LA FÉE VERTE - II. ORESTE ET PYLADE

La Fée Verte

Une nouvelle en cinq chapitres

Chapitre deuxième
Oreste et Pylade


In Montmartre, on the Right Bank of the Seine where it flows through the heart of the Ville Lumière, there dwell countless university students, most of them in humble garrets right under the steep-gabled zinc or slatestone rooftops, their skylight windows peeking through the eaves, with the drainpipe running right beneath the windowsill, and they all live quite crowded and huddled close together without much free space, let alone enough for such luxuries as a personal garden; there are so many inhabitants, so many families, that there is not enough place for each and everyone to possess 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 it is so crowded with people that there is not room for everyone to have even a small garden of their own. Thus, most of these bohemians who live there have to content themselves, and must be satisfied, with nothing more than a few flowers in a row of potted plants on the windowsills, or perhaps even a scrap of vine or 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 steep-gabled rooftop window on a seventh floor on the little narrow Rue des Grés (in spite of its name, actually a narrow ruelle in that decade), a pair of young Law students who, in spite of their bohemian life, had found a way to deck their sill with something better and just larger than a pair of whole plant pots, nearly a proper garden: a large wooden crate which they had filled with soil and improvised into a planter box upon and outside their windowsill, where they grew herbs meant for use in their own kitchen, such as peas, chives, parsley, spearmint, chervil, carrots, little radishes... aside from, both for the table and to add some colour, 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; one would have said a little garden, so well did all those plants grow and thrive. And, furthermore, since they had decided to place this crate perpendicular, across the drain-pipe and the windowsill, it looked rather exactly like a redoubt of flowering greenery.

Though they were not brothers by blood, these two who had their garden inside a crate loved one another more than even real siblings would (even though one of them was adamant to deny it). And that though their circumstances could not have been more different... 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 and it grew beautifully: the vines and tendrils of the calabashes and peas cascaded hung down over the side of the crate, into the void and the street below... The peas climbed over the sides and hung down, and the little catlike faces of the pansies cast ironic looks, like naughty little sprites, at those who tended to them; while the nasturtium, which signifies victory in battle, grew as tall as the window and entwined around a little trellis, creating a wonderful arch of greenery and flame-like flowers, whose long filaments climbed and trailed around along the window frames, making long growths and twining around the window, bending over to each other, curving towards one another; it was rather like an ephemeral triumphal arch all made of greenery, of tendrils and leaves and flowers. 
In time, the pea plants had begun to hang down over the boxes, and the fiery blooms threw out long vines that framed the windows and arched towards each other; creating an arch of greenery and flowers.

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 improvised 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. What a pleasure, when they went to amuse themselves together in the shade of that aerial shrubbery! It was if they were spending their spare time in the finest of all parks; the two would sit together in the long, balmy evenings, sometimes in the room they shared, surrounded by paintpots and brushes and with half-painted signs and portraits making a rainbow of colour around them, and sometimes at the Café Musain, where the dark-haired student sipped his anise or eau-de-vie as he listened to the blond's fiery discourse, spoken in a voice as blithe as a reveille call. "I have seen you paint," he had said. "It is time you had a closer look at my own work."

At last, these pleasures which they enjoyed for three quarters of the year 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, neither one of them 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; in the winter they had to go down many stairs and up many stairs again, while the snow was falling outside. Also in winter, when everything was frozen and even the windows, they had to move the crate indoors, for it became so bitterly cold that nothing could live until the springtime came again... 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 or ferns, 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 the frost would melt a transparent little round hole would appear in the frost through which, the glass having been defrosted in that patch of pane, they could watch the snow swirl outside, and this allowed them to have news of the outside world. Then they would each go down the several flights of the long staircase and meet in the street, where they would walk together in the 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 all warm pressed against the frost-coated windowpane, which made a most adorable and transparent little round peephole, the finest of ice-free peepholes as round as a ring, the best one you can imagine; from which, watching the snowflakes swirl outside in the dim gaslight, through the window, often a noble and piercing steel-blue eye would shine, or equally often an ironic hazel one, twinkling and smiling, fixed upon the sight through the glass: those were the fair student and the dark one, respectively, who said bonsoir to the outside world.

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, then curling over his left shoulder, in a golden queue, neatly tied with a bow, kept out of his soft face by a cherry-red satin ribbon, that he used to tie his hair back. His skin was clear and his cheekbones high, his icy blue eyes lit from within like an ember you thought you had put out. Thick, curly hair attacked the air around his head, barely contained in a riotous ponytail. Upon his proud, high marble brow and fine high Slavic-like cheekbones it was written of leadership, commanding respect. Now he was almost a grownup: ostensibly fourteen years old and as clever and learned as anyone and handsomer than everyone. He was so tall, so handsome and clever; so tall and slender and thin, with his beautiful eyes the colour of the winter day sky and that 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 of seventeen years; 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, braided with gold thread just 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 every springtime, 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; he had a fierce and warlike nature, at stark odds with his boyishness. To Enjolras, like to 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 apocalyptic prophecy for the adorable ones she had so frequently seen on her childhood's Glanzbilder, or for the gallant Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro, 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. Like the stonehearted brother-in-law of the fairytale, he was as good-looking as the day itself, but, unlike that character, he was the stark opposite of so much in love with his own figure that he was not occupied with anything else, from dawn to dark, and despised the beauty of everyone else. Enjolras 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 and half-timbered houses, of clocktowers and fountains, workshops and marketplaces, cafés and bookshops, bakeries and pawnbrokers, brasseries and hasty walks to and from lecture halls, an arrondissement so crowded that the townhouses in the narrowest ruelles leaned and jettied out over the streets towards one another as they grew up to the third and fourth floor, their étages or floors rising one right above the other, so close to the point that their respective zinc eaves and rain gables almost touched, and the rooftops were separated only by the drain-pipes that collected the water when it rained or snowed. One could only see a thin, thin sliver of sunlight if one was walking in the alleyway. At the point where the eaves touched one another, right above the drain-pipes, there was, in each garret, one little window, making it the only floor to get enough sunlight, with the windowsill right above the drain-pipes where the gables touched, and in between there was only a very narrow space; so that one might cross from one garret to another, or watch a birds'-eye view of the people who walked following the ruelle below, heading for the workplace, the lecture halls, the classroom, or any place of their leisure, by placing one foot on either windowsill, by simply taking one mighty stride over the gulleys and climbing from one skylight to the other opposite. With the same stride, it was also enough so that one could effortlessly pass from one windowsill to another, leap into the other home through the window, and visit those who lived opposite. In this arrondissement, which could be any district on the Right Bank, possibly even the one 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 duck-footed, auburn-haired and honey-eyed, and wore a pair of spectacles. His skin was a clear olive, with a spray of freckles across his face like a dusting of gold, and he had thick auburn hair that looked as though it had been cut with shears – so that, through that pair of glasses, his strange light-flecked eyes were very noticeable. Those honey eyes were flecked with lighter colours; with bronze and hazel and with gold. He looks quite like a scholar, or some statue of a Thinker. If you could give those Thinker statues brown hair, glasses, a green coat, and sturdy shoes, you’d have a likeness. He’d need to have this way of curling his lip and narrowing his eyes when trying to deal with some difficult case. And the kindest eyes when talking to people. 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 stubborn and aloof blond, Combeferre was more outgoing and flexible 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), just 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 height of 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 it is still 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: railway trