sit on the edge of the balcony railing. "Please," he said, "stay and tell us what you're doing here. I can see that you two have travelled a long way, and that you are near the end of your strength." And his voice did, indeed, sound like Grantaire's, deep and velvety with compassion and that faint, pleasing croaklike burr the fair leader missed so much. "Perhaps we can help," Cosette added, and her kindness was almost more than Enjolras could bear.
Enjolras, in a torment of embarrassment, told his story, and Courfeyrac supplied more details about the misunderstanding. When the tale was done, Marius and Cosette looked quite sorrowful, for learned as they both were, neither of them knew any more about Grantaire's whereabouts than his former classmates, though the fiancé asked with a keen interest after Combeferre, and Prouvaire, and Lesgle, and more old friends, for they had been at University together once.
"Once you see her, you cannot doubt that I love her," Marius Pontmercy said, eyes shining, after he had got to know about his classmates. His fiancée replied merely by clasping the young translator's neck in her arms and, with an expression of most passionate tenderness, gaze into his bright eyes.
“I didn’t want to approach you with my request, when you were preparing this ball. It looked very important to you.” Enjolras threw them a confident look from the side, as if it was a report on the state of the weather.
In response, Marius clicked his tongue, but his cheeks also reddened and he leaned in closer whispering into Cosette's ear, so others wouldn’t eavesdrop.
Of course the other two young men allowed the fiancés a moment of privacy en tête-à-tête, well-bred and courteous as they had always been.
After which, the fair heiress, regretting that she could not help more, and not at all angry to be startled from intimacy in the middle of the night by a strange man in scarlet standing in her balcony, offered to have another notice delivered throughout the département inquiring after Grantaire's whereabouts.
If Cosette did not know better, she’d think her dance partner was insulted (what with all that affair of mistaken identity!). In fact, she felt her soft gloved hand being clutched in the other’s grasp tighter and her fiancé's pressed firmer against his lower back as they turned, dancing the next waltz, un-deux-trois, un-deux-trois...
The music reached its crescendo and people clapped with fervour the end of the song and so the two departed from the embrace. Yet the princely betrothed did not let go of Cosette's hand and instead led her under everyone’s watchful gaze towards the terrace and from from it through the stairs, stopping at their foot. Just then he released her hand and pointed in front of them, towards the yard in front of the château.
The conductor motioned with his hands for the flute players to stop playing. They stopped mid-note.
The ladies and lords were sent out of the room. "We'll have more entertainment later," the host assured them.
They also, greatly impressed at the ingenuity of the two students, offered them fixed appointments as "courtiers" in local society, on the condition that their revolutionary gatherings at the Café be a thing of the past, but both Enjolras and Courfeyrac refused.
The former on account of his calling as a rebel leader, and the latter for more personal reasons:
"For I would rather have my independence, even if it means..." said Courfeyrac, "and if I were made a courtier, I would have to marry a fine lady, and not be allowed to flutter-by or dilly-dally, and that would not suit me at all. You see, I am too young to have my wings clipped, and very sharp-tongued when I am unhappy. Eh, Marius? No, if you give anyone a gift, it ought to be our leader over here, for he has come very far looking for his friend who left him, and if his friend won't treat him properly, then someone else ought to."
And then the fiancés, who really gave the impression of a storybook prince and princess, summoned servants to have a bed made up in a spare room for Enjolras and another for Courfeyrac, to take them upstairs for a hot bath and a comfortable place to sleep, and to bring them bread and butter from the kitchens for their supper, and the fair leader slept on a soft mattress, in a large silk bed with a canopy over it, for the first time since he had left his lodgings in Montmartre.
In between supper and bedtime, he had been given a splendid dressing gown of warm cherry-red velvet to sleep in, and he had been thoroughly scrubbed with Marseille soap and lavender water by the master's own valets. The bedclothes were also scented with soothing, fresh lavender, calming the young blond and bringing back to him fond memories of springtime in his childhood in the Camargue, when he as lonely and weary as both Marius and Cosette had been before their paths ever crossed. After which, the fair heiress, regretting that she could not help more, and not at all angry to be startled from intimacy in the middle of the night by a strange man in scarlet standing in her balcony, offered to have another notice delivered throughout the département inquiring after Grantaire's whereabouts.
If Cosette did not know better, she’d think her dance partner was insulted (what with all that affair of mistaken identity!). In fact, she felt her soft gloved hand being clutched in the other’s grasp tighter and her fiancé's pressed firmer against his lower back as they turned, dancing the next waltz, un-deux-trois, un-deux-trois...
The music reached its crescendo and people clapped with fervour the end of the song and so the two departed from the embrace. Yet the princely betrothed did not let go of Cosette's hand and instead led her under everyone’s watchful gaze towards the terrace and from from it through the stairs, stopping at their foot. Just then he released her hand and pointed in front of them, towards the yard in front of the château.
The conductor motioned with his hands for the flute players to stop playing. They stopped mid-note.
The ladies and lords were sent out of the room. "We'll have more entertainment later," the host assured them.
They also, greatly impressed at the ingenuity of the two students, offered them fixed appointments as "courtiers" in local society, on the condition that their revolutionary gatherings at the Café be a thing of the past, but both Enjolras and Courfeyrac refused.
The former on account of his calling as a rebel leader, and the latter for more personal reasons:
"For I would rather have my independence, even if it means..." said Courfeyrac, "and if I were made a courtier, I would have to marry a fine lady, and not be allowed to flutter-by or dilly-dally, and that would not suit me at all. You see, I am too young to have my wings clipped, and very sharp-tongued when I am unhappy. Eh, Marius? No, if you give anyone a gift, it ought to be our leader over here, for he has come very far looking for his friend who left him, and if his friend won't treat him properly, then someone else ought to."
And then the fiancés, who really gave the impression of a storybook prince and princess, summoned servants to have a bed made up in a spare room for Enjolras and another for Courfeyrac, to take them upstairs for a hot bath and a comfortable place to sleep, and to bring them bread and butter from the kitchens for their supper, and the fair leader slept on a soft mattress, in a large silk bed with a canopy over it, for the first time since he had left his lodgings in Montmartre.
When he had made himself at home in the spare bedchamber, Cosette's guardian had showed him the way and told Enjolras that he should lie down and rest, for he could plainly go no farther that night.
"Monsieur, you have already shown me more kindness than I deserve," the fair leader protested, though his body ached for the comfort of that soft-looking bed.
"Nonsense," said Courfeyrac, who had also come to bid him goodnight, smiling a crooked smile not unlike Grantaire's own. "Sleep now. We'll talk in the morning," he insisted, gesturing again for Enjolras to take his bed.
The fair leader had not the strength to resist, and so he lay down in the lavender-scented bed and was asleep almost before his head touched the pillow. It was the first time he had been able to sleep in safety and comfort in many months.
Pulling the embroidered curtains of his canopy bed together, Enjolras wrapped himself in a cocoon of perfumed silk sheets drawn up to his nose and fell asleep, thinking: "How much kindness people have for me in the wide world...! But still, this is all certainly noblesse oblige. The world, and not only France, needs many more Fauchelevents, or else, we young people will have to hoist the flags of freedom once more..."Laying in bed only allowed as much, he’d knew each corner of the room by heart. While at first the sight was wondrous, it quickly lost its luster. It was a pretty and rich chamber, but it served as a time capsule, preserving the sleeper in its comfortable bed, keeping him tucked and sweating in the thick covers.
While he slept, it seemed to him that he was back in the backroom of the Café Musain, surrounded by all of his friends once more. Joly was there, checking for eye-bags in the mirror; and Feuilly was there, ranting about the Hungarians oppressed by Austria; and Grantaire was there, dozing off by a flickering candle and a few empty bottles; and Enjolras himself was there, waving the flag and trying to convince them that this was not a game at all... and Combeferre had a stick of charcoal and a sheet of paper, and was sketching all of them while they worked at their respective passions. Then, all of a sudden, Joly left saying that it was time to go to bed and it should be at least ten hours of sleep; and Feuilly left, chanting the Szózat... and Courfeyrac left, saying his latest ladylove had invited him over to this Liszt concert; and nearly all the others left, one by one, Combeferre the last, until only Enjolras and Grantaire remained en tête-à-tête in the Café, both of them flustered, staring at one another but not knowing exactly what to say. It was then than the doors suddenly opened and the Green Faery made an unexpected entrance, fluttering into the room, cajoling the dark-haired student and clasping him in her arms; as soon as both of them were leaving through the front corridor, surreptitiously Marianne, the only mistress Enjolras thought he would ever love, coiffed with her bright scarlet Phrygian cap and bare-breasted and all, wearing a tricolore for a cape, marched in at a resolute step and packed him by the wrist, tearing him out of the Café by force, and dragging him along in a southward direction, as the Green Faery and the dark, ungainly sceptic got into that baroque carriage across the Musain and took off for the north. For a while, the fair leader looked over his shoulder and, with unchecked tears in his eyes, screamed out: "GRANTAIRE!", as Marianne urged him to march like a soldier at her brisk pace in the opposite direction; the one he sought disappearing from view, without even looking back to take a glance at his despair.
But all of this was only a dream, and vanished as soon as he awoke. In a cold sweat, with a gasp, in a silken canopy bed, and rather relieved that he had only dreamt it all; he had been sleeping on his belly with only the back of his neck uncovered from the ribbon-laced covers.
When he came to himself, he was in a room with high ceiling scattered with gold stucco, the walls papered with rococo floral motifs. Quick sweep of his surroundings assured him he’s in a rich household. Canopied bed with golden tassels; gilded chairs, tables, and cabinets, all furniture of a dark shining wood; silken draperies for window-curtains. The floor was covered with a thick and elegant Persian carpet, and one entered the bedchamber through an estrade paved with costly tapestries. A beautiful embroidered bell-rope hung close to the bed-curtains. A servant girl at his side, peeking through the bed-curtains, jumped out of her chair and ran out of the room shouting so fast that he didn't have the time to ask anything.
"He’s awake!”
Then, rising up and putting two and two together, he welcomed the mild light of day.
The morn of that day he was dressed from head to foot in silk and velvet, in his splendid warm cherry-red dressing-gown that was as soft as if made of spun sunset clouds. A servant helped him to put on the fine dressing-gown and charming slippers of drap d'or with cherry-red flowers, as if Enjolras were a baby, and he would gladly have declined, but felt that the gesture should rather be rewarded with courtesy.
That morning, he was served breakfast in a great hall, sweet clotted cream out of a silver bowl, eaten with spoons of sterling silver, along with macarons and croquignoles, and little chocolate truffles with strawberries baked in them; and the Fauchelevents, who were dining with him, talked to him about what he had seen on his journeys, and about art, which Cosette had studied a little, in between reading philosophy books, and about military tactics, and they invited him to stay at the palace for a few days, and enjoy himself.
They sat surrounding the table protectively and all kind of emotions passed over their faces. Cosette was clumsily wiping her tears as she cried in solidarity. Her guardian scowled even deeper and his face resembled the worst autumn storm. Marius nodded throughout the monologue spoken by the fair leader and looked sad.
When he came to himself, he was in a room with high ceiling scattered with gold stucco, the walls papered with rococo floral motifs. Quick sweep of his surroundings assured him he’s in a rich household. Canopied bed with golden tassels; gilded chairs, tables, and cabinets, all furniture of a dark shining wood; silken draperies for window-curtains. The floor was covered with a thick and elegant Persian carpet, and one entered the bedchamber through an estrade paved with costly tapestries. A beautiful embroidered bell-rope hung close to the bed-curtains. A servant girl at his side, peeking through the bed-curtains, jumped out of her chair and ran out of the room shouting so fast that he didn't have the time to ask anything.
"He’s awake!”
Then, rising up and putting two and two together, he welcomed the mild light of day.
The morn of that day he was dressed from head to foot in silk and velvet, in his splendid warm cherry-red dressing-gown that was as soft as if made of spun sunset clouds. A servant helped him to put on the fine dressing-gown and charming slippers of drap d'or with cherry-red flowers, as if Enjolras were a baby, and he would gladly have declined, but felt that the gesture should rather be rewarded with courtesy.
That morning, he was served breakfast in a great hall, sweet clotted cream out of a silver bowl, eaten with spoons of sterling silver, along with macarons and croquignoles, and little chocolate truffles with strawberries baked in them; and the Fauchelevents, who were dining with him, talked to him about what he had seen on his journeys, and about art, which Cosette had studied a little, in between reading philosophy books, and about military tactics, and they invited him to stay at the palace for a few days, and enjoy himself.
They sat surrounding the table protectively and all kind of emotions passed over their faces. Cosette was clumsily wiping her tears as she cried in solidarity. Her guardian scowled even deeper and his face resembled the worst autumn storm. Marius nodded throughout the monologue spoken by the fair leader and looked sad.
But, in response, Enjolras shook his head, and asked only for a new pair of boots, to replace his own that were so worn, and a little carriage or a rideworthy reliable horse, and provisions to continue his journey.
Little did he expect that they would be far beyond generous. Her guardian, that tall and strong silver-haired bear of a man with severe features softened by age and kindness, though slightly reserved, was the nicest old person Enjolras had ever met. No wonder that Cosette had been so thankful to be rescued from her first guardians, of whom she did not even breathe a word, and given such an education and such loving care, which, as a child (if she ever had been one), she must have needed with all her heart and soul. And why shouldn't such a benefactor, and his sure successor, who had not been the slightest intoxicated by their position of power, run out of kindness and lavish some more on a wayward bohemian student on a quest?
He was given, not just boots, but also a fine pair of gloves, and a warm scarlet peacoat to wear above the now already half-worn waistcoat (whose soutaches had been sewn back into place, aside from the whole ensemble having been thoroughly washed in Marseille soap and lavender), and a cravat of cobalt blue satin, and even a new cherry-red ribbon for his queue, after he had thoroughly cleansed himself in the château bathroom for a second time. And when he was dressed and ready to go, he found waiting at the door, in the yard before the château, a fine calèche, a white one pulled by four fine, tall horses, with hide a deep grey colour like polished steel, with a black mane and tail. Each horse's saddle and bridle were trimmed with silver bells, and the saddle-cloths, just like the blue velvet upholstery, had the Fauchelevent and Pontmercy coats of arms and initials, entwined, embroidered on it in silk thread. Upon the door panels of the carriage, the same coats of arms, Fauchelevent on the left and Pontmercy on the right, shone as brightly as two stars. The coachman and the postillions à la Daumont wore powdered wigs and liveries of silver brocade, and there was a trunk full of candied fruits, dragées, macarons, croquignoles, and a pair of bottles of white wine of the region, right before the seats; as well as a volume of Shakespearean tragedies, which a good friend of the heiress's guardian and of Marius's had translated in his spare time, for the young blond to read and enjoy. In sooth, so many honours made both the guests feel light-headed, or so they claimed, not without a good reason.
He was given, not just boots, but also a fine pair of gloves, and a warm scarlet peacoat to wear above the now already half-worn waistcoat (whose soutaches had been sewn back into place, aside from the whole ensemble having been thoroughly washed in Marseille soap and lavender), and a cravat of cobalt blue satin, and even a new cherry-red ribbon for his queue, after he had thoroughly cleansed himself in the château bathroom for a second time. And when he was dressed and ready to go, he found waiting at the door, in the yard before the château, a fine calèche, a white one pulled by four fine, tall horses, with hide a deep grey colour like polished steel, with a black mane and tail. Each horse's saddle and bridle were trimmed with silver bells, and the saddle-cloths, just like the blue velvet upholstery, had the Fauchelevent and Pontmercy coats of arms and initials, entwined, embroidered on it in silk thread. Upon the door panels of the carriage, the same coats of arms, Fauchelevent on the left and Pontmercy on the right, shone as brightly as two stars. The coachman and the postillions à la Daumont wore powdered wigs and liveries of silver brocade, and there was a trunk full of candied fruits, dragées, macarons, croquignoles, and a pair of bottles of white wine of the region, right before the seats; as well as a volume of Shakespearean tragedies, which a good friend of the heiress's guardian and of Marius's had translated in his spare time, for the young blond to read and enjoy. In sooth, so many honours made both the guests feel light-headed, or so they claimed, not without a good reason.
Cosette and Marius themselves helped Enjolras into the carriage, saw him off, and wished him success, as the blond turned quickly to the fiancés to say goodbye. Touched by the kindness of those that seemed a storybook prince and princess, Enjolras had to pretend to tighten the laces of his boots for a minute, until he was able to kiss the fair princess farewell and shake the translator prince's hand without embarrassing himself.
Courfeyrac accompanied him for the first three miles, while old M. Fauchelevent, the heiress's guardian, bid them goodbye from the garden gate, waving in farewell.
“Well then! Of you go! With fireworks!” Courfeyrac waved with elation.
The last he shouted and as it was the planned command, the fireworks illuminated the sky with loud roars, exploding over the vast courtyard, and people cheered the highpoint of the party.
The horses moved ahead eagerly, and the fair leader sat for a while looking back at the crowd and his patrons, who got smaller and smaller, until he couldn’t see their waving hands anymore. His friends shouting their goodbyes and well wishes made his heart aching with joy and sadness at the same time, wishing he could meet them once again.
Courfeyrac accompanied him for the first three miles, while old M. Fauchelevent, the heiress's guardian, bid them goodbye from the garden gate, waving in farewell.
“Well then! Of you go! With fireworks!” Courfeyrac waved with elation.
The last he shouted and as it was the planned command, the fireworks illuminated the sky with loud roars, exploding over the vast courtyard, and people cheered the highpoint of the party.
The horses moved ahead eagerly, and the fair leader sat for a while looking back at the crowd and his patrons, who got smaller and smaller, until he couldn’t see their waving hands anymore. His friends shouting their goodbyes and well wishes made his heart aching with joy and sadness at the same time, wishing he could meet them once again.
“Adieu, et bon voyage,” cried those that gave the impression of a prince and princess, each one of them drying up a single teardrop on a lace-lined handkerchief; and Enjolras waved back at them, restraining the tears in his own eyes, as the coachman turned the horses' heads north.
At the village entrance, after a few miles, Courfeyrac himself would say farewell, and that would be the saddest parting.
"Are you certain that you wish to go on seeking your friend?" the Gascon lordling asked as they left the palace gardens. "The way is long, and filled with dangers, and you do not even know for certain that you will find him. If you like, you can stay here in my stomping grounds and enjoy yourself with me. To be honest, I have never seen you smile until this morning, eh, Enj? I have only known the real you a short while, but already I like you very much indeed, and would be sorry to see you go."
Enjolras thought of Grantaire, who now could have been left alone in a desolate place without a single human soul for company; here was another parting that he regretted. He seemed to be forever leaving people behind on his journey, and it was very tiresome always being so alone.
But then he thought of Grantaire once more, and he knew that he could not stay, anymore than he had been able to stay in the Camargue, or at University, or in the prince and princess's palace.
When Marius had told him, at the breakfast table, that he was quite content to give up the bohemian world of revolution entirely, as long as he could remain with Cosette, Enjolras had been surprised, and had wondered at the sort of man who would make such a sacrifice.
Now, he did not wonder any longer, for he thought he was beginning to understand.
And thus, he had bid both the fiancés farewell, albeit with a heavy and regretful heart, as the horses' heads were turned north; then, after a few miles, a heavy-hearted Courfeyrac also said "adieu," the turn having come to him as well; and so he bid Enjolras farewell, with a heavy and regretful heart, embracing his classmate and leader.
As Enjolras drove away, the horses' hooves rang loudly against the cobbled ground, and the silver bells on their bridles sparkled in the sunlight. Courfeyrac leaned against a linden tree by the road, at the village entrance, and watched the carriage go, waving his sharply-sleeved arms in farewell until the horses, the calèche, and its passenger had disappeared from sight.
For about an hour, Courfeyrac kept on waving goodbye, leaning against that tree at the village entrance, for as long as he could see the calèche glittering in the light of the sun, till it disappeared into the treeline, and continued on deep into the woods.
It was not until that moment of stopping and saying that farewell that Enjolras was truly alone again.
...
Elsewhere, somewhere dark and foggy in the far North, Grantaire was sitting on a cold stone throne of a twilit throne room, in the chamber that had been set aside for him. He felt numb and bitter. Nothing mattered. Nothing at all. A whirring sound could be heard through the shut door to his left, growing louder and louder, nearer and nearer, the one who approached coming closer and closer. Suddenly his chamber door swung open and the Lady of the Green Kirtle walked into the hall."Voilà mon cher, here you are."
He looked down at it suspiciously. "What is it?"
At the village entrance, after a few miles, Courfeyrac himself would say farewell, and that would be the saddest parting.
"Are you certain that you wish to go on seeking your friend?" the Gascon lordling asked as they left the palace gardens. "The way is long, and filled with dangers, and you do not even know for certain that you will find him. If you like, you can stay here in my stomping grounds and enjoy yourself with me. To be honest, I have never seen you smile until this morning, eh, Enj? I have only known the real you a short while, but already I like you very much indeed, and would be sorry to see you go."
Enjolras thought of Grantaire, who now could have been left alone in a desolate place without a single human soul for company; here was another parting that he regretted. He seemed to be forever leaving people behind on his journey, and it was very tiresome always being so alone.
But then he thought of Grantaire once more, and he knew that he could not stay, anymore than he had been able to stay in the Camargue, or at University, or in the prince and princess's palace.
When Marius had told him, at the breakfast table, that he was quite content to give up the bohemian world of revolution entirely, as long as he could remain with Cosette, Enjolras had been surprised, and had wondered at the sort of man who would make such a sacrifice.
Now, he did not wonder any longer, for he thought he was beginning to understand.
And thus, he had bid both the fiancés farewell, albeit with a heavy and regretful heart, as the horses' heads were turned north; then, after a few miles, a heavy-hearted Courfeyrac also said "adieu," the turn having come to him as well; and so he bid Enjolras farewell, with a heavy and regretful heart, embracing his classmate and leader.
As Enjolras drove away, the horses' hooves rang loudly against the cobbled ground, and the silver bells on their bridles sparkled in the sunlight. Courfeyrac leaned against a linden tree by the road, at the village entrance, and watched the carriage go, waving his sharply-sleeved arms in farewell until the horses, the calèche, and its passenger had disappeared from sight.
For about an hour, Courfeyrac kept on waving goodbye, leaning against that tree at the village entrance, for as long as he could see the calèche glittering in the light of the sun, till it disappeared into the treeline, and continued on deep into the woods.
It was not until that moment of stopping and saying that farewell that Enjolras was truly alone again.
...
Elsewhere, somewhere dark and foggy in the far North, Grantaire was sitting on a cold stone throne of a twilit throne room, in the chamber that had been set aside for him. He felt numb and bitter. Nothing mattered. Nothing at all. A whirring sound could be heard through the shut door to his left, growing louder and louder, nearer and nearer, the one who approached coming closer and closer. Suddenly his chamber door swung open and the Lady of the Green Kirtle walked into the hall."Voilà mon cher, here you are."
"Where else would I be?" he snapped, not even bothering to look at her.
"Are you all right?" She asked in a patronizingly sweet tone.
"Of course I'm not!" he lashed out, forgetting how afraid he was of the person he was addressing. "I've been betrayed, taken from my home, it's freezing cold, and my stomach hurts!"
"Poor little thing," she whispered, pulling herself closer to him. "Such a pessimist." She started stroking his stubbled cheek with the side of her cupped hand.
Grantaire recoiled slightly; he wanted to vomit. Her icy touch repelled him. He couldn't believe that in less than two weeks he'd be leading her ranks. He thought he'd rather kill himself first if only he could get his hands on a suitable knife or a long piece of rope. Unfortunately there weren't any dangerous objects in the chamber.
"You've grown up nice, you know," she whispered.
In response, he shuddered and tried to pull away from her.
She let out a sigh and took out a small crystal flacon from the folds of her dress and, after pouring her own green blood into it, placed it in his hands. "Here, drink this."He looked down at it suspiciously. "What is it?"
"It's for your stomach," she lied, yet it was but a half-truth. "Let us drink to your health, Lord General!" she winked with a friendly smile. "May your stay here be long and prosperous!"
The dark student figured it wasn't for anything of the sort, he wished it was poison, but knew that she had no reason to kill him now. She wanted him alive. Whatever it was for, it didn't matter. He took out the cork, put it to his lips, and drank it, until the very last drop had disappeared from sight into his insides. It didn't taste too bad. Sort of watery and bland, but not too bad.
"How do you feel?" she asked him.
All of a sudden, Grantaire couldn't keep his eyes open no matter how hard he tried. "I feel...sleepy..." he muttered as his eyelids shut and his body sank back into the chair.
"That's what I thought," the Lady said with a smirk, taking the empty flacon away as she walked out of the room. It was sunset.
He didn't stand up to take his leave of her. He didn't turn to face her. Nothing. No movement. He was sleeping. One would know he wasn't dead because his chest moved up and down and he moaned twice.
In his state of deep sleep, he couldn't hear a word. If he heard any noise at all, it was only like a light wind, like a gentle breeze lulling him. He didn't feel the touch of the throne armrests either.
Chapitre quatrième
La jeune fille des brigands
What was this place, so empty and so dreary? Grantaire thought, looking to left and right as he came to his senses. A cold stone throne in the middle of the room, two glowing golden globes soaring above to give a faint light, and the floor all scribbled with lines and more lines of strange, angular characters which he could not read...
The Lady of the Green Kirtle came in, entering stage left and preceded by the gradually nearing whirring sound, as she had the day before, with the sleeping drink in the little phial. Sometimes he would find himself taken by an unexplained melancholy, but when that happened she would cheer him up by bullying or coaxing or cajoling him out of his mood, and life would go on as before.
"Is your stomach feeling better today, dear?"
Grantaire had to admit that until she had walked in, it had been a little better. Now he was feeling sick again. He wished she'd leave. "Yes, a little," he said hurriedly, hoping to get her out quicker.
La jeune fille des brigands
What was this place, so empty and so dreary? Grantaire thought, looking to left and right as he came to his senses. A cold stone throne in the middle of the room, two glowing golden globes soaring above to give a faint light, and the floor all scribbled with lines and more lines of strange, angular characters which he could not read...
The Lady of the Green Kirtle came in, entering stage left and preceded by the gradually nearing whirring sound, as she had the day before, with the sleeping drink in the little phial. Sometimes he would find himself taken by an unexplained melancholy, but when that happened she would cheer him up by bullying or coaxing or cajoling him out of his mood, and life would go on as before.
"Is your stomach feeling better today, dear?"
Grantaire had to admit that until she had walked in, it had been a little better. Now he was feeling sick again. He wished she'd leave. "Yes, a little," he said hurriedly, hoping to get her out quicker.
"It's because of what I gave you yesterday," she lied, grabbing into his arm, pulling his cupped hand towards her and placing the little flacon in the palm of it. "Drink it again and you'll be much better in no time."
Somehow, he didn't want to drink it. It made him feel groggy the last time and he'd woken up with a rather beastly headache that had taken hours to go away. But still she stared at him, refusing to leave until he drank it. In the end he sighed, took a deep breath, and swallowed it in one gulp, letting it all disappear from sight into his insides at one fell swoop. His head felt so heavy that he had to rest it on his left shoulder and then his eyelids snapped shut.
"Sleep tight," she laughed, leaving him fast asleep in the room once more.
...
Enjolras settled down on his seat in the calèche, happy and comfortable, putting a chocolate macaron to his lips before wiping his fingertips and plunging back into the world of tragedies that was the open book on his lap. Othello had just landed at the end of the pier, and Desdemona had stormed forth towards the gangway; then he clasped her in his arms. Now, what would Iago do to ruin this lovely scene? If Combeferre were by his side, he would have been dissecting Hugo's Othello while quoting the translation from Count Alfred de Vigny, objectively paying attention to the foremost differences between both French versions and the English original. That single thought of his lieutenant leader at the Café made the blond steel himself and swallow hard. Had he been right to appoint Combeferre, just as Othello had been right to appoint Cassio, as his lieutenant in both the senses of aide and steadholder? Enjolras had, hitherto, always been too busy with his studies and leadership duties to allow himself a pleasant distraction. And now, that distraction was more pleasant than ever, even though he would, every now and then, become carriage-sick and have to take a peek out into the roadside, which was exactly what he did next, after reading all the way to the end of the scene.
They were driving through a thick woodland or forest of mainly tall, dark pinewood, the autumn leaves crunching beneath horseshoes and carriage wheels. As night fell, they found themselves at the entrance of these gloomy woods, which were even more darkened by the evening twilight. And thus, one of the postillions descended and lit the lanterns of the calèche, so that the flickering light reflected on the dazzling panels, making the whole carriage shine like a sun, and turn the night into day, illuminating the pathway.
It was a crystal-clear sight in the light of the lanterns, and, seeing it shine so bright, some outlaws who were ambushed in the underbrush had never beheld, in a lifetime of lustrums outside the law, such a valuable prey! "La chose n'est pas possible, c'est un carrosse d'avant la Révolution..." a female contralto voice whispered into greedy ears among the bushes and ferns, unseen and unheard by Enjolras and the carriage servants. For the calèche shone like a pile of embers, and dazzled all of their eyes. Furthermore, it had been a rainless day, and their gunpowder was still dry...
The chiming of the bells on the horses' bridles, furthermore, had echoed off the vast tree-trunks for a very long way, until it reached the ears of that band of robbers, who could not bear to let a traveller with such a fine attelage pass unmolested.
“The saddlecloths are pure silk!” they cried, rushing towards the horses all at once. "Surely the passenger has gold!"
"Tally-ho! Tally-ho-o-o!!" they shouted for a battle-cry, as they lunged into the middle of the road, stormed upon the carriage, and rushed to seize the horses all at once; then, after seizing the horses, they shot the coachman and the postillions dead, and, forcing the door, tore the startled young passenger out of his seat, out of the carriage, and into their midst.
Right before the ambush, Enjolras had stopped looking around at the thick autumnal woods and sunken back into his chair in a pensive mood. He did not know where to go next, but, for the first time since he left the capital, he finally felt that he was able to carry on his search the right way. Then, he saw the blood.
"Tally-ho! Tally-ho-o-o!!" cried many a greedy-sounding voice, distracting Enjolras from his thoughts. A gunshot went right through the driver's chest, and stuck into the wall of the carriage. Blood poured on the upholstery, as Enjolras stored the book in the trunk to keep it safe. That was when he heard the screams, all around. He could hear more gunshots being fired, whirring, thudding into the driver, and how he was being dumped in a dark corner of the carriage. People climbed aboard, and the passenger, sitting on his trunk and shifting as the driver was thrown in, looked out through the corner of an eye, for he could hear the screams and pleading of the servants that left the castle with the attelage... before the sounds of daggers... Then... Silence.
Brigands. They had just waited for him to pass by and surprise him.
There was an instant when Enjolras was hopeful that they had left, but then the door exploded off its hinges. Someone had kicked it in. Surely some experienced and strong savateur... Could Grantaire had joined the band? Enjolras felt as relieved as he was tense. Once more, it was not Grantaire, but some big, ugly, gorilla-like man, who dragged him out by the arms, pointing a pistol at his left temple.
The next thing he was aware of, he was being pulled by the arms out of the calèche. No matter how much he struggled and kicked (and he knew that he was a leader, not a fighter, but nevertheless forced to struggle under pressure), it was to no avail, and the passenger found himself face-to-face with a group of dark-haired, tall, ugly, fierce-looking men in torn-up clothing, some of which was purple and some of which appeared to be part of worn, re-used military uniforms, surrounding him. The youngest member of the band he could see was in his twenties, raven-haired, dark of features and with an ill-shaven face, but definitely far better-looking and more sharply dressed than Grantaire, but he was a savage dandy, who was far from resembling the more cultured and adroit Courfeyrac; this young fellow, on the other hand, was the typical dashing dandy highwayman, sharply dressed to kill in a Prussian blue three-piece suit, and a fancy top hat, an opera hat, that Enjolras supposed had been stolen from a previous unfortunate traveller.
Well, well... most surely Grantaire, if he had ever joined these merry men, would be waiting and drinking and taking it easy in their common lair, Enjolras thought.
Their leader was, or at least seemed to be, a filthy, vicious cur of a man in a worn uniform, who had coiffed his head with a sergeant's bonnet and whose hair stood up in a ginger shock at each temple, not unlike walrus whiskers. He and his men seized Enjolras and dragged him off the carriage before the frightened geldings, and though he fought with all his strength, the blond was far outnumbered, and they had him bleeding on the ground before they were done.
Now he saw out of the corner of his right eye that while two of the men held him in place, squeezing his slender arms until Enjolras could hardly even feel them, the rest were taking the coach apart for its silver.
"He is worn and battered, for all his fine boots and overcoat," mocked the one who seemed to be the head robber, an ill-looking man with an unshaven jaw and wiry red muttonchop whiskers, dressed in a worn and torn sergeant's uniform. "Perhaps he stole the horses himself." And he held an old bayonet to the golden-haired stripling's throat —which made a little rill of blood trickle, red on white, on Enjolras' lilywhite skin—, saying, with a sardonic grin, "Justice is served, then."
Then he shouted an oath, for one of his fellows, a young person of indeterminate sex with a fierce and wild grin, had stabbed a small knife into his arm. The redhead cursed the youngster, and called that person an insubordinate lout, and a tall, stout, muscular blonde woman dressed as a camp follower, but who looked somewhat more like a drag queen (with a sprig of holly in a mop of messy ash-blond hair), set to bandaging the wounded man's arm with a strip of cloth torn from his ragged shirt, and the gang forgot all about killing their prisoner. Enjolras himself reeled backwards in shock. Air was knocked from his lungs and he was thrown to the ground with a boot pressed to his chest. A boot at the end of a shapely, muscular thigh beneath a sutler woman's worn skirt.
Although they themselves were mostly men, their leader was not the sergeant, Enjolras thought, but that tall burly woman with pointy-looking teeth, wiry bushy eyebrows, and a smile that was much too broad for his liking.
They were driving through a thick woodland or forest of mainly tall, dark pinewood, the autumn leaves crunching beneath horseshoes and carriage wheels. As night fell, they found themselves at the entrance of these gloomy woods, which were even more darkened by the evening twilight. And thus, one of the postillions descended and lit the lanterns of the calèche, so that the flickering light reflected on the dazzling panels, making the whole carriage shine like a sun, and turn the night into day, illuminating the pathway.
It was a crystal-clear sight in the light of the lanterns, and, seeing it shine so bright, some outlaws who were ambushed in the underbrush had never beheld, in a lifetime of lustrums outside the law, such a valuable prey! "La chose n'est pas possible, c'est un carrosse d'avant la Révolution..." a female contralto voice whispered into greedy ears among the bushes and ferns, unseen and unheard by Enjolras and the carriage servants. For the calèche shone like a pile of embers, and dazzled all of their eyes. Furthermore, it had been a rainless day, and their gunpowder was still dry...
The chiming of the bells on the horses' bridles, furthermore, had echoed off the vast tree-trunks for a very long way, until it reached the ears of that band of robbers, who could not bear to let a traveller with such a fine attelage pass unmolested.
“The saddlecloths are pure silk!” they cried, rushing towards the horses all at once. "Surely the passenger has gold!"
"Tally-ho! Tally-ho-o-o!!" they shouted for a battle-cry, as they lunged into the middle of the road, stormed upon the carriage, and rushed to seize the horses all at once; then, after seizing the horses, they shot the coachman and the postillions dead, and, forcing the door, tore the startled young passenger out of his seat, out of the carriage, and into their midst.
Right before the ambush, Enjolras had stopped looking around at the thick autumnal woods and sunken back into his chair in a pensive mood. He did not know where to go next, but, for the first time since he left the capital, he finally felt that he was able to carry on his search the right way. Then, he saw the blood.
"Tally-ho! Tally-ho-o-o!!" cried many a greedy-sounding voice, distracting Enjolras from his thoughts. A gunshot went right through the driver's chest, and stuck into the wall of the carriage. Blood poured on the upholstery, as Enjolras stored the book in the trunk to keep it safe. That was when he heard the screams, all around. He could hear more gunshots being fired, whirring, thudding into the driver, and how he was being dumped in a dark corner of the carriage. People climbed aboard, and the passenger, sitting on his trunk and shifting as the driver was thrown in, looked out through the corner of an eye, for he could hear the screams and pleading of the servants that left the castle with the attelage... before the sounds of daggers... Then... Silence.
Brigands. They had just waited for him to pass by and surprise him.
There was an instant when Enjolras was hopeful that they had left, but then the door exploded off its hinges. Someone had kicked it in. Surely some experienced and strong savateur... Could Grantaire had joined the band? Enjolras felt as relieved as he was tense. Once more, it was not Grantaire, but some big, ugly, gorilla-like man, who dragged him out by the arms, pointing a pistol at his left temple.
The next thing he was aware of, he was being pulled by the arms out of the calèche. No matter how much he struggled and kicked (and he knew that he was a leader, not a fighter, but nevertheless forced to struggle under pressure), it was to no avail, and the passenger found himself face-to-face with a group of dark-haired, tall, ugly, fierce-looking men in torn-up clothing, some of which was purple and some of which appeared to be part of worn, re-used military uniforms, surrounding him. The youngest member of the band he could see was in his twenties, raven-haired, dark of features and with an ill-shaven face, but definitely far better-looking and more sharply dressed than Grantaire, but he was a savage dandy, who was far from resembling the more cultured and adroit Courfeyrac; this young fellow, on the other hand, was the typical dashing dandy highwayman, sharply dressed to kill in a Prussian blue three-piece suit, and a fancy top hat, an opera hat, that Enjolras supposed had been stolen from a previous unfortunate traveller.
Well, well... most surely Grantaire, if he had ever joined these merry men, would be waiting and drinking and taking it easy in their common lair, Enjolras thought.
Their leader was, or at least seemed to be, a filthy, vicious cur of a man in a worn uniform, who had coiffed his head with a sergeant's bonnet and whose hair stood up in a ginger shock at each temple, not unlike walrus whiskers. He and his men seized Enjolras and dragged him off the carriage before the frightened geldings, and though he fought with all his strength, the blond was far outnumbered, and they had him bleeding on the ground before they were done.
Now he saw out of the corner of his right eye that while two of the men held him in place, squeezing his slender arms until Enjolras could hardly even feel them, the rest were taking the coach apart for its silver.
"Where is the driver?" the captive wondered worriedly. "Where are the footmen the heiress gave me?"
To his horror, Enjolras watched one of the men, a pot-bellied fellow with a gold arm-ring pushed up onto his left arm, lift up the driver's seat of the carriage and saw it was covered with blood.
So he was gone, then. The footmen, too, probably. Enjolras' stomach lurched; "If I hadn't been so terrified about my own fate, I would have vomited. I had liked the coachman -stupid though he'd been- and the footmen had been kind, too. How horrid it was to think that in one flash they were gone."
Now, for the first time in forever, he had to face the fact that his friends were dead. "That I might go next." Yet still he refused to die, not yet, it was too early... if Enjolras died himself, who would go and bring Grantaire back home? In spite of his disbelief, the estranged, dark sceptic was his brother in arms at the end of the day. They all had to stick together facing the guns; they all had to fall together, before turning thirty. There was simply no other way to die.
Though not being much of a fighter himself, though the Fauchelevents had not given him as much as a pistol which he could have fired to kill one of the robbers stone dead in half a moment... though the rest of the gang were upon him so quickly, Enjolras braced himself and tried his hand at savate for the first time in a short life, hitting about with an empty box that once had been full of macarons and croquignoles to right and left.
This worked for perhaps a minute, maybe two, but then the sheer weight of their numbers overwhelmed him, and they bore him to the ground. A lot more men encircled Enjolras, without a means to escape."He is worn and battered, for all his fine boots and overcoat," mocked the one who seemed to be the head robber, an ill-looking man with an unshaven jaw and wiry red muttonchop whiskers, dressed in a worn and torn sergeant's uniform. "Perhaps he stole the horses himself." And he held an old bayonet to the golden-haired stripling's throat —which made a little rill of blood trickle, red on white, on Enjolras' lilywhite skin—, saying, with a sardonic grin, "Justice is served, then."
Then he shouted an oath, for one of his fellows, a young person of indeterminate sex with a fierce and wild grin, had stabbed a small knife into his arm. The redhead cursed the youngster, and called that person an insubordinate lout, and a tall, stout, muscular blonde woman dressed as a camp follower, but who looked somewhat more like a drag queen (with a sprig of holly in a mop of messy ash-blond hair), set to bandaging the wounded man's arm with a strip of cloth torn from his ragged shirt, and the gang forgot all about killing their prisoner. Enjolras himself reeled backwards in shock. Air was knocked from his lungs and he was thrown to the ground with a boot pressed to his chest. A boot at the end of a shapely, muscular thigh beneath a sutler woman's worn skirt.
Although they themselves were mostly men, their leader was not the sergeant, Enjolras thought, but that tall burly woman with pointy-looking teeth, wiry bushy eyebrows, and a smile that was much too broad for his liking.
The leader woman, now that her men had gathered up all the silver they could carry, had turned her attention to the golden-haired passenger. "Hoo hoo hoo hoo! What have we got here?"
Enjolras tried to squirm out of the grips that held him firmly in place, but of course it was still no use.
"Hair like beaten gold... skin like porcelain or silk... hands like lilies... and this scent of lavender... he's dressed to the nines, and dashing in scarlet... He's surely a lordling! Shall we make him sing before we have the ransom paid?" she asked in a deep contralto voice, in the most alarming and ominous tone imaginable, as she, smacking her lips, drew from the brown silken sash she wore for a belt on her apron the scariest-looking butcher's knife that Enjolras had ever seen, a dreadful flashing blade in the evening twilight, holding it to his throat.
"Hoo hoo hoo hoo, what a ball we will have tonight indeed! Oh, quel régal nous en ferons! Look how pretty he is," the leader of the robbers said, baring her sharp teeth in a most frightful grin and licking her lips. "He's thin as a rake, but his flesh is pale and tender. If we stuff him with wine and eau-de-vie, just think how nice he will sing!" And as she said this, she drew forth a shining knife that glittered in the moonlight.
Meanwhile, the redhead in the worn uniform was tying the stripling's hands behind him with a sturdy rope. Enjolras was so shocked and in turmoil, that he barely managed his head to stop spinning. Once it did, he noticed the large group of the attackers seized his calèche and rummaged through his belongings greedily.
"Take all you can! There is something for everyone, and there is enough for everyone!"
They shouted excitedly and brayed like donkeys with each new item in their hands, exclaiming how rich they would be once they could sell all the fine clothes and the team of horses. They were dragging the bodies from the carriage and going through the pockets of the dead men for any valuables.
But before the leader could cut the captive's throat, she made a grunt of pain, for
then something weird happened, something unexpected, something that changed the course of events. Enjolras heard a growling in the underbrush, and then the tall woman shrieked, grimaced in pain, and spun around. The young person who had stabbed the sergeant in the arm was on her back, arms flung around that muscular neck, chewing at her left ear.
Keeping her from killing, or torturing, Enjolras.
"Hoo hoo hoo hoo, what a ball we will have tonight indeed! Oh, quel régal nous en ferons! Look how pretty he is," the leader of the robbers said, baring her sharp teeth in a most frightful grin and licking her lips. "He's thin as a rake, but his flesh is pale and tender. If we stuff him with wine and eau-de-vie, just think how nice he will sing!" And as she said this, she drew forth a shining knife that glittered in the moonlight.
Meanwhile, the redhead in the worn uniform was tying the stripling's hands behind him with a sturdy rope. Enjolras was so shocked and in turmoil, that he barely managed his head to stop spinning. Once it did, he noticed the large group of the attackers seized his calèche and rummaged through his belongings greedily.
"Take all you can! There is something for everyone, and there is enough for everyone!"
They shouted excitedly and brayed like donkeys with each new item in their hands, exclaiming how rich they would be once they could sell all the fine clothes and the team of horses. They were dragging the bodies from the carriage and going through the pockets of the dead men for any valuables.
But before the leader could cut the captive's throat, she made a grunt of pain, for
then something weird happened, something unexpected, something that changed the course of events. Enjolras heard a growling in the underbrush, and then the tall woman shrieked, grimaced in pain, and spun around. The young person who had stabbed the sergeant in the arm was on her back, arms flung around that muscular neck, chewing at her left ear.
Keeping her from killing, or torturing, Enjolras.
"Aoooww!! 'Ponine, you brat, you bitch, you...! It's not for nothing you're a sutler woman's daughter, eh?" the furious robber woman suddenly cursed, as that nimble dark young person bit her in the left ear until she bled. The maiden was still quite wild, and had bitten her fiercely on the ear. The robber leader struck out and scored a glancing blow, aiming a rippling left hook against 'Ponine's nose, but she cartwheeled back into the underbrush, which then rustled ominously; in the excitement, the robbers forgot about killing Enjolras.
"You mustn't kill him yet!" the maiden said, pouting yet in a clear, commanding voice. "He looks so nice... I have to keep him! P-le-e-ease! He must gimme his nice coat, and waistcoat, and keep me company, and sleep with me in my bed tonight! He will give me his coat, and read me stories before bedtime, for he looks very wise." Her mezzo voice, hoarse from strong drink, sounded like a croaking frog. A thoughtful look came over her simple features, and she cast a glance as dark as midnight at the prisoner.
"Non pas, 'Ponine, non pas, not at all," said the big blonde woman. "We're gonna keep this lad alive to male him sing."
And, in spite of the fact that the blonde was ready to slit her prisoner's throat once more, no sooner had she finished her reply... that her daughter bit her in the other ear, in the right one this time, which made her squeal and leap in pain.
Then, the dark youngster kicked the redheaded sergeant where it hurt the most, and he began to squeal like a pig at the abattoir, clutching his hands between his thighs and hopping about in pain. The other brigands just laughed heartily, all of them, at the scene, mocking the sergeant and the camp follower, who held one another and steeled themselves (the sergeant, his face as red as his hair, buried in his wife's cleavage), convinced that their brothers-in-arms were laughing at them: "Look at the old Thénardiers dancing with their little one!" Even the trickster girl who had started it all. And even the fair prisoner himself.
"Let me in the carriage!! Je veux entrer dans la voiture, et garder le prisonnier," 'Ponine roared, gnashing her teeth.
And the robber maiden's will had to be done come hell or highwater, and no one dared to oppose any of her desires; for every whim of hers was a command; there was nothing to do but to let her have her way -- that's so stubborn and pampered and headstrong for words the dark maiden was, so wild and so impulsive that it was a joy; and woe to the one who dared to contradict her!
She looked him over from crown to toe. Her thin eyes widened and she nodded all pleased, producing the thick leather-bound volume of Shakespearean tragedies. As the man in uniform was busy with tying the prisoner's hands with a rope, she yelled at him sternly. “I’ve got an eye on him first! And on Shakespeare as well! Finders keepers, that’s our rule!” The man in uniform sighed, still clutching his private parts, as the dark maiden resumed, trying to wrest Enjolras out of his grasp."And I make the rules so I can break them. He’s mine and that’s the end of the discussion. If you don’t like it, you can take your spoils and leave us.”
And just like that the argument was over. The sergeant laughed, the robber woman was insulted, or at least felt insulted, and both of them grew tired of fighting their daughter, for no one dared to oppose the dark maiden.
"The Sarge was a soldier," one of the other robbers pointed out — he was that young man in his twenties, like Enjolras himself, but raven-haired and a scoundrel to the core: the typical dashing dandy highwayman, sharply dressed to kill in a Prussian blue three-piece suit, and a fancy top hat, an opera hat, that Enjolras supposed had been stolen from a previous unfortunate traveller. This lad, who looked like an evil Courfeyrac, was as dark of features as that young person, whom the prisoner now understood to be a girl.
"That old blighter?" The dark maiden pointed at the Sarge, who was still wincing and clutching his private parts, as she scoffed. "He's a thief and a villain, and so are all the rest of you, and myself as well."
"Very well, you spoilt little brat," the older woman growled. "Keep her then — but mind you don't let her out of your sight..."
The Sarge, who was still tying the prisoner's hands behind him, asked the stripling if he would not like to join them, and try his hand at being a thief himself.
"Look at us," he said, nodding at the brigands where they stood in a half-circle around. "The dregs of half the armies in Europe. We've been at war, man and boy, for our entire lives, and all it got us was sore feet and empty bellies. Well, most of us except for 'Parnasse... posh lad, a real toff who fell on hard times, the poor thing. The mildest-mannered young man that e'er cut a throat; with such true breeding of a gentleman you never could divine his real thoughts. So... where were we? Aha! We've been all, sans 'Parnasse, at war for our entire lives, and all it got us was sore feet and empty bellies. Now we fight for ourselves alone, and claim for our own the spoils of our combat. You have the look of a man well-accustomed to fighting, of a warrior, and what's more, of a leader, as I know from all the lieutenants I served under... those expendable striplings I barely got to know, shot before my very own eyes. Well, I am not saying all of them were like you, my lad, for some of them were quite conceited and others were rather puny, but you get the picture. I do not know how you got ahold of those fine horses and silk cloth we took from you, but stay with us and I can promise you more."
"That old blighter?" The dark maiden pointed at the Sarge, who was still wincing and clutching his private parts, as she scoffed. "He's a thief and a villain, and so are all the rest of you, and myself as well."
"Very well, you spoilt little brat," the older woman growled. "Keep her then — but mind you don't let her out of your sight..."
The Sarge, who was still tying the prisoner's hands behind him, asked the stripling if he would not like to join them, and try his hand at being a thief himself.
"Look at us," he said, nodding at the brigands where they stood in a half-circle around. "The dregs of half the armies in Europe. We've been at war, man and boy, for our entire lives, and all it got us was sore feet and empty bellies. Well, most of us except for 'Parnasse... posh lad, a real toff who fell on hard times, the poor thing. The mildest-mannered young man that e'er cut a throat; with such true breeding of a gentleman you never could divine his real thoughts. So... where were we? Aha! We've been all, sans 'Parnasse, at war for our entire lives, and all it got us was sore feet and empty bellies. Now we fight for ourselves alone, and claim for our own the spoils of our combat. You have the look of a man well-accustomed to fighting, of a warrior, and what's more, of a leader, as I know from all the lieutenants I served under... those expendable striplings I barely got to know, shot before my very own eyes. Well, I am not saying all of them were like you, my lad, for some of them were quite conceited and others were rather puny, but you get the picture. I do not know how you got ahold of those fine horses and silk cloth we took from you, but stay with us and I can promise you more."
Looking about his surroundings, at the darkness and the circle of sinister faces around, Enjolras thought that the non-commissioned officer's promises of riches and ease to be gained by a life of highway robbery did not quite agree with the dismal condition of his living quarters; besides which, he had always been an honest man, and had made his living through his own efforts and not by stealing the property of others from their rightful owners. Why else would he start a revolution, and a secret society, in the first place?
But those were only a small part of the feelings that impelled him to decline. "I am searching for someone," he told the non-commissioned officer. "A friend who has gone away. I have walked so far in my searching that I have nearly walked the soles off my old pair of boots, and I will not stop until I have found my friend and we are together again."
"Ah," said the robber wisely, as he pulled a pipe from within his coat. "A woman. I might have known. I almost gave the soldiering life up myself, once, for a woman. Would have, indeed, had the peace not been signed just in time for her to become Madame Thénardier and the mother of our children... And I would have lived to regret it, mark me if I wouldn't. If she's gone off and left you, my advice is to forget all about her." And he lit his pipe, stuck the end of it in his mouth, and began to puff out foul-smelling clouds of pipe smoke.
"Ah," said the robber wisely, as he pulled a pipe from within his coat. "A woman. I might have known. I almost gave the soldiering life up myself, once, for a woman. Would have, indeed, had the peace not been signed just in time for her to become Madame Thénardier and the mother of our children... And I would have lived to regret it, mark me if I wouldn't. If she's gone off and left you, my advice is to forget all about her." And he lit his pipe, stuck the end of it in his mouth, and began to puff out foul-smelling clouds of pipe smoke.
Blushing slightly, Enjolras explained to Sergeant Thénardier that he was mistaken, and that the friend he sought was a man, a good friend and classmate of his, whom he had overlooked until his untimely disappearance, who had been lured away into the wide world by a carriage that seemed to be made of greenery.
"Ah, you didn't look quite straight to me... he he he... It is my business to know a great many things," the brigand said, with a shrug. "I'm afraid it will do you little good, though." Then he informed the fair student that if he did not see fit to join their merry band, they had no choice but to hold him for ransom. "For 'Ponine likes you, and would like as not cry for days on end if we were to cut your throat."
In response to these words, the maiden came and pried him away from the men holding onto his arms, embracing the hand-tied Enjolras so tightly that he thought she was going to crush every bone in his body, and then told him, very slowly as if she thought the young man might be less than intelligent, that as long as he swore friendship with her she would never let any harm come to her captive.
The robber maiden smiled with pleasure and nodded, satisfied. "Y'see, Papa, Maman?" And the sergeant, the vice-leader of the robbers, was not pleased, but secretly he was was a bit afraid of his daughter, as much as of his wife who spoiled the girl rotten, and rather than let his men see that, he acquiesced grudgingly and let 'Ponine drag the finely-dressed traveller off to their lair by calèche, as co-passengers. "We shall ride home in comfort!" she declared triumphantly, as the other outlaws, including her parents, stepped out of the way.
In response to these words, the maiden came and pried him away from the men holding onto his arms, embracing the hand-tied Enjolras so tightly that he thought she was going to crush every bone in his body, and then told him, very slowly as if she thought the young man might be less than intelligent, that as long as he swore friendship with her she would never let any harm come to her captive.
The robber maiden smiled with pleasure and nodded, satisfied. "Y'see, Papa, Maman?" And the sergeant, the vice-leader of the robbers, was not pleased, but secretly he was was a bit afraid of his daughter, as much as of his wife who spoiled the girl rotten, and rather than let his men see that, he acquiesced grudgingly and let 'Ponine drag the finely-dressed traveller off to their lair by calèche, as co-passengers. "We shall ride home in comfort!" she declared triumphantly, as the other outlaws, including her parents, stepped out of the way.
That seemed to settle the matter, and soon Enjolras found himself sitting back in the Fauchelevents' carriage, which rolled over ditches and gnarled roots into the depths of the forest, now being driven back to the bandit hideout; with his hands tied behind his back, the initial shock already wearing off of him, already saved from certain death or torture; and his captor, the daughter of the outlaw leader, holding the other end of the rope. Though she had saved his life, the captive still looked at her with fear. Now he could see clearer what she looked like. The robber maiden was not yet twenty, with tangled dark hair and a mournful look in her pitch black eyes, for all that she smiled so fiercely. She was about the same age and height as Cosette, but much stronger; she was sturdy and rough and dark-skinned from her harsh outdoor life, and her hair was coal-black and half-short, and kept out of her face by a ribbon, not fair and long like Cosette's. And the outlaw girl's eyes were as night-black as those of the heiress were day-blue. She was stronger, broader of shoulders and more muscular of limbs; her teeth were surprisingly well-kept, white, and sharp, making hers a beautiful mouth; and her whole nimble frame dressed in a tattered overcoat and torn trousers of rough fabric, with a deerskin cloak wrapped on top, instead of a corset and silken, lacy pristine petticoats; and her raven head was hatted with a worn, broken opera hat instead of a lacy bonnet. Long story short, the robber maiden was as catlike as Cosette was birdlike, as boyish as Cosette was feminine. Her dark eyes flashed menacingly, and there was a dangerous wildness in her nature, but there was also restlessness, and sorrow, and longing, and a melancholy expression.
She clasped Enjolras by the waist, so brusquely that he was startled, and held him tight, close to her, as she addressed him at point-blank range in her hoarse voice, that was less like a boy's and far more like a frog's:"Keep calm. As sure as my name is Éponine Thénardier: as long as I'm fond of you, as long as you don't make me get cross with you, we shan't have you killed, shall we, Your Lordlingship? They shall not kill you as long as you don’t make us angry with you. As long as I'm fond of you, you're safe and sound, or I'm not a Thénardier! I suppose you are a great general? I suppose you're at least a viscount, or at least a baron or a chevalier, right? Fess up!"
He sighed, taking but a little comfort from those words. The attire, trousseau, and attelage he had been given were, though austere, at least slightly ostentatious. "No... we Enjolras have never been aristocrats. Just wealthy landowners, and horse breeders, in the Camargue. It happens to be by chance that I find myself in such a grand carriage... By the way... Éponine... that's a lovely name, I have never heard before..."
"It's for the Celtic goddess of horses. Maman picked my name. I once had a sister called Azelma, a green-eyed, nutbrown little girl who died in the crossfire, she was shot down when we had to leave our village... She was named after a storybook heroine. But you... you look as much like a southerner as I look like a northerner... and I have never been down south in my life... what's it like? I've heard it's most delightful as to scenery and climate, laved by the soft waters of the Mediterranean, its climate is ideal; but maybe these are the romantic rêveries of a northerner weary of the cold and rains, so I'd like to hear it from a born and bred southerner..."
"Well, it's rather hot and dry and sunny, so hot that you the month of Thermidor was most rightfully named, and one cannot spend a summer day without having a swim. The woods are way brighter, without any ferns or berry bushes, and the sea is blue and cool, and there are soft sand dunes along the coast... and the scent of rosemary and lavender, and of the breeze, cannot be more refreshing... so I prefer springtime in my birthplace, definitely."
And so, he told Éponine the whole story of his life, and presently he began to tell her the story of his adventures thus far in the wide world. The loneliness of an only child of rank, the rambles among ruins and dunes and lavender in the Mediterranean breeze, the excitement of making friends in Paris with the Law degree, the revolutionary spirit of the decade, the little club he had with his friends at the Café Musain, Combeferre's puzzles and earnest discourses on the steering of montgolfières, Jehan Prouvaire's flute-playing and flower boxes, Joly taking his pulse when he was nervous, the quirks of all the others... and Grantaire. How much he missed the wit and the pluck of that drunken cynic, and how much his kidnapper reminded Enjolras of the missing friend he hoped to find.
She listened all journey long with eyes and mouth agape, with the most serious attention, at the blond young man who had seemed to her such a sheltered lordling, but to whom such strange things had occurred, and who now revealed himself to be, if not literally a great general, at least a hero like those of the stories and the plays she loved to read, freeing the oppressed from tyranny; a leader, a rebel, a dreamer, a quester. That epic tale made her long for both Paris and the Mediterranean, as well as for friends of her own, and out of the dangerous life she led...
In fact, Éponine seemed particularly interested in hearing about the impending Revolution, and so Enjolras elaborated on that part, talking until he was nearly hoarse, and they had reached their destination.
"Ah," she sighed with contentment, when he was done. "You are a fine storyteller, indeed. In fact, I shan't let the others kill you even if you do vex me—, not even if we two should quarrel—, for then I'll do it myself!"
"How comforting," Enjolras said, stifling a yawn.
"It's the least I can do," Éponine replied, oblivious to the finer points of irony.
When he had ended his tale, the dark maiden looked earnestly at him, nodded her head slightly, and dried up his few tears, as she said, raising her head with a defiant air:
"They shan't kill you, the people outside won't kill you if you make any of us angry, for even if Maman or Papa get cross with you, and even if I do get cross with you myself... as sure as my name is Éponine Thénardier, for I will do it myself! We shall see, we'll see!" At this, she pulled a slim, sharp-looking dagger from her left boot and, flicking her wrist, grinned ferociously at her fair prisoner... and then, she seized the thick volume of Shakespeare and placed it, open, on her lap, and spent the rest of the trip perusing those tragedies that were so intense and so harrowing. How exciting it was! Meanwhile, Enjolras wondered if a girl of her rank could be that well-read, and if she could understand such difficult language in the first place.
They drove deeper and deeper into the forest, entertained with their lively conversation, and the trees around them grew larger and larger, until they were riding through great, age-warped firs as big as the columns of a cathedral. The ground was covered by a thick carpet of their needles, which muffled the horses' footsteps, and there were no smaller plants of any sort, no ferns or bushes or flowers, to be seen, not, as you might think, because it was winter, but because nothing else can grow where a conifer's needles have fallen.
Eventually, the carriage and the band stopped; they had reached the courtyard of the lair of the brigands, a gloomy, broken-down Loire-Valley-style estate that had definitely seen better days during the Valois reign, and been left to ruin shortly before the Thermidor coup. When they came to the hideout, it was past nightfall, and the whole lair-castle was twilit dark. It was old and tumbledown; the walls were cracked from derelict towers through cracked-tile-pavement floor to the dungeons underneath, the once perfectly-trimmed French garden around had been claimed by the woods, and the carriage had stopped in the middle of the courtyard. As they entered, a huge murder of wild crows and magpies took to flight, cawing and fluttering out of every nook and cranny. Through a hole in a derelict tower roof, a large eagle-owl flew out with an ominous hoot.
In a corner of the courtyard, eight or nine horses, saddled and ready to depart, were tethered to the pillars, stomping with impatience. Some of them even kicked their front legs forwards, seeming to recognise Éponine. Along the walls, various weapons, both firearms and blades, as well as worn and torn cloaks and uniform coats, were scattered pêle-mêle.
Éponine dragged her prisoner along with the rope, with such strength that Enjolras feared that he would stumble with every step he took.
A few toothless men with gray hair and faces that were not at all nice (maybe the fathers of the male robbers) were sitting around playing cards, spitting at each other and cussing by turn. A great bonfire roared in the middle to keep everyone well supplied in warmth and light. In the middle of the courtyard, another fire was burning upon the sooty Renaissance floor tiles, and a large wrought-iron cauldron was bubbling hot with a soup of unknown ingredients. There was also a cauldron of soup on the fire, and it smelled so good that one would have dared to look in the pot. On one of three great spits close by, a whole fawn or young doe was roasting over an open fire, and, on the two other spits, two dozen wild rabbits or so were roasting as well for the outlaws' supper.
"Have you ever tasted roasted rabbit aux fines herbes?" Éponine asked, elbowing her fair prisoner in the side.
"Jamais," Enjolras replied with a sigh.
"Tu as tort," replied the dark maiden, tearing a bunny from the third spit, before beginning to devour it with her hands and mouth, without any cutlery. "C'est très bon..." One could barely hear her voice through all that chewing and lip-smacking.
There was, as we have said, a cauldron of stew on the fire, and it smelled so good that the prisoner dared to look in the pot; he was relieved to see it was rabbit stew and ate as much as he could hold.
A few toothless men with gray hair and faces that were not at all nice (maybe the fathers of the male robbers) were sitting around playing cards, spitting at each other and cussing by turn. A great bonfire roared in the middle to keep everyone well supplied in warmth and light. In the middle of the courtyard, another fire was burning upon the sooty Renaissance floor tiles, and a large wrought-iron cauldron was bubbling hot with a soup of unknown ingredients. There was also a cauldron of soup on the fire, and it smelled so good that one would have dared to look in the pot. On one of three great spits close by, a whole fawn or young doe was roasting over an open fire, and, on the two other spits, two dozen wild rabbits or so were roasting as well for the outlaws' supper.
"Have you ever tasted roasted rabbit aux fines herbes?" Éponine asked, elbowing her fair prisoner in the side.
"Jamais," Enjolras replied with a sigh.
"Tu as tort," replied the dark maiden, tearing a bunny from the third spit, before beginning to devour it with her hands and mouth, without any cutlery. "C'est très bon..." One could barely hear her voice through all that chewing and lip-smacking.
There was, as we have said, a cauldron of stew on the fire, and it smelled so good that the prisoner dared to look in the pot; he was relieved to see it was rabbit stew and ate as much as he could hold.
The two young people were then given each one a bowl of mushroom and carrot soup (the first spoonful was more delicious than the cauldron looked at first sight) and a whole roasted rabbit. Éponine handed him a bowl of the soup and started to eat from her own hungrily, slurping and exchanging talk with her men about the spoils. They were all pleased and ate calmly, calculating how much money they could get from selling their captive’s trousseau.
When she had finished her soup, and before tucking into the rabbit, the robber maiden knocked back a cupful of crystal-clear eau-de-vie. "This is to make a hole in the gut, to make room for more, and to keep the cold out of one's self, of course," she explained before refilling the cup and putting it to the captive's lips.
"Eh..." he hesitated with a sigh, sober as he frequently was, and not that sure.
"Trou normand. Old northern custom, y'know. Have you ever had a trou normand before?" she asked once more, elbowing her fair prisoner in the side.
"Jamais," Enjolras replied with a sigh.
Instinctively and instantly, Éponine poured the liquor by force into the fair leader's half-open mouth. It was a drink so strong that it seared the stripling's throat as it went down. Wincing and teary-eyed, he watched her take another bite of handheld roasted rabbit, without any cutlery, and, though not accustomed, he had no choice but to eat in the same way. After all, the robber woman had not knocked back two, but three shots of that trou normand liquor, and was now ferociously tearing her rabbit apart, like a beast of prey would. The prisoner's gaze darted from the hefty blonde to the petite raven-haired girl once more.
"Welcome to the Thénardier family! And now we're going to bed, my prisoner! You shall sleep with me tonight, eh? Tu dormiras cette nuit avec moi dans mon lit... And you are warned of this; the first time you try to escape, to flee this place, I shall slit your throat and drink your blood while it's still warm; that will keep you so calm...!" Éponine told him after they had eaten, tugging at Enjolras' hand-ties. Steeling himself, the fair captive was rushed through the doors and across the castle's great hall to a dark little corner at the rear, where a pile of deer furs, tapestries, and upholstery torn off other carriage seats made a soft bed on the floor. It was a far cozier sleeping place than you might suppose. And even cozier for one who had just knocked back a shot of eau-de-vie and was feeling all warm and fuzzy inside.
"Come, we sleep by day here. I've a soft bed of furs and upholstery at the back of this courtyard. Lie down with me and rest, and tonight you can tell me another story," she had said. And in spite of the smell of gunsmoke and liquor-laced vomit and Thénardier musk, which was quite appalling, the furs and the cloths were indeed soft and warm, and Enjolras found sleep did not come as slowly as he'd thought it would.
"And now you will tell me another story," said she, sitting cross-legged on the furs and grinning up at the fair leader cheerfully. "The rest of those villains tell the same ones over and over, and I am tired of hearing them. Not about your journey, for you have already told me that one. I want to hear about the wars you have been in, and the battles you have fought... freeing the oppressed from tyranny."
Then he had no choice but to repeat his story over again, though tonight it made his heart hurt to think of Grantaire and those long ago days in their little garden or at the Musain. When he reached the part of the story where he realised Cosette's fiancée was not the one he sought, he had to stop for a minute and draw a few deep breaths; luckily, Éponine was snoring already, and so he wasn't vexed, until he shifted for a little and thus woke her up, explaining their calling in more detail to her:
"Nothing to say... really... The Revolution... Our group is not a little after-class club where we posh boys play at heroes, but something serious, Éponine. The colours of the world are changing day by day, and a blood red dawn will rise at the end of this long night of oppression. Not all of us are southerners, or students, or upper class, and we might even take in a plucky girl like you. Three words: Liberté. Égalité. Fraternité. The Bastille lies in ruins, but the ancien régime still stands strong, though it is already wavering. All of us would die for the cause of freedom. Though we have not even felled, or even wounded, a single National Guard yet, I have got the feeling that soon shots shall ring and blood shall flow..."
Here he made a pause as she listened attentively.
"Do you really mean... that I can become one of you?" Éponine asked eagerly.
"Pourquoi pas? You will be the second female, after Louison the Café dishwasher, to receive permission to enter our secret lair!" Enjolras nodded in response and smiled at her, already imagining Courfeyrac flirting with her and singing some Spanish love song in her honour, Combeferre drawing her with charcoal as he annotated passages of Hugo's Shakespeare with the corresponding passages in de Vigny, Joly taking her aside to caché the dark maiden, explaining to the others that: "Best to be sure she hasn't got the pox. Like mother like daughter; camp followers really get around, and, Enjolras, you said she looked nothing like the Sarge..." This thought led to the fact that the fair prisoner, pointing at the sutler woman, had become suddenly curious about his captor's parentage.
When she had finished her soup, and before tucking into the rabbit, the robber maiden knocked back a cupful of crystal-clear eau-de-vie. "This is to make a hole in the gut, to make room for more, and to keep the cold out of one's self, of course," she explained before refilling the cup and putting it to the captive's lips.
"Eh..." he hesitated with a sigh, sober as he frequently was, and not that sure.
"Trou normand. Old northern custom, y'know. Have you ever had a trou normand before?" she asked once more, elbowing her fair prisoner in the side.
"Jamais," Enjolras replied with a sigh.
Instinctively and instantly, Éponine poured the liquor by force into the fair leader's half-open mouth. It was a drink so strong that it seared the stripling's throat as it went down. Wincing and teary-eyed, he watched her take another bite of handheld roasted rabbit, without any cutlery, and, though not accustomed, he had no choice but to eat in the same way. After all, the robber woman had not knocked back two, but three shots of that trou normand liquor, and was now ferociously tearing her rabbit apart, like a beast of prey would. The prisoner's gaze darted from the hefty blonde to the petite raven-haired girl once more.
"Welcome to the Thénardier family! And now we're going to bed, my prisoner! You shall sleep with me tonight, eh? Tu dormiras cette nuit avec moi dans mon lit... And you are warned of this; the first time you try to escape, to flee this place, I shall slit your throat and drink your blood while it's still warm; that will keep you so calm...!" Éponine told him after they had eaten, tugging at Enjolras' hand-ties. Steeling himself, the fair captive was rushed through the doors and across the castle's great hall to a dark little corner at the rear, where a pile of deer furs, tapestries, and upholstery torn off other carriage seats made a soft bed on the floor. It was a far cozier sleeping place than you might suppose. And even cozier for one who had just knocked back a shot of eau-de-vie and was feeling all warm and fuzzy inside.
"Come, we sleep by day here. I've a soft bed of furs and upholstery at the back of this courtyard. Lie down with me and rest, and tonight you can tell me another story," she had said. And in spite of the smell of gunsmoke and liquor-laced vomit and Thénardier musk, which was quite appalling, the furs and the cloths were indeed soft and warm, and Enjolras found sleep did not come as slowly as he'd thought it would.
"And now you will tell me another story," said she, sitting cross-legged on the furs and grinning up at the fair leader cheerfully. "The rest of those villains tell the same ones over and over, and I am tired of hearing them. Not about your journey, for you have already told me that one. I want to hear about the wars you have been in, and the battles you have fought... freeing the oppressed from tyranny."
Then he had no choice but to repeat his story over again, though tonight it made his heart hurt to think of Grantaire and those long ago days in their little garden or at the Musain. When he reached the part of the story where he realised Cosette's fiancée was not the one he sought, he had to stop for a minute and draw a few deep breaths; luckily, Éponine was snoring already, and so he wasn't vexed, until he shifted for a little and thus woke her up, explaining their calling in more detail to her:
"Nothing to say... really... The Revolution... Our group is not a little after-class club where we posh boys play at heroes, but something serious, Éponine. The colours of the world are changing day by day, and a blood red dawn will rise at the end of this long night of oppression. Not all of us are southerners, or students, or upper class, and we might even take in a plucky girl like you. Three words: Liberté. Égalité. Fraternité. The Bastille lies in ruins, but the ancien régime still stands strong, though it is already wavering. All of us would die for the cause of freedom. Though we have not even felled, or even wounded, a single National Guard yet, I have got the feeling that soon shots shall ring and blood shall flow..."
Here he made a pause as she listened attentively.
"Do you really mean... that I can become one of you?" Éponine asked eagerly.
"Pourquoi pas? You will be the second female, after Louison the Café dishwasher, to receive permission to enter our secret lair!" Enjolras nodded in response and smiled at her, already imagining Courfeyrac flirting with her and singing some Spanish love song in her honour, Combeferre drawing her with charcoal as he annotated passages of Hugo's Shakespeare with the corresponding passages in de Vigny, Joly taking her aside to caché the dark maiden, explaining to the others that: "Best to be sure she hasn't got the pox. Like mother like daughter; camp followers really get around, and, Enjolras, you said she looked nothing like the Sarge..." This thought led to the fact that the fair prisoner, pointing at the sutler woman, had become suddenly curious about his captor's parentage.
"Is your Maman the brawny blonde, with a sprig of holly in her messy fair hair? There's no other lady in the band, is there?" he asked Éponine.
Éponine nodded. "And Papa is the Sarge... or so I think, because he's Maman's husband and the two of them have raised me. Even though I don't look like either of them... But the chain of command is clear at our place, both here and at the inn up north. Papa's the Sarge, like he was in the ranks; Maman's the Lieutenant, and I am the fricking General! Well, I once was the Colonel, as soon as Azelma was born, but, when she was shot down and we had to leave, I got my old rank back... And no one outranks a General, right?"
"Even if it is a General-In-Rags?" Enjolras asked, and the dark girl burst into hearty laughter in response.
"Crazy ironic; how much you remind me of him once more..." he told her, rumpling her short raven hair as the robber girl sighed and murmured. The liquor was already going up to his head and stripping the fair student of his inhibitions, unaccustomed as he was to strong drink. Éponine, however, seemed to be as level-headed as if she had drunk eau de roche (water from a rock spring) instead of eau-de-vie. Like Grantaire, she must have got used to drinking liquor since childhood...
While rifling Enjolras' trunk, she seized the thick book and, upon reading some lines from a page she had chosen at random, she could not contain her elation.
"Oh... Mercutio, please don't...! Ah, he was witty till the bitter end, and the translation conveys that last pun perfectly into French!" Shuffling some more pages forwards, she sighed: "What memories... Those were the days..."
"Not only can you read, but you love it as well, eh, Éponine?" Enjolras asked her, surprised by the robber girl's literacy and passion for the classics.
She nodded with a smile... "Four or five years since I last read some classical literature; and, you know, time runs differently in the woods. Is this a new translation?"
The golden-haired young man nodded. "A good friend of some people who helped me, of those who gave me all these provisions; one Victor Hugo... oui, this is the most vivid Shakespeare I have ever read! I wonder what Combeferre would say about this version..."
"Isn't it, right?" Her dark eyes drank eagerly in every line; she was reading Othello and nudging her fair prisoner every now and then... as the fair leader pictured himself a lively conversation on literature between his bespectacled lieutenant and this girl; the former with his usual rational sang-froid, the latter far more passionate and stubbornly defending her own subjective opinion on the characters and events.
"Y'know? This is the best Othello ever! Especially how this Hugo guy renders Iago... Reminds me of Papa, a lot. Except that Papa would rather flirt with girls," Éponine chortled. "The non-commissioned officer and his army wife, trapped in a loveless marriage. As old as war, isn't it? Only that, in this tragedy, they are childless... and the reason may be that... Listen, Enj, and 'scuse me if I lambast your view of this character and this tragedy: Iago is not exactly straight."
Enjolras gasped, his heart leaping up to his throat.
"In my mind's eye, I see Iago leaning quite closely on Cassio, watching the young lieutenant eagerly, addressing him always in that easy and merry tone, though he doesn't regret discrediting Cassio at all. The title should have been The Irony of Iago, shouldn't it? The irony of a not-exactly-straight non-com falling for his straight immediate superior..."
"If Grantaire were more into high culture..." Enjolras muttered. He had never heard that approach before, seeing Iago as just the catalyst of the piece and nothing more. But Éponine's personal insight on those characters was beginning to unravel truths about himself.
"Don'tya believe? Well, the reason why (here, she laid the book on his lap and pointed to the lines in question with a flicking index finger) is given by Iago himself. Right when he's about to kill Cassio, no less!
And, like that, Éponine, tightly clasping Enjolras' waist with her right arm and clutching a surprisingly sharp Bowie knife in her left hand, drifted off into a deep sleep, and began to snore so loudly that she could be heard from the courtyard, but her prisoner stayed awake, without even being able to shut his eyes, seeing into the hall where the bandits drank and sang and danced in the firelight.
"Ceux qui me veulent faire une pipe,
qu'ils avancent deux pas en avant,
pour embrasser la croix que ma piche
formera avec celle du lieutenant...!"
Thus sang Sergeant Thénardier way off key, way too loudly, and in a way too slurred tone; the other men of the band forming the backup chorus, as his wife cajoled and flirted with the young dandy in Prussian blue, whose surname the prisoner now understood to be Montparnasse, and sipped some eau-de-vie as they drank to one another.
The songs of that evening were far more risqué and vulgar than any of those he ever had heard Grantaire sing at the Café, and the tankards were clanked together more frequently and louder; the quaffing was deep and the gambling was serious, and the outlaws even cheated and drew steel, or fired shots, over who had cheated, every now and then, in the midst of ear-deafening shouts; some of the robbers were already drunk. Pistols went off, but they were poorly aimed and not meant to actually hit anything. The Sarge was already almost dead drunk; and his wife turned cartwheels and somersaults — a frightening spectacle, which made our hero wonder a woman her age and physique, in that state of intoxication, could perform so deftly (after all, she was significantly older and larger than Grantaire) — and the other outlaws, except the sleeping maiden, roared their approval. It would all have been a terrible sight for a young man of rank to see. But, though unfazed by this scene, Enjolras could not close his eyes at all, he could not catch a wink of sleep, not knowing whether he should live or die, whether he was to leave this place unscathed or subjected to torture. Still, the leader's daughter, that dark garçon manqué, had taken a shine to him... who would ever have expected that?
Enjolras closed his eyes and tried to go to sleep then, but he could feel the gentle bite of the Bowie blade pressing against his thigh, and he wondered whether he would get out of this place alive after all. Outside, a twig snapped, and he lay awake listening, his body cold with dread, with growing despair. What was he doing in this place? Grantaire must surely be long dead now. What good would it do to get himself killed, as well? Would that bring Grantaire back? He'd be much better off trying to kill the Thénardiers and escape, and forget about Grantaire, and return to the Right Bank and to the friends he had left there, to rally them against the ancien régime, until all of them fell like lilies before the scythe, facing the bayonets. He was fooling himself, anyway. Anyway, Grantaire had stopped loving him months before he'd disappeared. Why couldn't he seem to accept that?
Watching the flames dance in the firelight, and listening to the songs and shouts in the courtyard, Enjolras tried to think of what he should do. The Fauchelevents would certainly pay his ransom, he thought, but they had already been so very generous that he was loathe to cost them any further expense (especially now that Marius and Cosette had at last found one another, and that her guardian had settled down). Ought he to lie, and pretend to join the robber band, and then slip away at the earliest opportunity? Perhaps that might have worked, had he thought of it earlier, but he had already given the leader of the band his refusal.
Anyway, he was feeling more comfortable about Éponine, realising that the maiden was not cruel, just bad-mannered and sometimes thoughtless. The robber girl was certainly tough as nails; she wrestled with outlaw boys much bigger and older, especially that 'Parnasse guy, the dandy, and she always won. It was quite obvious that the fop, though he had a sword-cane just like Courfeyrac's, was no match for that hoyden, who would always give him a black eye or a few broken bones (much like Enjolras himself would not stand the least chance against her either). The boys, especially Montparnasse, always complained that she bit and scratched them, but she laughed and sneered in response, saying that she had sharp teeth, and nails, and a keen eye for marksmanship, so she might as well use those skills. Éponine was not always kind; but Éponine was strong, and clever, and unafraid, and left-handed, and those were gifts enough to help her get by.
What's more, though she was an outlaw, though her parents were a camp follower and a non-commissioned officer, she could not only read and write, but was unusually cultured and learned and well-read for a girl of her backdrop, and obviously accustomed to have all her wishes gratified, however impossible they might be. All that lively conversation about literature and classical drama that they had had during the carriage trip and after supper? Enjolras did not expect at all that she should have that much knowledge on the subject...
[···] (Enj's musings on that Enjonine conversation on theatre, etc. detailed in the commentaries below. As well as his thoughts on gender roles, the uselessness of the society wife, and how both Enjolras and Éponine criticise this gender role. Also mentioning the only three men who have not flustered her: "Papa, 'Parnasse, and you." It ends with a reference to the Green Faery/Morrigan/Belle Dame Sans Merci)
"Oh yes... of course..." she muttered, still clasping Enjolras' waist, half asleep and half awake. "Oui, I have seen that fellow... Grand... R..."
The blond's ears perked up. Wouldn't she tell him, he implored, what he was doing, and where he was going?
"He was... sitting down in... the Green Faery's carriage... which passed tout près... so close that it grazed the ramparts of the keep... and then against the full moon..."
"And whither was she going?" Enjolras demanded.
"She has probably gone to... her own fortress... in the far north... where the skies are always... clouded and dire..." Éponine slurred, nodding off.
"Oh, poor Grantaire... how cold he must be feeling!" Enjolras sighed and thought to himself. For the first time, he felt that he was a step closer to learning his friend's true fate. "Did he really exchange his walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? Tell me you are not just toying with me," he pleaded. "Tell me you speak the truth."
Then, suddenly noticing that the prisoner was stirring by her side, the robber maiden awoke with a start, looking rather tense.
"Reste tranquille," she told him. "Shut up, and, besides, don't stir like that... or else, to keep you tranquil, my blade will slip into your side, and plunge all the way into your heart..." she drew steel and flicked the wrist that held her Bowie wistfully.
The fair leader thought it would be wiser to confirm to the commands of this self-proclaimed general, lest she put her spoken threat into reality. He kept silence, without even moving a muscle, and spent all night long staring up at the night sky and thinking about the Green Faery, if she ever existed in real life.
After some time had passed, Éponine opened her eyes and sat up, withdrawing from her bedclothes a Bowie knife of the most wicked sharpness, which she proceeded to use to cut her prisoner's bonds. Her frown deepened, but then she relaxed and cut the rope on the young student's hands.
“Don’t try to escape, we know the woods better than you and will catch you before you get too far. I have some things to take care of, but once I’m back, we’ll go to sleep.” She turned on her heel and strode back to the camp, where the men celebrated.
Enjolras watched her back sadly, rubbing his sore wrists. Her mother was not very pleasant in the mornings, 'Ponine said, and she didn't like to try and get her to wake up on her own. Usually she brought one of the lower-ranking robbers with her for moral support; but as her new best friend, that job had officially been passed on to Enjolras himself.
“Do you always have that knife with you while you are asleep?” he asked, looking at the weapon with some astonishment.
“I always sleep with the knife by me,” said the robber maiden. “ And with a loaded pistol as well. No one knows what may happen. But now tell me again all about your friend, and why you went out into the world.”
Then, Enjolras repeated his story over again, while all around them the rest of the robber band slept, having finally yielded to intoxication.
While rifling Enjolras' trunk, she seized the thick book and, upon reading some lines from a page she had chosen at random, she could not contain her elation.
"Oh... Mercutio, please don't...! Ah, he was witty till the bitter end, and the translation conveys that last pun perfectly into French!" Shuffling some more pages forwards, she sighed: "What memories... Those were the days..."
"Not only can you read, but you love it as well, eh, Éponine?" Enjolras asked her, surprised by the robber girl's literacy and passion for the classics.
She nodded with a smile... "Four or five years since I last read some classical literature; and, you know, time runs differently in the woods. Is this a new translation?"
The golden-haired young man nodded. "A good friend of some people who helped me, of those who gave me all these provisions; one Victor Hugo... oui, this is the most vivid Shakespeare I have ever read! I wonder what Combeferre would say about this version..."
"Isn't it, right?" Her dark eyes drank eagerly in every line; she was reading Othello and nudging her fair prisoner every now and then... as the fair leader pictured himself a lively conversation on literature between his bespectacled lieutenant and this girl; the former with his usual rational sang-froid, the latter far more passionate and stubbornly defending her own subjective opinion on the characters and events.
"Y'know? This is the best Othello ever! Especially how this Hugo guy renders Iago... Reminds me of Papa, a lot. Except that Papa would rather flirt with girls," Éponine chortled. "The non-commissioned officer and his army wife, trapped in a loveless marriage. As old as war, isn't it? Only that, in this tragedy, they are childless... and the reason may be that... Listen, Enj, and 'scuse me if I lambast your view of this character and this tragedy: Iago is not exactly straight."
Enjolras gasped, his heart leaping up to his throat.
"In my mind's eye, I see Iago leaning quite closely on Cassio, watching the young lieutenant eagerly, addressing him always in that easy and merry tone, though he doesn't regret discrediting Cassio at all. The title should have been The Irony of Iago, shouldn't it? The irony of a not-exactly-straight non-com falling for his straight immediate superior..."
"If Grantaire were more into high culture..." Enjolras muttered. He had never heard that approach before, seeing Iago as just the catalyst of the piece and nothing more. But Éponine's personal insight on those characters was beginning to unravel truths about himself.
"Don'tya believe? Well, the reason why (here, she laid the book on his lap and pointed to the lines in question with a flicking index finger) is given by Iago himself. Right when he's about to kill Cassio, no less!
'Si Cassio survit, — il a dans sa vie une beauté quotidienne — qui me rend laid…'
"I have never had a friend. Maybe I shall keep you here forever with me."
Iago wears, for once in the whole tragedy, his heart upon his sleeve! But why looking so glum, Enj?"
Tightening the ribbon in his golden queue, he sighed as he looked away. Those lines... "A daily beauty in his life that makes me...?" Something began to lighten within his chest. Why had Grantaire always been looking so wistfully at him with those glazed eyes? Why had he smiled like that whenever Enjolras brought him a cool drink in bed after a night of revels? Why had the leader himself always been denying his feelings and turning his back against someone who...? Now there was no turning back. Grantaire must have been feeling towards Enjolras what Iago felt towards Cassio. The realisation struck the fair leader like a bullet right between the eyes. He had never been in such a state of shock.
"Eh... pardon me, Éponine. Just something that I suddenly..." he finally replied after a quarter of an hour, upon seeing that she had grown so impatient that she was pointing the muzzle of a pistol towards his solar plexus. "Is it so that you sleep with that most surely loaded gun by your side?"
"Toujours", replied the robber maiden. "And of course it's loaded! And also with my trusty Bowie knife; on ne sait pas ce qui peut arriver!" she chuckled and drew out from a crack in the wall, as if from a scabbard, her other weapon to show the prisoner, who hastened to catch her wrist. She stopped and frowned on him in confusion. “Please don’t! I believe you, please don’t hurt..." 'Ponine's frown deepened, but then she relaxed as quickly as she had got tense. She passed her right arm around the nape of Enjolras' neck, and held the pistol in her left hand. "Each and every night, after all, may be our last, the one we go to sleep and never awaken... so isn't it a wise philosophy to live as if each and every day were the last one? And, by the way... Isn't it... strange?"
"Toujours", replied the robber maiden. "And of course it's loaded! And also with my trusty Bowie knife; on ne sait pas ce qui peut arriver!" she chuckled and drew out from a crack in the wall, as if from a scabbard, her other weapon to show the prisoner, who hastened to catch her wrist. She stopped and frowned on him in confusion. “Please don’t! I believe you, please don’t hurt..." 'Ponine's frown deepened, but then she relaxed as quickly as she had got tense. She passed her right arm around the nape of Enjolras' neck, and held the pistol in her left hand. "Each and every night, after all, may be our last, the one we go to sleep and never awaken... so isn't it a wise philosophy to live as if each and every day were the last one? And, by the way... Isn't it... strange?"
She finally lowered the gun and came closer. "Wot is that strange?"
"How often literature mirrors reality," he sighed. "Iago and Emilia are indeed similar to your parents, you said. Right?"
She nodded with a smile in response. "Or, also... think of the wicked stepfamily and Cinderella. There are still orphans whose guardians treat them like dirt, forcing them to know no childhood at all, while they pamper their own children, encouraging them to be children, and forbid them to make friends with the little servants. Then, a powerful person shows up to help those poor orphans..." Here, for once, Éponine looked slightly downcast and sighed, looking down.
"Why else would we not start a revolution?" Enjolras rose, patting her on the shoulder. He felt sorry for the plight of those Éponine was describing, even though, seeing how her parents were still alive, he had the intuition that the dark maiden had been a wicked stepsister to one of those nineteenth-century Cinderellas. Now the stepfamily, the Thénardiers, had fallen on hard times; while their indentured servant was certainly far better off... or so it appeared, at last. Éponine was clasping him as hard as a steel clamp and was reluctant to let him go, but he had never had felt anything queer inside him in the company of women. And still... "une beauté quotidienne..." "literature mirrors reality..." There was no mistake. Not about Grantaire's feelings, and not about Éponine either.
"You see, I would like to join your little secret society if I could. And not only for the excitement; there are dreams I want to fulfil as well... There are so many things in this world that women cannot do nowadays. Like attending universities, right?" she said as she finally let go.
"There were feminists during the Reign of Terror, indeed, and they all lost their heads... et voilà; now, decades later, I see there is still hope, isn't there? (Here, he mussed the crown of her dark head with a friendly smile on his lips.) But will you listen to me for a little? I will tell you a little about myself."
Éponine's eyes gleamed and she sat back on the furs, reclining against the wall, eager for another insight on such an interesting person. Definitely not the pampered, entitled lordling that she had seen a first impression of, right?
"Of course I have had a family once, but it was so long ago... and, as an only child of rank, I was very lonely, even though I was surrounded by people. I was always different from other boys. I never cared much for games. I took little interest in those things for which young boys of rank usually care so much. I was not very happy in my boyhood, I think. My one ambition was to find the ideal for which I longed. It has always been thus: I have always had an indefinite longing for something, a vague something that never quite took shape, that I could never quite understand. My great desire has always been to find something that would satisfy me. I was attracted at once by sin: my whole early life is stained and polluted with the taint of sin. Sometimes even now I think that there are sins more beautiful than anything else in the world. There are vices that are bound to attract almost irresistibly anyone who loves beauty above everything. I have always sought for love: again and again I have been the victim of fits of passionate affection: time after time I have seemed to have found my ideal at last: the whole object of my life has been, times without number, to gain the love of some particular person. Several times my efforts were successful; each time I woke to find that the success I had obtained was worthless after all. As I grasped the prize, it lost all its attraction - I no longer cared for what I had once desired with my whole heart. In vain I endeavoured to drown the yearnings of my heart with the ordinary pleasures that usually attract the young. I have been striving to cheat myself into the belief that peace had come at last - at last my yearning was satisfied: but all in vain. Unceasingly I have struggled with the old cravings for excitement, and, above all, the weary, incessant thirst for a perfect love."
"And then you decided to become a revolutionary leader, right?" Éponine cut into the conversation, packing him by the waist, with sparkles in her teary eyes. Enjolras nodded, then cleared his throat. "You do not understand me. I have never been attracted by a woman in my life. Can you not see that people are different, totally different, from one another? To think that we are all the same is impossible; our natures, our temperaments, are utterly unlike. But this is what people will never see; they found all their opinions on a wrong basis. How can their deductions be just if their premisses are wrong? One law laid down by the majority, who happen to be of one disposition, is only binding on the minority legally, not morally. What right has the Law, or anyone, to tell me that such and such a thing is sinful for me?" Here, Enjolras sighed for a while and began to think a little of Shakespeare's characters to distract himself.
"Y'know what?" he heard a familiar female voice behind his back. "That's something that I can surely relate to. In the company of men, I usually get tongue-tied and flustered, and the words choke in my throat. But there are three men —well, once there were two— who have never flustered me: Papa, 'Parnasse, and most recently you. Eh, Enj?"
All he could do in response was blink with those clever eyes of steel blue. The fact that she was that straightforward... and he had never seen any females, except this girl and her mother, who showed everything that they felt...
"Eh, Enj?" He stood there, transfixed. The scenario that both of them had imagined had been turned upside-down. "Now that Maman is too busy with the men out there... Kiss me good night!" Éponine clasped him harder than before, as Enjolras turned his head to the right, his fair face flustered with embarrassment and surprise. In such a state of shock, a false step backwards suddenly led him to fall on the ground, with the robber maiden on top of him on all fours. "All right!!" she exclaimed, trying to steal a kiss from the fair student; her lips struck him on the cheek, for he had turned his head away right before she could kiss his lips. "Tsk!" she then sneered, slapping Enjolras in the face, above the ear on the side she had kissed, then chortled at the young man's glowing flush and awkward expression.
"If the robber woman had not seen her daughter at my side right away, she would have shot at me with her pistol or stabbed at me with her cutlass knife, I think. But, thankfully, Éponine's dark eyes and excellent scowl worked wonders on her, so that she forgot that I was the one who'd had to shake her arm -however gingerly I'd managed it- and got up with a few muttered swears and a couple of light grunts," the blond thought to himself.
"If the robber woman had not seen her daughter at my side right away, she would have shot at me with her pistol or stabbed at me with her cutlass knife, I think. But, thankfully, Éponine's dark eyes and excellent scowl worked wonders on her, so that she forgot that I was the one who'd had to shake her arm -however gingerly I'd managed it- and got up with a few muttered swears and a couple of light grunts," the blond thought to himself.
When Enjolras finally scrambled back up on his feet, pulled up by this dark maiden's strong arms tugging at the tether that tied his wrists (he swallowed the pain of the tether against the skin), her laughing fit had come to an end, and she looked at him with a piercing stare, smirking at her fair captive:
And, like that, Éponine, tightly clasping Enjolras' waist with her right arm and clutching a surprisingly sharp Bowie knife in her left hand, drifted off into a deep sleep, and began to snore so loudly that she could be heard from the courtyard, but her prisoner stayed awake, without even being able to shut his eyes, seeing into the hall where the bandits drank and sang and danced in the firelight.
"Ceux qui me veulent faire une pipe,
qu'ils avancent deux pas en avant,
pour embrasser la croix que ma piche
formera avec celle du lieutenant...!"
Thus sang Sergeant Thénardier way off key, way too loudly, and in a way too slurred tone; the other men of the band forming the backup chorus, as his wife cajoled and flirted with the young dandy in Prussian blue, whose surname the prisoner now understood to be Montparnasse, and sipped some eau-de-vie as they drank to one another.
The songs of that evening were far more risqué and vulgar than any of those he ever had heard Grantaire sing at the Café, and the tankards were clanked together more frequently and louder; the quaffing was deep and the gambling was serious, and the outlaws even cheated and drew steel, or fired shots, over who had cheated, every now and then, in the midst of ear-deafening shouts; some of the robbers were already drunk. Pistols went off, but they were poorly aimed and not meant to actually hit anything. The Sarge was already almost dead drunk; and his wife turned cartwheels and somersaults — a frightening spectacle, which made our hero wonder a woman her age and physique, in that state of intoxication, could perform so deftly (after all, she was significantly older and larger than Grantaire) — and the other outlaws, except the sleeping maiden, roared their approval. It would all have been a terrible sight for a young man of rank to see. But, though unfazed by this scene, Enjolras could not close his eyes at all, he could not catch a wink of sleep, not knowing whether he should live or die, whether he was to leave this place unscathed or subjected to torture. Still, the leader's daughter, that dark garçon manqué, had taken a shine to him... who would ever have expected that?
Enjolras closed his eyes and tried to go to sleep then, but he could feel the gentle bite of the Bowie blade pressing against his thigh, and he wondered whether he would get out of this place alive after all. Outside, a twig snapped, and he lay awake listening, his body cold with dread, with growing despair. What was he doing in this place? Grantaire must surely be long dead now. What good would it do to get himself killed, as well? Would that bring Grantaire back? He'd be much better off trying to kill the Thénardiers and escape, and forget about Grantaire, and return to the Right Bank and to the friends he had left there, to rally them against the ancien régime, until all of them fell like lilies before the scythe, facing the bayonets. He was fooling himself, anyway. Anyway, Grantaire had stopped loving him months before he'd disappeared. Why couldn't he seem to accept that?
Watching the flames dance in the firelight, and listening to the songs and shouts in the courtyard, Enjolras tried to think of what he should do. The Fauchelevents would certainly pay his ransom, he thought, but they had already been so very generous that he was loathe to cost them any further expense (especially now that Marius and Cosette had at last found one another, and that her guardian had settled down). Ought he to lie, and pretend to join the robber band, and then slip away at the earliest opportunity? Perhaps that might have worked, had he thought of it earlier, but he had already given the leader of the band his refusal.
Anyway, he was feeling more comfortable about Éponine, realising that the maiden was not cruel, just bad-mannered and sometimes thoughtless. The robber girl was certainly tough as nails; she wrestled with outlaw boys much bigger and older, especially that 'Parnasse guy, the dandy, and she always won. It was quite obvious that the fop, though he had a sword-cane just like Courfeyrac's, was no match for that hoyden, who would always give him a black eye or a few broken bones (much like Enjolras himself would not stand the least chance against her either). The boys, especially Montparnasse, always complained that she bit and scratched them, but she laughed and sneered in response, saying that she had sharp teeth, and nails, and a keen eye for marksmanship, so she might as well use those skills. Éponine was not always kind; but Éponine was strong, and clever, and unafraid, and left-handed, and those were gifts enough to help her get by.
What's more, though she was an outlaw, though her parents were a camp follower and a non-commissioned officer, she could not only read and write, but was unusually cultured and learned and well-read for a girl of her backdrop, and obviously accustomed to have all her wishes gratified, however impossible they might be. All that lively conversation about literature and classical drama that they had had during the carriage trip and after supper? Enjolras did not expect at all that she should have that much knowledge on the subject...
[···] (Enj's musings on that Enjonine conversation on theatre, etc. detailed in the commentaries below. As well as his thoughts on gender roles, the uselessness of the society wife, and how both Enjolras and Éponine criticise this gender role. Also mentioning the only three men who have not flustered her: "Papa, 'Parnasse, and you." It ends with a reference to the Green Faery/Morrigan/Belle Dame Sans Merci)
"Oh yes... of course..." she muttered, still clasping Enjolras' waist, half asleep and half awake. "Oui, I have seen that fellow... Grand... R..."
The blond's ears perked up. Wouldn't she tell him, he implored, what he was doing, and where he was going?
"He was... sitting down in... the Green Faery's carriage... which passed tout près... so close that it grazed the ramparts of the keep... and then against the full moon..."
"And whither was she going?" Enjolras demanded.
"She has probably gone to... her own fortress... in the far north... where the skies are always... clouded and dire..." Éponine slurred, nodding off.
"Oh, poor Grantaire... how cold he must be feeling!" Enjolras sighed and thought to himself. For the first time, he felt that he was a step closer to learning his friend's true fate. "Did he really exchange his walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? Tell me you are not just toying with me," he pleaded. "Tell me you speak the truth."
Then, suddenly noticing that the prisoner was stirring by her side, the robber maiden awoke with a start, looking rather tense.
"Reste tranquille," she told him. "Shut up, and, besides, don't stir like that... or else, to keep you tranquil, my blade will slip into your side, and plunge all the way into your heart..." she drew steel and flicked the wrist that held her Bowie wistfully.
The fair leader thought it would be wiser to confirm to the commands of this self-proclaimed general, lest she put her spoken threat into reality. He kept silence, without even moving a muscle, and spent all night long staring up at the night sky and thinking about the Green Faery, if she ever existed in real life.
After some time had passed, Éponine opened her eyes and sat up, withdrawing from her bedclothes a Bowie knife of the most wicked sharpness, which she proceeded to use to cut her prisoner's bonds. Her frown deepened, but then she relaxed and cut the rope on the young student's hands.
“Don’t try to escape, we know the woods better than you and will catch you before you get too far. I have some things to take care of, but once I’m back, we’ll go to sleep.” She turned on her heel and strode back to the camp, where the men celebrated.
Enjolras watched her back sadly, rubbing his sore wrists. Her mother was not very pleasant in the mornings, 'Ponine said, and she didn't like to try and get her to wake up on her own. Usually she brought one of the lower-ranking robbers with her for moral support; but as her new best friend, that job had officially been passed on to Enjolras himself.
“Do you always have that knife with you while you are asleep?” he asked, looking at the weapon with some astonishment.
“I always sleep with the knife by me,” said the robber maiden. “ And with a loaded pistol as well. No one knows what may happen. But now tell me again all about your friend, and why you went out into the world.”
Then, Enjolras repeated his story over again, while all around them the rest of the robber band slept, having finally yielded to intoxication.
Éponine looked grave (aside from a tad teary-eyed when Cosette was mentioned, and a tad dreamy and flustered upon hearing of Marius), and nodded solemnly, and said, “That may be, but it is all talk. Do you even know where that is?”
"No," he admitted, "but I am sure that if I keep walking north, I shall certainly find it eventually."
All night long, while Éponine slept beside him, Enjolras lay awake and thought about how he might get free and find his way to the Green Faery's hold. For the first time since he had set out on his journey so long ago, he felt as though Grantaire were close, perhaps only a few weeks' journey from here.
They waited impatiently until the middle of the day. And, to pass the time, Éponine decided to tell her new friend some tales of her own in exchange: Arthurian legends, and Norse myths, her favourite tales of knights and dragons and damsels, and, ultimately, a story about someone else who was taken by the Green Faery:
"Once upon a time, and the best of times it was, not long ago and not far away, there were this sergeant and this camp follower, who, ever since they had come of age, were husband and wife; they had fought in strange lands and suffered many hardships, heading every now and then to another distant country during the war. She helped with the wounded and robbed corpses, of friend and foe alike. You know the ravens at the edge of the field at twilight, and 'tis much the same sort of life. Also, battle was exciting, though stupid. As for her spouse, he loved to kill and deceive, it was his nature, and she did not want to deny him. He made a fine-looking soldier too, with a short plume, dangling cartridges, and boots to the hip, his moustache waxed to point and his hair in muttonchop whiskers. For over seven years they followed the drum, and then..." she began. "With song and hurrah, and wearing the green leaves of victory, the regiment marched home, when the war was over and peace had come. And thus, having been left idle by their new circumstances, both of them returned to their birthplace, a lovely village up north, where they were received with much rejoicing, and they set up a tavern, which they called the Sergeant of Waterloo. They were both still young, in the prime of their lives, having just turned thirty, and the place they had chosen for their peacetime business was a little cottage whose quaint roofs were mantled with white in the wintry season, and overgrown with ivy vines and climbing thornroses in the short, pleasant northern summer, which is just like the southern springtime. The sergeant's wife painted herself the sign: her husband on a bloody battlefield, standing upright in the midst of the gunsmoke, wearing epaulettes with silver stars."
Here, Éponine sighed, looking pensive, as she took a glance at her parents. "When the peace came and they became innkeepers, the wife was expecting, for the first time in a decade of marriage, since seven or eight months before. Names were being discussed, most of them of knights, and druids, and princesses, and goddesses from Celtic lore, for she could read, and perused Arthurian lore and the Mabinogion whenever she had spare time. One month later, the village bells pealed for the baptism of a healthy little dark baby girl, whom the priest at first wavered upon hearing the parents' decision of giving her a pagan name, that of a false goddess instead of a saint, but the proud Maman would never stoop in front of the Church, and thus, after some well-deserved intimidation and mentions of gifts, the very best a strong woman can give a gentleman in a robe, the child at the font was finally christened Éponine, as both of her parents had wished."
Enjolras, making himself comfortable at last, listened attentively, even with his lips curling as the maiden telling the story rolled up her sleeves and put her fists up, like an English-style boxer, to illustrate how her mother had intimidated the village priest. Éponine Thénardier... ever since she was born, already at the baptismal font, her life had been marked by subversion and irreverence.
"One year later, another girl-child was born to the innkeepers, a nutbrown little darling successfully christened Azelma after Monsieur le Curé received the same coaxing from the former sutler woman. The innkeepers adored both of their daughters, not regretting at all that they had been given girls instead of boys, for of course the parents had been to war and seen that men were far more inclined to do wrong than women. Already in the cradle, both baby sisters were lulled to sleep by Maman by making them swallow a few drops of eau-de-vie, to make them stronger and more accustomed to the stuff. Each of them had her very first trou normand as soon as she had cut all her milk teeth. And it was then, two years later, when Yours Truly could already talk and walk on her own two feet, while Azelma was still tottering and learning to walk, and lollygagging... one fine, sunny day in May, when the roses were in bloom, and Azelma was baring her chubby little tummy... A firm board hung from strong chains down from an old oversized wooden cannon carriage, afterwards used to transport logs to the lumber mill till one of its wheels broke, near the inn: it was our swing, and Azelma and I sat down there together, swinging to and fro. Oh, for that warm sun, the cool breeze, the scent of roses and the hum of bees, in that golden afternoon, right before it turned to evening... Maman was sitting on the porch, watching us and singing old Arthurian ballads of warriors to pass the time, and to pace the rhythm for our swing: 'Il le faut, disait un guerrier...' Then, suddenly, those strangers entered the village. They were a young lady and a little girl, aged three like me, sleeping in her arms, surely mother and daughter; both of them golden-haired and fair and blue-eyed, with lovely features, dressed in sky blue silks to fit the colour of their eyes, with fine lace and azure satin ribbons. Ribbons at their empire waists, white Valenciennes lace trimming their bonnets. Theirs were beautiful yet austere high-collar fashionable gowns, the kind that ladies wore on the Left Bank; not even the female guests who had come from Calais and Montreuil to spend the night at the Sergeant's had worn such finery, too fancy even for provincial towns. Hitherto, I had only known such people from fairy tales, and never seen them in real life. It was such a grand sight, such fair and finely-dressed figures that they seemed ethereal, that Maman's song, and the flight of our swing, froze and were still, in such awe. Though pale and weary, and faintly smiling, the stranger lady, in a worn cobalt blue shawl, went up to Maman and asked: 'Are those pretty little girls your daughters?' The landlady nodded, introduced herself as Madame Thénardier... but what I remember the most is that the little blonde woke with our childlike cheers, her Maman sat down to lower her, and soon she stormed forth like a reckless little sunny bundle of energy, and we hopped down from the swing and introduced ourselves, and so there were three little girls, who seemed to be sisters all three, playing together in the shade of the rosebush at t'y es."
"T'y es?" Enjolras cocked his head, not recognising the game Éponine had been playing with her sister and their new little friend of rank.
"We call it like that up north; the game of catch-me-if-you-can, when you have to chase all the other children, or avoid being chased; and if you catch someone, you say 'T'y es!'. Neither Azelma nor the little blonde could run, so you guess who had the upper hand?"
"Ah, you mean trappe-trappe..." the fair student leader sighed. "We southerners call that game trappe-trappe. Though I grew up so lonely and so sheltered, without any friends or siblings to enjoy that, or any other parlour games for that matter..." he sighed. "And... what happened next?"
"The lady and her child had supper and spent the night at our inn. The next day at dawn, after breakfast, the pale lady, who was indeed this little girl's mother, kissed her goodbye and adjusted her little bonnet. 'Now be good, Cosette, and do not miss me; Maman has to leave, but the Thénardiers will care for you as well as Maman has done...' Then, the fair mother and daughter parted ways, both of them with tears in their bright blue eyes, and I could do nothing more than stare and wonder as the slender lady in blue, so ethereal and so different from my own parents, walked the streets northwards, sobbing and drying up her tears for some time, until she disappeared into the horizon beyond the heath around the village. But her child, her daughter, la petite Cosette, remained at the Sergeant's. And not only the little girl, whom I hoped to see as another sister, but also her regal trousseau, into which I peeked to see a dozen lacy gowns, silks and velvets and satin ribbons, with a pair of shoes and a bonnet for each dress; an ensemble for each and every month of the year, like a fairytale princess would have got. We all felt really lucky! As if we had a little faery in our midst... which left me with a lot of questions surrounding our new little tenant:
'Will Cosette be living with us, Maman?'
'Of course she will... Her own Maman is too busy at the jewellery factory in Montreuil. They came back up north, to that town, where she was born, when her husband died back in Paris.'
'And her trousseau? She has too many dresses, Maman, for a girl like us...'
'Indeed. And, since you are the same size as she is, and the eldest and heir to the family inn, you may wear as many of Cosette's ensembles as you please,' Maman replied, as Papa looked on and nodded in approval. I was too young, too cheerful, too impressed... hoping that Cosette could be another sister to me, and not knowing how suspicious was the fact that a mourning widow was not wearing black. In fact, Cosette's Maman would never return, not even to visit her for one single Christmas Eve."
A shudder ran down Enjolras' spine. The heiress who had been so kind towards him had been rescued from an abusive family of northern innkeepers, just like the Thénardiers. She was golden-haired and blue-eyed, and her name was Cosette... Éponine's parents had been her first guardians... or so it seemed, at least... Those who had been so harsh that neither the heiress as a young adult nor M. Fauchelevent would breathe a word about them. Furthermore, Cosette had been a bastard child to begin with, given Éponine's reflection on her mother's attire, which could explain the reason why she had been entrusted to the Thénardiers for a lifetime in the first place.
Had it not been by chance that he had first met Cosette and then her former guardians? What would Combeferre had said, something about serendipity? Enjolras nestled in the robber maiden's grasp, sunken in deep thought, reeled in by the story he was being told. Where would the Green Faery fall into place in this Thénardier tale, where already others he had met played the lead roles?
"And the Green Faery?" the fair leader finally asked, his thoughts wandering back to the quest.
"We'll come to that, but first you need to know the full story. Otherwise, you maybe will not understand for how long I know the Green Faery, by which other names I got to know her, and for which reasons someone very dear to the Thénardier clan was spirited away."
These words of the dark maiden's seemed to settle the matter, then.
"Her real name was Anne-Euphrasie Louet, but everyone called her Cosette, or Alouette, for she was always up in the morning, even before the sun and the chickens. Yet that little skylark would never sing," Éponine sighed. "For as long as she lived with us."
(Éponine wearing Cosette's gowns and vice versa with Cosette in Éponine's rags, Cosette exploited and a pampered Éponine being forbidden to play with her, teach her to read...)
"Of course we, Azelma and I, went to class in the village school, we had storybooks and toys to play with, and no misfortune or hard work were allowed to befall us. With Cosette, it was a completely different story. She had to do all the chores around the inn and at the Thénardier household: the laundry, the dishes, the windows, the floors, the stables, and even run errands and fetch water and clear the snow before the front entrance... It was too much hard work for such a scrawny little girl, who was given quite a meagre porridge for supper and slept on our hard garret floor; and then had to be up with the last dark of the night, way before the sun."
Enjolras just stood there, frozen.
"It was a miserable life, indeed, it was a life of hunger and pain, a lonely life, with a brutal stepmother far more dreadful than loving and a lackadaisy stepfather who treated her like dung on the heel of his boot. And, furthermore... Even before she could speak, they sent her out to beg. On the days she brought nothing home, the landlady would beat Cosette until she turned into fog, and lifted herself out of her body." Éponine's tone was detached and matter-of-fact, but there was a faint quivering in her voice, and a mournful look in her eyes, that made Enjolras suspect that she was feeling sorry. "And then, Maman would shove her little form upstairs onto the attic floor, senseless, on an empty belly."
The fair leader listened on, feeling his whole self turn cold and clammy; his mouth drying up, a shiver running down his spinal cord, as Éponine made a little pause, then began to tell more about the Thénardiers' cruelty and lack of empathy towards Cosette:
"There were days when no one felt charitable towards her and she would come home hungry and empty-handed and then Maman, yes, I remember, Maman would beat her black and blue, either with her bare hand or with a cat-of-nine-tails. Papa just sat back and drank his wine and told the guests in a slurred tone of his feats of derring-do, taking it easy, while Maman hit the poor little girl and hit her and did not stop. And, in the bleak winter, she would have bruises that looked like the mottling of her skin from the cold, so that you could not tell where her guardians' cruelty left off and the cruelty of nature took over." The robber maiden's voice quivered even more, her eyes glittering with restrained tears, as her fair captive thought of how comfortably, how lovingly Cosette and her doting guardian lived now as the Fauchelevents. Of how lucky she had been to have been rescued from such a life of drudgery and want. But the stepparents' own children...? Éponine...? The urge to ask her that question pressed down upon his mind.
"And how did you... how did you feel, how did you act, towards her?" Enjolras just had to ask her that question. The Thénardier girl was caught by surprise, at first gasping in response, ere she finally, after a most awkward silence, explained:
"... (how the Thénardier sisters treated Cosette)
In winter, those outdoor pleasures, in which Mother Nature intervened at last for three quarters of the year, came to a bitter end. The windowpanes were then covered in fog, if not in frost as well, and, to see what was going on outside, my sister and I used to warm our cupped hands by breathing into them, and then putting our nice warm hands against the frosted glass-panes. Later on, as we got older, it became a custom for us to warm a sou on the embers of the fireplace and put it, all hot, against the windowpane. Nevertheless, no matter the method, what matters is that we obtained a little round peephole, through which the part of the glass which had been uncovered by the warmth allowed us to see through. Then, behind each little round peephole, one would see, at each window, a sweet and friendly eye. Those were Azelma and me saying bonsoir. Cosette was obviously too deeply asleep, or too busy with her chores, to join us; and lackaday if Maman even found us speaking to her!
In winter, since it was impossible, due to the cold, to open the windows, and since each night got longer than the previous, our curfews after playing in the snow came naturally earlier for each evening, and our séances indoors, by the cozy fireside, naturally became longer... especially whenever it was snowing or stormy, or both snowing and stormy, outside.
And very often, while Papa was speaking to the guests at the supper table about his feats of derring-do, we would often come closer and huddle up, warmed by his uniform pelisse, and dream of foreign lands and stormy battlefields... Ah, those were the days...
Whenever Papa addressed his guests, he knew we were listening and spoke of his campaigns, of the renown he had won and the comrades he had lost, and what it was like to watch the sun come up over a Flemish battlefield, glinting off casques and pikeblades and bayonets and tinting the orange poppies that grew everywhere the color of blood. "There is beauty everywhere," he often told us. "Even in war."
And so he often told us all as we sat at our tables about the battle of Breitenfeld, and the sacking of Moscow, and the siege of Zaragoza, and what it was like to watch the sun rise over Flanders, and what it was like when the Beresina ice cracked under weary feet and hooves and cannon-carriages. And as he spoke, the rest of the patrons, who had finished their own dinners, began to come by ones and twos to sit in the shadow of the antlers that decked the wall and listen to him.
When the Sarge had exhausted every story of warfare and battle that he knew, the others began offering tales of their own. The man with the red moustaches told of men armed with pikes and halbards and a religion even harder than their iron breastplates, who had swept across his home country, burning and killing whatever they could find, and how he had left his land and gone south with the geese to fight another kingdom's battles in Spain. Another robber, a sun-burnt, black haired fellow who claimed to be descended from a long line of condottieri, told of laying siege to the French in Turin, and being besieged by them in turn, and of fighting for and then against the Pope's armies in Parma. A third man, a morisco from Spain by way of Marseille, who's dark face was nearly indistinguishable from the others, so grimy and weather-beaten were they all, had fought with France's armies against his own nation in the Low Countries and the Piedmont for many years —he claimed to have personally given the condottiero a musket wound in the thigh at the Siege of Turin— but had never laid eyes on Valencia and Castile, the lands his parents' parents' parents' parents' parents had been born in and then driven out from.
The leader of the gang, the merry Sarge himself, did not tell his own story once more, but after the fire had burned low, and several of the other men had fallen asleep, he asked me if I would like not a real story, but a folktale which had been told by some fireside at one point or another.
And thus I learned, during those bleak winter evenings, of Excalibur and Caractacus, of the Holy Grail and Sir Gawain's adventures and the banishment of Rhiannon, of the Cattle Raid of Cooley and how Queen Maeve lost that great war, long before the first firearms were fired, long before France itself would come into existence.
And it was one such tale of dragons and damsels, the one that became my favourite among all that sort of tales, that would haunt me and cross my path for the rest of my short life.
Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak November, glowing bright red as an ember... Outside the snow, or sleet, lashed against the frosted windowpanes, as if threatening to shatter them and throwing the whole village of Montfermeil, if not only our inn, into chaos.
''Tis a fine night for the Green Faery to show up,' Papa said, after knocking back a trou normand of Calvados and putting his old sergeant's hat on my dark head.
'Is she the Morrigan?' I raised a hand. 'The one who shows up as the biggest black raven at the edge of the battlefield at dawn and picks the ones who will have to die in that battle, like Poniatowski who fell off the bridge and drowned at Leipzig?'
In response, he nodded and tilted my hat a little. 'Oui, he did see her on that fated day. They also call her la Belle Dame Sans Merci, and not without a good reason. Those who have seen her find out that their days are numbered and drift away. Ere the rise of organised religions turned them into faeries, these spirits, nymphs, elementals... were once true goddesses, adored and dreaded alike by mortalkind; and she is one of the most powerful among them. She is of divine race and knows neither old age nor death.'
While Azelma dozed off on Papa's knee, I turned all my attention towards what he had to say. I just yearned to know more about this sinister presence, who went by so many names and held sway over the fates of mortal men and women. Little did I know that the lives of everyone in the Thénardier household would nevermore be the same, ever since Papa mussed a sleepy Azelma's auburn head and resumed that fated account:
'She is the most powerful of them all who consort with mortalkind, and she is never idle. No sooner has she trod on the ground that she rises up against towards the dark nimbus clouds. She's the largest of them all, and can fly as high as the clouds. Often at midnight she flies through the streets and looks in at the windows. Now during peacetime, at midnight, when it's cold and stormy, she walks the streets of the towns, looking through the windows, and looks for broken young people whom she may bring to drink her blood...'
'And doesn't she frost the windows when her breath freezes on the panes, with wonderful shapes of lace and ice flowers when she peeks through? Oui, of course I have seen that...'
'That's the Snow Queen, 'Ponine.'
In those days, we children thought that all the tales told by our parents and the guests at the inn were true; so much do little children, and even grown-up children, find it easy to believe that whatever they see, is true, no matter if what they see, or rather what they believe they see, might not always be the truth.
'But the Morrigan is far worse; for Arianrhod, the Snow Queen, merely freezes hearts as cold and hard as steel with her stolen kisses. La Belle Dame Sans Merci, on the other hand, will search out young people whom life has stabbed in the back, or dealt out the wrong cards. She breathes a vein on her wrist and pours her sickly green translucent blood into a crystal cup for those lads and lassies to drink, and then, lack-a-day! 'Tis one of the worst poisons ever known; whoever has drunk this green liquor has their heart frozen as soon as the lethal draught has sunken in. That person will nevermore recognise anything or anyone, and no longer love anything or anyone; whether mother or father, siblings or sweethearts, their friends nor their country. One only dreams of oneself; one feels nothing but an urge to drink, and one would gladly drink, all the blood upon this Earth, without being able to slake a thirst that nothing at all can quench. Thus has she shackled and disarmed the boldest warriors, both kings and revolutionaries, turning them towards pale death-in-life, lulling them into a fever-dream from which they never shall awaken...'
Throughout this short life of mine, that legend I was told on that fated evening has haunted me; especially since I became myself entangled in its elusive fabric; ever since that very evening when I first heard it by the fireside.
On that stormy autumn night, I came to visit Cosette in secret. Papa was too drunk and Maman was too busy, and there was the perfect chance to climb upstairs into the garret and pay her a visit. She lay there exhausted on her heap of straw, curled up and surely dreaming of a better life, when I awoke her with a startling pat on the back, and, when the shock had passed, told her the latest tale.
'And is it true that the Morrigan, who looks through every windowpane, can enter into people's rooms?' Cosette asked, quivering like a leaf on the branch.
'Ah! bon! Let her come in here at the Sergeant's,' I replied in that tone of forfanterie so particular to children, while putting my fists up in the air, 'and I will shove her into the fireplace, moi, and she will burn into a crisp! Doesn't she know what we are made of?'
I found it hard to believe Cosette's expression at that bold stance of mine; her eyes were teary, and the many times I had pulled her golden hair and dropped frogs down her cleavage came back to me at once. There she was, all teary-eyed, asking herself and me at the same time:
'Are you being nice, 'Ponine?'
It was so hard to find the right words.
'I would rather that she came here to visit us, and, when I was all thirsty after a long day's work, I could have some of that poison to drink, and forget the life I lead here... your good luck, your parents, and all the chores, and all the fessées I get in exchange for not being strong enough to do it all... It wouldn't be nice to shove her into the fire, right?'
I understood Cosette's plight. Her urge to escape from reality. But there was a twinge inside my chest, something that said that, if she ever disappeared, I would indeed miss her company. For a reason which I could not yet explained, since at least I was a child, Cosette having never been a child since her mother left her. Though she knew so much more than we did, in spite of never having been at school...
For the rest of the day I felt uneasy, though I couldn't have said the reason why.
Later on that very same night, as I lay in my bed wearing the lacy négligée that once had been Cosette's, half-undressed because the stove had warmed the room until it felt like high summer in Provence, I felt my throat dry up and, leaving my bed, went out to tap some cider, when a strange green light, so bright I had never seen it, drew me to peek out the foggy window; so I put my chair next to the pane and climbed up on the chair. My little warm palm rubbing on the cold pane soon yielded a lovely round peephole through which I, standing on my chair, saw the rain or the sleet pouring outside like bullets upon a battlefield, and, in the middle of all that downpour, an enormous snowflake, or raindrop, or shooting star of green light, which was darting straight towards my windowsill. No sooner had this green ray struck the sill than it grew, rounded itself, took on a gradually more and more distinct human shape, and finally became a beautiful lady, all dressed in a glittering green cloth that seemed to be embroidered with silver, and composed of millions of little leaves, some of which were frosted and some of which were star-shaped. As for her face and her hands, they seemed to be made of the purest and brightest marble, her green veins seen through the translucent skin, or of the most pristine, dazzling inland ice. In the middle of that heart-shaped, comely crystal visage, her eyes shone like leaves of wormwood seen through diamonds, yet betraying not the slightest feeling. Furthermore, she didn't seem to be walking, but rather soaring slightly above ground..."
Enjolras felt an unexplicable shiver run down his spine, all the way down to his thighs. "And... and how did you react?"
"She must have seen me watching through my peephole, for she waved at me with a lily-like left hand, and with a nod of her head. And... I was so frightened that I just leapt down off the chair, and pushed as much as I could both my hands towards the window, for the Morrigan not to enter. Those poison-green eyes burned into mine own, as if searching the depths of my very soul... All night long, in bed, I stayed awake, hearing the gale strike at the window with its wings." Éponine looked around again.
"And then?" asked the fair prisoner.
"The next day, the windows were frosted over with the laciest ice flowers I have ever seen in my short life. It was a beautiful white day, even though it seemed too early in November. Then, after Christmas, after Twelfth Night... The winter passed by like the refrain of a song, and very soon soon came the springtime; the sky cleared, the sun shone bright and warm, the young green shoots burst forth, the birds of passage returned to build their nests (wagtails, and storks, and red-throated swallows), the windows re-opened, and Azelma and I sat down once more, next to one another, at our desks at class, or in our cannon-carriage swing after class. The thornroses and the hollyhocks bloomed that year in a splendid fashion, and the ivy climbed all the way up to our eaves; I even heard the villagers say that the roses at the Sergeant's would last, that year, all the way until Christmas. We had learned a song at class, and Azelma and I would often make a ring with the other schoolchildren and sing it on the village green:
Sometimes Azelma and I would want to feed the half-open rosebuds with sugar, wondering why, if the mother birdies could feed their chicks, why couldn't we ourselves feed our roses as well?"
Enjolras chortled. "That sounds like something Jehan Prouvaire would have done," he remembered the medievalist's eccentric explanation about his pompom roses. But he also saw that Éponine was no longer the whimsical little girl she was reminiscing about, but a jaded maiden.
"We had superb days all springtime and summer long, and even when autumn came, as the seasons changed all around us... but everything has to change, sooner or later, and I was about to have my eyes opened to that reality; that year for Christmas, on a white, crisp, frosty night supposed to be the season of hope, our paths, that of the Thénardier family and that of Cosette, would diverge for evermore... By then, I had forgotten my strange encounter with la Belle Dame Sans Merci, and my memories of that felt like a hazy nightmare."
Enjolras thought that, if he had been in her stead, he would have forgotten about her as well. Now, finally, came the turning point, the part where M. Fauchelevent stepped into the scene and adopted Cosette. This real-life account, given by an eyewitness, was as exciting and interesting as any Shakespearean drama, or maybe even more... and naturally the fair captive was intrigued at how the paths of the orphan and her second guardian had crossed, and how the Thénardiers had parleyed with the benefactor about Cosette. But still it felt too early for him to ask her about that, so he shifted the topic of conversation.
"And Maman? What was she doing, when not attending to the guests?"
"Cajoling." (Here, Enjolras gasped.) "With younger men, especially if those young men wore uniforms with épaulettes and bâtons or swords, and were at least one-third drunk. And she often told the young officer du jour about how painful it was to be married to such a lout, and that, if Prince Charming never crossed her path, a fully commissioned officer, Lieutenant So-and-So, would have to do as well; and once she even made advances on a cadet, aged but sixteen, in the military cape, the peaked cap with the brass insignia of the college, the little swagger stick that cadets were supposed to carry so as to get used to handling them when they were commissioned —" Éponine tried mighty hard to restrain her laughter as she watched her mother and 'Parnasse at their little games.
Enjolras, in turn, remembered the look in Madame Thénardier's eyes when she had taken him prisoner, and a shudder ran down his spine. She must have been growing as weary of the dandy highwayman as she was of her husband, and the blond himself was surely the next item on her list.
(Cosette sent for water for Christmas, Valjean comes to adopt her and explains Fantine is dead, haggles with the Thénardiers, Éponine can only watch from the staircase...
A while later, the Thénardiers, pursued by the Gendarmerie, must leave for Paris for their lives; Azelma shot down, Éponine --feeling betrayed by Cosette and her guardian-- runs into the woods in the chaos, spirited away by the Green Faery...)
"No sooner had all the tears fallen from my eyes, and my eyesight cleared, that I found myself on the high road that crossed the open heath; whether towards Calais or to Paris, I did not know, but then I saw arrive a grand, magnificent calèche driven by two black horses harnessed all in green; their harnesses seemed to be made of climbing plants. Within the carriage, there was a regal, beautiful lady with a pelisse and a bonnet, or shapka, that seemed to be made of maidenhair ferns. The calèche itself was painted dark green, and its inner upholstery was of satin the colour of wormwood leaves.
'Halt!' she seemed to say wordlessly; the carriage stopped for an instant, as the lady turned towards me and gave me a friendly sign. One would have said that she knew me already.
Then, she beckoned me in, as the sleet whipped around so thickly that I could barely see her features as I entered the calèche to sit down by her side. 'Coachman!', a whiplash, and the carriage took off, as rapid as lightning. I tried to scream for help, but no one heard me scream, in the middle of the storm in the open countryside.
The sleet whipped around, and the calèche seemed to have grown wings. Time after time, I would feel my heart rise up to my throat, as if we were darting up and down sharp slopes and over yawning chasms. By now, I was scared stiff... I didn't even care for Cosette's betrayal or for my parents' concerns... I would have gladly cried for help, but the word froze in my throat, I had even forgotten how to say it... and, ever since that day Cosette had broken my heart, I had forgotten everything I could have done... I could not recall anything more than... this axiom: that two plus two makes four, and two times two makes four as well."
Her eyes were pretty teary by now, and Enjolras could only reply with a fixed expression; he seemed to be in a state of trance.
"Tout à coup, suddenly, the lady in the carriage stopped and stood up. Her pelisse and her shapka were made of living, writhing greenery. Only then did I recognise her..."
"She was... la Belle Dame Sans Merci!" Enjolras gasped, now pale and cold as a statue of ice, as Éponine nodded in response, and kept silence for a while, before knocking back another shot of liquor for courage and resuming her life story:
"And I rested all frightened, because I had not at hand, as I would have had at home, any fire into which I could toss her... 'Viens donc avec moi', said she in a voice as lovely and alluring as it was sinister. 'I will stow you into my pelisse and keep you snug and warm...'
And, as if it had been impossible for me to refuse that order, I let myself be led as she made me sit down by her side, and wrapped me in her pelisse. It seemed to me as if I were putting on a straitjacket, or a corset, or if a constrictor was squeezing all the air out of my lungs..."
Here, the Thénardier girl clasped her own waist as tightly as she could.
"And... then...?" Enjolras eagerly chimed in, quivering like a leaf on the branch.
"I cannot recall exactly... everything is so hazy from this moment on, but let me see which pieces of the puzzle I can piece together. Oh yes. She asked me if I was cold... 'Eh bien,' she asked ere she kissed me on the forehead, right between the eyes, 'as-tu toujours froid?' And, under the impression of that kiss, it seemed that the blood froze in my veins. For an instant, I thought I was about to die, yet that malaise only lasted for an instant, and equally suddenly I felt as right as rain once more, without a worry or a care; the impression of cold having completely disappeared."
The fair prisoner leaned backwards as Éponine scratched her head and toyed with her raven hair, as if she were rummaging in there and searching for important memories, until she finally uttered an "Aha!" of elation:
"Aha! She takes out from her pelisse a crystal cup full of a glittering green liquor, with a sweet herbal perfume that is really intoxicating. That is something I will never forget. Some elixir, she explained, that could heal broken hearts and soothe every pain... And she offered the cup to me and offered me to drink. Of course the long crying bout had made me thirsty, and my head was aching, so I gladly took her elixir and drained it in one quick throw."
Enjolras now realised that this was the draught Grantaire had been knocking back since his change of heart and until his sudden disappearance. "And what did it taste like?"
"The first cupful was so strong and so bitter that it made me wince, hollowed out my chest as it went down, and made my eyes swim with tears. But no sooner had I drained it that I felt my throat on fire with thirst, and I asked her for a refill. The second drink, however, filled me with elation, and swept away not only all of my troubles... I forgot all about Cosette, and my surname, and our village, and whether it was ivy that clung up the walls of our inn, and the rank Papa had held in the army, and Maman's wise upbraidings, and the identity of the lady who had given me to drink... everything about the home I had lost, and it had all vanished into the haze. I could only remember my first name, Éponine, and a few things more... and, instead, something stirred within me at the sight of the regal presence of the lady beside me.
'Et maintenant,' said she, 'And, in the meantime, my little one... you shall not have more of my blood until later on, or that would poison you to death, am I right?'
I looked at her once more and found her presence irresistible; never had such an intelligent or such a lovely face appeared before me. No sir, I felt no fear or awe towards her at all, and, in my own humble opinion, she was the most perfect thing I had ever seen up to that point.
So I told her that my name was Éponine, and that I could read and write, and that I already knew my nine times table by heart... that I was quite skillful at telling stories and making up verses, that I knew the lyrics to some pretty indecent songs no child should ever know by heart, that I would love to perform on a stage in Paris... that I could forge the signature of anyone whose handwriting I had come across at least once, and that I could fend for myself, whether with a loaded gun or with my own fisticuffs.
And she asked me if I would forgive anyone who betrayed me.
And I replied, resolutely, that no one who had stabbed me in the back would escape unscathed.
Then she burst into a ringing, lilting noblewoman's laugh:
'Hoo hoo hoo! Allons, allons, you are definitely the warrior that I need, ma jeune fille... Would you like to be uniformed in green maidenhair and spider silks, armed with a silver bâton and gloves to match, with a breastplate and a backplate brighter than the sun itself?'
Of course it all seemed so attractive that I could only wearily raise a hand and whisper 'oui' in response.
Then, everything turns hazy... I have no more recollections of that fateful night, when winter was writing to springtime, than the last fact that I felt my head swim and my limbs sapped dry of strength; and then, yielding to fatigue, I fell asleep at the feet of the regal lady. Then, for ages unknown, my head is full of darkness, fog, and chaos. Rien de rien. Nothing more. Nada de nada."
Enjolras wondered if Grantaire had also felt the same way; now understanding fully that it was from the Green Faery that he had received the draught that bound his senses and turned him against everyone else, and that she had spirited him away with the promise of more of her intoxicating elixir.
But, if Éponine was now back with her parents again, they surely had found a way to rescue her, right? When they finally broke out of prison and found their inn repossessed by the Gendarmerie, the Thénardiers would have surely missed the only daughter they had left, especially since she had vanished into thin air in the chaos, and gone forth to find her... Thus did Enjolras figure out that the account would conclude.
"
"There were no druids proper in those days, but still there were wise old crones; and in that shire there were three old maids who lived at the edge of the woods, not far from the inn. While her husband set the carriage and their personal effects in order for the flight, the landlady came to these wise women, offering them her best egg-laying hen in exchange for advice. 'We have an agreement. We can’t help anyone reach her. Every living being who wants to see her, must cross her court alone.' Thus they replied with friendly toothless smiles. But nevertheless she remained determined and unfazed. The eldest had no direct power against la Belle Dame sans Merci, but she was not completely helpless, for she had the ability to speak to the spirits of those who had died—and she knew that the korrigan guards who kept the stronghold were spirit creatures, the imprisoned souls of all those who had lost their lives as soon as they had disappointed her.
As for the sutler? Hastily she sought and found the one she knew would aid her and bade them hurry to the Dark Queen's gate. Upon returning to the edge of the village, she found the Sarge unusually sober, and unusually concerned.
'We shall find our 'Ponine. Both of us, together. There is a lead, and I got it from the wise women themselves; the Green Faery, the Morrigan, has spirited her away. Thankfully, as we know, her stronghold is not far away: upon a heath along the North Coast where it's always foggy and cold, even in mid-summer, and no trees grow. They say her lands are empty of all living things, and that her castle is surrounded by a circle of menhirs, and built of cold dark stone, so cold that its walls and gates will freeze the skin off any man who touched them. But a woman, on the other hand...'
'But...' he interrupted his wife, his voice quivering, 'we should have to pass through a woodland full of all sorts of enchantments and voices, which would try to frighten us and make us lose our way. And thus, most of those who have gone before us have wandered they know not where, and perished from cold, hunger, or fatigue.’
'Haven't we walked through fire and ice?' the landlady grabbed her husband by the collar. 'Haven't we lived all through the Revolution and through the wars, at Austerlitz, at Leipzig, at Waterloo... in many a distant country during the war, far from here, in a strange land, living in strange lands and suffering many hardships; as lieutenants, colonels, generals, not only officers, but even high-and-mighty great lords, have fallen off their high horses; while we paltry lowlives thrived in the shades...? Is she not your daughter as well as mine? Pull yourself together! If so it has been, we shall find our 'Ponine, alive, come hell or highwater! Love will always find a way... or won't it?'
The sergeant, though still a bit fazed, regained a slight resolve, knocking back a sip of eau-de-vie for liquid courage. 'Well, suppose we get through safely? And... what did the wise women say?'
'If we do make it through, we shall then meet a host, or at least a whole regiment, of some sort of faeries, each one armed with a needle-like sword, like a rapier, of fire which burns to ashes all it touches.' The Sarge, trembling like an aspen leaf, downed another sip from his flask to warm himself from within. One swig comforts one; two are better still.
'But what...? Rise and shine! 'This is suicide,' I know you're thinking... We've made it through redcoats and Cossacks, through Austrians and Prussians, through enemy fire and snowstorms and surging rapids... so what chance do we have of defeating those korrigans? It's actually the same, for Christ's sake, just another enemy in our path, but with flaming swords!' she fired at point-blank range into his face. 'Furthermore, we've got the upper hand; not only are we two taller and stronger, but also armed with cold steel, which the Fair Folk of all kinds shun like the plague. So... Listen up; we make it together as far as that, to the last living tree that marks the edge of her realm, and then our ways part; you face the korrigans, at least diverting their attention, while I rush into the fortress and save our dear 'Ponine. Right. Allons-y!' And thus, the wife shaking the reins and the husband polishing his bayonet inside the cart, they set off in her old sutler's wagon for the dangerous forest up north."
Enjolras had listened attentively, as attentively as he could, to the story... He could not even believe that her parents, as neglectful and self-indulgent as they were, could have at least a little shred of feelings for Éponine, let alone that they would take so much into their hands to rescue her. Clearing his throat to make a little pause, he interrupted:
"And let me have a guess at what comes next... the parents freed their daughter from the Green Faery, or did they not? This tale is so far keeping me on tenterhooks, in spite of the end being a foregone conclusion..."
"And why else should I not be here by your side? Listen now; you already know from the first impressions of us Thénardiers that Maman rules the roost, as she has always done. Generals and kings and czars come up with battle plans as effective as hers!
...
They gathered berries, and nuts, and mushrooms, the few they could find, and washed them down with spring water and morning dew, rationing their eau-de-vie to a sip a day for each person, for the moment of truth; they guided themselves by the North Star. It seemed to the sergeant and the sutler woman turned landlord and landlady that the ordeal had made them at least a decade and a half younger, or at least as brisk and pure as they had been in their youth, during early wartime.
Only once, during the rationing, he drew out their keg of eau-de-vie twice, thrice, filled and emptied the cup several times, and laid it down with a hoarse ‘Ha, ha, ha! now this old scoundrel is a man again!’
'Mon cher!' his wife chided him sternly, slapping him twice in the face, first on the left ear and then on the right.
‘But oh!’ he went on (still sipping, I am sorry to say), 'ere war gave way to peace, I needed not this intoxicating draught; once I detested the hot brandy wine, and quaffed no other fount but nature’s rill. It dashes not more quickly o’er the rocks than I did, as, with blunderbuss in hand, I brushed away the early morning dew!' the non-commissioned officer remarked to his lady, as he knocked back one last sip of eau-de-vie by their campfire. 'Thus easily do we deceive ourselves! Thus do we fancy what we wish is right!'
'I had never seen that side of you... that Shakespearean, sentimental side, beyond the patina of wit and intrigue...' Madame Thénardier chortled, more used to his Voltairian remarks than to this sincere, heartfelt outburst of iambic pentameter. 'It seems you paid heed to my reads as well!' she swaddled herself in a blanket by his side and began to unbutton his uniform jacket, as he shoved his hands deep under her skirt... Now listen, Enj: I had sometimes seen my parents together in bed, as well as several of our guests, looking rather excited... but, ever since Cosette left with her new guardian and I got my first bleeding, they just slept side by side without playing any of their serious games. They have never done it since those nights during the quest. And you, Sir Galahad the Pure, given your circumstances, will never, ever, ever understand!"
Enjolras tried as hard as he could to stifle the hearty laugh, so uncharacteristic of him, that was surging up from his lungs as he listened to Éponine's experience with her parents, and their guests, making love to one another. Needless to say his own sheltered upbringing and childhood may have contributed at least slightly to his lack of experience in matters of the heart and in matters of the flesh.
But still he would listen to her story until the bitter end, in spite of knowing that the ending was a foregone conclusion.
(The Thénardiers save Éponine from the Green Faery; her mum frees the girl, while the Sarge fights off the korrigans --then, after freeing her, they start a band of outlaws)
"If it is your story... your parents' love freed you..." Enjolras blinked and gasped, not knowing what to say next to the dark robber maiden who had saved his life. "In that case... is Grantaire... all right?"
She hesitated and her eyes lowered in clear sign of holding back.
“N'importe," said she, turning serious and shaking her head. "He’s… alive. For sure. He might not be the same person you remember. He might not remember you. Indeed, your Grantaire is most surely at the Green Faery's; he finds everything there after his taste and he believes 'tis the most charming place in all possible worlds... but the reason why is that he has received her blood in his throat, and his heart has been frozen. She has caught and entangled him in her snares, and dripped poison into his sickly mind. Just like it happened to Yours Truly," Éponine explained, as her fair prisoner listened attentively, steeling himself to restrain the shudder that ran down his spine. "What's needed to do is to get that fey blood out of inside him... or else, she will retain all that power over him."
"And where does she dwell? Whither is that carriage heading?"
"Towards her keep, not far from the Channel, upon a heath along the North Coast where it's always foggy and cold, even in mid-summer, and no trees grow. They say her lands are empty of all living things, and that her castle is built of cold dark stone, so cold that its walls and gates will freeze the skin off any man who touched them. The Morrigan lives there now, and the will o'wisp fires in her palace, if it can be called a palace in the first place, burn every evening. Your poor lover must be freezing, right? Now keep calm. Now lie still and shut up, and do not stir like that, Enj, or else, to keep you tranquil, my blade will slip into your side, and plunge all the way into your heart..." she drew steel and flicked the wrist that held her Bowie wistfully.
Enjolras sighed listlessly in response, staying frozen in place, without even moving a muscle. But, if Éponine had been taken by the Green Faery, and subsequently set free from her grasp, there was a very important question to ask: "Do you really know the way to get there?"
The dark maiden's expression turned serious, and she nodded in response, her eyes beaming with self-confidence. "Qui pourrait mieux le savoir que moi? 'Tis up north I was born, 'tis up north that I was raised, 'tis up north that I leapt for joy over heath and hill; and never forget that the Morrigan has had me in thrall!"
She disappeared into her twilit niche briefly, then rolled out a small barrel and proclaimed that in the evening there was a content in who would get drunk as last one.
She offered him a cup full of scarlet wine. He declined and just shook his head, observing Éponine downing the alcohol like water. The way she went about it, it looked like she was trying to lose the contest. At that rate, given that she had already surpassed her threshold for strong drink, she would be the first to get drunk. Uneasiness settled within him as he watched her from afar. The more he saw her abandon herself, the more his fingers fidgeted. It was odd. She didn’t seem to have fun, even though she laughed heartily and sung as loud as she could. It felt forced how she threw herself onto Montparnasse’s shoulders and swayed with him in the rhythm. She looked… desperate.
At some point, Éponine must have had enough, because she detached herself from the group and walked away from the fire. She walked as a newborn deer as she approached the outskirts of the camp. Her cup fell down on the ground and rolled on the floor tiles, drawing a colourless rainbow.
At first, Enjolras hesitated, thinking if he should enter the scene and casually convince her to go sleep it off. She behaved very much not like a bandit captain would. “No! You’re not bad! You’re fine,” she looked up and glared at him with glazed eyes. Doubtless, in those circumstances, Grantaire would quaff her under the table, he muttered to himself, but loud enough, being under the influence, for her to overhear.
She eyed him quietly, pondering about what he had said. It took longer, since she was drunk, so he almost thought she didn’t hear him properly.
He counted the stars and traced the bark with his fingers, trying to feel each hard ridge on its surface. Literally anything just to ground himself. Éponine thought of him as a replacement for the foster sister she would never reach, and his presence recalled old memories for her, which hurt her soul for many years. Or so he thought. Enjolras didn’t know what to make of his emotional roller-coaster, but the one thing he knew was that he wanted to help her. He wanted to be kind and show compassion. Therefore he braced himself, coughed loudly and made his appearance.
“Took you long enough!” 'Parnasse grumbled, lifting his head and shifting awkwardly underneath Éponine's weight. Enjolras winced, he wasn’t as sneaky as he thought after all. “Enj!” she called him all jolly. The happy grin on her face didn’t last long, because as drunks tend to do, she switched to sadness very quickly, hanging herself on his elbow like a coat hanger. “Come now, we go to sleep now, right?” She shook her head and pouted. “I’m not tired,” he led her slowly to their corner and thought of what to reply as they passed a log. “But I am. Keep me company?” She considered and affirmed with a nod. “I can do that!"
As he cradled her on his arms, he saw her for what she was. Smaller than him and perhaps very similar to him in her sadness. Thus, he pretended that night he wasn’t a prisoner, but that he chose to be her support in her weakened state. "But will you listen to me for a little? I will tell you a little more about myself."
Éponine's eyes gleamed and she sat back on the furs, reclining against the wall, eager for another insight on such an interesting person. Her head was beginning to swim, she felt drowsy indeed, but she was even more curious to get to know about her captive.
" Of course I have had a family once, but it was so long ago... As you know, I was and am an only child, adored by my parents," he told the robber maiden with a sigh. "Of all the parents I could have known, mine are the kindest. Over the years some would-could ill afford a sick child; others would have grown weary of caring for one. In public they feigned love but in private they lost patience. I regret that at times I, too, lost my temper with them. They never faltered in their devotion."
Éponine had heard little to nothing of her southern captive's childhood, and it pained her to know so little in exchange for all the story she had given him. Raised as an only child in a grand estate instead of the eldest of middling innkeepers' children... "Tell me more, Enj! I feel so sorry not to hear about you in exchange..." She was visibly excited and worn-out, but he could see she was not too intoxicated, the better for her to listen to the stories he had to tell.
"Let me tell you my first memories, and make yourself comfortable by my side." The weary Thénardier girl nestled on his lap as he cleared his throat and began: "At three or four, I am so much healthier than when I first woke in this body. And so beautifully cared for. I sleep on soft sheets in cloudlike comfort. My mother brings the scent of lilacs with her when she leans in to kiss me, which she does frequently. Her tenderness elicits such a response. It amazes me to feel myself rise to her love. And my father, he’s so kind. Every day he comes with a present in his pocket. They have spared no expense in finding a cure for me. They have thrown both their energies and their resources into meeting with anyone reputedly wise in the healing arts. Yet they’ve never subjected me to treatments that might cause undue pain."
Éponine swallowed hard, a sound like a purr forming in her throat. "Awwwrrr..." Enjolras could see that her eyes had become glossy, even slightly teary, and that she would never plunge her knife into his heart in that state, as he resumed:
"On stormy November evenings... The fireplace in my bedroom radiates comfort. Embers make delicate sounds, like fine china splintering. This room, like a princess’s chamber, sparkles. The chandelier bends firelight and sends it dancing across the ceiling. There is a table set with buns and cocoa."
He stopped abruptly, looked at a teary-eyed Éponine, thought of Cosette and of himself, and gasped. The Thénardiers, who besides lived in a harsher climate, had even been willing to steal and to deceive in order to procure such comforts for their own daughters, which had led the whole family to live outside the law. This was the reason why he had to start a revolution. This was the reason why all of his friends, led by Enjolras himself, had to die violently and leave beautiful corpses, before they all turned thirty.
"It must have been quite a cozy spot, right?"
Enjolras swallowed hard and nodded. "A group of holiday revellers, emboldened with drink, defy the storm, shouting to each other on the street beneath my window. My parents host a small dinner party below. The sound of music came softly through their windows, and laughter, and the heavenly aroma of roasted meat." The scene made the dark maiden think of the Christmases of days gone by, back when they were innkeepers... and especially of that fated Christmas Eve when Cosette left the Sergeant's Inn, never to return. Crystal tears streamed down her olive-skinned face as she sobbed only once, but that was enough for Enjolras to produce a silken handkerchief, embroidered with floral motifs and scented with lavender, to dry up the robber girl's tears. "And in summer?" she choked back, eager for memories of hot sun and azure waves.
"How many times have these parents taken me to the dunes? In the summer we would go with a picnic hamper. Mother would make certain my straw hat, with its blue velvet ribbons, kept the sun off my face. I remember insisting I could run down the hill and then, halfway down, collapsing. I had been carrying a chocolate bun that flew from my hands. Father gathered me in his arms. I nestled into him. He smelled of cologne and freshly pressed cotton. His golden moustache tickled my cheek. He bought me a new bun and held me as I ate it." As he said those words and remembered the fond days gone by, Enjolras looked for a while first at the Thénardiers, then looked back at his own childhood.
"I have never known boys or girls whose greatest pleasure arose from tormenting others," he told her with a sigh, as he locked eyes with her, night-black with day-blue, "not in this life. I have known no one like that in this life. These parents would not allow such a child near me." The thought of his own parents not allowing such bullying children to come near him made the fair leader think of M. Fauchelevent cutting all ties between Cosette and the Thénardiers, and Éponine's subsequent feelings of betrayal. "With Combeferre and Courfeyrac, however, it was a different story. Combeferre lived in the centre of Arles; his parents were a doctor and a female tutor, and thus his thirst for knowledge about life has been with him for as long as he has lived; he often ventured out of town to study the plants and the bugs in the bush, and the little things the sea washed upon the shore. The Manoir Enjolras, with its surrounding gardens and kindly masters, became a spot this clever little boy would obviously frequent on the way home to Arles, bringing now a bright green jewel beetle, now a piece of sun-whitened coral, now a shell with rainbow mother-of-pearl on the inside, now a fossil shaped like a snail which he had found inland in the hills or near Roman ruins, now a fallen leaf which had been so withered away that only the vessels remained, just like a lacy gauze... And his own eyes widen as he looks at the chandelier, the table laden with food, the enormous gilded mirror. And, from sharing all these little rarities, and all those grand rarities as well, with the scion of the estate... in that auburn boy with spectacles I found first an acquaintance, then a dear friend, and finally the very best lieutenant that any leader could ever wish for."
"And Courfeyrac?" Éponine raised her head eagerly, bringing Enjolras back to the bright side of a childhood otherwise so wearisome and bereft of a purpose that he would rather forget it.
"I had only heard the surname every now and then... and I knew that they lived in a far grander mansion, a real château, in Gascony, and that they had an only child as well, a boy slightly older than we were... Once they had been proper French aristocrats, surnamed de Courfeyrac; they had been driven out from the land and gone south with the flamingos and left for Catalonia or Valencia during the Revolution, until they returned to our land post-Thermidor, without the particle before their surname, having "abdicated" the particle as Courfeyrac still says. Of course now that France is a kingdom once more, his parents are de Courfeyrac, but the lad himself has never used the particle before his surname, not even when he is drunk. Anyway, Madame Combeferre was the dark, lively Courfeyrac boy's personal tutor when it came to etiquette, and Monsieur Combeferre was their household physician."
"Lemme guess... They would sometimes bring their boy to the Château de Courfeyrac for playdates, and His Lordlingship would have heard a lot about Enjolras from little Combeferre as well..."
"Exactly! And the end of it was, that I had made two friends at the age of twelve or thirteen. We would go on swims, and explore ruined watchtowers together... whenever our parents allowed us to be together... though I easily grew weary of these pursuits, no matter for how long my friends seemed to enjoy them... There was also Jehan Prouvaire, a shy little boy who looked more like a girl with that crisp hair and those dreamy eyes, who came over every summer from Collioure. Oh, he was an only child too, and his family, descendants of the last surviving Cathars who lived through the Inquisition, had made a fortune distilling lavender and pompom-rose perfumes; he was as shy as a violet, and turned red as a pompom rose and stuttered whenever he had to speak, so he spent the summers with us, with his parents' hopes that he would open up, but he often detached himself as I did, and would rather be left quietly on his own... And thus, when all four of us had come of age and were ready to study at Paris University, and of course quite eager for the move to the capital, with all its monuments and its white winters, all four of us made the trip by stagecoach together, with my parents, the Prouvaires, and the Courfeyracs paying for the middle-class Combeferre's needs..."
"I know the end of thish shtory," she replied, slumping down upon his lap, as he resumed.
Here, Éponine sighed, looking pensive, as she took a glance at her parents. "When the peace came and they became innkeepers, the wife was expecting, for the first time in a decade of marriage, since seven or eight months before. Names were being discussed, most of them of knights, and druids, and princesses, and goddesses from Celtic lore, for she could read, and perused Arthurian lore and the Mabinogion whenever she had spare time. One month later, the village bells pealed for the baptism of a healthy little dark baby girl, whom the priest at first wavered upon hearing the parents' decision of giving her a pagan name, that of a false goddess instead of a saint, but the proud Maman would never stoop in front of the Church, and thus, after some well-deserved intimidation and mentions of gifts, the very best a strong woman can give a gentleman in a robe, the child at the font was finally christened Éponine, as both of her parents had wished."
Enjolras, making himself comfortable at last, listened attentively, even with his lips curling as the maiden telling the story rolled up her sleeves and put her fists up, like an English-style boxer, to illustrate how her mother had intimidated the village priest. Éponine Thénardier... ever since she was born, already at the baptismal font, her life had been marked by subversion and irreverence.
"One year later, another girl-child was born to the innkeepers, a nutbrown little darling successfully christened Azelma after Monsieur le Curé received the same coaxing from the former sutler woman. The innkeepers adored both of their daughters, not regretting at all that they had been given girls instead of boys, for of course the parents had been to war and seen that men were far more inclined to do wrong than women. Already in the cradle, both baby sisters were lulled to sleep by Maman by making them swallow a few drops of eau-de-vie, to make them stronger and more accustomed to the stuff. Each of them had her very first trou normand as soon as she had cut all her milk teeth. And it was then, two years later, when Yours Truly could already talk and walk on her own two feet, while Azelma was still tottering and learning to walk, and lollygagging... one fine, sunny day in May, when the roses were in bloom, and Azelma was baring her chubby little tummy... A firm board hung from strong chains down from an old oversized wooden cannon carriage, afterwards used to transport logs to the lumber mill till one of its wheels broke, near the inn: it was our swing, and Azelma and I sat down there together, swinging to and fro. Oh, for that warm sun, the cool breeze, the scent of roses and the hum of bees, in that golden afternoon, right before it turned to evening... Maman was sitting on the porch, watching us and singing old Arthurian ballads of warriors to pass the time, and to pace the rhythm for our swing: 'Il le faut, disait un guerrier...' Then, suddenly, those strangers entered the village. They were a young lady and a little girl, aged three like me, sleeping in her arms, surely mother and daughter; both of them golden-haired and fair and blue-eyed, with lovely features, dressed in sky blue silks to fit the colour of their eyes, with fine lace and azure satin ribbons. Ribbons at their empire waists, white Valenciennes lace trimming their bonnets. Theirs were beautiful yet austere high-collar fashionable gowns, the kind that ladies wore on the Left Bank; not even the female guests who had come from Calais and Montreuil to spend the night at the Sergeant's had worn such finery, too fancy even for provincial towns. Hitherto, I had only known such people from fairy tales, and never seen them in real life. It was such a grand sight, such fair and finely-dressed figures that they seemed ethereal, that Maman's song, and the flight of our swing, froze and were still, in such awe. Though pale and weary, and faintly smiling, the stranger lady, in a worn cobalt blue shawl, went up to Maman and asked: 'Are those pretty little girls your daughters?' The landlady nodded, introduced herself as Madame Thénardier... but what I remember the most is that the little blonde woke with our childlike cheers, her Maman sat down to lower her, and soon she stormed forth like a reckless little sunny bundle of energy, and we hopped down from the swing and introduced ourselves, and so there were three little girls, who seemed to be sisters all three, playing together in the shade of the rosebush at t'y es."
"T'y es?" Enjolras cocked his head, not recognising the game Éponine had been playing with her sister and their new little friend of rank.
"We call it like that up north; the game of catch-me-if-you-can, when you have to chase all the other children, or avoid being chased; and if you catch someone, you say 'T'y es!'. Neither Azelma nor the little blonde could run, so you guess who had the upper hand?"
"Ah, you mean trappe-trappe..." the fair student leader sighed. "We southerners call that game trappe-trappe. Though I grew up so lonely and so sheltered, without any friends or siblings to enjoy that, or any other parlour games for that matter..." he sighed. "And... what happened next?"
"The lady and her child had supper and spent the night at our inn. The next day at dawn, after breakfast, the pale lady, who was indeed this little girl's mother, kissed her goodbye and adjusted her little bonnet. 'Now be good, Cosette, and do not miss me; Maman has to leave, but the Thénardiers will care for you as well as Maman has done...' Then, the fair mother and daughter parted ways, both of them with tears in their bright blue eyes, and I could do nothing more than stare and wonder as the slender lady in blue, so ethereal and so different from my own parents, walked the streets northwards, sobbing and drying up her tears for some time, until she disappeared into the horizon beyond the heath around the village. But her child, her daughter, la petite Cosette, remained at the Sergeant's. And not only the little girl, whom I hoped to see as another sister, but also her regal trousseau, into which I peeked to see a dozen lacy gowns, silks and velvets and satin ribbons, with a pair of shoes and a bonnet for each dress; an ensemble for each and every month of the year, like a fairytale princess would have got. We all felt really lucky! As if we had a little faery in our midst... which left me with a lot of questions surrounding our new little tenant:
'Will Cosette be living with us, Maman?'
'Of course she will... Her own Maman is too busy at the jewellery factory in Montreuil. They came back up north, to that town, where she was born, when her husband died back in Paris.'
'And her trousseau? She has too many dresses, Maman, for a girl like us...'
'Indeed. And, since you are the same size as she is, and the eldest and heir to the family inn, you may wear as many of Cosette's ensembles as you please,' Maman replied, as Papa looked on and nodded in approval. I was too young, too cheerful, too impressed... hoping that Cosette could be another sister to me, and not knowing how suspicious was the fact that a mourning widow was not wearing black. In fact, Cosette's Maman would never return, not even to visit her for one single Christmas Eve."
A shudder ran down Enjolras' spine. The heiress who had been so kind towards him had been rescued from an abusive family of northern innkeepers, just like the Thénardiers. She was golden-haired and blue-eyed, and her name was Cosette... Éponine's parents had been her first guardians... or so it seemed, at least... Those who had been so harsh that neither the heiress as a young adult nor M. Fauchelevent would breathe a word about them. Furthermore, Cosette had been a bastard child to begin with, given Éponine's reflection on her mother's attire, which could explain the reason why she had been entrusted to the Thénardiers for a lifetime in the first place.
Had it not been by chance that he had first met Cosette and then her former guardians? What would Combeferre had said, something about serendipity? Enjolras nestled in the robber maiden's grasp, sunken in deep thought, reeled in by the story he was being told. Where would the Green Faery fall into place in this Thénardier tale, where already others he had met played the lead roles?
"And the Green Faery?" the fair leader finally asked, his thoughts wandering back to the quest.
"We'll come to that, but first you need to know the full story. Otherwise, you maybe will not understand for how long I know the Green Faery, by which other names I got to know her, and for which reasons someone very dear to the Thénardier clan was spirited away."
These words of the dark maiden's seemed to settle the matter, then.
"Her real name was Anne-Euphrasie Louet, but everyone called her Cosette, or Alouette, for she was always up in the morning, even before the sun and the chickens. Yet that little skylark would never sing," Éponine sighed. "For as long as she lived with us."
(Éponine wearing Cosette's gowns and vice versa with Cosette in Éponine's rags, Cosette exploited and a pampered Éponine being forbidden to play with her, teach her to read...)
"Of course we, Azelma and I, went to class in the village school, we had storybooks and toys to play with, and no misfortune or hard work were allowed to befall us. With Cosette, it was a completely different story. She had to do all the chores around the inn and at the Thénardier household: the laundry, the dishes, the windows, the floors, the stables, and even run errands and fetch water and clear the snow before the front entrance... It was too much hard work for such a scrawny little girl, who was given quite a meagre porridge for supper and slept on our hard garret floor; and then had to be up with the last dark of the night, way before the sun."
Enjolras just stood there, frozen.
"It was a miserable life, indeed, it was a life of hunger and pain, a lonely life, with a brutal stepmother far more dreadful than loving and a lackadaisy stepfather who treated her like dung on the heel of his boot. And, furthermore... Even before she could speak, they sent her out to beg. On the days she brought nothing home, the landlady would beat Cosette until she turned into fog, and lifted herself out of her body." Éponine's tone was detached and matter-of-fact, but there was a faint quivering in her voice, and a mournful look in her eyes, that made Enjolras suspect that she was feeling sorry. "And then, Maman would shove her little form upstairs onto the attic floor, senseless, on an empty belly."
The fair leader listened on, feeling his whole self turn cold and clammy; his mouth drying up, a shiver running down his spinal cord, as Éponine made a little pause, then began to tell more about the Thénardiers' cruelty and lack of empathy towards Cosette:
"There were days when no one felt charitable towards her and she would come home hungry and empty-handed and then Maman, yes, I remember, Maman would beat her black and blue, either with her bare hand or with a cat-of-nine-tails. Papa just sat back and drank his wine and told the guests in a slurred tone of his feats of derring-do, taking it easy, while Maman hit the poor little girl and hit her and did not stop. And, in the bleak winter, she would have bruises that looked like the mottling of her skin from the cold, so that you could not tell where her guardians' cruelty left off and the cruelty of nature took over." The robber maiden's voice quivered even more, her eyes glittering with restrained tears, as her fair captive thought of how comfortably, how lovingly Cosette and her doting guardian lived now as the Fauchelevents. Of how lucky she had been to have been rescued from such a life of drudgery and want. But the stepparents' own children...? Éponine...? The urge to ask her that question pressed down upon his mind.
"And how did you... how did you feel, how did you act, towards her?" Enjolras just had to ask her that question. The Thénardier girl was caught by surprise, at first gasping in response, ere she finally, after a most awkward silence, explained:
"... (how the Thénardier sisters treated Cosette)
In winter, those outdoor pleasures, in which Mother Nature intervened at last for three quarters of the year, came to a bitter end. The windowpanes were then covered in fog, if not in frost as well, and, to see what was going on outside, my sister and I used to warm our cupped hands by breathing into them, and then putting our nice warm hands against the frosted glass-panes. Later on, as we got older, it became a custom for us to warm a sou on the embers of the fireplace and put it, all hot, against the windowpane. Nevertheless, no matter the method, what matters is that we obtained a little round peephole, through which the part of the glass which had been uncovered by the warmth allowed us to see through. Then, behind each little round peephole, one would see, at each window, a sweet and friendly eye. Those were Azelma and me saying bonsoir. Cosette was obviously too deeply asleep, or too busy with her chores, to join us; and lackaday if Maman even found us speaking to her!
In winter, since it was impossible, due to the cold, to open the windows, and since each night got longer than the previous, our curfews after playing in the snow came naturally earlier for each evening, and our séances indoors, by the cozy fireside, naturally became longer... especially whenever it was snowing or stormy, or both snowing and stormy, outside.
And very often, while Papa was speaking to the guests at the supper table about his feats of derring-do, we would often come closer and huddle up, warmed by his uniform pelisse, and dream of foreign lands and stormy battlefields... Ah, those were the days...
Whenever Papa addressed his guests, he knew we were listening and spoke of his campaigns, of the renown he had won and the comrades he had lost, and what it was like to watch the sun come up over a Flemish battlefield, glinting off casques and pikeblades and bayonets and tinting the orange poppies that grew everywhere the color of blood. "There is beauty everywhere," he often told us. "Even in war."
And so he often told us all as we sat at our tables about the battle of Breitenfeld, and the sacking of Moscow, and the siege of Zaragoza, and what it was like to watch the sun rise over Flanders, and what it was like when the Beresina ice cracked under weary feet and hooves and cannon-carriages. And as he spoke, the rest of the patrons, who had finished their own dinners, began to come by ones and twos to sit in the shadow of the antlers that decked the wall and listen to him.
When the Sarge had exhausted every story of warfare and battle that he knew, the others began offering tales of their own. The man with the red moustaches told of men armed with pikes and halbards and a religion even harder than their iron breastplates, who had swept across his home country, burning and killing whatever they could find, and how he had left his land and gone south with the geese to fight another kingdom's battles in Spain. Another robber, a sun-burnt, black haired fellow who claimed to be descended from a long line of condottieri, told of laying siege to the French in Turin, and being besieged by them in turn, and of fighting for and then against the Pope's armies in Parma. A third man, a morisco from Spain by way of Marseille, who's dark face was nearly indistinguishable from the others, so grimy and weather-beaten were they all, had fought with France's armies against his own nation in the Low Countries and the Piedmont for many years —he claimed to have personally given the condottiero a musket wound in the thigh at the Siege of Turin— but had never laid eyes on Valencia and Castile, the lands his parents' parents' parents' parents' parents had been born in and then driven out from.
The leader of the gang, the merry Sarge himself, did not tell his own story once more, but after the fire had burned low, and several of the other men had fallen asleep, he asked me if I would like not a real story, but a folktale which had been told by some fireside at one point or another.
And thus I learned, during those bleak winter evenings, of Excalibur and Caractacus, of the Holy Grail and Sir Gawain's adventures and the banishment of Rhiannon, of the Cattle Raid of Cooley and how Queen Maeve lost that great war, long before the first firearms were fired, long before France itself would come into existence.
And it was one such tale of dragons and damsels, the one that became my favourite among all that sort of tales, that would haunt me and cross my path for the rest of my short life.
Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak November, glowing bright red as an ember... Outside the snow, or sleet, lashed against the frosted windowpanes, as if threatening to shatter them and throwing the whole village of Montfermeil, if not only our inn, into chaos.
''Tis a fine night for the Green Faery to show up,' Papa said, after knocking back a trou normand of Calvados and putting his old sergeant's hat on my dark head.
'Is she the Morrigan?' I raised a hand. 'The one who shows up as the biggest black raven at the edge of the battlefield at dawn and picks the ones who will have to die in that battle, like Poniatowski who fell off the bridge and drowned at Leipzig?'
In response, he nodded and tilted my hat a little. 'Oui, he did see her on that fated day. They also call her la Belle Dame Sans Merci, and not without a good reason. Those who have seen her find out that their days are numbered and drift away. Ere the rise of organised religions turned them into faeries, these spirits, nymphs, elementals... were once true goddesses, adored and dreaded alike by mortalkind; and she is one of the most powerful among them. She is of divine race and knows neither old age nor death.'
While Azelma dozed off on Papa's knee, I turned all my attention towards what he had to say. I just yearned to know more about this sinister presence, who went by so many names and held sway over the fates of mortal men and women. Little did I know that the lives of everyone in the Thénardier household would nevermore be the same, ever since Papa mussed a sleepy Azelma's auburn head and resumed that fated account:
'She is the most powerful of them all who consort with mortalkind, and she is never idle. No sooner has she trod on the ground that she rises up against towards the dark nimbus clouds. She's the largest of them all, and can fly as high as the clouds. Often at midnight she flies through the streets and looks in at the windows. Now during peacetime, at midnight, when it's cold and stormy, she walks the streets of the towns, looking through the windows, and looks for broken young people whom she may bring to drink her blood...'
'And doesn't she frost the windows when her breath freezes on the panes, with wonderful shapes of lace and ice flowers when she peeks through? Oui, of course I have seen that...'
'That's the Snow Queen, 'Ponine.'
In those days, we children thought that all the tales told by our parents and the guests at the inn were true; so much do little children, and even grown-up children, find it easy to believe that whatever they see, is true, no matter if what they see, or rather what they believe they see, might not always be the truth.
'But the Morrigan is far worse; for Arianrhod, the Snow Queen, merely freezes hearts as cold and hard as steel with her stolen kisses. La Belle Dame Sans Merci, on the other hand, will search out young people whom life has stabbed in the back, or dealt out the wrong cards. She breathes a vein on her wrist and pours her sickly green translucent blood into a crystal cup for those lads and lassies to drink, and then, lack-a-day! 'Tis one of the worst poisons ever known; whoever has drunk this green liquor has their heart frozen as soon as the lethal draught has sunken in. That person will nevermore recognise anything or anyone, and no longer love anything or anyone; whether mother or father, siblings or sweethearts, their friends nor their country. One only dreams of oneself; one feels nothing but an urge to drink, and one would gladly drink, all the blood upon this Earth, without being able to slake a thirst that nothing at all can quench. Thus has she shackled and disarmed the boldest warriors, both kings and revolutionaries, turning them towards pale death-in-life, lulling them into a fever-dream from which they never shall awaken...'
Throughout this short life of mine, that legend I was told on that fated evening has haunted me; especially since I became myself entangled in its elusive fabric; ever since that very evening when I first heard it by the fireside.
On that stormy autumn night, I came to visit Cosette in secret. Papa was too drunk and Maman was too busy, and there was the perfect chance to climb upstairs into the garret and pay her a visit. She lay there exhausted on her heap of straw, curled up and surely dreaming of a better life, when I awoke her with a startling pat on the back, and, when the shock had passed, told her the latest tale.
'And is it true that the Morrigan, who looks through every windowpane, can enter into people's rooms?' Cosette asked, quivering like a leaf on the branch.
'Ah! bon! Let her come in here at the Sergeant's,' I replied in that tone of forfanterie so particular to children, while putting my fists up in the air, 'and I will shove her into the fireplace, moi, and she will burn into a crisp! Doesn't she know what we are made of?'
I found it hard to believe Cosette's expression at that bold stance of mine; her eyes were teary, and the many times I had pulled her golden hair and dropped frogs down her cleavage came back to me at once. There she was, all teary-eyed, asking herself and me at the same time:
'Are you being nice, 'Ponine?'
It was so hard to find the right words.
'I would rather that she came here to visit us, and, when I was all thirsty after a long day's work, I could have some of that poison to drink, and forget the life I lead here... your good luck, your parents, and all the chores, and all the fessées I get in exchange for not being strong enough to do it all... It wouldn't be nice to shove her into the fire, right?'
I understood Cosette's plight. Her urge to escape from reality. But there was a twinge inside my chest, something that said that, if she ever disappeared, I would indeed miss her company. For a reason which I could not yet explained, since at least I was a child, Cosette having never been a child since her mother left her. Though she knew so much more than we did, in spite of never having been at school...
For the rest of the day I felt uneasy, though I couldn't have said the reason why.
Later on that very same night, as I lay in my bed wearing the lacy négligée that once had been Cosette's, half-undressed because the stove had warmed the room until it felt like high summer in Provence, I felt my throat dry up and, leaving my bed, went out to tap some cider, when a strange green light, so bright I had never seen it, drew me to peek out the foggy window; so I put my chair next to the pane and climbed up on the chair. My little warm palm rubbing on the cold pane soon yielded a lovely round peephole through which I, standing on my chair, saw the rain or the sleet pouring outside like bullets upon a battlefield, and, in the middle of all that downpour, an enormous snowflake, or raindrop, or shooting star of green light, which was darting straight towards my windowsill. No sooner had this green ray struck the sill than it grew, rounded itself, took on a gradually more and more distinct human shape, and finally became a beautiful lady, all dressed in a glittering green cloth that seemed to be embroidered with silver, and composed of millions of little leaves, some of which were frosted and some of which were star-shaped. As for her face and her hands, they seemed to be made of the purest and brightest marble, her green veins seen through the translucent skin, or of the most pristine, dazzling inland ice. In the middle of that heart-shaped, comely crystal visage, her eyes shone like leaves of wormwood seen through diamonds, yet betraying not the slightest feeling. Furthermore, she didn't seem to be walking, but rather soaring slightly above ground..."
Enjolras felt an unexplicable shiver run down his spine, all the way down to his thighs. "And... and how did you react?"
"She must have seen me watching through my peephole, for she waved at me with a lily-like left hand, and with a nod of her head. And... I was so frightened that I just leapt down off the chair, and pushed as much as I could both my hands towards the window, for the Morrigan not to enter. Those poison-green eyes burned into mine own, as if searching the depths of my very soul... All night long, in bed, I stayed awake, hearing the gale strike at the window with its wings." Éponine looked around again.
"And then?" asked the fair prisoner.
"The next day, the windows were frosted over with the laciest ice flowers I have ever seen in my short life. It was a beautiful white day, even though it seemed too early in November. Then, after Christmas, after Twelfth Night... The winter passed by like the refrain of a song, and very soon soon came the springtime; the sky cleared, the sun shone bright and warm, the young green shoots burst forth, the birds of passage returned to build their nests (wagtails, and storks, and red-throated swallows), the windows re-opened, and Azelma and I sat down once more, next to one another, at our desks at class, or in our cannon-carriage swing after class. The thornroses and the hollyhocks bloomed that year in a splendid fashion, and the ivy climbed all the way up to our eaves; I even heard the villagers say that the roses at the Sergeant's would last, that year, all the way until Christmas. We had learned a song at class, and Azelma and I would often make a ring with the other schoolchildren and sing it on the village green:
Passe, passe, passera, la dernière, la dernière
Passe, passe, passera, la dernière y restera!
Sometimes Azelma and I would want to feed the half-open rosebuds with sugar, wondering why, if the mother birdies could feed their chicks, why couldn't we ourselves feed our roses as well?"
Enjolras chortled. "That sounds like something Jehan Prouvaire would have done," he remembered the medievalist's eccentric explanation about his pompom roses. But he also saw that Éponine was no longer the whimsical little girl she was reminiscing about, but a jaded maiden.
"We had superb days all springtime and summer long, and even when autumn came, as the seasons changed all around us... but everything has to change, sooner or later, and I was about to have my eyes opened to that reality; that year for Christmas, on a white, crisp, frosty night supposed to be the season of hope, our paths, that of the Thénardier family and that of Cosette, would diverge for evermore... By then, I had forgotten my strange encounter with la Belle Dame Sans Merci, and my memories of that felt like a hazy nightmare."
Enjolras thought that, if he had been in her stead, he would have forgotten about her as well. Now, finally, came the turning point, the part where M. Fauchelevent stepped into the scene and adopted Cosette. This real-life account, given by an eyewitness, was as exciting and interesting as any Shakespearean drama, or maybe even more... and naturally the fair captive was intrigued at how the paths of the orphan and her second guardian had crossed, and how the Thénardiers had parleyed with the benefactor about Cosette. But still it felt too early for him to ask her about that, so he shifted the topic of conversation.
"And Maman? What was she doing, when not attending to the guests?"
"Cajoling." (Here, Enjolras gasped.) "With younger men, especially if those young men wore uniforms with épaulettes and bâtons or swords, and were at least one-third drunk. And she often told the young officer du jour about how painful it was to be married to such a lout, and that, if Prince Charming never crossed her path, a fully commissioned officer, Lieutenant So-and-So, would have to do as well; and once she even made advances on a cadet, aged but sixteen, in the military cape, the peaked cap with the brass insignia of the college, the little swagger stick that cadets were supposed to carry so as to get used to handling them when they were commissioned —" Éponine tried mighty hard to restrain her laughter as she watched her mother and 'Parnasse at their little games.
Enjolras, in turn, remembered the look in Madame Thénardier's eyes when she had taken him prisoner, and a shudder ran down his spine. She must have been growing as weary of the dandy highwayman as she was of her husband, and the blond himself was surely the next item on her list.
(Cosette sent for water for Christmas, Valjean comes to adopt her and explains Fantine is dead, haggles with the Thénardiers, Éponine can only watch from the staircase...
A while later, the Thénardiers, pursued by the Gendarmerie, must leave for Paris for their lives; Azelma shot down, Éponine --feeling betrayed by Cosette and her guardian-- runs into the woods in the chaos, spirited away by the Green Faery...)
"No sooner had all the tears fallen from my eyes, and my eyesight cleared, that I found myself on the high road that crossed the open heath; whether towards Calais or to Paris, I did not know, but then I saw arrive a grand, magnificent calèche driven by two black horses harnessed all in green; their harnesses seemed to be made of climbing plants. Within the carriage, there was a regal, beautiful lady with a pelisse and a bonnet, or shapka, that seemed to be made of maidenhair ferns. The calèche itself was painted dark green, and its inner upholstery was of satin the colour of wormwood leaves.
'Halt!' she seemed to say wordlessly; the carriage stopped for an instant, as the lady turned towards me and gave me a friendly sign. One would have said that she knew me already.
Then, she beckoned me in, as the sleet whipped around so thickly that I could barely see her features as I entered the calèche to sit down by her side. 'Coachman!', a whiplash, and the carriage took off, as rapid as lightning. I tried to scream for help, but no one heard me scream, in the middle of the storm in the open countryside.
The sleet whipped around, and the calèche seemed to have grown wings. Time after time, I would feel my heart rise up to my throat, as if we were darting up and down sharp slopes and over yawning chasms. By now, I was scared stiff... I didn't even care for Cosette's betrayal or for my parents' concerns... I would have gladly cried for help, but the word froze in my throat, I had even forgotten how to say it... and, ever since that day Cosette had broken my heart, I had forgotten everything I could have done... I could not recall anything more than... this axiom: that two plus two makes four, and two times two makes four as well."
Her eyes were pretty teary by now, and Enjolras could only reply with a fixed expression; he seemed to be in a state of trance.
"Tout à coup, suddenly, the lady in the carriage stopped and stood up. Her pelisse and her shapka were made of living, writhing greenery. Only then did I recognise her..."
"She was... la Belle Dame Sans Merci!" Enjolras gasped, now pale and cold as a statue of ice, as Éponine nodded in response, and kept silence for a while, before knocking back another shot of liquor for courage and resuming her life story:
"And I rested all frightened, because I had not at hand, as I would have had at home, any fire into which I could toss her... 'Viens donc avec moi', said she in a voice as lovely and alluring as it was sinister. 'I will stow you into my pelisse and keep you snug and warm...'
And, as if it had been impossible for me to refuse that order, I let myself be led as she made me sit down by her side, and wrapped me in her pelisse. It seemed to me as if I were putting on a straitjacket, or a corset, or if a constrictor was squeezing all the air out of my lungs..."
Here, the Thénardier girl clasped her own waist as tightly as she could.
"And... then...?" Enjolras eagerly chimed in, quivering like a leaf on the branch.
"I cannot recall exactly... everything is so hazy from this moment on, but let me see which pieces of the puzzle I can piece together. Oh yes. She asked me if I was cold... 'Eh bien,' she asked ere she kissed me on the forehead, right between the eyes, 'as-tu toujours froid?' And, under the impression of that kiss, it seemed that the blood froze in my veins. For an instant, I thought I was about to die, yet that malaise only lasted for an instant, and equally suddenly I felt as right as rain once more, without a worry or a care; the impression of cold having completely disappeared."
The fair prisoner leaned backwards as Éponine scratched her head and toyed with her raven hair, as if she were rummaging in there and searching for important memories, until she finally uttered an "Aha!" of elation:
"Aha! She takes out from her pelisse a crystal cup full of a glittering green liquor, with a sweet herbal perfume that is really intoxicating. That is something I will never forget. Some elixir, she explained, that could heal broken hearts and soothe every pain... And she offered the cup to me and offered me to drink. Of course the long crying bout had made me thirsty, and my head was aching, so I gladly took her elixir and drained it in one quick throw."
Enjolras now realised that this was the draught Grantaire had been knocking back since his change of heart and until his sudden disappearance. "And what did it taste like?"
"The first cupful was so strong and so bitter that it made me wince, hollowed out my chest as it went down, and made my eyes swim with tears. But no sooner had I drained it that I felt my throat on fire with thirst, and I asked her for a refill. The second drink, however, filled me with elation, and swept away not only all of my troubles... I forgot all about Cosette, and my surname, and our village, and whether it was ivy that clung up the walls of our inn, and the rank Papa had held in the army, and Maman's wise upbraidings, and the identity of the lady who had given me to drink... everything about the home I had lost, and it had all vanished into the haze. I could only remember my first name, Éponine, and a few things more... and, instead, something stirred within me at the sight of the regal presence of the lady beside me.
'Et maintenant,' said she, 'And, in the meantime, my little one... you shall not have more of my blood until later on, or that would poison you to death, am I right?'
I looked at her once more and found her presence irresistible; never had such an intelligent or such a lovely face appeared before me. No sir, I felt no fear or awe towards her at all, and, in my own humble opinion, she was the most perfect thing I had ever seen up to that point.
So I told her that my name was Éponine, and that I could read and write, and that I already knew my nine times table by heart... that I was quite skillful at telling stories and making up verses, that I knew the lyrics to some pretty indecent songs no child should ever know by heart, that I would love to perform on a stage in Paris... that I could forge the signature of anyone whose handwriting I had come across at least once, and that I could fend for myself, whether with a loaded gun or with my own fisticuffs.
And she asked me if I would forgive anyone who betrayed me.
And I replied, resolutely, that no one who had stabbed me in the back would escape unscathed.
Then she burst into a ringing, lilting noblewoman's laugh:
'Hoo hoo hoo! Allons, allons, you are definitely the warrior that I need, ma jeune fille... Would you like to be uniformed in green maidenhair and spider silks, armed with a silver bâton and gloves to match, with a breastplate and a backplate brighter than the sun itself?'
Of course it all seemed so attractive that I could only wearily raise a hand and whisper 'oui' in response.
Then, everything turns hazy... I have no more recollections of that fateful night, when winter was writing to springtime, than the last fact that I felt my head swim and my limbs sapped dry of strength; and then, yielding to fatigue, I fell asleep at the feet of the regal lady. Then, for ages unknown, my head is full of darkness, fog, and chaos. Rien de rien. Nothing more. Nada de nada."
Enjolras wondered if Grantaire had also felt the same way; now understanding fully that it was from the Green Faery that he had received the draught that bound his senses and turned him against everyone else, and that she had spirited him away with the promise of more of her intoxicating elixir.
But, if Éponine was now back with her parents again, they surely had found a way to rescue her, right? When they finally broke out of prison and found their inn repossessed by the Gendarmerie, the Thénardiers would have surely missed the only daughter they had left, especially since she had vanished into thin air in the chaos, and gone forth to find her... Thus did Enjolras figure out that the account would conclude.
"
"There were no druids proper in those days, but still there were wise old crones; and in that shire there were three old maids who lived at the edge of the woods, not far from the inn. While her husband set the carriage and their personal effects in order for the flight, the landlady came to these wise women, offering them her best egg-laying hen in exchange for advice. 'We have an agreement. We can’t help anyone reach her. Every living being who wants to see her, must cross her court alone.' Thus they replied with friendly toothless smiles. But nevertheless she remained determined and unfazed. The eldest had no direct power against la Belle Dame sans Merci, but she was not completely helpless, for she had the ability to speak to the spirits of those who had died—and she knew that the korrigan guards who kept the stronghold were spirit creatures, the imprisoned souls of all those who had lost their lives as soon as they had disappointed her.
As for the sutler? Hastily she sought and found the one she knew would aid her and bade them hurry to the Dark Queen's gate. Upon returning to the edge of the village, she found the Sarge unusually sober, and unusually concerned.
'We shall find our 'Ponine. Both of us, together. There is a lead, and I got it from the wise women themselves; the Green Faery, the Morrigan, has spirited her away. Thankfully, as we know, her stronghold is not far away: upon a heath along the North Coast where it's always foggy and cold, even in mid-summer, and no trees grow. They say her lands are empty of all living things, and that her castle is surrounded by a circle of menhirs, and built of cold dark stone, so cold that its walls and gates will freeze the skin off any man who touched them. But a woman, on the other hand...'
'But...' he interrupted his wife, his voice quivering, 'we should have to pass through a woodland full of all sorts of enchantments and voices, which would try to frighten us and make us lose our way. And thus, most of those who have gone before us have wandered they know not where, and perished from cold, hunger, or fatigue.’
'Haven't we walked through fire and ice?' the landlady grabbed her husband by the collar. 'Haven't we lived all through the Revolution and through the wars, at Austerlitz, at Leipzig, at Waterloo... in many a distant country during the war, far from here, in a strange land, living in strange lands and suffering many hardships; as lieutenants, colonels, generals, not only officers, but even high-and-mighty great lords, have fallen off their high horses; while we paltry lowlives thrived in the shades...? Is she not your daughter as well as mine? Pull yourself together! If so it has been, we shall find our 'Ponine, alive, come hell or highwater! Love will always find a way... or won't it?'
The sergeant, though still a bit fazed, regained a slight resolve, knocking back a sip of eau-de-vie for liquid courage. 'Well, suppose we get through safely? And... what did the wise women say?'
'If we do make it through, we shall then meet a host, or at least a whole regiment, of some sort of faeries, each one armed with a needle-like sword, like a rapier, of fire which burns to ashes all it touches.' The Sarge, trembling like an aspen leaf, downed another sip from his flask to warm himself from within. One swig comforts one; two are better still.
'But what...? Rise and shine! 'This is suicide,' I know you're thinking... We've made it through redcoats and Cossacks, through Austrians and Prussians, through enemy fire and snowstorms and surging rapids... so what chance do we have of defeating those korrigans? It's actually the same, for Christ's sake, just another enemy in our path, but with flaming swords!' she fired at point-blank range into his face. 'Furthermore, we've got the upper hand; not only are we two taller and stronger, but also armed with cold steel, which the Fair Folk of all kinds shun like the plague. So... Listen up; we make it together as far as that, to the last living tree that marks the edge of her realm, and then our ways part; you face the korrigans, at least diverting their attention, while I rush into the fortress and save our dear 'Ponine. Right. Allons-y!' And thus, the wife shaking the reins and the husband polishing his bayonet inside the cart, they set off in her old sutler's wagon for the dangerous forest up north."
Enjolras had listened attentively, as attentively as he could, to the story... He could not even believe that her parents, as neglectful and self-indulgent as they were, could have at least a little shred of feelings for Éponine, let alone that they would take so much into their hands to rescue her. Clearing his throat to make a little pause, he interrupted:
"And let me have a guess at what comes next... the parents freed their daughter from the Green Faery, or did they not? This tale is so far keeping me on tenterhooks, in spite of the end being a foregone conclusion..."
"And why else should I not be here by your side? Listen now; you already know from the first impressions of us Thénardiers that Maman rules the roost, as she has always done. Generals and kings and czars come up with battle plans as effective as hers!
...
They gathered berries, and nuts, and mushrooms, the few they could find, and washed them down with spring water and morning dew, rationing their eau-de-vie to a sip a day for each person, for the moment of truth; they guided themselves by the North Star. It seemed to the sergeant and the sutler woman turned landlord and landlady that the ordeal had made them at least a decade and a half younger, or at least as brisk and pure as they had been in their youth, during early wartime.
Only once, during the rationing, he drew out their keg of eau-de-vie twice, thrice, filled and emptied the cup several times, and laid it down with a hoarse ‘Ha, ha, ha! now this old scoundrel is a man again!’
'Mon cher!' his wife chided him sternly, slapping him twice in the face, first on the left ear and then on the right.
‘But oh!’ he went on (still sipping, I am sorry to say), 'ere war gave way to peace, I needed not this intoxicating draught; once I detested the hot brandy wine, and quaffed no other fount but nature’s rill. It dashes not more quickly o’er the rocks than I did, as, with blunderbuss in hand, I brushed away the early morning dew!' the non-commissioned officer remarked to his lady, as he knocked back one last sip of eau-de-vie by their campfire. 'Thus easily do we deceive ourselves! Thus do we fancy what we wish is right!'
'I had never seen that side of you... that Shakespearean, sentimental side, beyond the patina of wit and intrigue...' Madame Thénardier chortled, more used to his Voltairian remarks than to this sincere, heartfelt outburst of iambic pentameter. 'It seems you paid heed to my reads as well!' she swaddled herself in a blanket by his side and began to unbutton his uniform jacket, as he shoved his hands deep under her skirt... Now listen, Enj: I had sometimes seen my parents together in bed, as well as several of our guests, looking rather excited... but, ever since Cosette left with her new guardian and I got my first bleeding, they just slept side by side without playing any of their serious games. They have never done it since those nights during the quest. And you, Sir Galahad the Pure, given your circumstances, will never, ever, ever understand!"
Enjolras tried as hard as he could to stifle the hearty laugh, so uncharacteristic of him, that was surging up from his lungs as he listened to Éponine's experience with her parents, and their guests, making love to one another. Needless to say his own sheltered upbringing and childhood may have contributed at least slightly to his lack of experience in matters of the heart and in matters of the flesh.
But still he would listen to her story until the bitter end, in spite of knowing that the ending was a foregone conclusion.
(The Thénardiers save Éponine from the Green Faery; her mum frees the girl, while the Sarge fights off the korrigans --then, after freeing her, they start a band of outlaws)
"If it is your story... your parents' love freed you..." Enjolras blinked and gasped, not knowing what to say next to the dark robber maiden who had saved his life. "In that case... is Grantaire... all right?"
She hesitated and her eyes lowered in clear sign of holding back.
“N'importe," said she, turning serious and shaking her head. "He’s… alive. For sure. He might not be the same person you remember. He might not remember you. Indeed, your Grantaire is most surely at the Green Faery's; he finds everything there after his taste and he believes 'tis the most charming place in all possible worlds... but the reason why is that he has received her blood in his throat, and his heart has been frozen. She has caught and entangled him in her snares, and dripped poison into his sickly mind. Just like it happened to Yours Truly," Éponine explained, as her fair prisoner listened attentively, steeling himself to restrain the shudder that ran down his spine. "What's needed to do is to get that fey blood out of inside him... or else, she will retain all that power over him."
"And where does she dwell? Whither is that carriage heading?"
"Towards her keep, not far from the Channel, upon a heath along the North Coast where it's always foggy and cold, even in mid-summer, and no trees grow. They say her lands are empty of all living things, and that her castle is built of cold dark stone, so cold that its walls and gates will freeze the skin off any man who touched them. The Morrigan lives there now, and the will o'wisp fires in her palace, if it can be called a palace in the first place, burn every evening. Your poor lover must be freezing, right? Now keep calm. Now lie still and shut up, and do not stir like that, Enj, or else, to keep you tranquil, my blade will slip into your side, and plunge all the way into your heart..." she drew steel and flicked the wrist that held her Bowie wistfully.
Enjolras sighed listlessly in response, staying frozen in place, without even moving a muscle. But, if Éponine had been taken by the Green Faery, and subsequently set free from her grasp, there was a very important question to ask: "Do you really know the way to get there?"
The dark maiden's expression turned serious, and she nodded in response, her eyes beaming with self-confidence. "Qui pourrait mieux le savoir que moi? 'Tis up north I was born, 'tis up north that I was raised, 'tis up north that I leapt for joy over heath and hill; and never forget that the Morrigan has had me in thrall!"
She disappeared into her twilit niche briefly, then rolled out a small barrel and proclaimed that in the evening there was a content in who would get drunk as last one.
She offered him a cup full of scarlet wine. He declined and just shook his head, observing Éponine downing the alcohol like water. The way she went about it, it looked like she was trying to lose the contest. At that rate, given that she had already surpassed her threshold for strong drink, she would be the first to get drunk. Uneasiness settled within him as he watched her from afar. The more he saw her abandon herself, the more his fingers fidgeted. It was odd. She didn’t seem to have fun, even though she laughed heartily and sung as loud as she could. It felt forced how she threw herself onto Montparnasse’s shoulders and swayed with him in the rhythm. She looked… desperate.
At some point, Éponine must have had enough, because she detached herself from the group and walked away from the fire. She walked as a newborn deer as she approached the outskirts of the camp. Her cup fell down on the ground and rolled on the floor tiles, drawing a colourless rainbow.
At first, Enjolras hesitated, thinking if he should enter the scene and casually convince her to go sleep it off. She behaved very much not like a bandit captain would. “No! You’re not bad! You’re fine,” she looked up and glared at him with glazed eyes. Doubtless, in those circumstances, Grantaire would quaff her under the table, he muttered to himself, but loud enough, being under the influence, for her to overhear.
She eyed him quietly, pondering about what he had said. It took longer, since she was drunk, so he almost thought she didn’t hear him properly.
He counted the stars and traced the bark with his fingers, trying to feel each hard ridge on its surface. Literally anything just to ground himself. Éponine thought of him as a replacement for the foster sister she would never reach, and his presence recalled old memories for her, which hurt her soul for many years. Or so he thought. Enjolras didn’t know what to make of his emotional roller-coaster, but the one thing he knew was that he wanted to help her. He wanted to be kind and show compassion. Therefore he braced himself, coughed loudly and made his appearance.
“Took you long enough!” 'Parnasse grumbled, lifting his head and shifting awkwardly underneath Éponine's weight. Enjolras winced, he wasn’t as sneaky as he thought after all. “Enj!” she called him all jolly. The happy grin on her face didn’t last long, because as drunks tend to do, she switched to sadness very quickly, hanging herself on his elbow like a coat hanger. “Come now, we go to sleep now, right?” She shook her head and pouted. “I’m not tired,” he led her slowly to their corner and thought of what to reply as they passed a log. “But I am. Keep me company?” She considered and affirmed with a nod. “I can do that!"
As he cradled her on his arms, he saw her for what she was. Smaller than him and perhaps very similar to him in her sadness. Thus, he pretended that night he wasn’t a prisoner, but that he chose to be her support in her weakened state. "But will you listen to me for a little? I will tell you a little more about myself."
Éponine's eyes gleamed and she sat back on the furs, reclining against the wall, eager for another insight on such an interesting person. Her head was beginning to swim, she felt drowsy indeed, but she was even more curious to get to know about her captive.
" Of course I have had a family once, but it was so long ago... As you know, I was and am an only child, adored by my parents," he told the robber maiden with a sigh. "Of all the parents I could have known, mine are the kindest. Over the years some would-could ill afford a sick child; others would have grown weary of caring for one. In public they feigned love but in private they lost patience. I regret that at times I, too, lost my temper with them. They never faltered in their devotion."
Éponine had heard little to nothing of her southern captive's childhood, and it pained her to know so little in exchange for all the story she had given him. Raised as an only child in a grand estate instead of the eldest of middling innkeepers' children... "Tell me more, Enj! I feel so sorry not to hear about you in exchange..." She was visibly excited and worn-out, but he could see she was not too intoxicated, the better for her to listen to the stories he had to tell.
"Let me tell you my first memories, and make yourself comfortable by my side." The weary Thénardier girl nestled on his lap as he cleared his throat and began: "At three or four, I am so much healthier than when I first woke in this body. And so beautifully cared for. I sleep on soft sheets in cloudlike comfort. My mother brings the scent of lilacs with her when she leans in to kiss me, which she does frequently. Her tenderness elicits such a response. It amazes me to feel myself rise to her love. And my father, he’s so kind. Every day he comes with a present in his pocket. They have spared no expense in finding a cure for me. They have thrown both their energies and their resources into meeting with anyone reputedly wise in the healing arts. Yet they’ve never subjected me to treatments that might cause undue pain."
Éponine swallowed hard, a sound like a purr forming in her throat. "Awwwrrr..." Enjolras could see that her eyes had become glossy, even slightly teary, and that she would never plunge her knife into his heart in that state, as he resumed:
"On stormy November evenings... The fireplace in my bedroom radiates comfort. Embers make delicate sounds, like fine china splintering. This room, like a princess’s chamber, sparkles. The chandelier bends firelight and sends it dancing across the ceiling. There is a table set with buns and cocoa."
He stopped abruptly, looked at a teary-eyed Éponine, thought of Cosette and of himself, and gasped. The Thénardiers, who besides lived in a harsher climate, had even been willing to steal and to deceive in order to procure such comforts for their own daughters, which had led the whole family to live outside the law. This was the reason why he had to start a revolution. This was the reason why all of his friends, led by Enjolras himself, had to die violently and leave beautiful corpses, before they all turned thirty.
"It must have been quite a cozy spot, right?"
Enjolras swallowed hard and nodded. "A group of holiday revellers, emboldened with drink, defy the storm, shouting to each other on the street beneath my window. My parents host a small dinner party below. The sound of music came softly through their windows, and laughter, and the heavenly aroma of roasted meat." The scene made the dark maiden think of the Christmases of days gone by, back when they were innkeepers... and especially of that fated Christmas Eve when Cosette left the Sergeant's Inn, never to return. Crystal tears streamed down her olive-skinned face as she sobbed only once, but that was enough for Enjolras to produce a silken handkerchief, embroidered with floral motifs and scented with lavender, to dry up the robber girl's tears. "And in summer?" she choked back, eager for memories of hot sun and azure waves.
"How many times have these parents taken me to the dunes? In the summer we would go with a picnic hamper. Mother would make certain my straw hat, with its blue velvet ribbons, kept the sun off my face. I remember insisting I could run down the hill and then, halfway down, collapsing. I had been carrying a chocolate bun that flew from my hands. Father gathered me in his arms. I nestled into him. He smelled of cologne and freshly pressed cotton. His golden moustache tickled my cheek. He bought me a new bun and held me as I ate it." As he said those words and remembered the fond days gone by, Enjolras looked for a while first at the Thénardiers, then looked back at his own childhood.
"I have never known boys or girls whose greatest pleasure arose from tormenting others," he told her with a sigh, as he locked eyes with her, night-black with day-blue, "not in this life. I have known no one like that in this life. These parents would not allow such a child near me." The thought of his own parents not allowing such bullying children to come near him made the fair leader think of M. Fauchelevent cutting all ties between Cosette and the Thénardiers, and Éponine's subsequent feelings of betrayal. "With Combeferre and Courfeyrac, however, it was a different story. Combeferre lived in the centre of Arles; his parents were a doctor and a female tutor, and thus his thirst for knowledge about life has been with him for as long as he has lived; he often ventured out of town to study the plants and the bugs in the bush, and the little things the sea washed upon the shore. The Manoir Enjolras, with its surrounding gardens and kindly masters, became a spot this clever little boy would obviously frequent on the way home to Arles, bringing now a bright green jewel beetle, now a piece of sun-whitened coral, now a shell with rainbow mother-of-pearl on the inside, now a fossil shaped like a snail which he had found inland in the hills or near Roman ruins, now a fallen leaf which had been so withered away that only the vessels remained, just like a lacy gauze... And his own eyes widen as he looks at the chandelier, the table laden with food, the enormous gilded mirror. And, from sharing all these little rarities, and all those grand rarities as well, with the scion of the estate... in that auburn boy with spectacles I found first an acquaintance, then a dear friend, and finally the very best lieutenant that any leader could ever wish for."
"And Courfeyrac?" Éponine raised her head eagerly, bringing Enjolras back to the bright side of a childhood otherwise so wearisome and bereft of a purpose that he would rather forget it.
"I had only heard the surname every now and then... and I knew that they lived in a far grander mansion, a real château, in Gascony, and that they had an only child as well, a boy slightly older than we were... Once they had been proper French aristocrats, surnamed de Courfeyrac; they had been driven out from the land and gone south with the flamingos and left for Catalonia or Valencia during the Revolution, until they returned to our land post-Thermidor, without the particle before their surname, having "abdicated" the particle as Courfeyrac still says. Of course now that France is a kingdom once more, his parents are de Courfeyrac, but the lad himself has never used the particle before his surname, not even when he is drunk. Anyway, Madame Combeferre was the dark, lively Courfeyrac boy's personal tutor when it came to etiquette, and Monsieur Combeferre was their household physician."
"Lemme guess... They would sometimes bring their boy to the Château de Courfeyrac for playdates, and His Lordlingship would have heard a lot about Enjolras from little Combeferre as well..."
"Exactly! And the end of it was, that I had made two friends at the age of twelve or thirteen. We would go on swims, and explore ruined watchtowers together... whenever our parents allowed us to be together... though I easily grew weary of these pursuits, no matter for how long my friends seemed to enjoy them... There was also Jehan Prouvaire, a shy little boy who looked more like a girl with that crisp hair and those dreamy eyes, who came over every summer from Collioure. Oh, he was an only child too, and his family, descendants of the last surviving Cathars who lived through the Inquisition, had made a fortune distilling lavender and pompom-rose perfumes; he was as shy as a violet, and turned red as a pompom rose and stuttered whenever he had to speak, so he spent the summers with us, with his parents' hopes that he would open up, but he often detached himself as I did, and would rather be left quietly on his own... And thus, when all four of us had come of age and were ready to study at Paris University, and of course quite eager for the move to the capital, with all its monuments and its white winters, all four of us made the trip by stagecoach together, with my parents, the Prouvaires, and the Courfeyracs paying for the middle-class Combeferre's needs..."
"I know the end of thish shtory," she replied, slumping down upon his lap, as he resumed.
"As you may remember... Even though I had found two friends I still hold very dear, and even though my life was charmed right from the start, I was very lonely, even though I was surrounded by people. I was always different from other boys. I never cared much for games. I took little interest in those things for which young boys of rank usually care so much. I was not very happy in my boyhood, I think. My one ambition was to find the ideal for which I longed. It has always been thus: I have always had an indefinite longing for something, a vague something that never quite took shape, that I could never quite understand. My great desire has always been to find something that would satisfy me. I was attracted at once by sin: my whole early life is stained and polluted with the taint of sin. Sometimes even now I think that there are sins more beautiful than anything else in the world. There are vices that are bound to attract almost irresistibly anyone who loves beauty above everything. I have always sought for love: again and again I have been the victim of fits of passionate affection: time after time I have seemed to have found my ideal at last: the whole object of my life has been, times without number, to gain the love of some particular person. Several times my efforts were successful; each time I woke to find that the success I had obtained was worthless after all. As I grasped the prize, it lost all its attraction - I no longer cared for what I had once desired with my whole heart. In vain I endeavoured to drown the yearnings of my heart with the ordinary pleasures that usually attract the young. I have been striving to cheat myself into the belief that peace had come at last - at last my yearning was satisfied: but all in vain. Unceasingly I have struggled with the old cravings for excitement, and, above all, the weary, incessant thirst for a perfect love."
"And you shettled down... flower boxesh... the Café Mushain... revolution... new friendsh, Grand'R, he ish no longer himshelf, he dishappearsh," the robber maiden said in a slurred tone, with a shrug of her shoulders, before she fell once more on his lap, trying to have some rest, but too wide-awake and excited in preparation for the upcoming morning.
As the dawn cleared up the skies, Éponine sauntered from her straw-bed, now completely sober without a trace of a hangover, as nimble as a stray cat (reminding Enjolras, for the umpteenth time, of someone equally dark and jaded); she flung her arms around her mother's neck, pinched her in both cheeks, and startled her: "G'day, my own dear old bitch; bonjour!"These are quite uncouth words, and even more uncouth if spoken between mother and daughter; and, in fact, Enjolras believed at first that the sutler woman would lunge with clenched fists at her child in response to such an irreverent address. But Madame Thénardier simply burst into sarcastic laughter, muttering something. Then, she slapped her daughter right across the face, and boxed her ears, making Éponine at least slightly wince, yet this was by no means a punishment, but rather a token of endearment; it was all for sheer affection.
Then, the robber mother turned on the keg-tap and knocked back a little swig from her keg, followed by a second, and then by a third, to warm herself from within (one sip was good, she thought; two were better; and all good things came in threes)... and then, after draining the keg at one single deep draught, she looked all around with a puzzled air through glazed eyes; then, she lay down to take her customary little nap.
As soon as she had had her draught and fallen asleep, her daughter sauntered off towards the prisoner. The robber woman even talked in her sleep. The words she spoke were all dreadful: death, hunt, fight, pillage, raid, steal. And thus, Enjolras wondered if she'd ever had anything kind to say to anybody aside from maybe the semi-spoiled Éponine.
"I could still find the greatest pleasure for ages in tickling your throat with my Bowie... for, though you try to hide it as much as you can, you're so frightened that I'm about to die laughing! But who gives a hoot? So I'll detach a horse, set you free, and carry my storyteller, my rebel leader, to the castle of the Morrigan. Right now, we'll leave this place, so that we'll head up north...! Since I was taken away by her, I know the way, more or less, and we will soon find ourselves before the keep of the Green Faery, where your companion is."
"Do you engage yourself positively?" Enjolras was still insecure.
"Foi d'Éponine Thénardier! You shall descend in the very courtyard of that keep."
Then she suited deeds to words and darted towards the horses' corner. And she loosened the knots in the rope halter that tethered one of the carriage horses, a nutbrown gelding with a silver blaze, to a pillar, and outfitted the horseback with a saddle and a cushion behind it, not seeming surprised when the beast immediately danced backward, out of reach. Enjolras watched on, surprised, restraining tears of joy as many as he could.
"Here are Papa's old Wellingtons," said she, handing over a pair of worn military boots, “for it will be very cold. And his old bicorn hat, and Maman's old mittens, for I don't want you to freeze your wrists off; here, allons, stick your hands in!..." The hat was plumed and decorated with a golden cockade, definitely too fine for a non-commissioned officer, and thus, most likely to be stolen goods; while the equally gold-laced military boots were a bit too wide for the stripling's slender legs, if it weren't for the soft, fluffy lining of rabbitskin that Madame Thénardier had lined them with on the inside, most surely to keep her husband's feet warm and healthy during the Russian winter.
"There! Now you look just like Papa!" Éponine told him with a flourish.
"More like Puss in Boots, actually..." Enjolras muttered as he donned the thick winter mittens, lined with fluffy rabbitskin within, that reached half-way up to his elbows.
"At least your li'l lily hands look as nasty as old Maman's! You ought to be looking delighted, right, Sir? And here also is your pack that we took from you. Not only are our mutual friend Shakespeare's tragedies back in there; I have put two loaves of ration bread and some salted meat inside it, both ham and bacon, so that we needn't starve. And this li'l keg of eau-de-vie too... for we shan't die of thirst either, shall we?"
Enjolras found himself near to sobbing in gratitude, and he asked the robber maiden if she would not leave this place and come with him on his journey. "For this life that you are living now is no life for a child."
In response, Éponine grinned fiercely, and shook her head.
"Those happy days shall nevermore return... but still, I have been beginning to grow weary of this life I lead in a ruin in the middle of the woods (here she yawned slightly); maybe, at the end of our quest, if we ever make it through, with these franc notes I have pocketed from Maman's purse (here she winked an eye at the fair student and produced the bundle of banknotes), I can go south to the Camargue, or most surely to Montmartre, where all the art and where all the excitement is... though it's unfair indeed that no woman can enter University —I wish I could someday, and I hope it comes true after that Revolution of yours!—, and try my luck at being an honest writer or actress; and perhaps also demonstrate for women's right to vote." Then she frowned, and studied him carefully. "Once we go out, we can’t stop. Can’t look back. If we do any of that, we’ll never make it to her castle. Y'know, I could still use some pleasure in tickling that lilywhite throat of yours with this Bowie knife of mine, and bursting into laughter at your reactions. But who gives a hoot anyway? Keep your spirits up... we shall find that friend of yours, shan't we? And, in his absence, such a stripling still needs a companion worth fighting for; someone quick and strong and able to survive in the wild, someone who knows that way up north, someone who would gladly fend off some obnoxious korrigans while you set your squire free... For who would care when the others wake tomorrow and find the two of us gone? Nowadays, Maman and Papa know I'm nobody's fool and I can fend for myself!"
Then, she unwrapped a bundle and handed it to him, and Enjolras saw that it was his peacoat, his gift from the Fauchelevents. "You'll need this," she said gruffly, "for it will be very cold." And then, somewhat embarrassed, he added, "I'm afraid the others have already sold your other horses."
The fair leader, as he donned his coat once more, knew it was much more likely that they had eaten his horses, but he didn't want to upset her. "That's all right," he said hastily, anxious to be gone before the other robbers realized what had happened. He hesitated, though, just for a moment. "'Ponine—"
Éponine opened the rickety gates, before tying the pack of provisions to the horse's back and seating herself in front, straddling her steed, with one leg on either side, and turning its head northwards. " You ought to be looking delighted, right? Now hop on, Sir Galahad," she motioned to Enjolras, as she helped him up behind her. "And hold tight to my back!"
In response, he didn’t hesitate a moment more and climbed up on horseback with Éponine's help. Once he was up, he glanced down on her with strange mixed emotions. Their eyes met and the fair leader really wished she was his sister. He wished he could spend an evening with her, together with his friends at the backroom of the Café Musain... But something in her gaze told that she’d not appreciate such unrealistic things. She was a woman of action and sound thinking. She smiled awkwardly and caressed his side for reassurance as if she didn’t know how it felt under her fingers. Once more she was a complete bundle of uncertainty.
As he mounted and clung to the maiden who sat in front, she drew her Bowie and cut the rope halter that tied the horse to the pillar, then shook the reins.
Instantly, they set off at breakneck speed, leaping over ruined statues and dried-up fountains in two great bounds, and out into the star-lit night. In a moment they were outside, plunging through the deep underbrush.
"Free! We're free!" the blond panted joyfully as they ran, but the dark maiden clamped her hand over the comely features, trying to shush him.
"Not yet," she hissed. "We've still got the robbers to get past." But her warning came too late—already the alarm was sounding, figures shouting and running through the trees.
A loud whistle whipped the morning air. Madame Thénardier, now completely sober with no trace of a hangover, stood on a small mound and shouted orders on her men, who rushed back and forth. Everyone was gathering something, people were assembling. "What's going on?" Enjolras asked, at a certain distance from the lair. “Ah, they’re packing up. They’re moving on to a new location," replied Éponine, plunging the spurs into the sides of their steed. “The camp is leaving. Hurry! She’s not in a good mood today.”
As he glanced at her sideways, Enjolras could swear he saw a glint, a snicker in her eyes. The dark maiden's wavering had vanished as quickly as it had come over her; her general of bandits demeanour back in full force. A lioness sending him off. This silent approval filled the fair student with pride and confidence; Éponine was strong and recognized his strength in return.
Yet this was not yet the time to be safe and sound —as we have said before, already the alarm was sounding, figures shouting and running through the treetrunks.
To the two young people's dismay, the robbers' leader appeared directly in their path, snarling, and nearly took the horse's head off with a vicious swing of her cutlass; the steed was forced to wheel around and race back the way they had come, Madame Thénardier close on their heels. On level ground, the riders would have outpaced the brute in a heartbeat, but in the trees, they were forced to go carefully to avoid catching their hair in the branches, and they barely stayed ahead of that wicked, curved blade.
"OFF WITH HIS HEAD!! OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!!!" roared the virago in their pursuit, slashing her way through the woods, as she stormed through the underbrush, by cutting down branches to left and right.
The gelding soon began to tire, and Enjolras feared his weight would cost the beast his life.
Just as he was beginning to think they were lost, the horse reared up unexpectedly and dodged to one side, unseating him and the maiden who showed him the way. Enjolras flew into a clump of furze and landed with a grunt on top of Éponine, flustering both of them for a mere instant, but they barely had time to think about whether they'd been hurt; when Madame Thénardier saw that she had frightened the beast, and most surely killed her own beloved daughter, the only child she had left, leaping to conclusions, a cold fist seized her own heart.
Then the robber sank to the ground, and the cutlass with her. The two young people held their breath, watching their master's body crumble under the terrible weight of her dismay. Madame Thénardier's body came to rest in the furze and moved no more for a while, until she came to her senses and found that both riders and steed had vanished into thin air.
She was already striding away, her back to the North, and there was nothing she could say to change what had happened, nothing but to cross her fingers and hope that at least her dear 'Ponine was still alive. During her mother's seizure, the maiden, after jumping onto the horseback and helping the blond southerner up as well, had turned the horse's head northward and urged him forward, blinking against the stinging sleet as it began to fall thickly, laying a new carpet of white for their journey.
One could not even follow them with one's eyes; storming across valleys, and rivers, and heathland; as if they were riding a pegasus, not being stopped by the howling of the night-wind nor by that of the wolves behind them, in the forest depths. Éponine was unafraid: she had grown up in the wilderness; she knew all the ways of the forest; she understood the souls of the beasts and the plants that lived in it; and she loved it. Sparks of fire seemed to fly from the horseshoes and reflect in Éponine's eyes, while Enjolras clung dearly to her waist for his life, the hoofbeats and the heartbeat of the dark maiden throbbing within his head.Just then did he comprehend how much force there was hidden in behind her kind eyes and watched amazed how the colourful particles rushed from underneath the hooves.
"Oh, the North Star! Look, Enj, how brightly it's shining!"
And, upon beholding that sight by night, following the North Star, she shook the reins and doubled their speed across the frozen wastes. He just clutched to her back purely on instinct, since the ride itself didn’t seem dangerous. Although it was ferocious, their bodies felt light and weren’t fighting with the air. In fact it seemed like the air flowed around them like a steady current.
They had already galloped for six days and seven nights, and the two loaves and the ham and bacon within the pack had been eaten, and the eau-de-vie had been drained to the last drop to stave the cold away, and both Othello and King Lear had been read through.
And Enjolras had already seen all the way through the dark maiden and found that she was a gem in the rough: elle était libre, rieuse, franche, avisée... et le regardait d'un air frondeur. The fair leader would, indeed, have fallen immediately in love with her, if his heart did not belong to Liberty already.
But... they had reached the end of the treeline!
Day turned into night within a heartbeat, the woods were gone and there were just endless plains of heather in sight. Huge calm sea of purple flowers, glittering like diamonds with the twilight frost.
"Two miles from here the Green Faery's garden begins," Éponine caught her companion's attention. "I will take you as far as that, to the last living tree that marks the edge of her realm, but from there, I will stay behind and fight the korrigans, and you must go forward on your own."
Enjolras agreed that this was perfectly fair, and moreover, he asked Éponine if they could not dismount immediately, for the knowledge that he was but a few miles from finding Grantaire at last made him too eager to sit still any longer.
The robber maiden clapped her hands together and shook the reins, digging into the flanks of her horse for what could have been the last time in her short life.
The two miles flew by in the twinkling of an eye, and then they came to a stop before a low, scrubby holly-tree, warped and wind-blasted by the frozen air, but covered in bright red berries. Beyond it, all was frosty heather in bloom, stretching away before them like a great sheet of amethyst crystals.
It was their destination, and they had reached the far north at last.
They found before them a vast plain of heather in bloom, full of bare rocks and here and there a clump of furze or a low, scrubby tree, warped into strange shapes by the wind. At the moment they arrived, it was wuthering, and the gale whipped their youthful faces, rosy with warmth, yet already weather-beaten.
And, in the middle of the heath, on a low hill surrounded with three terrace-rings, there was a perfect circle of stones, something like a solar calendar, in the centre of which they could make up a dark shape of something similar to a fort. All that moorland was lit with an eerie flickering green light, overhead the sky burned with sickly green fire, which Enjolras supposed could only be the ward that defended the keep.
The Green Faery's fortress. They had reached the place at last. They saw the stronghold looming on the horizon.
It was exactly as Éponine had described it.
Now what was it they should do next? What had Madame Thénardier done while her husband staved off the korrigans? To open the ward and enter the keep? The dark elves would arrive as soon as they detected intruders...
Dismounting from her horse and helping the fair leader dismount, after having tethered the steed by the reins to the last gnarled tree trunk at the edge of the moorland realm, she aimed at him another of those inquisitive, wistful stares:
"Don't you remember, Enj? There is only one way to break the ward cast by the Green Faery upon this circle! Go round it thrice, withershins, running as fast as you can, and the first time say:
Enjolras braced himself. Dark forms were already beginning to loom up behind the heather bloom. Korrigans. A whole army, a whole host, if not a whole regiment. And yet they were but the vanguard of the Morrigan's forces, the tip of the iceberg seen from the surface...
It would hurt indeed to take his leave of Éponine after all they had been through, after how much they had got to know one another and looked at one another's true self, beyond first impressions. Now he had to let her go in order to set Grantaire free.
"Halt!" said she, seizing the fair leader by the shoulder as he strode forth towards the fortress. It was time to bid one another farewell, and Éponine obviously felt the same way, tears welling in her dark eyes as she drew her sharp Bowie and took a glance into her reflection. It could not be more obvious that she was choking back some really heartfelt sobs.
"Opening the ward is not enough, Sir Galahad, but merely the first trial. After you have entered, you will find a large cauldron hewn out of dark rock, and filled with rainwater, on the threshold of the Green Faery's keep. Now pay attention; walk round the cauldron and push the gates inward, but drink no drop, no matter how thirsty you be; for if in faery realms you sup one drop, never again will you see our Earth, but you will remain trapped, within the ward and without entering the fortress, until the Green Faery herself finds you and forces her blood down your throat." Then, as she let the tears flow freely, she clasped Enjolras in those strong arms and planted a kiss upon each of his cheeks. Maybe it was the last bear hug that she would ever give in a short lifetime. And he dried up her tears on those soft scarlet velvet sleeves of his.
As he started forth towards the circle of stones, Enjolras said these lessons over and over until he knew them by heart, not even daring to look back at Éponine. The korrigans were closing in, hastening not only to cut off the intruders' passage, but to surround them and put an end to their short lives. They were advancing in a more regular order than ever regiment of National Guards had ever marched.
In response, the robber maiden braced herself in a catlike stance, setting her top hat right on her head, her trusty Bowie knife held firm in the grasp of her left hand, and her warm overcoat wrapped around her right arm for defense.
The closer the korrigans came, the clearer the young people could see what the Green Faery's host looked like. Each of the little pointy-eared dark elves, both male and female adults the size of young children, was armed with a needle-like rapier blade of fire. "A needle of fire which burns to ashes all it touches," she had told him that night in the robbers' den. It seemed as if all these korrigans were ready to ask: "You two and what army?"
"We tower over them, don't we? And our cold steel, furthermore, gives us the edge as well! Now, I storm through their ranks, stabbing to left and right and wreaking havoc in their ranks; so in the end I will have cut a fine path for you to the fortress," Éponine reassuringly said as she winked an eye at Enjolras.
At the sight of the human intruders, each korrigan uttered a piercing scream, and raised his or her sword, the fiery sword which reduced to ashes anything it touched; but without appearing surprised the dark maiden strode forth with a resolute pace, her knife still in her left hand and her coat wrapped around her right arm, as the young man by her side steeled himself.
She straightened his collar caring just as a sibling he had never had would. “You’ll be on your own, and I won’t be able to help you.” He took a hold of her wrists and pulled them away gently. “I’ll keep you all in my heart. Think of me and wish me strength.” A light kiss painting his cheeks rosy sent him on his way. "Now... Go! Go!! Your lover needs you! GO!!" she pushed the blond in the back, giving him a generous shove forwards as the korrigans lunged towards her where she stood, her Bowie in her left hand and her coat wrapped around her right arm.
Then, she clapped him on the back, and wished him well, and, before she departed, she blew one last kiss at Enjolras; as he set off across the heather and frost as quickly as he could. His feet were soon tender and maybe even bleeding, and, while he walked, the lashing rains from the ominous clouds overhead flew thicker and faster, forming a wall of white fog around him, but somehow never seeming to touch the ground, which remained icy and bare.
It was then that Enjolras reached up to the crown of his head and found it bare, topped with nothing but soft golden locks. "My hat... it dropped off during the ride!" he thought. There he was, bareheaded in the middle of that blistering cold and those obscuring mists. Looking over his shoulder at Éponine for one last time, he gulped down and braced himself, ready to enter the sacred ground as he left her fighting off the enemy vanguard.
"Say 'allo to my li'l friend!", he heard, behind the nape of his neck, her defiant warcry rising to the skies. "En-en garde!!"
(not only the daughter of a non-commissioned officer: Boudicca, shieldmaidens... Pluck, and education, of northern vs southern girls. É. as influenced someway by these warrior women of the North)
(thinking Enj as he runs around the keep for those two first times, his strength gradually dwindling and his hair loosened...)
He thought about radiant days on fields of lavender, of dark-haired young men with stubbly faces, of bright orange flowers and the hands that planted them. La Marseillaise and legalese, Merlot and barmaids. Love, he realised, was in the little things.
Leading his little society and planning the Revolution, Enjolras was everything: confident, beautiful, skilled... But Grantaire made him dizzier than pirouettes, wilder than river rapids, and shyer than buttercups. Grantaire just took that perfect Enjolras and made a mess of him. And he loved every minute of it. There was no epiphany or shocking realization about it. Loving the one he sought to free came to him as easily as breathing, as running.
And, upon beholding that sight by night, following the North Star, she shook the reins and doubled their speed across the frozen wastes. He just clutched to her back purely on instinct, since the ride itself didn’t seem dangerous. Although it was ferocious, their bodies felt light and weren’t fighting with the air. In fact it seemed like the air flowed around them like a steady current.
They had already galloped for six days and seven nights, and the two loaves and the ham and bacon within the pack had been eaten, and the eau-de-vie had been drained to the last drop to stave the cold away, and both Othello and King Lear had been read through.
And Enjolras had already seen all the way through the dark maiden and found that she was a gem in the rough: elle était libre, rieuse, franche, avisée... et le regardait d'un air frondeur. The fair leader would, indeed, have fallen immediately in love with her, if his heart did not belong to Liberty already.
But... they had reached the end of the treeline!
Day turned into night within a heartbeat, the woods were gone and there were just endless plains of heather in sight. Huge calm sea of purple flowers, glittering like diamonds with the twilight frost.
"Two miles from here the Green Faery's garden begins," Éponine caught her companion's attention. "I will take you as far as that, to the last living tree that marks the edge of her realm, but from there, I will stay behind and fight the korrigans, and you must go forward on your own."
Enjolras agreed that this was perfectly fair, and moreover, he asked Éponine if they could not dismount immediately, for the knowledge that he was but a few miles from finding Grantaire at last made him too eager to sit still any longer.
The robber maiden clapped her hands together and shook the reins, digging into the flanks of her horse for what could have been the last time in her short life.
The two miles flew by in the twinkling of an eye, and then they came to a stop before a low, scrubby holly-tree, warped and wind-blasted by the frozen air, but covered in bright red berries. Beyond it, all was frosty heather in bloom, stretching away before them like a great sheet of amethyst crystals.
It was their destination, and they had reached the far north at last.
They found before them a vast plain of heather in bloom, full of bare rocks and here and there a clump of furze or a low, scrubby tree, warped into strange shapes by the wind. At the moment they arrived, it was wuthering, and the gale whipped their youthful faces, rosy with warmth, yet already weather-beaten.
And, in the middle of the heath, on a low hill surrounded with three terrace-rings, there was a perfect circle of stones, something like a solar calendar, in the centre of which they could make up a dark shape of something similar to a fort. All that moorland was lit with an eerie flickering green light, overhead the sky burned with sickly green fire, which Enjolras supposed could only be the ward that defended the keep.
The Green Faery's fortress. They had reached the place at last. They saw the stronghold looming on the horizon.
It was exactly as Éponine had described it.
Now what was it they should do next? What had Madame Thénardier done while her husband staved off the korrigans? To open the ward and enter the keep? The dark elves would arrive as soon as they detected intruders...
Dismounting from her horse and helping the fair leader dismount, after having tethered the steed by the reins to the last gnarled tree trunk at the edge of the moorland realm, she aimed at him another of those inquisitive, wistful stares:
"Don't you remember, Enj? There is only one way to break the ward cast by the Green Faery upon this circle! Go round it thrice, withershins, running as fast as you can, and the first time say:
'Open from within;
Let me in! Let me in!'
Let me in! Let me in!'
'Open wide, open wide;
Let me inside.'
Let me inside.'
"Then go round the third lap and say:
'Open fast, open fast;
Let me in at last.'
And the third time, as soon as those words 'at last' have left your lips, the ward will vanish closing with a click, only for an instant, and you may go in, as soon as possible. Only remember to go round withershins. If you go round with the sun, or the hands of a clock, the ward will not open. Nevermore.” She tsk-ed, flicking her index finger back and forth.Let me in at last.'
Enjolras braced himself. Dark forms were already beginning to loom up behind the heather bloom. Korrigans. A whole army, a whole host, if not a whole regiment. And yet they were but the vanguard of the Morrigan's forces, the tip of the iceberg seen from the surface...
It would hurt indeed to take his leave of Éponine after all they had been through, after how much they had got to know one another and looked at one another's true self, beyond first impressions. Now he had to let her go in order to set Grantaire free.
"Halt!" said she, seizing the fair leader by the shoulder as he strode forth towards the fortress. It was time to bid one another farewell, and Éponine obviously felt the same way, tears welling in her dark eyes as she drew her sharp Bowie and took a glance into her reflection. It could not be more obvious that she was choking back some really heartfelt sobs.
"Opening the ward is not enough, Sir Galahad, but merely the first trial. After you have entered, you will find a large cauldron hewn out of dark rock, and filled with rainwater, on the threshold of the Green Faery's keep. Now pay attention; walk round the cauldron and push the gates inward, but drink no drop, no matter how thirsty you be; for if in faery realms you sup one drop, never again will you see our Earth, but you will remain trapped, within the ward and without entering the fortress, until the Green Faery herself finds you and forces her blood down your throat." Then, as she let the tears flow freely, she clasped Enjolras in those strong arms and planted a kiss upon each of his cheeks. Maybe it was the last bear hug that she would ever give in a short lifetime. And he dried up her tears on those soft scarlet velvet sleeves of his.
As he started forth towards the circle of stones, Enjolras said these lessons over and over until he knew them by heart, not even daring to look back at Éponine. The korrigans were closing in, hastening not only to cut off the intruders' passage, but to surround them and put an end to their short lives. They were advancing in a more regular order than ever regiment of National Guards had ever marched.
In response, the robber maiden braced herself in a catlike stance, setting her top hat right on her head, her trusty Bowie knife held firm in the grasp of her left hand, and her warm overcoat wrapped around her right arm for defense.
The closer the korrigans came, the clearer the young people could see what the Green Faery's host looked like. Each of the little pointy-eared dark elves, both male and female adults the size of young children, was armed with a needle-like rapier blade of fire. "A needle of fire which burns to ashes all it touches," she had told him that night in the robbers' den. It seemed as if all these korrigans were ready to ask: "You two and what army?"
"We tower over them, don't we? And our cold steel, furthermore, gives us the edge as well! Now, I storm through their ranks, stabbing to left and right and wreaking havoc in their ranks; so in the end I will have cut a fine path for you to the fortress," Éponine reassuringly said as she winked an eye at Enjolras.
At the sight of the human intruders, each korrigan uttered a piercing scream, and raised his or her sword, the fiery sword which reduced to ashes anything it touched; but without appearing surprised the dark maiden strode forth with a resolute pace, her knife still in her left hand and her coat wrapped around her right arm, as the young man by her side steeled himself.
She straightened his collar caring just as a sibling he had never had would. “You’ll be on your own, and I won’t be able to help you.” He took a hold of her wrists and pulled them away gently. “I’ll keep you all in my heart. Think of me and wish me strength.” A light kiss painting his cheeks rosy sent him on his way. "Now... Go! Go!! Your lover needs you! GO!!" she pushed the blond in the back, giving him a generous shove forwards as the korrigans lunged towards her where she stood, her Bowie in her left hand and her coat wrapped around her right arm.
Then, she clapped him on the back, and wished him well, and, before she departed, she blew one last kiss at Enjolras; as he set off across the heather and frost as quickly as he could. His feet were soon tender and maybe even bleeding, and, while he walked, the lashing rains from the ominous clouds overhead flew thicker and faster, forming a wall of white fog around him, but somehow never seeming to touch the ground, which remained icy and bare.
It was then that Enjolras reached up to the crown of his head and found it bare, topped with nothing but soft golden locks. "My hat... it dropped off during the ride!" he thought. There he was, bareheaded in the middle of that blistering cold and those obscuring mists. Looking over his shoulder at Éponine for one last time, he gulped down and braced himself, ready to enter the sacred ground as he left her fighting off the enemy vanguard.
"Say 'allo to my li'l friend!", he heard, behind the nape of his neck, her defiant warcry rising to the skies. "En-en garde!!"
(not only the daughter of a non-commissioned officer: Boudicca, shieldmaidens... Pluck, and education, of northern vs southern girls. É. as influenced someway by these warrior women of the North)
(thinking Enj as he runs around the keep for those two first times, his strength gradually dwindling and his hair loosened...)
He thought about radiant days on fields of lavender, of dark-haired young men with stubbly faces, of bright orange flowers and the hands that planted them. La Marseillaise and legalese, Merlot and barmaids. Love, he realised, was in the little things.
Leading his little society and planning the Revolution, Enjolras was everything: confident, beautiful, skilled... But Grantaire made him dizzier than pirouettes, wilder than river rapids, and shyer than buttercups. Grantaire just took that perfect Enjolras and made a mess of him. And he loved every minute of it. There was no epiphany or shocking realization about it. Loving the one he sought to free came to him as easily as breathing, as running.
It was the easiest sentence he had ever said.
“I love him.”
And thus, the third circle around the cairn was finally closed:
"Open fast, open fast!
Let me in at last!"
Gathering all the strength he had left, the fair leader, his queue undone and golden locks fluttering in the wake of his head like the tail of a shooting star, took a resolute, firm step forwards, the light within the circle fading as he took that stride into it.
However, soon he was forced to take a step back... for a circular hedge of dark thorny bushes began to rapidly grow around the fort, until it was as high and as thick as the walls of the Thénardiers' lair. It was impossible for Enjolras to know if he should turn left or right to enter the threshold of the circle of stones, so thick was the hedge, whose thorn-bushes were entirely bereft of both leaf and bloom, and thus seemed to be rather made of black wire. The frost hung like crystal lace from each and every thorny branch, creating a stark contrast of black and white.
What would Grantaire or Courfeyrac have said? "The Morrigan must have tightened up security," or something like that. She must be dreadfully cautious of losing her prisoner, especially since Éponine's parents freed her.
As Enjolras stood panting before the hedge of thorns, its rustling in the piercing gale seemed to reply to the questions he was too breathless to ask:
"I have, indeed; but I will not tell you which way you should go unless you do not warm my heart with your life-blood, for, as you see, the cold has turned me into a lump of ice, and not even the Lady of the Green Kirtle herself has ever come to take me upon her bosom... soon I will be entirely made of ice! For the winter has chilled my veins, and the frost has nipped my buds, and the storm has broken my branches, and I shall have no roses at all this year. If you want a way, stain my sleeping rose-buds with your own life-blood. You must sing to me with your chest against my thorns, and the thorns must pierce your flesh, and your life-blood must flow into my veins, and become mine."
Without wavering for a single instant, the fair leader bent the knees, as if in prayer, and, thrusting himself forwards, pressed the thorns to his chest, for the hedge to show him the way and let him into the sanctum.
"Be happy, be happy; you shall have your red rose. I will stain it with my own heart's-blood."
The dark frosty thorns pierced a scarlet coat and lilywhite shirt, and the silky skin, decked only with a few sparse golden chest-hairs, that lay underneath; the same thorns plunged right into the flesh, deep into his pectoral and intercostal muscles, so that the blood flew in great drops into the light of day, staining the golden soutaches on his coat and the frost on the thorny branches to his left and right; and the thorns went deeper and deeper into the flesh of his chest, and the life-blood ebbed away. It was crimson blood, the consistence of runny honey, due to all the liquid that perspiration already had wrested from him. And on the top-most spray of the Rose-hedge there blossomed a marvellous thornrose, petal following petal, as song followed song. Pale was it, at first, as the mist that hangs over the river Seine at sunrise - pale as the feet of the morn, and silvery as the wings of the dawn. As the shadow of a rose in a mirror of silver, as the shadow of a rose in a water-pool, so was the rose that blossomed on the topmost spray.
So the fair leader pressed closer against the thorns, and louder and louder grew the reassuring song, for he sang of the birth of passion in the soul of a man and... not a maid, but another man, who nevertheless turned his back to his lover.
And a delicate flush of pink came into the leaves of the thornrose, like the flush in the face of the bridegroom when he kisses the lips of the bride. Yet the rose's heart remained as white as the pale dead, for only heart's-blood can crimson the heart of a thornrose.
And the branches of the hedge cried to the fair leader to press closer against the thorns. "Press closer, or the Day will come before the rose is finished. And the Ruthless Fair herself will come back home at Break of Day..."
So Enjolras pressed closer against the thorns, and the sharp tips of the thorns grazed his lungs and his heart, and a fierce pang of pain shot through the pale ribcage. Bitter, bitter was the pain, and wilder and wilder grew the song, for it sang of the Love that is perfected by Death, of the Love that dies not in the Grave.
And the marvellous thornrose became crimson, like the rose of the eastern sky. Crimson was the girdle of petals, and crimson as a bloodstained ruby was the heart.
And thus, as the stripling's bosom was torn and his blood flowed freely, the bushes gradually budded into life, for the blood turned to sap as it was drained, until the whole circular hedge was covered in the freshest, loveliest green leaves and crimson thornroses, in the quiet of the cold wintry night; so hot was his blood and so sure his conviction! And, when the thorns that grew before him had retreated, baring the cold dark ground, the fair leader could finally see which way he had to go in order to cross the threshold. As he trudged into the circle of stones, Enjolras felt as if he breached a sacred forbidden ground. Everything looked beautiful indeed, but everything was void of warmth in its austerity. He wasn’t sure how to feel, since this was his goal. To arrive here and face her.
No matter if his knees were already buckling, no matter that slight dizzy feeling in his rumpled fair head, or that his throat was beginning to burn with thirst, he took the most vigourous strides he could towards his goal; on the threshold of the fort, before the closed door, stood a cauldron hewn out of the same dark granite as the holdfast behind it, and filled to the brim with crystal-clear, rippling dew and rainwater.
Given how much liquid had been wrested from him through perspiration and blood loss, this proved to be quite the hard trial to resist.
And yet he staggered forwards towards the font, his head reeling, his knees giving way as he leaned forwards upon the brink of the stone cauldron for support. (...)
"Not a sup will I swallow, not a drop will I drink, till Grantaire is set free...!"
(...)
It seemed as though one moment he stood alone against the trials that lay within the stronghold, and the next he was confronted by a pale, ghostly figure, carrying a gun in her left hand and brandishing it against him. And wrapped around her right arm, she wore the French tricolore flag. Directly before him, this tall figure with thick blond curls coiffed in a scarlet bonnet, and wearing the white robes of a goddess, wielded a bayonetted rifle with breathtaking precision, holding the fair leader at gunpoint.
Though he seemed to see right through the translucent body of this ghostly warrior, he recognised her, and watched in astonishment as the ghostly figure put the bayonet to his throat; the blade felt so hot that it glowed red, just like the setting sun, and Enjolras held out as she traced his throbbing carotids, until she finally took one, two, three steps backwards.
When it was over, it seemed to him that the figure solidified a bit, and he was more easily able to make out the face of the warrior who had aided him. "How can I thank you?" he asked her, looking at one kind and noble countenance.
"No thanks are necessary," said the Athena-like figure, in a beautifully accented voice that Enjolras immediately wished to hear again. "You care for Grantaire, and that is more than enough."
"You've seen him?" the fair leader asked breathlessly, hoping it was so.
But she shook her head, smiling sadly. "Not for a long time, I'm afraid," said the blonde maiden-goddess, gallantly doffing her scarlet cockaded cap.
And, as she spoke, he saw that she had been fading away little by little, until only the barest outlines showed against the fog and sleet.
"You'll tell him?" her deep female voice, which he recognised as that of Marianne, asked, her Athena-gray eyes fixing Enjolras with demanding insistence.
"That he is loved?" His voice broke only a little, and he nodded. "Oh, yes."
In another moment, Enjolras stood alone in the austere garden, only the cauldron hewn out of stone for company, but it seemed to him that he felt the cold less, and his feet carried him more rapidly toward the Green Faery's hold. Already the battle seemed to have taken on the surreal quality of a dream, and he wondered if it had happened at all, or if he were experiencing the delusions that came with a slow death from freezing or thirst or exhaustion. No matter. He had come at last to the end of his long journey, and the inner gate rose up before him.But for now let us forget for a while about Enjolras, on whose fate we are left at least slightly reassured, and peek into the stronghold, to see what Grantaire was doing in the meantime. Since the effect was wearing off like ever before, he may have been thinking of his fair leader in scarlet, but most surely, most certainly, he did not doubt at all that Enjolras was so close to him. The mere idea that the one he loved stood out there, so near, was quite far from his mind; he thought nothing of the once he had loved, and never supposed that Enjolras could be standing right in the threshold of the keep.
Chapitre cinquième
Ce qui s'y passa chez la Fée Verte et ce qui arriva ensuite
Nothing could have prepared Enjolras for the shock of how that reunion would be, for it would completely overthrow his (and everyone's) expectations concerning the aforementioned and much expected reunion.
The walls of the shrine, which Éponine had called the Morrigan's fortress, were made of black granite, and the windows were narrow slits, without any glass, through which the piercing cold air and fog entered the structure. There were more than a hundred rooms in it, all of them laid out with perfect geometric precision, and all of them utterly empty of anything alive. The largest of them alone, the Green Faery's throne room, was three square French miles wide. All of those halls were so immensely vast and empty, so dark, so dreary, that it was deathly painful to look around.
There were no amusements here, and not the least animation; there never was any gaiety, not a paltry little soirée with dances and feasting, nor even the slightest invitation to a spearmint tea or chicory coffee party, let alone an unthinkable main event for the korrigans to display their social graces, with the tempest for an orchestra, as these pixies might have shown off their grand manners and danced quadrilles whose decent gravity would be convenient for the solemn austerity of the halls; no musical reunions, not even for a single korrigan to give a harp or flute solo concert... never even the shortest and paltriest soirée de jeu for such games as colin-maillard, cheval fondu, or un-deux-trois-soleil... no, it was not even evermore allowed for the elven maidens to gather there for a chat; there was not even the slightest invitation for a little gossip over their spearmint tea or chicory coffee cups for them, like mortal girls of high rank were wont to do. There were no games of cards, or evenings spent in reading, and all that was provided by way of art or decoration were sparse mosses and maidenhead ferns, pale and wan, and even dying, due to the lack of light within those dark halls of granite.
They were lit up by the vivid, cold light of the will o' the wisps, but those halls were were vast and empty, icy and glittering and utterly forbidding. There were no amusements here, no music or warmth nor any living thing. The only illusion of warmth was the flickering flame of the faery lights, which could be seen from every part of the castle.
Empty, immense, vast, tranquil, and cold were the halls of the Morrigan, for never having been human herself, she had no understanding of human emotions, least of all joy or cheer. The flickering dance of the light of the dreary, clouded northern sun or moon, or of flashing lightning, that could be seen through the narrow, sparse windows was the only thing that seemed to have any life or spirit at all. Everything was vast and empty within that austere keep, and that dreary light of the North, even on a sunny summer day, was icy cold itself.
The floor of the fortress's empty, endless throne hall was a great runestone of black granite, its surface covered in engraved straight lines and curves, and scrawled all over with those strange, angular characters which most French people could not read, following the trace of the lines, which formed a perfect piece of art. Two golden globes, to left and right, hung from the ceiling, and in a cold stone throne in the centre of the floor sat the Green Faery when she was at home. She called the floor "the Writing of Wrongs," and said that it was the greatest writing, the best, and indeed the only one in the world.
At her feet sat Grantaire, clad in thick-furred catskins and crowned with an ivy wreath, holding in his left hand, for a bâton of command, a thyrsos made out of a bare pine branch crowned with the pine-cone and wound with ivy entwined all around; he was quite pale with cold, so that he looked almost lifeless, his skin so pale with poisoning that it seemed to be marble, even with green veins (for his blood ran green with the intoxicating draught) beneath that skin rough as sackcloth; but he did not feel it, for the fey blood he had drunk, and her kiss, had burned away the icy shiverings, and wasn't his heart already a crazy diamond? His lovely face was pale and pinched with unhappiness. Nothing he eyed and of nought he suspected, merely reaching out his left hand, as if in his sleep. And from a crystal chalice he nipped, as soon as his memories awakened life around those clenched lips. His eyes were wide, yet bereft of tears; was that young person dead or alive? The look in his eyes was lightless, and his brow was pale; his mouth a single, hard-drawn straight line, thin and bitter.
"My lady... my lady is most generous when the nightmares come. If I cry out, which I often do, she will come to me at once and bring me a cup of her warm green blood. She sits with me until my shaking abates. She will surely lead me right... I wish I did not feel so drowsy and dull-witted."
The charm was losing its spell, and the dark warrior was recovering himself. Like every other time whenever the effect wore off, he went about tracing the runes on the floor in all sorts of patterns, with his fingertips and the tip of his thyrsos pinecone, trying to make something out of; he spent the hours placing them together in all kinds of positions, as if he wished to make something out of them, just as one might play with a puzzle. The patterns he traced were the most ingenious, even though they were all meaningless strings of sounds, that did not resemble anything real. In his eyes, they were first rate, very remarkable, and of the highest importance; this opinion was owing to the fey blood that lingered within his system. He composed many complete figures, but there was one word he never could manage to form, although he wished it very much. He made many patterns, the most bizarre and the most incoherent ones, forming countless syllables and perhaps even non-existent words, but he never could find out the right way to place them for one particular password, which he was most anxious to make. He had spent a long time, always whenever he was sober, trying to face the answer to the riddle. The Green Faery had said to him that, if he could find out this password, he should be his own lord and master, and feel free to leave her service. But he could not accomplish it, he found it impossible to discover it, and the Morrigan, as she cajoled him into forgetting the puzzle altogether, rejoiced at the irony and the paradox in this challenge.
No matter in how many different ways he had tried, he had not even come slightly close to success. Anyway, he came up with the most bizarre and the most incoherent patterns, which all looked magnificent to him and made time pass for Grantaire, without him even realising that time passed in the first place.
For a while, he spent the empty hours imagining, combining, thinking of how he could put those runes together to reach his purpose, creating the most bizarre patterns he had ever found so far... or were they? He had recognised a password try from before, a sense of déjà-vu. Flicking the left wrist with his thyrsos in hand, as if twirling a bâton, listlessly, when he had grown weary of trying to seek out the password. And, after an hour or so twirling the thyrsos, he began to play rock-paper-scissors against his own shadow, which ensured that he would always win the game. For as long as he had lived in this retreat, he had begun to reason whenever he came to and recovered himself. Nothing makes one as wicked as growing weary in company; nothing makes one as wise as growing weary on one's own.
"Don't drink anything she gives you. It'll be worse this time." He steeled himself. "Meaning that it'll make you act...a little..." How to put it in a delicate way, one Enjolras would say? "Just a tad... like a... um... a heartless tyrant?" Then he cringed, looking very distressed. "She won't leave my chamber until I drink whatever she gives me." "Correction," he said to himself calmly. "She won't leave the room until she thinks you drank whatever she gives you." A slow smile started to spread across that stubbled face. "That's a really good idea."
Yet his thirst would, like ever before, prove far stronger than reason.
"Ah..." Grantaire sighed wearily in response, looking at the wrists of his liege lady. "You do have finer fingers than me... such lovely wrists... and I'm dying of thirst..."
"If I have lovely wrists, Sir, at least spare me the scars for a while... That would be better than having so much esprit and sleeping like a log, or poring over those old runes time and again... If good luck ever knocks on your door, you should at least be wide awake to let it in. Right?"
"Something strange is happening to me, milady... strange, passing strange, ever since I came here. My head feels heavy and my heart is confused, and the few dreams I have are gruesome or dreary. There's someone in my head, but it's not me. Where can all that have come from...?" he asked her.
"I promise you disasters, débâcles, catastrophes... I offer you the whole world on a platter, and a brand new bâton with a peridot hilt," the Morrigan had told him time and again, and he wondered whenever that would be, but hoped that it was the best of rewards for every wish of hers he made come true. He could only hope, and neither rejoice nor grieve, so listless he had become from intoxication.
"We shall burn the cathedrals, we shall set fire to the skies," he replied, with that fixed expression in his glazed, lifeless eyes and that sneer upon his lips. "The world? I will tell you, milady, what the world is made of. Of everything that can be taken. The rest does not exist at all. If you will so, if your will is that, I shall pillage the whole world and cast all its treasures at your feet. And you, you shall rest by my side, still upon your throne, uttering wishes that will be my commands. 'Tis the way I love you."
"Is it wishes you are waiting for, my fierce warrior?" she asked, wistfully approaching Grantaire and stroking his stubbled chin. "Then, I wish you to declare war. Declare war. Burn all the gardens. Burn all the books. Accuse all the foreigners and send them to die. 'Tis an empire that we wish for. 'Tis a name in history that we want."
In response, he stood there before her, pensive and quiet, with that same fixed expression, casting doubt on all she had to say. The effect was beginning to wear off. And thus, as the Green Faery breathed her vein and filled a rock crystal cup with her poison-green blood, she handed the draught over to Grantaire with an ice-cold sneer and the following rant:
"Or would you rather wish to be a free man, your own lord and master? With unachieved desires, trifling comforts for reassurance, derisory love... anonymity, sense of guilt, ennui...?"
"Reach me... Reach to me, my lady, the ice-cold draught; mix me your strong drops... I only ask you to make them strong. Drown my sorrows for each and every loss; let your green blood suffocate me... Take me like that! I will, thus, be worthy of your bed, as I am of your command!"
"Good, you seem in better spirits this evening. I know ever since the first time we met that you were meant for greater things," she was somewhere between suspicious and pleased. She took his hand and placed the crystal phial, into which she had poured more of her blood, in it. "Here, drink it up."
The dark student took off the cork and put it to his lips. As he downed the bright green poison of a liquor, once he had drained it to the last drop, his lips curled upwards and he rose wearily into a stance that quickly turned to one full of resolve:
"Rather a dead warrior than a living man! You ask me for greater things, and... what else would anyone else want from me? And you will never die, nevermore."
"Now I must hasten away to other countries," she suddenly replied, as her warrior clasped her waist, full of anxiety. "I will go eastward, into the heart of Europe, and look into the cafés of Budapest and Debrecen, where young men are singing the Szózat and loading their firearms, and I will whisper the truth in their ears, just softly enough that they cannot hear it. So that they will be left for dead upon the streets and upon the fields, mowed down by Austrian fire; and they will have to drink my blood to live and follow our commands. It will be good for them, for it will make them work all the harder, and that will certainly add more warriors to your ranks; for what general has ever had no men at all at his command? When I return, I shall give you frequent draughts; that will help you ease your pain, and blur your memories as well..."
And, leaving through the door to the left, without even waving goodbye, away she flew, gradually soaring up to the skies, leaving her dark warrior quite quite alone in the great hall which was so many miles in length; so he spent a while reaching out into the air as if beckoning to her, but in vain.
He turned to look upon her; struck by her sorrow, and perhaps by the pity for himself which trembled in her voice. It was a quick and rapid action; and for the moment some flash of his old bearing kindled in his form. In the next she went as she had come. Nor did this glimmer of a quenched fire seem to light him to a quicker sense of his debasement.
Then, suddenly, something gave way within him; he turned pale once more, and begain to tremble from crown to toe like a leaf on the branch, his knees buckled and gave way underneath, and he fell on all fours, his lilywhite lips uttering confused sounds, his pupils disappearing in the increasing whites of his eyes; then he knelt and stared at the floor, and was thinking so deeply, and sat so still, and remained there so stiff and so lifeless, without even breathing, that anyone might have supposed that he was a statue of a young satyr, or even of the God of Revelry himself, hewn out of Carrara marble.
Any brusque movement could make him reel and fall heavily upon the runes, or so it seemed.
Just at this moment it happened that Enjolras, entering the circle of stones, reached the great doors of the castle. They were so cold that it burned to the touch like metal heated until it glowed. Indeed, so cold were the doors that his gloves stuck to them, and after he had opened them, which was surprisingly easy, he had to rip his hands free.
The fair young man staggered in through the great doors, leaving them open behind him, for he could not bring himself to touch them again. The floor of the hallway beyond them was cold as well, and damp, his feet sticking a little, or slipping on the slippery grounds, with every step.
Enjolras walked wearily down the long hallway and through the castle, his long golden hair fluttering loosely in his wake. Every room he passed was empty, and in the whole fortress, nothing moved except his own reflection in the pools upon the floors, where a ray of light peered in through the foreboding, forbidden dark walls. Little motes of dust and heather pollen travelled over the lit space and landed on the mirror floor. There was no natural light. It surprised Enjolras that what from the outside seemed to be a simple Celtic shrine... turned out to be a foggy, dark, cold Cretan labyrinth of black granite full of twists and turns and dead ends. His own ribs were like lead, constricting his lungs, lying heavy on his heart, poisoning his blood. His skin was burning. "It feels like I'm suffocating..." gasped the fair leader to himself.
At last, he reached the large, empty hall, and caught sight of, then stared down at Grantaire, for whom he had walked halfway across France, for whose sake he had left behind all the other friends he had made along the way… his brow was furrowed, as if some complexity weighed on his mind, but his lips were parted like a child's, in stark contrast to the black stubble around, and something about his face was vulnerable and sweet as he slept. Unconscious. Not even moving a muscle. Illuminated by this sinister twilight, he appeared even more lonely and foreign. He wasn't a man. He was a helpless little thing, senseless and bereft of life.
At first, the fair leader was at a loss how to begin the conversation the closer he approached him. Would he say bonjour or bonsoir; did it make a difference? They had no concept of time here and, a stranger in the throne room, the blond was an intruder not belonging in here.
Enjolras' heart seemed to stop beating for a moment when he saw him, kneeling on the floor so very still, and for a terrible moment, the fair leader thought that he had come all this way, walked so very far, and given up so much, through fire and ice, only to find his friend dead, the terrible cold within the lightless throne room having frozen him solid where he sat.
The stance of a savateur about to strike his opponent.
And his grin was something feral and bare, eyes dark with something almost like madness.
"Hope he still is intoxicated, weakened by what he has drunk..." the fair leader braced himself. There was nothing he could do but skip and dodge his opponent's kicks, delivered with the same strength he should have used to protect his beloved leader.
All Enjolras could do was run, and feint, and skip... he had always been a leader, never a fighter... everything but an expert when it came to hand-to-hand combat, not to mention hand-to-foot combat... if he had only asked Grantaire, or at least Courfeyrac, to teach him some savate and/or bâton moves... but maybe he could turn the dark savateur's power against himself, with the right responses? There was no other way. After all, cold steel could slash and hot lead could pierce... but well-trained limbs could not only bruise, but even disfigure, even kill by crushing. "He does not know me anymore. A hideous way to die," the blond thought as he gulped, bracing himself. "Though against a worthy opponent indeed..."
This train of thought was instantly cut short by the fight-or-flight response: Grantaire, pivoting quickly, aimed a fine kick of his left escarpin, powered by rippling leg muscles, at Enjolras' face and throat. "Le coup de figure!", the blond instantly realised as he took, unconsciously, a quick step to the right. The heel of his opponent's foot barely grazed Enjolras' left shoulder. A gasp, the fair-haired stripling reeling backwards with his heart up in his throat, and looking right at his opponent, who was as lithe and strong as if he were sober; the latter was leaning forwards to the right, as if concentrating all of his body weight on that side, but stretching out his left leg. As counterweight? Maybe, being lighter, Enjolras could just vault or leap over that left leg, as if playing cheval fondu... but it could be a ruse, a decoy... still, there was no other way than just standing still there and waiting to die.
The perspiration ran down his forehead in streams, making the golden fringe of his hair stick to the drenched brow beneath. Of course his strength had begun to dwindle ever since those three laps withershins around the fort, but the fair leader had never felt sapped of it all until that disastrous attempt. Racing towards his dark opponent, with his heart pounding and his head already beginning to swim, Enjolras missed the chance to use that outstretched leg of his opponent's as a vaulting horse. Instead, it had rather the effect of a rope stretched out at his feet in that headlong collission course.
A reeling Enjolras staggered forwards six or seven steps before crashing into the wall, his head leaning on the cold stone wall before he slumped down on the pavement runes, everything darkening before his eyes as he lost consciousness.
"For having lived in too much sorrow, or too much joy, the light of your soul and reason has been quenched. Drinking and revelling until you became insane... The place in your heart where I once dwelt is cold and dead. You stand there with your fixed expression, casting doubt on all I have to say..." Enjolras sighed. He wanted so much to go to sleep, even if it were never to awaken... But there was still breathing in his lungs, and strength in his limbs, and resolve to spare:
"I can wish for no greater power than I have already... Don’t you see how strong that is? How many obstacles you have overcome, Enjolras, and how well you have got through the wide world, alone as you are? You cannot receive any power from me greater than you now have, which consists in your own courage and the nobility of your heart. Still, I was never alone: Éponine's out there, alone against the korrigans... she saved me from a cut throat in the forest, and freed me from captivity in the brigands' den... Marius and Cosette, and her guardian, remember giving me provisions and a fine carriage, and their best wishes... Combeferre is still standing in for me as leader of our friends at the Café... long story short, I have felt so terribly alone since Grantaire's departure, and felt alone, in truth, even before he disappeared, from the day that he began to drink that bright green liquor that pierced his heart and turned him cold and unfeeling; but at every stage along this journey, there has always been someone to offer aid and friendship. Though all these people, of high rank and low, have been obliged to serve me... But still... as they all wished... only me... I am the only one who can set him free... Maybe I am more of a leader than a fighter, but still... maybe there is greater power in me than in the Green Faery. I have such a power... within this heart, within this hot blood in my pulse. Otherwise, she will retain her power over him, and he will never be himself again. The thorns within my lover's heart can be removed by me and me alone. I have made it this far, and why give up already? If I cannot free Grantaire, then nobody will."
With this resolve, the fair leader wearily climbed up to his feet, his hands and feet so frozen that they had gone quite numb, and no longer even hurt anymore. The fight-or-flight response had also made every physical urge that weighed him down (pain, thirst, and fatigue) fade away within Enjolras, just like the light of the sun dispels the stars in the night sky.
(Kuroashi inspiration: punctured lung kick), forcing all of the air out. With a loud crash, Enjolras fell backwards and landed on the cold, damp pavement; as he was struck down by the impact of his opponent's foot on the fifth and sixth true ribs, he could hear something that broke with a cracking sound inside his chest, crushing through cloth and skin and flesh and bone. Then, as he crash-landed, he felt the shock and a sharp pain in his side; as if he had been stabbed with a sword or a bayonet in the left side. Only that what had stabbed the fair leader were the sharp edges of his broken ribs.
Clutching his left side, the aftermath of that loud cracking sound still ringing in his ears, Enjolras scrambled wearily up on his feet. The damage had been done. From somewhere inside him, blood was gushing from a wound. A stabbing pain racked his crushed side and some liquid welled up inside his chest, making him cough; when he looked at his bloodstained open palms, which he had covered his mouth with, at the end of the coughing spell... the fair rebel leader's suspicions were confirmed. The gasp he uttered wrought even sharper pain to his side (it was already hurting like hell every time he breathed). Three broken ribs, one of which had pierced the lung... the only thing to hope for was that the sharp edge of the bone had not severed the artery. Why hadn't he brought a sword-cane like Courfeyrac's, or learned savate himself? Why hadn't he asked Éponine to tag along, but left her outside to deal with the korrigans? Enjolras was as helpless as the damsels he resembled, and he had thought that Grantaire would be in a weaker condition than usual due to intoxication. How wrong!
"I have walked half the length of this country for him, down roads and across ice and stones, until my limbs are faltering and my head is lulled to rest. Because I have followed him through fields and forests, through the palaces of privilege, and into and out of the dens of iniquity. Because, all for his sake, I have left behind a cause to kill or die for, and friends who asked me to stay with them. Yet still, how... How do we learn to give up in the face of all-powerful, very good-looking physical strength? This is suicide!" Enjolras' head was beginning to swim due to blood loss; he staggered like a sleepy child, but a shred of consciousness still remained, like a bright star of hope in the night sky of sorrows. "What would 'Ponine say? What would 'Ferre, and Courf', and Marius and Cosette, and all the others...? For they rely not only on me. They rely on both of us. Though we are on our own, face to face... As long as we breathe... Never give up. Never give in. Come on, you boy-child, you winner and loser, and shine! You must keep struggling. The two of us must keep struggling, even if we find ourselves in terrible circumstances. Look at Death in the eye and say to yourself: NOT TODAY!"
The pain was like nothing he'd ever known.
Every breath he took seared his lungs. Blood poured from his torn flesh, over his shattered ribs. Through the red haze of agony, he could hear something. It was pounding, low and laboured. It was the sound of his own heart, struggling to beat.
For a rather obvious reason, people with punctured lungs have always been advised by healthcare practitioners to speak as little as possible (as well as to remain prostrate). Given his state of health prior to the injury, it would matter thrice or four times as much to someone in Enjolras' situation.
And now that he was standing upright, his knees buckling with fatigue and his head beginning to swim... his head was drooping like the calyx of a lily whose stem is broken; and yet, raising his voice, no matter how weak and how distorted by injury, was the worst thing Enjolras could possibly do.
Still, he saw no other choice. He could no longer fight in that state, but... Even humming or whispering La Marseillaise would ease the pain and maybe catch the conscience of his advantaged opponent. At first, it was only a faint humming of the tune, but soon, no matter the pain stabbing at his sides, lyrics were sung, at first softly and gently:
Here, his voice was broken by a coughing spell; ruby-red foam shot from his lips and rained down, leaving stains of blood that slowly began to freeze, upon several of the delicately engraved runes upon the cold, polished floor. It may have been by chance, or maybe not, that the runes highlighted by these drops of red foam spelled out the lyrics to the song Enjolras was singing at the cost of his life.
Every word he breathed, every note he breathed, was like a dagger to his left side, but still he kept on singing, raising his voice the loudest he could muster (though it was a faint tone, broken by bloody coughing fits), even though everything was turning dark before his weary eyes, and his knees finally gave way, the pale young man, feeling as cold as ice, collapsing on all fours:
Blood filled his chest and came up through his throat, leaking through his mouth; his broken voice forming the pain-torn words. Time slowed. The images before his eyes blurred. Urgent words, spoken and shouted, stretched out forever. He couldn't understand them. Keep on singing, he thought, even if prostrate on the cold stone floor, surrounded by bloodstained runes that spelled out the lyrics to that brand new tune. Not even realizing that Grantaire was swiftly and stealthily approaching his lovely, lifeless form. That his opponent was now straight by his side, coldly, indifferently watching the unconscious leader. Left leg firmly poised upon the ground, right leg raised up about one meter above Enjolras' lilywhite, gaunt face. Right foot steady, ready to crash land on the dying blond's throat, where life could be quenched the quickest, and silence that broken chant that had begun to fill Grantaire with an unlikely sense of déjà-vu, staring at the fair-haired stranger with hazel eyes that gradually widened and lightened up with more and more life:
"Enjolras..." he sobbed, restraining manly tears, getting down on his knees and cradling his strangely pale, shallowly breathing beloved leader. His voice was hoarse and harsh, as if he had not spoken in a long, long time; and he stared in shock at his lifeless beloved.
The fair leader twitched at the touch of tears upon lilywhite skin. Time slowed. The images before his eyes blurred. Urgent words, spoken and shouted, stretched out forever. Hands lifted him, bringing fresh pain. Shouts echoed around the him. Lights blazed from the ceiling above.
And then a face came into view, blurry at first, then clear.
There was nothing more Enjolras could say in a voice choked by lungs full of blood, and a red foam bubbled from his parted lips. A convulsive shudder shook his powerless limbs, he turned dreadfully pale, and fell backwards, hands and feet sliding down onto the floor, in the strong arms of the one who loved him.
And thus, Grantaire enfolded the wounded, senseless leader in his arms, and buried his face in Enjolras' left shoulder, his tears wetting the loose golden locks that veiled the lilywhite neck. He could see sparse golden hairs on the back of that lilywhite hand, and the curved fingers seemed vulnerable. "Where have you been all this time?" Grantaire cried. "And where have I been?" He lifted his face from Enjolras' neck and looked around the hall, empty but for themselves en tête-à-tête, turning his head in all directions, full of astonishment. "How cold it is," he said wonderingly, "and how dreadfully large and empty it all looks!"
Then, his eyes fell back upon the haggard features and the crushed left side of his beloved leader, and he gave a cry of dismay. "You are wounded," he cried. "You have hurt yourself for me. You should not have, for I do not deserve it. I have never had the right to injure, let alone to kill you... I went away and left you, and forgot all about you, and let the Green Faery's promises turn my heart to a cold crazy diamond... and then it were my feet that crushed your side, and I was so close to seeing you die by my own strength, but now no strength is left in my feeble frame, the poisons have done their work... I just hope... Enjolras... I shall nevermore... You will nevermore..."
More teardrops fell upon the dark bags under the fair leader's eyes, and upon his lilywhite lips, which curled upwards in a faint smile, and his eyelids flickered to reveal glazed sapphire orbs as he said, fiercely, "You can never leave me, for there is nowhere you can go that I will not follow. I have found you now, and I will never be parted from you again. Nevermore... Until... the bitter..." And as they knelt there, clinging to one another, he broke into a blood-coughing fit and collapsed once more on Grantaire's lap.
He felt the savateur take his hand in Enjolras' snow-white own, and squeeze it. He squeezed back, silk against sackcloth, ice against fire. For once, Grantaire was crying, in earnest, but trying to smile. "Hang on... Enj... Please,... hang... on...", he sobbed.
There was so much Enjolras wanted to say, but he couldn't make the words come. He wanted to tell Grantaire that he would be all right. That he was brave and strong. He wanted the lush to know how much he loved him...
The pounding in his ears grew softer. His vision blurred again.
"No!" Grantaire screamed, then looked down at the bloodstained runes. A flash to Combeferre translating runes came to his mind. FRIHET. He'd heard some sailors from the North, Scandinavians if he remembered right, say that word in Marseille, but could not remember exactly what it meant. Then he turned back to his beloved, terror in his eyes. "Enj... no..." he begged frantically. "Don't go. Please, p-lease don't go..."
The pounding slowed. His azure, steel-coloured eyes fluttered closed.
"Until... the bitter..." he whispered. "Always..."
The beat of Enjolras' brave heart faltered, and then finally, it stopped.
And, as his fair beloved sank down in his embrace, Enjolras clutching him as tighly as he could lest Grantaire should leave him on his own to die within the Green Faery's keep, the dark-haired one sobbed all the harder, knowing himself forgiven, and kissed those cold, bloody, strangely smiling lips, and carefully cradled the fragile, lifeless form of Enjolras, listening constantly to the rattling and wheezing from within the ribcage he had unwittingly crushed.
As the dark-haired student lifted up and cradled his friend, Grantaire's eyes finally shone with the light of life, his lilywhite complexion changed back into healthy olive, and the invisible chains of immobility that seemed to shackle his wrists and ankles disappeared. He was once more a young man full of health and good cheer, though racked with concern at the state of his beloved, cradled in strong yet gentle arms.
"At last I am free... Enjolras... Not even the Green Faery can hold me anymore..."
In that stance they went forth from the great fortress, the fair stripling gently held, cradled, by the stronger dark young man, who muttered to himself about the Café Musain, and their long-abandoned chairs, and legalese, and of Merlot and barmaids and barricades, and of the sunsets they had watched together, and about the blood-red dawn that would hopefully find them having given it all for Liberty, their fingers entwining in a final gesture... and as they walked the winds were at rest and the fog lifted and the sun burst forth from behind the clouds, a pale sun still half-veiled in the Northern morning sky.
The Green Faery could return, and enter her throne room once more, if she pleased; for upon the dark pavement lingered the glow, in warm red firelight, of six runes that spelled out the word FRIHET: "Liberty" or "Freedom" in Norse languages, the password that Grantaire had to find out if he was to become his own master. The two students did not even wait for her return to claim what she had promised. They left behind the runes that proved that the Green Faery's latest general had won back his freedom, and become once more his own lord and master.
"This place is cold as a witch's tit," he said after a while, grinning that crooked grin Enjolras had almost forgotten, and which, his eyes shut and veiled in darkness, he could not even picture himself. "Let's go someplace warmer."
The sun was low when Grantaire came to himself, his much-enfeebled self. His head was throbbing, his body was cramped with pain, his mouth was dry and burning. Down-hill he trudged slowly to the cauldron of cold stone and drank. It revived him a little, enough so he could cradle the fair beloved and walk at a brisk pace while carrying Enjolras safe in strong, loving arms. On Grantaire trudged out of the circle of stones, with Enjolras in his arms; on they trudged south, until they reached the edge of the plains and the point where the forest began.
Already half-bled to death by the trial of the hedge of thorns, and exhausted by the three laps he had run withershins around the circle of stones, the fair leader had not come to his senses. Pale as wax, eyes firmly shut, he gave no sign or token of life.
Kissing his icy forehead for a long time, the darker and stronger student, equally pale, muttered:
"Pas de crainte, Enjolras. 'Tis too early for both of us to die..."
When they reached the gnarled holly bush with red berries, there stood someone waiting for them. Out of the treeline of beeches and chestnut there suddenly cantered, riding a magnificent steed, a dark young girl in tattered boy's clothing, hatted or coiffed with a scarlet sans-culotte bonnet, and wearing two pistols at her belt. Her raven hair was matted and rumpled like a troll's, her queue cut off into a more boyish bob haircut; she had a bruised left eye, and there were tears all over her sleeves and trousers, through which burn scars could be seen upon her olive skin. Her head was covered with a bright scarlet scarf below the bright scarlet cap (one just like Marianne's), but the curly raven hair flowing from beneath the scarf and the flashing dark eyes gave her away. There were two pistols on her belt, a Bowie in her left hand, and she held the reins in the right.
It was the little robber maiden, who had tired of staying with the robber band, and gone forth to seek her fortune as a writer or a revolutionary, and to demonstrate for women's right to vote.
As we have said before, fierce Éponine had grown weary of the life she led in the ruins in the forest. Thus, right before she left her parents' den in the company of Enjolras, she had taken a great sum in franc banknotes from their coffers, stuffed her pockets full, and cut the tethers of one of the horses that Cosette had given Enjolras (and the Thénardiers had claimed after the ambush), right before they leapt up on horseback and set forth.
She recognised both young men directly, but was astonished upon beholding her hero senseless, so deeply unconscious that he could die at any given moment. Her expectations of Enjolras striding forth towards her safe and sound, holding hands with his dark friend, had been brutally subverted; and thus, she stormed, in a state of shock, towards them. It was an anxious meeting, but, upon hearing the fair leader breathe, though shallowly and racked with pain, she was at least slightly encouraged and reassured.
"And who can this dark young man be... but the companion whom Enj sought so anxiously, when we took him prisoner?" she quietly asked herself.
"You're a fine fellow to go rambling about in this way, gallivanting off and putting dear Enj to all that trouble, aren't you?" she turned towards Grantaire and prodded him in the side with a sharp elbow, taking care not even to graze the wounded leader. "I would like to know whether you really deserve to have someone running to the ends of the Earth to search for you. Or even whether anyone should be worthy of dying for your sake...! Honestly, Enjolras deserves someone way better!" she smirked, slapping the senseless young man gently in the face (for the sake of auld lang syne).
In response, Enjolras was so deeply unconscious that he did not even flinch, while the sceptic gauchely looked away. Even though he knew himself forgiven, this girl, who seemed to know Enjolras, was at least slightly unsensitive to remind him of what he had wrought, as she looked him up and down and shook her head.
"Mind you, you're handsome enough! I can see why he followed you to the ends of the Earth! I just knew. Maman would beat me black and blue, and sneer, and say Enj and I would both die in the fog... but I knew you were strong, Enj. I always knew. If we get him to a safe place, like the Château Fauchelevent, as soon as possible, he may survive. He's a strong young fellow, so there's one chance out of twenty... And, furthermore, I know every shortcut through these woods, and you will surely need a pathfinder to get there in time... Trust me. But now tell me how he managed to get you back. Please tell me everything that has transpired, how he got on himself, and how he has found his fugitive!" Éponine was on tenterhooks, for all that had transpired in her absence, as well as for saving the life of her wounded hero.
Though his recollections were rather hazy and the last, most vivid of them were the most shocking experience in his short life, he told the robber maiden all about it. Or at least, all that he could recall: how he had let himself be seduced and spirited away, as Enjolras had stormed off in his pursuit, suffering concerns and encountering misfortunes that no single person could ever wish for. And, as he related his version of the story, he felt that he could trust this boyish stranger, and that an oppressive weight was being taken from his chest. It felt like partaking of a healing draught, and a change seemed to pass over his whole frame. He no longer felt the excitement of fever, or the painful weakness which succeeds it.
“Well, your beau is in quite the serious condition, with that tear in the left lung and all that! Who knows if he shall live? 'Twould have been better with a sword thrust or a bayonet! Well, then, I suppose it's all right at last,” said the robber maiden. "All's well that ends well, like the Bard once said! Once Enj has recovered, return to Paris, you two; and, should I ever pass by, I will drop by and pay you a little visit..."
And, having greeted the two of them without even setting foot upon the ground, she carefully helped Enjolras on horseback and spurred her horse into a steady trot, a right pace to carry the wounded blond safely, as Grantaire followed them on foot, trudging forth at the same pace.
The great forest of beeches and chestnut seemed to take a much shorter time to traverse this time than it had on the outward journey, and yet it seemed that the spaces under the trees were less dark, yet nevertheless slightly gloomy, now that a life, that of a seriously injured yet healthy young person, hung in the balance.
"Actually, you and I," Éponine told Grantaire with an unusual look of concern, that day at dusk, "both of us, are a rare case. Survivors. We may have lived through the Green Faery's toils, but most others died because of the draught... —or, I should say, of withdrawal from that green blood of hers. Like honey to the throat, but poison in the blood. Those who had been at her keep for years and had been fed a daily diet of it were not able to adjust to life without the Green Faery. The withdrawal was a terrible thing, causing a violent trembling of the entire body, vomiting, and eventually an abrupt halt of breathing. Then, heart failure..."
Éponine and Grantaire locked eyes with one another and shuddered. Both of them had been lucky to be loved, for, otherwise, their destiny would have been far different, and they would most surely have never met. And yet there had been a price to be paid... all that was left was to hope, even though there was only one chance out of twenty, and to quench the thirst of the senseless, febrile leader, for, as the robber maiden herself had explained:
"As for dear little Enj, there is hope as well; I know my shortcuts through the woods of this region, or I'm not a Thénardier! That injury of his is not lethal, but nevertheless quite serious. In fact, I've heard, or so Papa and Maman told, of surgeons during wartime who healed worse injuries, and the wounded nearly all survived in those cases. Though, as we have discussed before, this injury is dead serious, and will not heal easily... Surely he'll be all right within two weeks at least!"
And thus, and with such a good pathfinder, they were far from losing all hope. Comfortably lying in an improvised stretcher on horseback, Enjolras tossed feverishly, coughing up blood and asking for a drink. The nearest spring or pond was far closer than the Château Fauchelevent, quoth the robber maiden; by the crystal-clear freshwater, all three of them could have a rest and a drink until the next morning.
By the time they encamped by said spring, a tranquil lily-pond, and gently lowered him from horseback, Enjolras was deeply lethargic and as pale as death, a clammy cold sweat covered his brow, and two dark purple crescent eye bags shaded his shut eyelids. His breathing was wheezy and whistling; deep within his chest, a muffled bubbling or gurgling sound could be heard.
There he lay upon the spearmint around the spring, with only his half-open shirt on, to ease his breathing. The other two could see his clean lines, all sharp curves and angles; the fair lashes, the fine high bones of his cheeks, the cove where the wings of his collarbone met, the marks of his ribs, faint shadows like the strings of a harp. "A broken harp," Grantaire mused with a heavy sigh, wandering that perfect set of harp-string ribs-- how could he have dared to shatter them?
As if Éponine could read the dark student's thoughts, she cupped his stubbled face and reassured the broken lover's anxieties:
"No, there is no fear... there is no fear for now at least..."
"Hold on!" Grantaire slapped his beloved gently in the face and clasped his lilywhite, cold, pulseless wrists. "Hold on, Enjolras!"
In response, the fair leader's eyelids parted ever so slightly, a ray of elation shining in his glossy ice-blue irises.
"Ah... 'Ponine... Grand'R...! Ah... Left... side... crushed..."
For a while, the two other young people lifted him up and, touching him on the back, realised that the back of the ribcage, and the spinal cord, were intact.
"Could you try to explain what you feel like?" the dark student softly asked his fair leader.
"I feel..." Enjolras tried to put it into as few words and as clear words as possible, considering his own state and his friends' concerns, "like a flow of blood... rising... at every respiration... Je respire... difficilement..."
His voice was barely a whisper, broken with coughs and red foam from his lips every now and then, like that of a consumptive; the bleeding in his lungs and the pain from the crushed side rendered his breathing that difficult and made every word he uttered a bayonet stab to the left side.
"Je me sens trop mal... Depuis quelques jours... ce coup de... m'empêche de respirer..."
"Quiet!" the Thénardier girl commanded, putting an index finger to the cold bloodstained lips.
"I hope we can save him in time..." Grantaire sighed, filling a tankard Éponine kept in her knapsack with clear spring water to quench the thirst of his beloved. "This young man cannot die. This young man will not die..."
The cold lips curled upwards into a pale smile. Enjolras bit his lips to stifle a groan of pain and stop the blood-flow welling within his chest. Still Éponine kept on chiding, and Grantaire now chimed in on her side:
"Quiet, Enjolras... or you will kill yourself! Please do not speak; your healing, your life itself, is at stake!"
"I will n... I will not..." Enjolras muttered softly. "Love me... or die... now you... just like that evening... Café Musain...!"
Those last words were interrupted by a violent blood-coughing fit, and Éponine, in response, pushing the scarlet kerchief she wore over her bonnet over the wounded leader's mouth, for a handkerchief:
"No speaking! Hold on, Enj! Lay still and quiet..."
It was Grantaire's stance, and the look in his eyes, which reassured and persuaded Enjolras to finally submit to his convalescence; no matter the burning thirst that parched his throat or the stabbing pain in his left side. He suffered, nevertheless, due to that burning thirst, and often asked for a drink, and asked to be fanned with an open palm or Éponine's scarlet bonnet. A tankard held to those lips by his kind-hearted lover or by the Thénardier girl merely lasted for an instant ere it was emptied.
"Je sens quelque chose... qui se soulève... dans ma poitrine. Je vivrai... je vivrai du moins... embrassez-moi... Grand... R..."
And, in response, he felt the dark stubble on an ill-shaven face brushing against his right cheek, then against his forehead... but what were those cool droplets falling upon his pale features? It was a clear night, so it was not drizzle; and it was too early for morning dew. Grantaire was shedding tears upon the fair leader's face, and furthermore sobbing, as he gave those warm, soothing kisses. Yet at first Enjolras did not recognise the one who reassured him with those tokens of endearment.
"Qui m'embrasse?" Those blue eyes were drowning in darkness, and his thoughts were once more confused.
"C'est moi, Grantaire", he heard a deeper voice piercing through the haze, not entirely, but enough for the doubt to be cleared.
"Merci... mon ami..." said Enjolras in his now usual weak voice; an interrupted voice which indicated a reduplication of his suffering. His thirst was now increasing; tossing feverishly in his cool spearmint bed, he motioned towards the open palm of Grantaire's left hand to tell wordlessly that he needed fanning, and wearily put the empty tankard back into the dark student's grasp, pointing at the lily-pond. Soon Grantaire returned with the refilled cup, which he put to Enjolras' lips right-handed, as the dark young man himself, to procure some solace for the fair leader, stroked and gently rubbed the middle of Enjolras' chest with a large, knotty, warm left palm.
There was still a pulse within, fluttering and somethimes dashing against the sternum, like a butterfly held in the clasp of a child's shut hands. Though a wavering heart, it was young and strong, and struggling at its utmost: there was still hope, in spite of that rattling breathing and erratic heartbeat, Grantaire thought with a sigh of relief. Remembering the pains he had endured for endless nights, when the coolest draught changed, within his seared mouth, into molten lead. A transient shudder ran down his spine. On the other hand, Enjolras drank deeply to quench his inward heat, proving that there was far more hope than sorrow. Whenever he was brought a refreshing drink, he drank it all up, without leaving a single drop.
And, all night long, they watched the fair leader, counted his pulse's flagging stir, felt for his shallow breath, held water from that spring to his lips, which he quaffed most eagerly, and cooled his face with damp cloth and fanning leaves, until the mists that clouded his bright intelligence condensed and lulled him into deep sleep.
"How cool I feel..." Enjolras muttered, soothed by these refreshing gestures, "I must be getting better;" and he sank into a delicious slumber.
All the blood he had lost, and all that struggle for life, awakened within the wounded leader a powerful urge to rest; and thus, gradually surrendering all his strength, he sank down exhausted on the soft, fresh spearmint, laying his weary golden head in Grantaire's lap.
All night long he tossed about until his strength failed, and awoke the next morning in a high fever. His weakness hardly allowed him to speak, the words welling up as nothing more than low groans from a choked throat, and the friends who accompanied him lived in a state of perpetual anxiety about his state of health.
During the journey to the Fauchelevents' estate grounds, Éponine and Grantaire got to know one another better, and both of them were reassured by the fact that they had found kindred spirits. She told him of Cosette and of her uncertainty on how the new heiress would receive a garçon manqué in such worn clothing, and if she would remember, and display kindness towards, her childhood acquaintance; and, in response, he told her of why he was so concerned with Enjolras' state of health, and wished for his fair leader to return alive:
"I met this boy: I loved him as I had never loved anyone or anything before: I had no need to labour to win his affection - he was mine by right: he loved me, even as I loved him, from the first: he was the necessary complement to my soul. How dare the world presume to judge us? What is convention to us? Nevertheless, although I really knew that such a love was beautiful and blameless, although from the bottom of my heart I despised the narrow judgement of the world, yet for his sake, I tried at first to resist. I struggled against the fascination he possessed for me. I would never have gone to him and asked his love; I would have struggled on till the end: but what could I do? It was he that came to me, and offered me the wealth of love his beautiful soul possessed. How could I tell to such a nature as his the hideous picture the world would paint? And thus, if I should die, and if he should die, let me die by his side, and let him die by my side, most surely with his hand in mine and my hand in his, while we are still young, facing the barrels of the Crown's firearms. Only then can our purposes be fulfilled..."
Now Éponine understood that she was feeling more or less the same towards Cosette, and replied with an ironic smirk. They still carried the wounded Enjolras as carefully and as quickly as they could, though he was still pale and unconscious and sleeping as deeply as any critically injured person would be sleeping.
Still the hurt to his side made him suffer a lot, and still he often found his own mouth full of blood."Je me sens trop mal... Depuis quelques jours... ce coup de... m'empêche de respirer..."
"There is no water here... my throat is dry and burning! there is fire and ice within me, and the air is so heavy! Ah!" Those were the thoughts he was unable to put into words, given his state of health, tossing feverishly and gasping for breath, writhing like a trampled snake, but could only express with a violent blood-coughing fit, low groans from a choked throat, or a pat on the back of one of the two riders who gently transported him on horseback. And always Grantaire was there, softly pouring through those parted lips, overcome by the agony of thirst, a deep draught from a flask refilled at the closest clear rill or spring to refresh his beloved, reassured by the swallowing reflex which proved that life still nestled, and resisted, within the wounded young man; or fanning his pale forehead with a flick of the wrist and an open palm. As usual, whenever he was brought a refreshing drink, he drank it all up, without leaving a single drop.
"How cool I feel..." Enjolras muttered, whenever he was gently fanned, "I must be getting better;" and he sank into a delicious slumber.
When they left the woods, and reached the green fields and the river on the other side of them. That was when they caught their first glimpse of the Château Fauchelevent in the distance. Though the fair leader was too worn-out, sleeping in a dreamless darkness, his breathing still rattling within the throat and chest, to realise how close the hope of saving his life was.
As they thought of how his heart had stopped, and how close they'd come to losing him, their own hearts faltered. Especially Grantaire's.
He'd screamed at Éponine to help him, to do something. And she had pressed bandages made from his torn shirt against the wound in his chest, and then she had put the heels of her hands over his heart and started pushing. One, two, three, stop. One, two, three, stop. Over and over again, and, with every push, the bandages had become redder. For endless, agonizing seconds, nothing had happened, and then Enjolras had groaned and started breathing again. The fair leader had lived — barely. The broken ribs had missed his heart by an inch, but had badly damaged his lung. He'd lost a great deal of blood and had been deprived of oxygen. Would he recover? Could he fully come back from such terrible injuries? Neither Grantaire nor Éponine did know. No one did. Enjolras himself couldn't tell them. He was still unconscious.
Two weeks had passed since he'd almost died, and he was still in a coma; the high amount of blood he had lost brought a powerful urge for lots of rest. Éponine and Grantaire went to visit him morning and night, twice a day, always hoping for a sign —a twitch of his hand, a flutter of his eyelashes—, but they never got one.
The doctors had told that they'd done all they could. That the Fauchelevents and their guests must prepare themselves for the worst —that Enjolras might remain in a coma for the rest of his life. It would be better to put him out of his misery, indeed, but, for all the sorrow, there still was hope.
Éponine and Grantaire talked to him, sang to him, told him about their days, and the new challenges they brought, as if he could answer. He was still there; they knew he was. And they all refused to give up hope. He had broken three ribs, they had wounded one of his lungs, and he breathed with great pain and difficulty, which increased daily. It was a consequence of his hurt, that he spoke so low as to be scarcely audible; therefore, he spoke very little. But he was ever ready to listen, and it became the first duty of Grantaire's life to say to him, and read to him, what his lover knew he ought to hear. Even though the bedridden blond was too deeply unconscious, and it hurt too much to speak, to put into words, the thoughts that crossed his fevered mind:
"Wherefore all this trifling? Do you wish to see me pine and pant, and die by inches? I am wasting away; without hope, and tormented by this tragedy. And you see clearly the proof, for the fever is double-stitched to my veins. Let me behold you, and take in payment all my love; for nothing else can cure the troubles I endure."
But when he had thought, again and again, this and a great deal more, and still saw that all his words were thrown away, for they could not be uttered, he took to his bed, and had such a desperate fit that the doctors prognosticated badly of his case. Then his lover, who had no other joy in the world, sat down by his bedside, and said to him, "My love, whence comes all this grief? What melancholy humour has seized you? You are young, you are loved, you are great, you are rich—what then is it you want, my love? Do you not see that your illness is an illness to me? Your pulse beats with fever in your veins, and my heart beats with illness in my brain, for I have no other support of my sorrows than you. So be cheerful now, and cheer up my heart, and do not see the whole kingdom thrown into mourning, this house into lamentation, and your lover forlorn and heart-broken."
When Enjolras heard these words, he softly said, "Nothing can console me but the... cough! but the fact that we... cough! will both live through this ordea... cough! Therefore, if you wish to see me well again, let Grand'R... be brought into this chamber; I will have... no one else to attend... me, and... make my bed, and... cook for me, but Grand'R... himself; and you may be sure that this pleasure will make me well in a trice."
Thereupon Grantaire, realising that his fair beloved was far too unconscious to recognise him, and although he thought it ridiculous enough for himself to act as cook and chambermaid, and feared that Enjolras was not in his right mind, yet, in order to gratify him, he came up to his bed, and felt the patient's pulse (which made Éponine laugh outright as she peeped behind the curtain). Then the leader said in a faint voice, "My dear... Grand'R... if it is really... will you not... wait... upon me?" and Grantaire nodded his rumpled dark head, with a friendly smile. Then the physicians had some foxglove syrup brought, on a silver platter and with a silver spoon, and the dark student put a spoonful of the syrup to the lover's cold lips, watching his throat work as he swallowed it down; it felt so delicious that Enjolras, who could not relish even sugar, licked his fingers at the taste. And when he had done with the syrup, Grantaire handed him a drink of laudanum with such grace that Enjolras, if he had not sunken back into sleep on the fluffy lacy pillows, overcome by the narcotic drug after eagerly quaffing it, was ready to kiss the dark lover on the forehead. For every draught of water, or of laudanum, he would have gladly expressed thanks.
Thereupon, Grantaire gently pushed Enjolras to one side, and quickly set about making the bed; and, running into the garden, he gathered a clothful of roses and citrus blossoms and lavender, and strewed them over it, so that the staff and the household of the château said that this gauche, unkempt young man was worth his weight in gold, and that the fair convalescent had good reason to be fond of him. He no longer refused Grantaire's assistance, but gladly took from the hand of his lover any cooling draught he offered. Their constant presence lessened one another's tediousness of the slow creeping hours. How could Enjolras have remained insensible to so much love, to the self-denial exercised for his sake by a person whom he had hitherto overlooked!
"Bonsoir," said the nurse as the dark student went into Enjolras' room.
"Has there been any improvement?" Grantaire asked hopefully, as he did every single time he came to visit Enjolras.
"I'm afraid not," the nurse said.
"We've changed the flower arrangement beside his bed, though, so he has something fresh to look at."
"Thank you," she replied, glancing at the glass vase on the nightstand table, where a new pattern of orange blossoms, purple lavender, and pink roses had been laid out. Enjolras' blank eyes stared at it.
Is he seeing them? Grantaire wondered. Can he hear me? Does he even know I'm here?
He sat down on the edge of Enjolras' bed and smoothed a lock of golden hair off his forehead. "We're ready, Enj," he said, sharing his day with him, as he did every evening. He smoothed the fair leader's negligée and fastened an open button. He was sitting quite calmly, with half his nightshirt on. One could see his clean lines, all sharp curves and angles; the fair lashes, the fine high bones of his cheeks, the cove where the wings of his collarbone met, the marks of his ribs, faint shadows like the strings of a harp. He gently lifted Enjolras' head and fluffed the pillow underneath it, tucking the blond right into bed and pushing the pillow behind his back to keep him from falling and from getting cold. Then, he took that ice-cold, lilywhite hand in his callous own:
"They're so brave, all of them, so tough, so smart. But this —this National Guard—... How are we supposed to destroy what the first Revolution has made? We were given this task; they believe we can carry it out... but how? Will you be leading like one thousand students into battle, or straight to their destruction?" Here he smiled sadly. "I wish you could tell me."
There they sat for quite some time, saying nothing, Grantaire just holding Enjolras' hand and gazing at his face. "I have to go," he finally said. "Before I go, I have to tell you something. I — I don't know if you'll be here for the moment of truth. All I know is that I love you, Enj, with all my heart. You were ready to give your life for mine. Maybe you already have. But you are my life. Remember when you set me free? Well, Jehan Prouvaire said something I remember, right before my change of heart." He leaned over and kissed the fair leader's lips. "I disbelieved him then. But now I do believe. Love is the strongest magic."
He touched Enjolras' forehead to his own, then quickly left.
Without even looking back. It was easier that way.
If he had looked back, he would have seen it.
A single silver-crystal tear rolling down Enjolras' cheek.
Marius and Cosette were greatly alarmed and concerned for Enjolras' sake, indeed. For many days his critical condition did not appear to improve. But now a favourable change was noticed; the fever left him, sleep returned, and with it, although slowly, strength as well.
"He was very agitated, though, and I had to give him double the portion of laudanum, and soothe his brow with a cool, wet cloth upon his forehead," Grantaire told their most generous hosts. "It was very peaceful, holding him in my arms as he settled down to sleep, his golden head resting on my shoulder."
When Enjolras finally came to in that lavender-scented canopy bed, and instantly recognised those uneven features perched above his own, still pale, he laughed and sobbed for joy, and kissed that drawn, stubbled face, and his long, clever fingers, so pale and cold. He kissed his dark saviour's eyelids, which were red and haggard-looking from staring so long, unsleeping, under the influence of that green draught, and he buried his face in that curly, matted dark hair and felt as perfectly content as he ever had back home, before Grantaire's change of heart, before the sceptic had gone away and his own long, lonely journey had begun.
"Is this... no, this cannot be a dream... "
When the blond, still pale from his wound, saw all those pretty offices which had been done during his convalescence, they only added fuel to the fire; and he said finally in that blithe voice of command, that clear and loud voice which his injury had hushed for months:
"If I do not give this lad a kiss, the breath will leave my body. Kiss me, kiss me, my beautiful beast! Let me not see my poor soul die of longing!"
And thus Grantaire, finally with that cheerfully ironic smile that looked a little like a smirk, cupped Enjolras by the cheeks, and kissed him again and again.
So the fair leader awoke that one day and realized that for the first time, he knew what it was to be happy, and what it was to belong, and for long days afterward he held this new awareness close and thought about the day when he would at last find the courage to tell the secrets that he kept in his heart, the dark memories that he scarcely admitted even to himself, and the fragile, inescapable certainty he felt every time Grantaire looked at him. And on good days, he thought maybe he could see an answering certainty in those hazel eyes, just waiting for him to speak.
"I have caught you, my little rogue! You shall not escape from me again without a good reason."
At these words, Enjolras, adding the colour of modesty to the picture of his own natural beauty, said to him:
"I am indeed in your hands—only guard me safely, and stand by my side before every volley of enemy fire, until the bitter end!"
The fair leader had awakened as if from a dream, and light danced in his azure eyes, though he was still pale from his injury. Enjolras drank the moment in, like a drowning man drawing water into his lungs. And, in response, Grantaire laughed in his innocent old way.
Then Marius and Cosette entered the sickroom, to check out Enjolras' progress, and, praising Grantaire as a good and virtuous fellow, told the now fully-conscious leader that they were content that the dark realist should be his saviour. With a sigh of relief, the lilywhite leader explained how Grantaire, who desired nothing else in life, had forthwith pledged him his faith; whereupon the latter, his right hand upon his heart, gave spoken proof of that solemn oath.
But Enjolras ruffled Grantaire's dark, curly hair and then, to change the matter of conversation, asked Cosette about her guardian, of whom neither of the students had even seen as much as a glimpse during this sojourn at the Fauchelevents'.
"Oh, he is gone to foreign countries," said the heiress, lowering her gaze. "On a great voyage across Northern Europe, to seek out new business partners. He took the carriage to Calais, and from there the London ferry, about a month ago; maybe he is thinking of me right now in Gothenburg, or Stockholm, or Saint Petersburg, or Königsberg, or Stralsund, or Lübeck..." And, as she spoke in a voice laden with concern, her newlywedded husband Marius laid a warm palm of a hand upon her shoulder to reassure her.
“Well, then, I suppose it's all right at last,” said Grantaire with his usual smirk.
Then, Enjolras looked at Cosette and reassuringly addressed her, with an unusually warm look in her eyes:
"I will tell Éponine of why she surely was unable to reach you in the Thénardiers' hour of need. That will surely reassure her, and bridge the gap between the two of you."
And (speak of the wolf!) the Thénardier girl, who had been eavesdropping, popped up from behind a curtain and excused herself with a curtsy.
"Why not put the kettle on, and discuss the matter of our past en tête-à-tête, 'Ponine and I, over some Earl Grey and butter scones in the parlour?" the fair heiress asked all the others.
That seemed to settle the matter indeed, and soon the young husband and wife both left the spare bedchamber turned now far less of a sickroom, while Éponine stayed for a while with the two revolutionaries.
"What a jolly rambler you are, eh, Grantaire?" she asked. "I would like to ask you a little more whether you deserve that anyone should go to the ends of the Earth for, and even have their chest crushed, to find you!"
But he only ruffled her matted dark hair in response, and then Enjolras did the same; and she told them about her emancipation, her flight at the crack of dawn from the brigands' lair, and her decision to lead an honest life, no longer on the lam. "Maybe I should change my surname, whether as a nom de plume to publish my works or altogether as a physical person. 'Thénardier' has such a nasty ring to it, even in Paris where no one would know me, and see just another young hopeful from the provinces. I am thinking of... how about 'Jondrette'? Sounds good at least to me, 'Éponine Jondrette'. Like a plucky storybook girl of those that save the prince in distress..."
No words she received in reply, but reassuring smiles and eyes beaming with honesty, approving of all of her decisions, both months-old and recent, to become a free spirit. And that was enough for her to satisfy her esteem needs and spread her wings to their full extent!
That was when the robber maiden left them, to return to the parlour where Cosette was waiting for her with tea and scones at hand, and to seek her forgiveness. Both of the students thought it best not to go with Éponine and Cosette, for it seemed that their reunion ought to be a private thing, though Enjolras, still bedridden, and with the Thénardier girl (who would soon change her surname) for a go-between, asked the heiress to remember him to her guardian, and to give M. Fauchelevent his thanks for the trousseau, for the attelage and provisions that had sustained him for so long on his journey, and also to carry message from Éponine to him, saying that her time with the Thénardiers was now a thing of the past.
Then, after a few hours en tête-à-tête with her former foster sister, Éponine returned to the sickroom where the two young men were waiting, told them that she had made friends and amends with Cosette at last (though she still looked a little dreamy and sighing; maybe because she had fallen head over heels for a certain young translator who was already married?), took both their hands, and promised that if ever she should pass through the arrondissement where they lived, she would call and pay them a visit, and surely join their ranks and fight and bleed for Liberty.
"Bon!" quoth she, "tout est pour le mieux; retournez au café Musain, et si j'y passe jamais, j'irai vous faire au moins une petite visite. Et bien sûr j'irai combattre sous votre drapeau, et être morte pour la Liberté..."
And then, she mounted her chestnut horse, straddling as usual; and, after being given the address of the Musain by the fair leader himself, she embraced both of the revolutionaries without even setting a foot on the ground, and rode away into the wide world, spurring her horse into gallop and disappearing into the horizon. She resumed thus her grand voyage, back on her horse and onwards, on adventures of her own.
As they watched her go from the threshold of the Château Fauchelevent, Enjolras rejoiced that the robber girl would not have to travel the world alone, as he had. "Those are never alone who are accompanied by good thoughts," or hadn't she said that during their quest up north?
After a couple of months had elapsed, Enjolras felt himself sufficiently strong and tranquil to leave his bed, though not his chamber, on his own. This he did with the assistance of an overjoyed Grantaire for a crutch. They saw the blond, with a steady hand, hold and use the spoon, and able to take the strengthening soup for himself.
"Are you ready?"
Enjolras nodded, and then Grantaire smiled back at the fair leader, so handsome in his scarlet waistcoat laced with golden soutaches, and took his arm.
The dark student led the fair one through the Grand Hall. "Nervous?" Enjolras asked.
"About 'Ponine, no. Not about M. Fauchelevent either. About your breathing, yes."
Grantaire had heard a hitch in his chest. He was sure of it.
"I'm fine," Enjolras replied. "The doctors said I could do this. Don't worry so much, Grand'R..."
"How can I not?"
"Because I'm not in a coma anymore!" he replied, cheerfully exasperated, as the dark lover bit his lip. Enjolras tended to get frustrated. He was eager to be up and about. To resume his duties. He was getting stronger every day, but still —Grantaire was worried. He couldn't help it. They'd come so close to losing one another that everything scared either one of them now. He was worried if Enjolras was pale, or flushed. If he looked tired. If he didn't eat enough. If he cleared his throat or coughed.
Grantaire had come home from the village market to find him sitting up and conscious. It was the happiest day of both their lives. He'd hugged him and kissed him and cried tears of joy.
But Enjolras wasn't out of the woods yet. He still had a long way ahead of him. His recovery had been slow and full of setbacks, but now, nine months later, he was up and about most of the day, though his doctors insisted that he rest after lunch. He would return to the Right Bank to study and lead his people soon, when he was stronger.
"He is now out of danger. The fever has abated, and there only remains a debility quite natural after so severe an illness. Great care, however, is still necessary, with strict attention to all I have prescribed; for his central nervous system is much shaken, and any relapse might be serious."
One day, months later, the surgeon finally set the convalescent free. When Enjolras was perfectly restored to health, finally able to stand upright, though still pale with blood loss, he and Grantaire went forth hand-in-hand towards home, and as they advanced, springtime appeared more lovely with its green verdure and its beautiful flowers. The blood rushed back to Enjolras' cheeks, and his strength seemed to return. The countryside was a riot of colour, and the sunshine and the birdsong lifted their hearts. As they neared their home, the sound of the church bells mingled in with the blue-tits and finches, and soon the breeze carried other sounds and smells of town life to them. Very soon they recognized the town where they lived, the pointed zinc and slatestone rooftops of an ocean of townhouses and the tall verdigrised steeples of the churches, rising like masts above, in which the bells were ringing loud, joyous peals. It was springtime in truth, and this was the first time the church bells had been sounded in forty days; therefore they were making the best of the occasion, for even church bells grown sad and lonely when they have no occasion to speak.
Once more, they recognised the route through which they had left Paris, and they were on the Right Bank where they had lived and studied, walking through the twisting cobbled streets through which they had passed when they left, winding their way through Pigalle and up towards Montmartre, the white dome of Sacré Coeur rising at the top of it; that was where they lived. They wove through cobblestone streets on slanted hills, past little shops selling chocolate truffles and thick loaves of bread, cafés filled with people as they watched the rest of the world stroll by. They ducked into a little bookshop with sagging shelves that smelled of paper and leather and dust (one of those places that Combeferre always frequented), and soon they found themselves upon the threshold of a familiar café, on a street corner in Montmartre. They entered the place, passed by the tables and behind the counter, greeting the two young barmaids (who waved sighing wistfully at Enjolras and sneered coldly at Grantaire, as usual), and down the long dark corridor into the backroom of the Musain. Everything was exactly as it had been when they had left. The same map and tricolore flag remained nailed upon the walls, the same quinquet lamp filled the sunset interior with warmth, the same daylight was streaming in through those two rickety windows... The clock behind the counter still ticked and told the time, the old landlady's cat was sunning herself on her owner's lap, and around the tables still remained their old regular chairs of every evening. Up in their garret, as seen through the window, their edible flowers, which Combeferre had been lovingly tending to in their absence, were still in full bloom in the planter boxes. They were in spectacular bloom this year, and had formed an archway of beauty across the street. Long story short, everything and everyone remained in the same familiar place, with everything still waiting for them, like ever before.
And furthermore, soon there would be peals from a nearby tower, and their friends would stream into their secret hideout...
But for now they were en tête-à-tête, so what better than to enjoy it? Enjolras and Grantaire sat down in their respective chairs. They had forgotten the past as one who forgets an unquiet, heavy dream upon awakening, and it seemed to both of them that it was as if they had never left the Café in the first place.
As they sat in the golden sunshine, the dreary grandeur of the Green Faery's fortress and the deep, deep cold of her terrible kiss seemed a lifetime away.
Holding one another's hands, lilywhite soft fingers clasping palms rough as sackcloth, earnest sapphire orbs looking at last warmly into ironic hazel eyes, they finally understood the meaning of that anthem they had so frequently sung:
And, furthermore and what was the most relevant, they finally understood those words, said by some British Lordship with a pointed brown moustache and goatee in a low, musical voice and with a characteristic graceful wave of the hand, at a soirée in the Manoir Enjolras, right before the young heir left for the capital to pursue those university studies, as wise words of advice to the aloof stripling about to reach maturity, to let his spirit soar free:
"Yes, that is one of the great secrets of life - to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul."
They remained like this for hours, locking eyes and entwining hands, having finally understood that life was the finest gift they had ever been given, but that its worth would always grow pale if compared to freedom and liberty.
Right then, those foretold bell-peals rang in the air and the regular crowd shuffled in. Combeferre came in first, holding his notebook in hand, followed by Courfeyrac, who was humming the latest Liszt tune in vogue; and then came all the others... At first, Enjolras' lieutenants did not recognise the two strangers who sat in the hitherto empty chairs, and asked at least for their surnames.
Upon hearing them sing those verses from La Marseillaise, however, a general scream of elation ran through the backroom, startling the landlady and the barmaids, and of course the cat that leapt off the landlady's lap, as those earnest freedom-fighting young men had recognised their fair leader and the odd one out of their secret society.
And each evening, at the backroom of the Café Musain, they all dined together, and watched the sunset together, and there they talked of many things, both of the pain and the hardships they had endured, and of the future they hoped to have now that they had survived them, and of the glorious death that would crown them ere they reached midlife, giving it all before the end of youth, shedding their hearts' blood for Freedom and Country. And after they had talked and most of them had left, the leader and the cynic simply sat there en tête-à-tête, in one another's company, and each thought that he had never before been so happy as this, and that the crowner for such elation would definitely be to fall together by enemy fire, holding one another's hands, one rough as sackcloth and the other soft as silk, yet both tightened together in a final clasp for evermore; and all around them was warm, beautiful midsummer, no matter how often the seasons changed. Each had found in the other perfect sympathy and perfect love: what could the outside world matter to them now? Each was to the other the perfect fulfilment of a scarcely preconceived ideal. The fair lad sat on his knees with his arms closely pressed round his neck and his golden curls laid against his newest lieutenant's close-cut raven hair; completely absorbed in each other, intoxicated with the sweetly poisonous draught that is the gift of love, they sat in silence.
One day, far earlier than they could have expected, both young men, and all of their friends except one, would indeed gallantly shed their blood and give their lives for Freedom and Country, dying with one another's fingers entwining in clasped hands. But that, my dear readers, is another story, and perchance it will be told some other time.
All good stories, of course, must have a happy ending, and this one is no exception, but the important part, dear reader, is not that Enjolras and Grantaire (and the rest of their Friends from the Café, and the robber maiden, and her parents, and the heiress, and her husband, and her guardian) lived happily ever after.
The important part, reader, is that, together or separately, they lived.
Finis.
Ce qui s'y passa chez la Fée Verte et ce qui arriva ensuite
Nothing could have prepared Enjolras for the shock of how that reunion would be, for it would completely overthrow his (and everyone's) expectations concerning the aforementioned and much expected reunion.
The walls of the shrine, which Éponine had called the Morrigan's fortress, were made of black granite, and the windows were narrow slits, without any glass, through which the piercing cold air and fog entered the structure. There were more than a hundred rooms in it, all of them laid out with perfect geometric precision, and all of them utterly empty of anything alive. The largest of them alone, the Green Faery's throne room, was three square French miles wide. All of those halls were so immensely vast and empty, so dark, so dreary, that it was deathly painful to look around.
There were no amusements here, and not the least animation; there never was any gaiety, not a paltry little soirée with dances and feasting, nor even the slightest invitation to a spearmint tea or chicory coffee party, let alone an unthinkable main event for the korrigans to display their social graces, with the tempest for an orchestra, as these pixies might have shown off their grand manners and danced quadrilles whose decent gravity would be convenient for the solemn austerity of the halls; no musical reunions, not even for a single korrigan to give a harp or flute solo concert... never even the shortest and paltriest soirée de jeu for such games as colin-maillard, cheval fondu, or un-deux-trois-soleil... no, it was not even evermore allowed for the elven maidens to gather there for a chat; there was not even the slightest invitation for a little gossip over their spearmint tea or chicory coffee cups for them, like mortal girls of high rank were wont to do. There were no games of cards, or evenings spent in reading, and all that was provided by way of art or decoration were sparse mosses and maidenhead ferns, pale and wan, and even dying, due to the lack of light within those dark halls of granite.
They were lit up by the vivid, cold light of the will o' the wisps, but those halls were were vast and empty, icy and glittering and utterly forbidding. There were no amusements here, no music or warmth nor any living thing. The only illusion of warmth was the flickering flame of the faery lights, which could be seen from every part of the castle.
Empty, immense, vast, tranquil, and cold were the halls of the Morrigan, for never having been human herself, she had no understanding of human emotions, least of all joy or cheer. The flickering dance of the light of the dreary, clouded northern sun or moon, or of flashing lightning, that could be seen through the narrow, sparse windows was the only thing that seemed to have any life or spirit at all. Everything was vast and empty within that austere keep, and that dreary light of the North, even on a sunny summer day, was icy cold itself.
The floor of the fortress's empty, endless throne hall was a great runestone of black granite, its surface covered in engraved straight lines and curves, and scrawled all over with those strange, angular characters which most French people could not read, following the trace of the lines, which formed a perfect piece of art. Two golden globes, to left and right, hung from the ceiling, and in a cold stone throne in the centre of the floor sat the Green Faery when she was at home. She called the floor "the Writing of Wrongs," and said that it was the greatest writing, the best, and indeed the only one in the world.
At her feet sat Grantaire, clad in thick-furred catskins and crowned with an ivy wreath, holding in his left hand, for a bâton of command, a thyrsos made out of a bare pine branch crowned with the pine-cone and wound with ivy entwined all around; he was quite pale with cold, so that he looked almost lifeless, his skin so pale with poisoning that it seemed to be marble, even with green veins (for his blood ran green with the intoxicating draught) beneath that skin rough as sackcloth; but he did not feel it, for the fey blood he had drunk, and her kiss, had burned away the icy shiverings, and wasn't his heart already a crazy diamond? His lovely face was pale and pinched with unhappiness. Nothing he eyed and of nought he suspected, merely reaching out his left hand, as if in his sleep. And from a crystal chalice he nipped, as soon as his memories awakened life around those clenched lips. His eyes were wide, yet bereft of tears; was that young person dead or alive? The look in his eyes was lightless, and his brow was pale; his mouth a single, hard-drawn straight line, thin and bitter.
"My lady... my lady is most generous when the nightmares come. If I cry out, which I often do, she will come to me at once and bring me a cup of her warm green blood. She sits with me until my shaking abates. She will surely lead me right... I wish I did not feel so drowsy and dull-witted."
The charm was losing its spell, and the dark warrior was recovering himself. Like every other time whenever the effect wore off, he went about tracing the runes on the floor in all sorts of patterns, with his fingertips and the tip of his thyrsos pinecone, trying to make something out of; he spent the hours placing them together in all kinds of positions, as if he wished to make something out of them, just as one might play with a puzzle. The patterns he traced were the most ingenious, even though they were all meaningless strings of sounds, that did not resemble anything real. In his eyes, they were first rate, very remarkable, and of the highest importance; this opinion was owing to the fey blood that lingered within his system. He composed many complete figures, but there was one word he never could manage to form, although he wished it very much. He made many patterns, the most bizarre and the most incoherent ones, forming countless syllables and perhaps even non-existent words, but he never could find out the right way to place them for one particular password, which he was most anxious to make. He had spent a long time, always whenever he was sober, trying to face the answer to the riddle. The Green Faery had said to him that, if he could find out this password, he should be his own lord and master, and feel free to leave her service. But he could not accomplish it, he found it impossible to discover it, and the Morrigan, as she cajoled him into forgetting the puzzle altogether, rejoiced at the irony and the paradox in this challenge.
No matter in how many different ways he had tried, he had not even come slightly close to success. Anyway, he came up with the most bizarre and the most incoherent patterns, which all looked magnificent to him and made time pass for Grantaire, without him even realising that time passed in the first place.
For a while, he spent the empty hours imagining, combining, thinking of how he could put those runes together to reach his purpose, creating the most bizarre patterns he had ever found so far... or were they? He had recognised a password try from before, a sense of déjà-vu. Flicking the left wrist with his thyrsos in hand, as if twirling a bâton, listlessly, when he had grown weary of trying to seek out the password. And, after an hour or so twirling the thyrsos, he began to play rock-paper-scissors against his own shadow, which ensured that he would always win the game. For as long as he had lived in this retreat, he had begun to reason whenever he came to and recovered himself. Nothing makes one as wicked as growing weary in company; nothing makes one as wise as growing weary on one's own.
"Don't drink anything she gives you. It'll be worse this time." He steeled himself. "Meaning that it'll make you act...a little..." How to put it in a delicate way, one Enjolras would say? "Just a tad... like a... um... a heartless tyrant?" Then he cringed, looking very distressed. "She won't leave my chamber until I drink whatever she gives me." "Correction," he said to himself calmly. "She won't leave the room until she thinks you drank whatever she gives you." A slow smile started to spread across that stubbled face. "That's a really good idea."
Yet his thirst would, like ever before, prove far stronger than reason.
Before he could marshal his wits, la Belle Dame Sans Merci was standing before him in all her terrifying glory, green eyes flashing against the white perfection of her skin, a deadly chill emanating from her that he knew might kill him in an instant if it touched him.
"Well, well, well," she said with a sneer of haughty amusement. "What have we here? Well done, my solstice child." Grantaire basked in the praise, but his smile was so empty and cold and so unlike his own warm expression that any of his Friends at the Musain wouldn't bear to look at him.
"Loneliness has always had its charms, 'tis true," the Green Faery told him, as stern as a governess. "Yet you do not seem to amuse yourself in playing all alone. Why not play at least one game against me?"
In the palm of her other hand she held a snowflake. Against another woman's hand such a delicate, intricate thing would have melted away, but in hers it only glittered with beautiful, cold perfection. "Look closer," she said, her breath icy against his ear. He did, compelled by her Voice.
The crystalline structure seemed to grow larger as he looked at it, until he realized that each tiny facet held an image, and then not just an image, but a whole world, as if the tiny snowflake were made up of miniature windowpanes, each offering a glimpse into some other place and time, a vast, intricate design of worlds upon worlds, each one different from his own. And in each of them it seemed that he saw himself, and Enjolras, and the Lady in Green—and not just the three of them, but all those he had met on his journey, in the docks of Marseille and at Paris University, the dockworkers and the lecturers, Combeferre and Courfeyrac, Joly and Lesgle..., all shimmering there in infinitely varying patterns in the palm of the Morrigan's hand.
Dizzy with sudden vertigo, he managed to tear his gaze away from the hypnotic images just in time, for he had been very close to losing himself in the infinite pattern. "What are you?" he whispered.
"Your fate, your destiny," the regal lady said, as if kindly, though there was no mercy in her. "In this world, as in all the others, I am the reckoning you must face for the pain you have caused."
"I only wanted to be with him," Grantaire whispered. "That's all."
"And so you shall," quoth la Belle Dame sans Merci, and kissed him on the forehead.
The coldness of her kiss sank through him like the dark, bitter cold of the Beresina ice, as it would have cracked beneath the feet of weary men in uniform. And he felt as though he were breathing water, but it was a curiously calming sensation, for the water was very cold indeed, numbing him almost instantly. A part of him grieved bitterly, fighting to keep hold of his memories, but his fear began to bleed away, and after a while, he forgot why he had been afraid.
"Ah..." Grantaire sighed wearily in response, looking at the wrists of his liege lady. "You do have finer fingers than me... such lovely wrists... and I'm dying of thirst..."
"If I have lovely wrists, Sir, at least spare me the scars for a while... That would be better than having so much esprit and sleeping like a log, or poring over those old runes time and again... If good luck ever knocks on your door, you should at least be wide awake to let it in. Right?"
"Something strange is happening to me, milady... strange, passing strange, ever since I came here. My head feels heavy and my heart is confused, and the few dreams I have are gruesome or dreary. There's someone in my head, but it's not me. Where can all that have come from...?" he asked her.
"I promise you disasters, débâcles, catastrophes... I offer you the whole world on a platter, and a brand new bâton with a peridot hilt," the Morrigan had told him time and again, and he wondered whenever that would be, but hoped that it was the best of rewards for every wish of hers he made come true. He could only hope, and neither rejoice nor grieve, so listless he had become from intoxication.
"We shall burn the cathedrals, we shall set fire to the skies," he replied, with that fixed expression in his glazed, lifeless eyes and that sneer upon his lips. "The world? I will tell you, milady, what the world is made of. Of everything that can be taken. The rest does not exist at all. If you will so, if your will is that, I shall pillage the whole world and cast all its treasures at your feet. And you, you shall rest by my side, still upon your throne, uttering wishes that will be my commands. 'Tis the way I love you."
"Is it wishes you are waiting for, my fierce warrior?" she asked, wistfully approaching Grantaire and stroking his stubbled chin. "Then, I wish you to declare war. Declare war. Burn all the gardens. Burn all the books. Accuse all the foreigners and send them to die. 'Tis an empire that we wish for. 'Tis a name in history that we want."
In response, he stood there before her, pensive and quiet, with that same fixed expression, casting doubt on all she had to say. The effect was beginning to wear off. And thus, as the Green Faery breathed her vein and filled a rock crystal cup with her poison-green blood, she handed the draught over to Grantaire with an ice-cold sneer and the following rant:
"Or would you rather wish to be a free man, your own lord and master? With unachieved desires, trifling comforts for reassurance, derisory love... anonymity, sense of guilt, ennui...?"
"Reach me... Reach to me, my lady, the ice-cold draught; mix me your strong drops... I only ask you to make them strong. Drown my sorrows for each and every loss; let your green blood suffocate me... Take me like that! I will, thus, be worthy of your bed, as I am of your command!"
"Good, you seem in better spirits this evening. I know ever since the first time we met that you were meant for greater things," she was somewhere between suspicious and pleased. She took his hand and placed the crystal phial, into which she had poured more of her blood, in it. "Here, drink it up."
The dark student took off the cork and put it to his lips. As he downed the bright green poison of a liquor, once he had drained it to the last drop, his lips curled upwards and he rose wearily into a stance that quickly turned to one full of resolve:
"Rather a dead warrior than a living man! You ask me for greater things, and... what else would anyone else want from me? And you will never die, nevermore."
"Now I must hasten away to other countries," she suddenly replied, as her warrior clasped her waist, full of anxiety. "I will go eastward, into the heart of Europe, and look into the cafés of Budapest and Debrecen, where young men are singing the Szózat and loading their firearms, and I will whisper the truth in their ears, just softly enough that they cannot hear it. So that they will be left for dead upon the streets and upon the fields, mowed down by Austrian fire; and they will have to drink my blood to live and follow our commands. It will be good for them, for it will make them work all the harder, and that will certainly add more warriors to your ranks; for what general has ever had no men at all at his command? When I return, I shall give you frequent draughts; that will help you ease your pain, and blur your memories as well..."
And, leaving through the door to the left, without even waving goodbye, away she flew, gradually soaring up to the skies, leaving her dark warrior quite quite alone in the great hall which was so many miles in length; so he spent a while reaching out into the air as if beckoning to her, but in vain.
He turned to look upon her; struck by her sorrow, and perhaps by the pity for himself which trembled in her voice. It was a quick and rapid action; and for the moment some flash of his old bearing kindled in his form. In the next she went as she had come. Nor did this glimmer of a quenched fire seem to light him to a quicker sense of his debasement.
Then, suddenly, something gave way within him; he turned pale once more, and begain to tremble from crown to toe like a leaf on the branch, his knees buckled and gave way underneath, and he fell on all fours, his lilywhite lips uttering confused sounds, his pupils disappearing in the increasing whites of his eyes; then he knelt and stared at the floor, and was thinking so deeply, and sat so still, and remained there so stiff and so lifeless, without even breathing, that anyone might have supposed that he was a statue of a young satyr, or even of the God of Revelry himself, hewn out of Carrara marble.
Any brusque movement could make him reel and fall heavily upon the runes, or so it seemed.
Just at this moment it happened that Enjolras, entering the circle of stones, reached the great doors of the castle. They were so cold that it burned to the touch like metal heated until it glowed. Indeed, so cold were the doors that his gloves stuck to them, and after he had opened them, which was surprisingly easy, he had to rip his hands free.
The fair young man staggered in through the great doors, leaving them open behind him, for he could not bring himself to touch them again. The floor of the hallway beyond them was cold as well, and damp, his feet sticking a little, or slipping on the slippery grounds, with every step.
Enjolras walked wearily down the long hallway and through the castle, his long golden hair fluttering loosely in his wake. Every room he passed was empty, and in the whole fortress, nothing moved except his own reflection in the pools upon the floors, where a ray of light peered in through the foreboding, forbidden dark walls. Little motes of dust and heather pollen travelled over the lit space and landed on the mirror floor. There was no natural light. It surprised Enjolras that what from the outside seemed to be a simple Celtic shrine... turned out to be a foggy, dark, cold Cretan labyrinth of black granite full of twists and turns and dead ends. His own ribs were like lead, constricting his lungs, lying heavy on his heart, poisoning his blood. His skin was burning. "It feels like I'm suffocating..." gasped the fair leader to himself.
At last, he reached the large, empty hall, and caught sight of, then stared down at Grantaire, for whom he had walked halfway across France, for whose sake he had left behind all the other friends he had made along the way… his brow was furrowed, as if some complexity weighed on his mind, but his lips were parted like a child's, in stark contrast to the black stubble around, and something about his face was vulnerable and sweet as he slept. Unconscious. Not even moving a muscle. Illuminated by this sinister twilight, he appeared even more lonely and foreign. He wasn't a man. He was a helpless little thing, senseless and bereft of life.
At first, the fair leader was at a loss how to begin the conversation the closer he approached him. Would he say bonjour or bonsoir; did it make a difference? They had no concept of time here and, a stranger in the throne room, the blond was an intruder not belonging in here.
Enjolras' heart seemed to stop beating for a moment when he saw him, kneeling on the floor so very still, and for a terrible moment, the fair leader thought that he had come all this way, walked so very far, and given up so much, through fire and ice, only to find his friend dead, the terrible cold within the lightless throne room having frozen him solid where he sat.
At last he came to the great hall, at the center of which was the vast frozen runestone floor. And there he saw a pale figure dressed all in green, armed with a thyrsos, sitting as still as a statue at the center of the hall, and his heart started to hammer fiercely against his left-hand ribs. Only by the raven's wing of his dark hair was Grantaire recognizable, but Enjolras knew him at once, even from that great distance.
Before he knew it, he had stepped out onto the runestone floor of the throne room. He took two long strides toward his friend, and then broke into a run.
As soon as he saw the dark warrior up close, he knew that something terrible had happened to him, but he couldn't help himself; so relieved was he to see the savateur alive that he threw his arms around Grantaire's strong neck, feeling the strength of the fine, corded muscles, and seized him close, burying his face against his friend's and holding on tightly. "Grand... R! Oh, my friend, I've found you at last."
But Grantaire sat quite still, stiff and cold, his skin like marble.
Enjolras let him go and looked into his eyes, looking for some sign of recognition, but those hazel eyes were no longer sad, nor warm with affection, nor bright with irony, but as cold and hard as chips of grey ice. "Don't you know me?" Enjolras asked in a small voice, a sinking dread beginning to take hold in his stomach.
At that, Grantaire seemed at last to notice him there, and he blinked as if waking from a deep trance. "Should I?" he said, but it had been so long since he had spoken that his voice sounded like icicles cracking.
Enjolras wanted to say something that would reach him, wanted to tell him the things he'd been afraid to tell him so long ago, but his beloved friend now wore the face of a stranger, and his courage deserted him. "Surely you must remember," the fair leader said, fighting despair. To have come so far only to find that he'd lost Grantaire after all was a cruel blow indeed. "Did you exchange your walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?"
A suspicious look came into the stubbled face then, and he backed away from the blond. "I don't know you," the dark warrior said in that awful, splintered-ice voice. And before Enjolras could answer, Grantaire's response proved as violent as it proved unexpected. As if from the sudden halt of a galloping coach, the sleeper awoke. Grantaire stood up with a start, stretched his arms, rubbed his eyes, looked, yawned, and understood.
The dark-haired man didn’t turn to him right away, think he didn’t hear him. He was about to call to him once more, but he was left with a gaping mouth when Grantaire suddenly rose up, bloodshot hazel eyes flashing like lightning in the night. The dark-haired one moved, ever so slightly, gradually crouching into a catlike stance, like that of a jaguar about to lunge at its prey, as threatening as it was graceful, that Enjolras knew all too well.The stance of a savateur about to strike his opponent.
And his grin was something feral and bare, eyes dark with something almost like madness.
"Hope he still is intoxicated, weakened by what he has drunk..." the fair leader braced himself. There was nothing he could do but skip and dodge his opponent's kicks, delivered with the same strength he should have used to protect his beloved leader.
All Enjolras could do was run, and feint, and skip... he had always been a leader, never a fighter... everything but an expert when it came to hand-to-hand combat, not to mention hand-to-foot combat... if he had only asked Grantaire, or at least Courfeyrac, to teach him some savate and/or bâton moves... but maybe he could turn the dark savateur's power against himself, with the right responses? There was no other way. After all, cold steel could slash and hot lead could pierce... but well-trained limbs could not only bruise, but even disfigure, even kill by crushing. "He does not know me anymore. A hideous way to die," the blond thought as he gulped, bracing himself. "Though against a worthy opponent indeed..."
This train of thought was instantly cut short by the fight-or-flight response: Grantaire, pivoting quickly, aimed a fine kick of his left escarpin, powered by rippling leg muscles, at Enjolras' face and throat. "Le coup de figure!", the blond instantly realised as he took, unconsciously, a quick step to the right. The heel of his opponent's foot barely grazed Enjolras' left shoulder. A gasp, the fair-haired stripling reeling backwards with his heart up in his throat, and looking right at his opponent, who was as lithe and strong as if he were sober; the latter was leaning forwards to the right, as if concentrating all of his body weight on that side, but stretching out his left leg. As counterweight? Maybe, being lighter, Enjolras could just vault or leap over that left leg, as if playing cheval fondu... but it could be a ruse, a decoy... still, there was no other way than just standing still there and waiting to die.
The perspiration ran down his forehead in streams, making the golden fringe of his hair stick to the drenched brow beneath. Of course his strength had begun to dwindle ever since those three laps withershins around the fort, but the fair leader had never felt sapped of it all until that disastrous attempt. Racing towards his dark opponent, with his heart pounding and his head already beginning to swim, Enjolras missed the chance to use that outstretched leg of his opponent's as a vaulting horse. Instead, it had rather the effect of a rope stretched out at his feet in that headlong collission course.
A reeling Enjolras staggered forwards six or seven steps before crashing into the wall, his head leaning on the cold stone wall before he slumped down on the pavement runes, everything darkening before his eyes as he lost consciousness.
"For having lived in too much sorrow, or too much joy, the light of your soul and reason has been quenched. Drinking and revelling until you became insane... The place in your heart where I once dwelt is cold and dead. You stand there with your fixed expression, casting doubt on all I have to say..." Enjolras sighed. He wanted so much to go to sleep, even if it were never to awaken... But there was still breathing in his lungs, and strength in his limbs, and resolve to spare:
"I can wish for no greater power than I have already... Don’t you see how strong that is? How many obstacles you have overcome, Enjolras, and how well you have got through the wide world, alone as you are? You cannot receive any power from me greater than you now have, which consists in your own courage and the nobility of your heart. Still, I was never alone: Éponine's out there, alone against the korrigans... she saved me from a cut throat in the forest, and freed me from captivity in the brigands' den... Marius and Cosette, and her guardian, remember giving me provisions and a fine carriage, and their best wishes... Combeferre is still standing in for me as leader of our friends at the Café... long story short, I have felt so terribly alone since Grantaire's departure, and felt alone, in truth, even before he disappeared, from the day that he began to drink that bright green liquor that pierced his heart and turned him cold and unfeeling; but at every stage along this journey, there has always been someone to offer aid and friendship. Though all these people, of high rank and low, have been obliged to serve me... But still... as they all wished... only me... I am the only one who can set him free... Maybe I am more of a leader than a fighter, but still... maybe there is greater power in me than in the Green Faery. I have such a power... within this heart, within this hot blood in my pulse. Otherwise, she will retain her power over him, and he will never be himself again. The thorns within my lover's heart can be removed by me and me alone. I have made it this far, and why give up already? If I cannot free Grantaire, then nobody will."
With this resolve, the fair leader wearily climbed up to his feet, his hands and feet so frozen that they had gone quite numb, and no longer even hurt anymore. The fight-or-flight response had also made every physical urge that weighed him down (pain, thirst, and fatigue) fade away within Enjolras, just like the light of the sun dispels the stars in the night sky.
(Kuroashi inspiration: punctured lung kick), forcing all of the air out. With a loud crash, Enjolras fell backwards and landed on the cold, damp pavement; as he was struck down by the impact of his opponent's foot on the fifth and sixth true ribs, he could hear something that broke with a cracking sound inside his chest, crushing through cloth and skin and flesh and bone. Then, as he crash-landed, he felt the shock and a sharp pain in his side; as if he had been stabbed with a sword or a bayonet in the left side. Only that what had stabbed the fair leader were the sharp edges of his broken ribs.
Clutching his left side, the aftermath of that loud cracking sound still ringing in his ears, Enjolras scrambled wearily up on his feet. The damage had been done. From somewhere inside him, blood was gushing from a wound. A stabbing pain racked his crushed side and some liquid welled up inside his chest, making him cough; when he looked at his bloodstained open palms, which he had covered his mouth with, at the end of the coughing spell... the fair rebel leader's suspicions were confirmed. The gasp he uttered wrought even sharper pain to his side (it was already hurting like hell every time he breathed). Three broken ribs, one of which had pierced the lung... the only thing to hope for was that the sharp edge of the bone had not severed the artery. Why hadn't he brought a sword-cane like Courfeyrac's, or learned savate himself? Why hadn't he asked Éponine to tag along, but left her outside to deal with the korrigans? Enjolras was as helpless as the damsels he resembled, and he had thought that Grantaire would be in a weaker condition than usual due to intoxication. How wrong!
"I have walked half the length of this country for him, down roads and across ice and stones, until my limbs are faltering and my head is lulled to rest. Because I have followed him through fields and forests, through the palaces of privilege, and into and out of the dens of iniquity. Because, all for his sake, I have left behind a cause to kill or die for, and friends who asked me to stay with them. Yet still, how... How do we learn to give up in the face of all-powerful, very good-looking physical strength? This is suicide!" Enjolras' head was beginning to swim due to blood loss; he staggered like a sleepy child, but a shred of consciousness still remained, like a bright star of hope in the night sky of sorrows. "What would 'Ponine say? What would 'Ferre, and Courf', and Marius and Cosette, and all the others...? For they rely not only on me. They rely on both of us. Though we are on our own, face to face... As long as we breathe... Never give up. Never give in. Come on, you boy-child, you winner and loser, and shine! You must keep struggling. The two of us must keep struggling, even if we find ourselves in terrible circumstances. Look at Death in the eye and say to yourself: NOT TODAY!"
The pain was like nothing he'd ever known.
Every breath he took seared his lungs. Blood poured from his torn flesh, over his shattered ribs. Through the red haze of agony, he could hear something. It was pounding, low and laboured. It was the sound of his own heart, struggling to beat.
For a rather obvious reason, people with punctured lungs have always been advised by healthcare practitioners to speak as little as possible (as well as to remain prostrate). Given his state of health prior to the injury, it would matter thrice or four times as much to someone in Enjolras' situation.
And now that he was standing upright, his knees buckling with fatigue and his head beginning to swim... his head was drooping like the calyx of a lily whose stem is broken; and yet, raising his voice, no matter how weak and how distorted by injury, was the worst thing Enjolras could possibly do.
Still, he saw no other choice. He could no longer fight in that state, but... Even humming or whispering La Marseillaise would ease the pain and maybe catch the conscience of his advantaged opponent. At first, it was only a faint humming of the tune, but soon, no matter the pain stabbing at his sides, lyrics were sung, at first softly and gently:
"Allons enfants de la Patrie,
le jour de gloire est..."
Here, his voice was broken by a coughing spell; ruby-red foam shot from his lips and rained down, leaving stains of blood that slowly began to freeze, upon several of the delicately engraved runes upon the cold, polished floor. It may have been by chance, or maybe not, that the runes highlighted by these drops of red foam spelled out the lyrics to the song Enjolras was singing at the cost of his life.
"Contre nous de la tyrannie
l'étendard sanglant est levé..."
"Marchons, marchons,
qu'un sang impur..."
"Amour sacré de la Patrie,
conduis, soutiens nos... bras vengeurs..."
More of that red foam, as scarlet as his coat and waistcoat, gushed through Enjolras' parted lips. He felt like being stabbed by a dozen bayonets on both sides of his ribcage, as the coughing spell took hold and he quivered feverishly. The opinion was suddenly entertained, from the great flow of blood, that he had cut an artery, which foreboded little good. All his hopes were wearing off and fading away, like a rope gradually breaks, thread by thread, until only the thin filament at the core remained.
"Liberté, Liberté chérie,
combats avec tes défenseurs..."
And Grantaire stood there transfixed, frozen in place, as if doubting or toying with the idea of putting the fair stranger out of his misery, his hazel eyes widening and little by little coming to shine with life.
Enjolras tried to struggle back to his feet, but he was so exhausted that he found he could not do it. He was able to reach his knees, but could go no farther. There he stood, clutching the dark-haired Grantaire's right leg as he scrambled up and kept on singing the song that both of them had sung together by the windowsill, or in the Café Musain, as the Revolution was about to come:
"Combats avec tes défenseurs..."
One might be able to take the two of them, at first sight, for a sculptural group.
Ruby droplets shot out through Enjolras' cold lips and struck Grantaire on the thighs, on the midsection, on the chest... and it felt warm, so warm... The warmth of that freshly-shed blood seeped through his dark, hairy skin; it ran through his veins and the lump of ice that gripped his heart melted away in an instant, as Enjolras collapsed once more, senseless, before his feet. The fair leader writhed like a trampled snake, and a red foam bubbled from his lips; only his strained breathing broke the silence.
Right then, consciousness and sensitivity came back, instantly, to the young warrior who had wrought that painful injury in the first place.
For a long time he stared at the wounded young man who lay so close. And though he could not remember why this song or this person was important, his heart remembered. The pain of it, much like the return of feeling to limbs that have been frozen, brought memory flooding back, and he looked and saw Enjolras a little distance away, busy with his own puzzle of life and death. It struck him as the bitterest thing in the world, that he should have had his heart's desire right beside him all this time and been unable to recognize it. Then he thought that the Queen would soon return, and he might never again have the chance to say the things he should have said so long ago.
Then Grantaire drew a deep breath, as if it were the first he'd drawn in a long time. He looked down, and recognition sparked.
"But then... how... who...?" His words trailed away as his eyes came to rest on a motionless figure stretched out on the floor.
It was a wisp of a boy, with long fair hair like beaten gold, and dressed in scarlet. An equally bright red foam bubbled from his lips.
The savateur's hazel eyes widened. Suddenly, it all made sickening sense. The crushing of bones. The weight. The blood.
"No!" he screamed in despair, shaking his head wildly. "No, no, no!!" The last word came out in a long, tearing roar. The shock of reality dazzled his glazed eyes.
A large indentation came to view on the stripling's back. On the left side. Where his heart was. His face was turned away from Grantaire now, hidden in a halo of golden thread, but still he knew him.
Instantly, he recognised Enjolras, and gasped in a rapture of elation, but also in a rapture of anxiety, that since a long time ago had been unknown to him:
"Enj... mon chéri... Enjolras... où as-tu donc été si longtemps?"
He forgot that he was the one who had been far away in the first place, and not the dying ephebe at his feet.
And he looked left and right, in all directions, with astonishment.
"Ah! qu’il fait froid ici! comme c’est vaste et vide!"
And thus, reeling, in a state of shock, he got up and went to his friend, kneeling before the fair form that lay prostrate on the ground, the lifeless stripling whose ribs he had crushed himself, and cradled the feather-light form of the blond in strong hairy arms. "Enj..., listen to me," he said softly, trying once more to reach him, though he knew it was futile. And though those glazed eyes of blue were shut beneath pale lids as cold and dead as ever, and he writhed trying to pull away, this time Grantaire held his lilywhite, lilysoft face between his cupped hands and would not let him go. "I never needed anyone before I met you. But I need you now... Enj... I need you to come back to me. Nothing means anything without you, do you understand?" But it was no use; the fair leader's bloodstained lips did not even curl in scorn. There he lay, hardly breathing, eyes shut, senseless, uncomprehending. And so, at last, Grantaire could not help himself; hot tears welled up, and there in the coldest hall of the Green Faery's palace, he bowed his head and sobbed into the broken chest of his beloved. The tears splashed down onto the frozen runes, but some of them fell upon Enjolras' left side, as the dark savateur cradled his lovely and beloved victim:
Right then, consciousness and sensitivity came back, instantly, to the young warrior who had wrought that painful injury in the first place.
For a long time he stared at the wounded young man who lay so close. And though he could not remember why this song or this person was important, his heart remembered. The pain of it, much like the return of feeling to limbs that have been frozen, brought memory flooding back, and he looked and saw Enjolras a little distance away, busy with his own puzzle of life and death. It struck him as the bitterest thing in the world, that he should have had his heart's desire right beside him all this time and been unable to recognize it. Then he thought that the Queen would soon return, and he might never again have the chance to say the things he should have said so long ago.
Then Grantaire drew a deep breath, as if it were the first he'd drawn in a long time. He looked down, and recognition sparked.
"But then... how... who...?" His words trailed away as his eyes came to rest on a motionless figure stretched out on the floor.
It was a wisp of a boy, with long fair hair like beaten gold, and dressed in scarlet. An equally bright red foam bubbled from his lips.
The savateur's hazel eyes widened. Suddenly, it all made sickening sense. The crushing of bones. The weight. The blood.
"No!" he screamed in despair, shaking his head wildly. "No, no, no!!" The last word came out in a long, tearing roar. The shock of reality dazzled his glazed eyes.
A large indentation came to view on the stripling's back. On the left side. Where his heart was. His face was turned away from Grantaire now, hidden in a halo of golden thread, but still he knew him.
Instantly, he recognised Enjolras, and gasped in a rapture of elation, but also in a rapture of anxiety, that since a long time ago had been unknown to him:
"Enj... mon chéri... Enjolras... où as-tu donc été si longtemps?"
He forgot that he was the one who had been far away in the first place, and not the dying ephebe at his feet.
And he looked left and right, in all directions, with astonishment.
"Ah! qu’il fait froid ici! comme c’est vaste et vide!"
And thus, reeling, in a state of shock, he got up and went to his friend, kneeling before the fair form that lay prostrate on the ground, the lifeless stripling whose ribs he had crushed himself, and cradled the feather-light form of the blond in strong hairy arms. "Enj..., listen to me," he said softly, trying once more to reach him, though he knew it was futile. And though those glazed eyes of blue were shut beneath pale lids as cold and dead as ever, and he writhed trying to pull away, this time Grantaire held his lilywhite, lilysoft face between his cupped hands and would not let him go. "I never needed anyone before I met you. But I need you now... Enj... I need you to come back to me. Nothing means anything without you, do you understand?" But it was no use; the fair leader's bloodstained lips did not even curl in scorn. There he lay, hardly breathing, eyes shut, senseless, uncomprehending. And so, at last, Grantaire could not help himself; hot tears welled up, and there in the coldest hall of the Green Faery's palace, he bowed his head and sobbed into the broken chest of his beloved. The tears splashed down onto the frozen runes, but some of them fell upon Enjolras' left side, as the dark savateur cradled his lovely and beloved victim:
"Oh, why did I drink of...! Must I perish...? I, to whom such a glorious reward was offered... must I now lose all, disgrace the name that I.... and furnish a cause to our enemies... Enj... Must your young life... like mine... be wasted? Undone in my undoing... thirsty... cankered... febrile...? Oh, Enj! Would that I had listened to you, that I had never tasted of that fatal spring!!" Shaking with aguish fear and pain, like one poisoned with mercury, Grantaire knelt down beside the beautiful form, clung about the fair leader with all his strength, and kissed and kissed and kissed those pale, cold, bloodstained lips with an eager mouth. His lips began to scorch, and then his throat, and his chest, and his vitals... Long before half a kiss, the little warden that dwells somewhere betwixt mouth and maw began to send offensive messages to his brain, and even with a crimson drop between his teeth there set in strong a fearful devastating revulsion, a climax of disgust, a maw-revolt, an absolute loathing. That warm red mortal blood was bitter wormwood to the tongue, and he loathed the feast; writhing as one possessed, he curled up into a ball, racked with a fit, a seizure, like dying a death by a thousand cuts. His mouth was dripping with its natural juice, something (a blood-clot) gripped his throat, the last morsel was there and seemed to stick. He tightly closed his eyes, violently shook his head, through which pains shot. The choking lump was shaken out. Limbs and lungs were cramped. He jerked his head from side to side with violent insistence. His stomach yielded most of the lethal draught at once. But the poison had entered into his body, already was coursing in his veins. As he beat his hairy chest in despair, swift fire spread through his veins, knocked at his heart, met the ice that gripped around it, and overbore its lesser flame. When this happened, the heat of that crimson blood reached straight through to Grantaire's frozen heart, thawing the lump of ice as nothing else could have. Yet still he quaffed that bitterness without a name, that stabbing pain seized his sides and limbs even more violently, until, at last, sense failed in the mortal strife, everything suddenly fading to black in his field of vision. Writhing with agony, overwhelmed with loathing, he lay almost as dead, and the smallest enemy he ever had might now and easily have wreaked the limit of revenge.
And then, quite unexpectedly... it seemed to Grantaire that he had been torn away from a dream, or that a curtain was rising, or that a haze was fading before his eyes. In an instant all the past rushed back to him: a waif leaving his native whitewashed Catalan village, learning to kick his way out of trouble on the docks of Marseille; a series of odd jobs as an errand boy, then as a stevedore, taken in under one middling Madame Grantaire's wing, constantly forced to battle with hardships and saving for a University degree; a weary months-long journey on foot up to the capital, followed by the hardships of bohemian life; a street-corner café full of southerners, including some of his classmates, who longed for a brighter tomorrow; their leader, a dashing golden-haired stripling he had saved from some thugs outside the café; the experience of making friends... and he only saw the fair, soft face of the one he had followed, worshipped, and defended long ago. Enjolras was as fair as the sun, as bright as the day, as stern and firm as white cliffs; his hair golden, glowing bright as a bonfire, or like the Jardins du Luxembourg in September on the first day of the academic year; his voice as blithe as a reveille call... and yet he was dying, dying of the injury that Grantaire had wrought himself! Reality was all too clear, all too vivid, all too shocking.
His eyes widened, and he spoke a familiar name in a voice filled with sorrow:"Enjolras..." he sobbed, restraining manly tears, getting down on his knees and cradling his strangely pale, shallowly breathing beloved leader. His voice was hoarse and harsh, as if he had not spoken in a long, long time; and he stared in shock at his lifeless beloved.
The fair leader twitched at the touch of tears upon lilywhite skin. Time slowed. The images before his eyes blurred. Urgent words, spoken and shouted, stretched out forever. Hands lifted him, bringing fresh pain. Shouts echoed around the him. Lights blazed from the ceiling above.
And then a face came into view, blurry at first, then clear.
The face of the one he had sought for so long.
Relief washed over him like a gentle wave, lapping his pain away. He'd saved Grantaire; that was all that mattered.
"Grand... R... not a dream... really you, R, all along... mais... ce n'est qu'une... petite blessure... c'est... rien..."There was nothing more Enjolras could say in a voice choked by lungs full of blood, and a red foam bubbled from his parted lips. A convulsive shudder shook his powerless limbs, he turned dreadfully pale, and fell backwards, hands and feet sliding down onto the floor, in the strong arms of the one who loved him.
And thus, Grantaire enfolded the wounded, senseless leader in his arms, and buried his face in Enjolras' left shoulder, his tears wetting the loose golden locks that veiled the lilywhite neck. He could see sparse golden hairs on the back of that lilywhite hand, and the curved fingers seemed vulnerable. "Where have you been all this time?" Grantaire cried. "And where have I been?" He lifted his face from Enjolras' neck and looked around the hall, empty but for themselves en tête-à-tête, turning his head in all directions, full of astonishment. "How cold it is," he said wonderingly, "and how dreadfully large and empty it all looks!"
Then, his eyes fell back upon the haggard features and the crushed left side of his beloved leader, and he gave a cry of dismay. "You are wounded," he cried. "You have hurt yourself for me. You should not have, for I do not deserve it. I have never had the right to injure, let alone to kill you... I went away and left you, and forgot all about you, and let the Green Faery's promises turn my heart to a cold crazy diamond... and then it were my feet that crushed your side, and I was so close to seeing you die by my own strength, but now no strength is left in my feeble frame, the poisons have done their work... I just hope... Enjolras... I shall nevermore... You will nevermore..."
More teardrops fell upon the dark bags under the fair leader's eyes, and upon his lilywhite lips, which curled upwards in a faint smile, and his eyelids flickered to reveal glazed sapphire orbs as he said, fiercely, "You can never leave me, for there is nowhere you can go that I will not follow. I have found you now, and I will never be parted from you again. Nevermore... Until... the bitter..." And as they knelt there, clinging to one another, he broke into a blood-coughing fit and collapsed once more on Grantaire's lap.
He felt the savateur take his hand in Enjolras' snow-white own, and squeeze it. He squeezed back, silk against sackcloth, ice against fire. For once, Grantaire was crying, in earnest, but trying to smile. "Hang on... Enj... Please,... hang... on...", he sobbed.
There was so much Enjolras wanted to say, but he couldn't make the words come. He wanted to tell Grantaire that he would be all right. That he was brave and strong. He wanted the lush to know how much he loved him...
The pounding in his ears grew softer. His vision blurred again.
"No!" Grantaire screamed, then looked down at the bloodstained runes. A flash to Combeferre translating runes came to his mind. FRIHET. He'd heard some sailors from the North, Scandinavians if he remembered right, say that word in Marseille, but could not remember exactly what it meant. Then he turned back to his beloved, terror in his eyes. "Enj... no..." he begged frantically. "Don't go. Please, p-lease don't go..."
The pounding slowed. His azure, steel-coloured eyes fluttered closed.
"Until... the bitter..." he whispered. "Always..."
The beat of Enjolras' brave heart faltered, and then finally, it stopped.
And, as his fair beloved sank down in his embrace, Enjolras clutching him as tighly as he could lest Grantaire should leave him on his own to die within the Green Faery's keep, the dark-haired one sobbed all the harder, knowing himself forgiven, and kissed those cold, bloody, strangely smiling lips, and carefully cradled the fragile, lifeless form of Enjolras, listening constantly to the rattling and wheezing from within the ribcage he had unwittingly crushed.
As the dark-haired student lifted up and cradled his friend, Grantaire's eyes finally shone with the light of life, his lilywhite complexion changed back into healthy olive, and the invisible chains of immobility that seemed to shackle his wrists and ankles disappeared. He was once more a young man full of health and good cheer, though racked with concern at the state of his beloved, cradled in strong yet gentle arms.
"At last I am free... Enjolras... Not even the Green Faery can hold me anymore..."
In that stance they went forth from the great fortress, the fair stripling gently held, cradled, by the stronger dark young man, who muttered to himself about the Café Musain, and their long-abandoned chairs, and legalese, and of Merlot and barmaids and barricades, and of the sunsets they had watched together, and about the blood-red dawn that would hopefully find them having given it all for Liberty, their fingers entwining in a final gesture... and as they walked the winds were at rest and the fog lifted and the sun burst forth from behind the clouds, a pale sun still half-veiled in the Northern morning sky.
The Green Faery could return, and enter her throne room once more, if she pleased; for upon the dark pavement lingered the glow, in warm red firelight, of six runes that spelled out the word FRIHET: "Liberty" or "Freedom" in Norse languages, the password that Grantaire had to find out if he was to become his own master. The two students did not even wait for her return to claim what she had promised. They left behind the runes that proved that the Green Faery's latest general had won back his freedom, and become once more his own lord and master.
"This place is cold as a witch's tit," he said after a while, grinning that crooked grin Enjolras had almost forgotten, and which, his eyes shut and veiled in darkness, he could not even picture himself. "Let's go someplace warmer."
The sun was low when Grantaire came to himself, his much-enfeebled self. His head was throbbing, his body was cramped with pain, his mouth was dry and burning. Down-hill he trudged slowly to the cauldron of cold stone and drank. It revived him a little, enough so he could cradle the fair beloved and walk at a brisk pace while carrying Enjolras safe in strong, loving arms. On Grantaire trudged out of the circle of stones, with Enjolras in his arms; on they trudged south, until they reached the edge of the plains and the point where the forest began.
Already half-bled to death by the trial of the hedge of thorns, and exhausted by the three laps he had run withershins around the circle of stones, the fair leader had not come to his senses. Pale as wax, eyes firmly shut, he gave no sign or token of life.
Kissing his icy forehead for a long time, the darker and stronger student, equally pale, muttered:
"Pas de crainte, Enjolras. 'Tis too early for both of us to die..."
When they reached the gnarled holly bush with red berries, there stood someone waiting for them. Out of the treeline of beeches and chestnut there suddenly cantered, riding a magnificent steed, a dark young girl in tattered boy's clothing, hatted or coiffed with a scarlet sans-culotte bonnet, and wearing two pistols at her belt. Her raven hair was matted and rumpled like a troll's, her queue cut off into a more boyish bob haircut; she had a bruised left eye, and there were tears all over her sleeves and trousers, through which burn scars could be seen upon her olive skin. Her head was covered with a bright scarlet scarf below the bright scarlet cap (one just like Marianne's), but the curly raven hair flowing from beneath the scarf and the flashing dark eyes gave her away. There were two pistols on her belt, a Bowie in her left hand, and she held the reins in the right.
It was the little robber maiden, who had tired of staying with the robber band, and gone forth to seek her fortune as a writer or a revolutionary, and to demonstrate for women's right to vote.
As we have said before, fierce Éponine had grown weary of the life she led in the ruins in the forest. Thus, right before she left her parents' den in the company of Enjolras, she had taken a great sum in franc banknotes from their coffers, stuffed her pockets full, and cut the tethers of one of the horses that Cosette had given Enjolras (and the Thénardiers had claimed after the ambush), right before they leapt up on horseback and set forth.
She recognised both young men directly, but was astonished upon beholding her hero senseless, so deeply unconscious that he could die at any given moment. Her expectations of Enjolras striding forth towards her safe and sound, holding hands with his dark friend, had been brutally subverted; and thus, she stormed, in a state of shock, towards them. It was an anxious meeting, but, upon hearing the fair leader breathe, though shallowly and racked with pain, she was at least slightly encouraged and reassured.
"And who can this dark young man be... but the companion whom Enj sought so anxiously, when we took him prisoner?" she quietly asked herself.
"You're a fine fellow to go rambling about in this way, gallivanting off and putting dear Enj to all that trouble, aren't you?" she turned towards Grantaire and prodded him in the side with a sharp elbow, taking care not even to graze the wounded leader. "I would like to know whether you really deserve to have someone running to the ends of the Earth to search for you. Or even whether anyone should be worthy of dying for your sake...! Honestly, Enjolras deserves someone way better!" she smirked, slapping the senseless young man gently in the face (for the sake of auld lang syne).
In response, Enjolras was so deeply unconscious that he did not even flinch, while the sceptic gauchely looked away. Even though he knew himself forgiven, this girl, who seemed to know Enjolras, was at least slightly unsensitive to remind him of what he had wrought, as she looked him up and down and shook her head.
"Mind you, you're handsome enough! I can see why he followed you to the ends of the Earth! I just knew. Maman would beat me black and blue, and sneer, and say Enj and I would both die in the fog... but I knew you were strong, Enj. I always knew. If we get him to a safe place, like the Château Fauchelevent, as soon as possible, he may survive. He's a strong young fellow, so there's one chance out of twenty... And, furthermore, I know every shortcut through these woods, and you will surely need a pathfinder to get there in time... Trust me. But now tell me how he managed to get you back. Please tell me everything that has transpired, how he got on himself, and how he has found his fugitive!" Éponine was on tenterhooks, for all that had transpired in her absence, as well as for saving the life of her wounded hero.
Though his recollections were rather hazy and the last, most vivid of them were the most shocking experience in his short life, he told the robber maiden all about it. Or at least, all that he could recall: how he had let himself be seduced and spirited away, as Enjolras had stormed off in his pursuit, suffering concerns and encountering misfortunes that no single person could ever wish for. And, as he related his version of the story, he felt that he could trust this boyish stranger, and that an oppressive weight was being taken from his chest. It felt like partaking of a healing draught, and a change seemed to pass over his whole frame. He no longer felt the excitement of fever, or the painful weakness which succeeds it.
“Well, your beau is in quite the serious condition, with that tear in the left lung and all that! Who knows if he shall live? 'Twould have been better with a sword thrust or a bayonet! Well, then, I suppose it's all right at last,” said the robber maiden. "All's well that ends well, like the Bard once said! Once Enj has recovered, return to Paris, you two; and, should I ever pass by, I will drop by and pay you a little visit..."
And, having greeted the two of them without even setting foot upon the ground, she carefully helped Enjolras on horseback and spurred her horse into a steady trot, a right pace to carry the wounded blond safely, as Grantaire followed them on foot, trudging forth at the same pace.
The great forest of beeches and chestnut seemed to take a much shorter time to traverse this time than it had on the outward journey, and yet it seemed that the spaces under the trees were less dark, yet nevertheless slightly gloomy, now that a life, that of a seriously injured yet healthy young person, hung in the balance.
"Actually, you and I," Éponine told Grantaire with an unusual look of concern, that day at dusk, "both of us, are a rare case. Survivors. We may have lived through the Green Faery's toils, but most others died because of the draught... —or, I should say, of withdrawal from that green blood of hers. Like honey to the throat, but poison in the blood. Those who had been at her keep for years and had been fed a daily diet of it were not able to adjust to life without the Green Faery. The withdrawal was a terrible thing, causing a violent trembling of the entire body, vomiting, and eventually an abrupt halt of breathing. Then, heart failure..."
Éponine and Grantaire locked eyes with one another and shuddered. Both of them had been lucky to be loved, for, otherwise, their destiny would have been far different, and they would most surely have never met. And yet there had been a price to be paid... all that was left was to hope, even though there was only one chance out of twenty, and to quench the thirst of the senseless, febrile leader, for, as the robber maiden herself had explained:
"As for dear little Enj, there is hope as well; I know my shortcuts through the woods of this region, or I'm not a Thénardier! That injury of his is not lethal, but nevertheless quite serious. In fact, I've heard, or so Papa and Maman told, of surgeons during wartime who healed worse injuries, and the wounded nearly all survived in those cases. Though, as we have discussed before, this injury is dead serious, and will not heal easily... Surely he'll be all right within two weeks at least!"
And thus, and with such a good pathfinder, they were far from losing all hope. Comfortably lying in an improvised stretcher on horseback, Enjolras tossed feverishly, coughing up blood and asking for a drink. The nearest spring or pond was far closer than the Château Fauchelevent, quoth the robber maiden; by the crystal-clear freshwater, all three of them could have a rest and a drink until the next morning.
By the time they encamped by said spring, a tranquil lily-pond, and gently lowered him from horseback, Enjolras was deeply lethargic and as pale as death, a clammy cold sweat covered his brow, and two dark purple crescent eye bags shaded his shut eyelids. His breathing was wheezy and whistling; deep within his chest, a muffled bubbling or gurgling sound could be heard.
There he lay upon the spearmint around the spring, with only his half-open shirt on, to ease his breathing. The other two could see his clean lines, all sharp curves and angles; the fair lashes, the fine high bones of his cheeks, the cove where the wings of his collarbone met, the marks of his ribs, faint shadows like the strings of a harp. "A broken harp," Grantaire mused with a heavy sigh, wandering that perfect set of harp-string ribs-- how could he have dared to shatter them?
As if Éponine could read the dark student's thoughts, she cupped his stubbled face and reassured the broken lover's anxieties:
"No, there is no fear... there is no fear for now at least..."
"Hold on!" Grantaire slapped his beloved gently in the face and clasped his lilywhite, cold, pulseless wrists. "Hold on, Enjolras!"
In response, the fair leader's eyelids parted ever so slightly, a ray of elation shining in his glossy ice-blue irises.
"Ah... 'Ponine... Grand'R...! Ah... Left... side... crushed..."
For a while, the two other young people lifted him up and, touching him on the back, realised that the back of the ribcage, and the spinal cord, were intact.
"Could you try to explain what you feel like?" the dark student softly asked his fair leader.
"I feel..." Enjolras tried to put it into as few words and as clear words as possible, considering his own state and his friends' concerns, "like a flow of blood... rising... at every respiration... Je respire... difficilement..."
His voice was barely a whisper, broken with coughs and red foam from his lips every now and then, like that of a consumptive; the bleeding in his lungs and the pain from the crushed side rendered his breathing that difficult and made every word he uttered a bayonet stab to the left side.
"Je me sens trop mal... Depuis quelques jours... ce coup de... m'empêche de respirer..."
"Quiet!" the Thénardier girl commanded, putting an index finger to the cold bloodstained lips.
"I hope we can save him in time..." Grantaire sighed, filling a tankard Éponine kept in her knapsack with clear spring water to quench the thirst of his beloved. "This young man cannot die. This young man will not die..."
The cold lips curled upwards into a pale smile. Enjolras bit his lips to stifle a groan of pain and stop the blood-flow welling within his chest. Still Éponine kept on chiding, and Grantaire now chimed in on her side:
"Quiet, Enjolras... or you will kill yourself! Please do not speak; your healing, your life itself, is at stake!"
"I will n... I will not..." Enjolras muttered softly. "Love me... or die... now you... just like that evening... Café Musain...!"
Those last words were interrupted by a violent blood-coughing fit, and Éponine, in response, pushing the scarlet kerchief she wore over her bonnet over the wounded leader's mouth, for a handkerchief:
"No speaking! Hold on, Enj! Lay still and quiet..."
It was Grantaire's stance, and the look in his eyes, which reassured and persuaded Enjolras to finally submit to his convalescence; no matter the burning thirst that parched his throat or the stabbing pain in his left side. He suffered, nevertheless, due to that burning thirst, and often asked for a drink, and asked to be fanned with an open palm or Éponine's scarlet bonnet. A tankard held to those lips by his kind-hearted lover or by the Thénardier girl merely lasted for an instant ere it was emptied.
"Je sens quelque chose... qui se soulève... dans ma poitrine. Je vivrai... je vivrai du moins... embrassez-moi... Grand... R..."
And, in response, he felt the dark stubble on an ill-shaven face brushing against his right cheek, then against his forehead... but what were those cool droplets falling upon his pale features? It was a clear night, so it was not drizzle; and it was too early for morning dew. Grantaire was shedding tears upon the fair leader's face, and furthermore sobbing, as he gave those warm, soothing kisses. Yet at first Enjolras did not recognise the one who reassured him with those tokens of endearment.
"Qui m'embrasse?" Those blue eyes were drowning in darkness, and his thoughts were once more confused.
"C'est moi, Grantaire", he heard a deeper voice piercing through the haze, not entirely, but enough for the doubt to be cleared.
"Merci... mon ami..." said Enjolras in his now usual weak voice; an interrupted voice which indicated a reduplication of his suffering. His thirst was now increasing; tossing feverishly in his cool spearmint bed, he motioned towards the open palm of Grantaire's left hand to tell wordlessly that he needed fanning, and wearily put the empty tankard back into the dark student's grasp, pointing at the lily-pond. Soon Grantaire returned with the refilled cup, which he put to Enjolras' lips right-handed, as the dark young man himself, to procure some solace for the fair leader, stroked and gently rubbed the middle of Enjolras' chest with a large, knotty, warm left palm.
There was still a pulse within, fluttering and somethimes dashing against the sternum, like a butterfly held in the clasp of a child's shut hands. Though a wavering heart, it was young and strong, and struggling at its utmost: there was still hope, in spite of that rattling breathing and erratic heartbeat, Grantaire thought with a sigh of relief. Remembering the pains he had endured for endless nights, when the coolest draught changed, within his seared mouth, into molten lead. A transient shudder ran down his spine. On the other hand, Enjolras drank deeply to quench his inward heat, proving that there was far more hope than sorrow. Whenever he was brought a refreshing drink, he drank it all up, without leaving a single drop.
And, all night long, they watched the fair leader, counted his pulse's flagging stir, felt for his shallow breath, held water from that spring to his lips, which he quaffed most eagerly, and cooled his face with damp cloth and fanning leaves, until the mists that clouded his bright intelligence condensed and lulled him into deep sleep.
"How cool I feel..." Enjolras muttered, soothed by these refreshing gestures, "I must be getting better;" and he sank into a delicious slumber.
All the blood he had lost, and all that struggle for life, awakened within the wounded leader a powerful urge to rest; and thus, gradually surrendering all his strength, he sank down exhausted on the soft, fresh spearmint, laying his weary golden head in Grantaire's lap.
All night long he tossed about until his strength failed, and awoke the next morning in a high fever. His weakness hardly allowed him to speak, the words welling up as nothing more than low groans from a choked throat, and the friends who accompanied him lived in a state of perpetual anxiety about his state of health.
During the journey to the Fauchelevents' estate grounds, Éponine and Grantaire got to know one another better, and both of them were reassured by the fact that they had found kindred spirits. She told him of Cosette and of her uncertainty on how the new heiress would receive a garçon manqué in such worn clothing, and if she would remember, and display kindness towards, her childhood acquaintance; and, in response, he told her of why he was so concerned with Enjolras' state of health, and wished for his fair leader to return alive:
"I met this boy: I loved him as I had never loved anyone or anything before: I had no need to labour to win his affection - he was mine by right: he loved me, even as I loved him, from the first: he was the necessary complement to my soul. How dare the world presume to judge us? What is convention to us? Nevertheless, although I really knew that such a love was beautiful and blameless, although from the bottom of my heart I despised the narrow judgement of the world, yet for his sake, I tried at first to resist. I struggled against the fascination he possessed for me. I would never have gone to him and asked his love; I would have struggled on till the end: but what could I do? It was he that came to me, and offered me the wealth of love his beautiful soul possessed. How could I tell to such a nature as his the hideous picture the world would paint? And thus, if I should die, and if he should die, let me die by his side, and let him die by my side, most surely with his hand in mine and my hand in his, while we are still young, facing the barrels of the Crown's firearms. Only then can our purposes be fulfilled..."
Now Éponine understood that she was feeling more or less the same towards Cosette, and replied with an ironic smirk. They still carried the wounded Enjolras as carefully and as quickly as they could, though he was still pale and unconscious and sleeping as deeply as any critically injured person would be sleeping.
Still the hurt to his side made him suffer a lot, and still he often found his own mouth full of blood."Je me sens trop mal... Depuis quelques jours... ce coup de... m'empêche de respirer..."
"There is no water here... my throat is dry and burning! there is fire and ice within me, and the air is so heavy! Ah!" Those were the thoughts he was unable to put into words, given his state of health, tossing feverishly and gasping for breath, writhing like a trampled snake, but could only express with a violent blood-coughing fit, low groans from a choked throat, or a pat on the back of one of the two riders who gently transported him on horseback. And always Grantaire was there, softly pouring through those parted lips, overcome by the agony of thirst, a deep draught from a flask refilled at the closest clear rill or spring to refresh his beloved, reassured by the swallowing reflex which proved that life still nestled, and resisted, within the wounded young man; or fanning his pale forehead with a flick of the wrist and an open palm. As usual, whenever he was brought a refreshing drink, he drank it all up, without leaving a single drop.
"How cool I feel..." Enjolras muttered, whenever he was gently fanned, "I must be getting better;" and he sank into a delicious slumber.
When they left the woods, and reached the green fields and the river on the other side of them. That was when they caught their first glimpse of the Château Fauchelevent in the distance. Though the fair leader was too worn-out, sleeping in a dreamless darkness, his breathing still rattling within the throat and chest, to realise how close the hope of saving his life was.
He'd screamed at Éponine to help him, to do something. And she had pressed bandages made from his torn shirt against the wound in his chest, and then she had put the heels of her hands over his heart and started pushing. One, two, three, stop. One, two, three, stop. Over and over again, and, with every push, the bandages had become redder. For endless, agonizing seconds, nothing had happened, and then Enjolras had groaned and started breathing again. The fair leader had lived — barely. The broken ribs had missed his heart by an inch, but had badly damaged his lung. He'd lost a great deal of blood and had been deprived of oxygen. Would he recover? Could he fully come back from such terrible injuries? Neither Grantaire nor Éponine did know. No one did. Enjolras himself couldn't tell them. He was still unconscious.
Two weeks had passed since he'd almost died, and he was still in a coma; the high amount of blood he had lost brought a powerful urge for lots of rest. Éponine and Grantaire went to visit him morning and night, twice a day, always hoping for a sign —a twitch of his hand, a flutter of his eyelashes—, but they never got one.
The doctors had told that they'd done all they could. That the Fauchelevents and their guests must prepare themselves for the worst —that Enjolras might remain in a coma for the rest of his life. It would be better to put him out of his misery, indeed, but, for all the sorrow, there still was hope.
Éponine and Grantaire talked to him, sang to him, told him about their days, and the new challenges they brought, as if he could answer. He was still there; they knew he was. And they all refused to give up hope. He had broken three ribs, they had wounded one of his lungs, and he breathed with great pain and difficulty, which increased daily. It was a consequence of his hurt, that he spoke so low as to be scarcely audible; therefore, he spoke very little. But he was ever ready to listen, and it became the first duty of Grantaire's life to say to him, and read to him, what his lover knew he ought to hear. Even though the bedridden blond was too deeply unconscious, and it hurt too much to speak, to put into words, the thoughts that crossed his fevered mind:
"Wherefore all this trifling? Do you wish to see me pine and pant, and die by inches? I am wasting away; without hope, and tormented by this tragedy. And you see clearly the proof, for the fever is double-stitched to my veins. Let me behold you, and take in payment all my love; for nothing else can cure the troubles I endure."
But when he had thought, again and again, this and a great deal more, and still saw that all his words were thrown away, for they could not be uttered, he took to his bed, and had such a desperate fit that the doctors prognosticated badly of his case. Then his lover, who had no other joy in the world, sat down by his bedside, and said to him, "My love, whence comes all this grief? What melancholy humour has seized you? You are young, you are loved, you are great, you are rich—what then is it you want, my love? Do you not see that your illness is an illness to me? Your pulse beats with fever in your veins, and my heart beats with illness in my brain, for I have no other support of my sorrows than you. So be cheerful now, and cheer up my heart, and do not see the whole kingdom thrown into mourning, this house into lamentation, and your lover forlorn and heart-broken."
When Enjolras heard these words, he softly said, "Nothing can console me but the... cough! but the fact that we... cough! will both live through this ordea... cough! Therefore, if you wish to see me well again, let Grand'R... be brought into this chamber; I will have... no one else to attend... me, and... make my bed, and... cook for me, but Grand'R... himself; and you may be sure that this pleasure will make me well in a trice."
Thereupon Grantaire, realising that his fair beloved was far too unconscious to recognise him, and although he thought it ridiculous enough for himself to act as cook and chambermaid, and feared that Enjolras was not in his right mind, yet, in order to gratify him, he came up to his bed, and felt the patient's pulse (which made Éponine laugh outright as she peeped behind the curtain). Then the leader said in a faint voice, "My dear... Grand'R... if it is really... will you not... wait... upon me?" and Grantaire nodded his rumpled dark head, with a friendly smile. Then the physicians had some foxglove syrup brought, on a silver platter and with a silver spoon, and the dark student put a spoonful of the syrup to the lover's cold lips, watching his throat work as he swallowed it down; it felt so delicious that Enjolras, who could not relish even sugar, licked his fingers at the taste. And when he had done with the syrup, Grantaire handed him a drink of laudanum with such grace that Enjolras, if he had not sunken back into sleep on the fluffy lacy pillows, overcome by the narcotic drug after eagerly quaffing it, was ready to kiss the dark lover on the forehead. For every draught of water, or of laudanum, he would have gladly expressed thanks.
Thereupon, Grantaire gently pushed Enjolras to one side, and quickly set about making the bed; and, running into the garden, he gathered a clothful of roses and citrus blossoms and lavender, and strewed them over it, so that the staff and the household of the château said that this gauche, unkempt young man was worth his weight in gold, and that the fair convalescent had good reason to be fond of him. He no longer refused Grantaire's assistance, but gladly took from the hand of his lover any cooling draught he offered. Their constant presence lessened one another's tediousness of the slow creeping hours. How could Enjolras have remained insensible to so much love, to the self-denial exercised for his sake by a person whom he had hitherto overlooked!
"Bonsoir," said the nurse as the dark student went into Enjolras' room.
"Has there been any improvement?" Grantaire asked hopefully, as he did every single time he came to visit Enjolras.
"I'm afraid not," the nurse said.
"We've changed the flower arrangement beside his bed, though, so he has something fresh to look at."
"Thank you," she replied, glancing at the glass vase on the nightstand table, where a new pattern of orange blossoms, purple lavender, and pink roses had been laid out. Enjolras' blank eyes stared at it.
Is he seeing them? Grantaire wondered. Can he hear me? Does he even know I'm here?
He sat down on the edge of Enjolras' bed and smoothed a lock of golden hair off his forehead. "We're ready, Enj," he said, sharing his day with him, as he did every evening. He smoothed the fair leader's negligée and fastened an open button. He was sitting quite calmly, with half his nightshirt on. One could see his clean lines, all sharp curves and angles; the fair lashes, the fine high bones of his cheeks, the cove where the wings of his collarbone met, the marks of his ribs, faint shadows like the strings of a harp. He gently lifted Enjolras' head and fluffed the pillow underneath it, tucking the blond right into bed and pushing the pillow behind his back to keep him from falling and from getting cold. Then, he took that ice-cold, lilywhite hand in his callous own:
"They're so brave, all of them, so tough, so smart. But this —this National Guard—... How are we supposed to destroy what the first Revolution has made? We were given this task; they believe we can carry it out... but how? Will you be leading like one thousand students into battle, or straight to their destruction?" Here he smiled sadly. "I wish you could tell me."
There they sat for quite some time, saying nothing, Grantaire just holding Enjolras' hand and gazing at his face. "I have to go," he finally said. "Before I go, I have to tell you something. I — I don't know if you'll be here for the moment of truth. All I know is that I love you, Enj, with all my heart. You were ready to give your life for mine. Maybe you already have. But you are my life. Remember when you set me free? Well, Jehan Prouvaire said something I remember, right before my change of heart." He leaned over and kissed the fair leader's lips. "I disbelieved him then. But now I do believe. Love is the strongest magic."
He touched Enjolras' forehead to his own, then quickly left.
Without even looking back. It was easier that way.
If he had looked back, he would have seen it.
A single silver-crystal tear rolling down Enjolras' cheek.
Marius and Cosette were greatly alarmed and concerned for Enjolras' sake, indeed. For many days his critical condition did not appear to improve. But now a favourable change was noticed; the fever left him, sleep returned, and with it, although slowly, strength as well.
"He was very agitated, though, and I had to give him double the portion of laudanum, and soothe his brow with a cool, wet cloth upon his forehead," Grantaire told their most generous hosts. "It was very peaceful, holding him in my arms as he settled down to sleep, his golden head resting on my shoulder."
When Enjolras finally came to in that lavender-scented canopy bed, and instantly recognised those uneven features perched above his own, still pale, he laughed and sobbed for joy, and kissed that drawn, stubbled face, and his long, clever fingers, so pale and cold. He kissed his dark saviour's eyelids, which were red and haggard-looking from staring so long, unsleeping, under the influence of that green draught, and he buried his face in that curly, matted dark hair and felt as perfectly content as he ever had back home, before Grantaire's change of heart, before the sceptic had gone away and his own long, lonely journey had begun.
"Is this... no, this cannot be a dream... "
When the blond, still pale from his wound, saw all those pretty offices which had been done during his convalescence, they only added fuel to the fire; and he said finally in that blithe voice of command, that clear and loud voice which his injury had hushed for months:
"If I do not give this lad a kiss, the breath will leave my body. Kiss me, kiss me, my beautiful beast! Let me not see my poor soul die of longing!"
And thus Grantaire, finally with that cheerfully ironic smile that looked a little like a smirk, cupped Enjolras by the cheeks, and kissed him again and again.
So the fair leader awoke that one day and realized that for the first time, he knew what it was to be happy, and what it was to belong, and for long days afterward he held this new awareness close and thought about the day when he would at last find the courage to tell the secrets that he kept in his heart, the dark memories that he scarcely admitted even to himself, and the fragile, inescapable certainty he felt every time Grantaire looked at him. And on good days, he thought maybe he could see an answering certainty in those hazel eyes, just waiting for him to speak.
“What do you believe in, then?” Enjolras asked him, burning.
“Honestly?” Grantaire asked, the cat playing in his eyes as he paused the bottle of laudanum at his lips—
“If you are so capable of belief,” Enjolras interjected snidely—
“Nothing,” Grantaire continued; “Nothing but you—“
And they remained in one another's arms, and the ungainly, awkward Marseillais remained in the arms of the most beautiful creature in the world; and pressing the fair leader the tightest he could to his heart, he said:“Nothing,” Grantaire continued; “Nothing but you—“
"I have caught you, my little rogue! You shall not escape from me again without a good reason."
At these words, Enjolras, adding the colour of modesty to the picture of his own natural beauty, said to him:
"I am indeed in your hands—only guard me safely, and stand by my side before every volley of enemy fire, until the bitter end!"
The fair leader had awakened as if from a dream, and light danced in his azure eyes, though he was still pale from his injury. Enjolras drank the moment in, like a drowning man drawing water into his lungs. And, in response, Grantaire laughed in his innocent old way.
Then Marius and Cosette entered the sickroom, to check out Enjolras' progress, and, praising Grantaire as a good and virtuous fellow, told the now fully-conscious leader that they were content that the dark realist should be his saviour. With a sigh of relief, the lilywhite leader explained how Grantaire, who desired nothing else in life, had forthwith pledged him his faith; whereupon the latter, his right hand upon his heart, gave spoken proof of that solemn oath.
"Oh, he is gone to foreign countries," said the heiress, lowering her gaze. "On a great voyage across Northern Europe, to seek out new business partners. He took the carriage to Calais, and from there the London ferry, about a month ago; maybe he is thinking of me right now in Gothenburg, or Stockholm, or Saint Petersburg, or Königsberg, or Stralsund, or Lübeck..." And, as she spoke in a voice laden with concern, her newlywedded husband Marius laid a warm palm of a hand upon her shoulder to reassure her.
“Well, then, I suppose it's all right at last,” said Grantaire with his usual smirk.
Then, Enjolras looked at Cosette and reassuringly addressed her, with an unusually warm look in her eyes:
"I will tell Éponine of why she surely was unable to reach you in the Thénardiers' hour of need. That will surely reassure her, and bridge the gap between the two of you."
And (speak of the wolf!) the Thénardier girl, who had been eavesdropping, popped up from behind a curtain and excused herself with a curtsy.
"Why not put the kettle on, and discuss the matter of our past en tête-à-tête, 'Ponine and I, over some Earl Grey and butter scones in the parlour?" the fair heiress asked all the others.
That seemed to settle the matter indeed, and soon the young husband and wife both left the spare bedchamber turned now far less of a sickroom, while Éponine stayed for a while with the two revolutionaries.
"What a jolly rambler you are, eh, Grantaire?" she asked. "I would like to ask you a little more whether you deserve that anyone should go to the ends of the Earth for, and even have their chest crushed, to find you!"
But he only ruffled her matted dark hair in response, and then Enjolras did the same; and she told them about her emancipation, her flight at the crack of dawn from the brigands' lair, and her decision to lead an honest life, no longer on the lam. "Maybe I should change my surname, whether as a nom de plume to publish my works or altogether as a physical person. 'Thénardier' has such a nasty ring to it, even in Paris where no one would know me, and see just another young hopeful from the provinces. I am thinking of... how about 'Jondrette'? Sounds good at least to me, 'Éponine Jondrette'. Like a plucky storybook girl of those that save the prince in distress..."
No words she received in reply, but reassuring smiles and eyes beaming with honesty, approving of all of her decisions, both months-old and recent, to become a free spirit. And that was enough for her to satisfy her esteem needs and spread her wings to their full extent!
That was when the robber maiden left them, to return to the parlour where Cosette was waiting for her with tea and scones at hand, and to seek her forgiveness. Both of the students thought it best not to go with Éponine and Cosette, for it seemed that their reunion ought to be a private thing, though Enjolras, still bedridden, and with the Thénardier girl (who would soon change her surname) for a go-between, asked the heiress to remember him to her guardian, and to give M. Fauchelevent his thanks for the trousseau, for the attelage and provisions that had sustained him for so long on his journey, and also to carry message from Éponine to him, saying that her time with the Thénardiers was now a thing of the past.
Then, after a few hours en tête-à-tête with her former foster sister, Éponine returned to the sickroom where the two young men were waiting, told them that she had made friends and amends with Cosette at last (though she still looked a little dreamy and sighing; maybe because she had fallen head over heels for a certain young translator who was already married?), took both their hands, and promised that if ever she should pass through the arrondissement where they lived, she would call and pay them a visit, and surely join their ranks and fight and bleed for Liberty.
"Bon!" quoth she, "tout est pour le mieux; retournez au café Musain, et si j'y passe jamais, j'irai vous faire au moins une petite visite. Et bien sûr j'irai combattre sous votre drapeau, et être morte pour la Liberté..."
And then, she mounted her chestnut horse, straddling as usual; and, after being given the address of the Musain by the fair leader himself, she embraced both of the revolutionaries without even setting a foot on the ground, and rode away into the wide world, spurring her horse into gallop and disappearing into the horizon. She resumed thus her grand voyage, back on her horse and onwards, on adventures of her own.
As they watched her go from the threshold of the Château Fauchelevent, Enjolras rejoiced that the robber girl would not have to travel the world alone, as he had. "Those are never alone who are accompanied by good thoughts," or hadn't she said that during their quest up north?
After a couple of months had elapsed, Enjolras felt himself sufficiently strong and tranquil to leave his bed, though not his chamber, on his own. This he did with the assistance of an overjoyed Grantaire for a crutch. They saw the blond, with a steady hand, hold and use the spoon, and able to take the strengthening soup for himself.
"Are you ready?"
Enjolras nodded, and then Grantaire smiled back at the fair leader, so handsome in his scarlet waistcoat laced with golden soutaches, and took his arm.
The dark student led the fair one through the Grand Hall. "Nervous?" Enjolras asked.
"About 'Ponine, no. Not about M. Fauchelevent either. About your breathing, yes."
Grantaire had heard a hitch in his chest. He was sure of it.
"I'm fine," Enjolras replied. "The doctors said I could do this. Don't worry so much, Grand'R..."
"How can I not?"
"Because I'm not in a coma anymore!" he replied, cheerfully exasperated, as the dark lover bit his lip. Enjolras tended to get frustrated. He was eager to be up and about. To resume his duties. He was getting stronger every day, but still —Grantaire was worried. He couldn't help it. They'd come so close to losing one another that everything scared either one of them now. He was worried if Enjolras was pale, or flushed. If he looked tired. If he didn't eat enough. If he cleared his throat or coughed.
Grantaire had come home from the village market to find him sitting up and conscious. It was the happiest day of both their lives. He'd hugged him and kissed him and cried tears of joy.
But Enjolras wasn't out of the woods yet. He still had a long way ahead of him. His recovery had been slow and full of setbacks, but now, nine months later, he was up and about most of the day, though his doctors insisted that he rest after lunch. He would return to the Right Bank to study and lead his people soon, when he was stronger.
"He is now out of danger. The fever has abated, and there only remains a debility quite natural after so severe an illness. Great care, however, is still necessary, with strict attention to all I have prescribed; for his central nervous system is much shaken, and any relapse might be serious."
One day, months later, the surgeon finally set the convalescent free. When Enjolras was perfectly restored to health, finally able to stand upright, though still pale with blood loss, he and Grantaire went forth hand-in-hand towards home, and as they advanced, springtime appeared more lovely with its green verdure and its beautiful flowers. The blood rushed back to Enjolras' cheeks, and his strength seemed to return. The countryside was a riot of colour, and the sunshine and the birdsong lifted their hearts. As they neared their home, the sound of the church bells mingled in with the blue-tits and finches, and soon the breeze carried other sounds and smells of town life to them. Very soon they recognized the town where they lived, the pointed zinc and slatestone rooftops of an ocean of townhouses and the tall verdigrised steeples of the churches, rising like masts above, in which the bells were ringing loud, joyous peals. It was springtime in truth, and this was the first time the church bells had been sounded in forty days; therefore they were making the best of the occasion, for even church bells grown sad and lonely when they have no occasion to speak.
Once more, they recognised the route through which they had left Paris, and they were on the Right Bank where they had lived and studied, walking through the twisting cobbled streets through which they had passed when they left, winding their way through Pigalle and up towards Montmartre, the white dome of Sacré Coeur rising at the top of it; that was where they lived. They wove through cobblestone streets on slanted hills, past little shops selling chocolate truffles and thick loaves of bread, cafés filled with people as they watched the rest of the world stroll by. They ducked into a little bookshop with sagging shelves that smelled of paper and leather and dust (one of those places that Combeferre always frequented), and soon they found themselves upon the threshold of a familiar café, on a street corner in Montmartre. They entered the place, passed by the tables and behind the counter, greeting the two young barmaids (who waved sighing wistfully at Enjolras and sneered coldly at Grantaire, as usual), and down the long dark corridor into the backroom of the Musain. Everything was exactly as it had been when they had left. The same map and tricolore flag remained nailed upon the walls, the same quinquet lamp filled the sunset interior with warmth, the same daylight was streaming in through those two rickety windows... The clock behind the counter still ticked and told the time, the old landlady's cat was sunning herself on her owner's lap, and around the tables still remained their old regular chairs of every evening. Up in their garret, as seen through the window, their edible flowers, which Combeferre had been lovingly tending to in their absence, were still in full bloom in the planter boxes. They were in spectacular bloom this year, and had formed an archway of beauty across the street. Long story short, everything and everyone remained in the same familiar place, with everything still waiting for them, like ever before.
And furthermore, soon there would be peals from a nearby tower, and their friends would stream into their secret hideout...
But for now they were en tête-à-tête, so what better than to enjoy it? Enjolras and Grantaire sat down in their respective chairs. They had forgotten the past as one who forgets an unquiet, heavy dream upon awakening, and it seemed to both of them that it was as if they had never left the Café in the first place.
As they sat in the golden sunshine, the dreary grandeur of the Green Faery's fortress and the deep, deep cold of her terrible kiss seemed a lifetime away.
Holding one another's hands, lilywhite soft fingers clasping palms rough as sackcloth, earnest sapphire orbs looking at last warmly into ironic hazel eyes, they finally understood the meaning of that anthem they had so frequently sung:
"Liberté, Liberté chérie,
combats avec tes défenseurs..."
And, furthermore and what was the most relevant, they finally understood those words, said by some British Lordship with a pointed brown moustache and goatee in a low, musical voice and with a characteristic graceful wave of the hand, at a soirée in the Manoir Enjolras, right before the young heir left for the capital to pursue those university studies, as wise words of advice to the aloof stripling about to reach maturity, to let his spirit soar free:
"Yes, that is one of the great secrets of life - to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul."
They remained like this for hours, locking eyes and entwining hands, having finally understood that life was the finest gift they had ever been given, but that its worth would always grow pale if compared to freedom and liberty.
Right then, those foretold bell-peals rang in the air and the regular crowd shuffled in. Combeferre came in first, holding his notebook in hand, followed by Courfeyrac, who was humming the latest Liszt tune in vogue; and then came all the others... At first, Enjolras' lieutenants did not recognise the two strangers who sat in the hitherto empty chairs, and asked at least for their surnames.
Upon hearing them sing those verses from La Marseillaise, however, a general scream of elation ran through the backroom, startling the landlady and the barmaids, and of course the cat that leapt off the landlady's lap, as those earnest freedom-fighting young men had recognised their fair leader and the odd one out of their secret society.
And each evening, at the backroom of the Café Musain, they all dined together, and watched the sunset together, and there they talked of many things, both of the pain and the hardships they had endured, and of the future they hoped to have now that they had survived them, and of the glorious death that would crown them ere they reached midlife, giving it all before the end of youth, shedding their hearts' blood for Freedom and Country. And after they had talked and most of them had left, the leader and the cynic simply sat there en tête-à-tête, in one another's company, and each thought that he had never before been so happy as this, and that the crowner for such elation would definitely be to fall together by enemy fire, holding one another's hands, one rough as sackcloth and the other soft as silk, yet both tightened together in a final clasp for evermore; and all around them was warm, beautiful midsummer, no matter how often the seasons changed. Each had found in the other perfect sympathy and perfect love: what could the outside world matter to them now? Each was to the other the perfect fulfilment of a scarcely preconceived ideal. The fair lad sat on his knees with his arms closely pressed round his neck and his golden curls laid against his newest lieutenant's close-cut raven hair; completely absorbed in each other, intoxicated with the sweetly poisonous draught that is the gift of love, they sat in silence.
One day, far earlier than they could have expected, both young men, and all of their friends except one, would indeed gallantly shed their blood and give their lives for Freedom and Country, dying with one another's fingers entwining in clasped hands. But that, my dear readers, is another story, and perchance it will be told some other time.
All good stories, of course, must have a happy ending, and this one is no exception, but the important part, dear reader, is not that Enjolras and Grantaire (and the rest of their Friends from the Café, and the robber maiden, and her parents, and the heiress, and her husband, and her guardian) lived happily ever after.
The important part, reader, is that, together or separately, they lived.
PS. This is a Director's Cut - left in this unfinished state by the post length limit.
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EliminarThe paradis of the Otherworld holds beauty and sorrow, ... whereas the beauty of the fairy castle is static and its visual beauty does not restore the dead.
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EliminarIt seems that La Fée Verte is exceeding the length allowed by the size limits -I have had this problem before with other fics-. So I cut out most of the commentaries -and the epilogue- and abridged some parts of the story. I hope I can write as much as I want about this world and these characters... I wish I could, indeed. XOXO
ResponderEliminarAs mentioned earlier, if your one post already exceeds the 1MB limit, there is little you can do except to split that article into separate posts.
ResponderEliminarThe stated maximum size of one page of text content is 1M - which is not a small number since the complete Christian Bible is just over 4M of text.
ResponderEliminarYour readers might be happy, if you were to segment your narrative about your summer trip.
--So, trailer here, or leaving the draft as it is, and then publisg La Fée Verte segmented as a feuilleton (ditto for the Baratheon saga)--
There is autopagination. So there is nothing to do but surrender, and leave this as but a draft-first version-director's cut of the integral story (ditto the Baratheon saga).
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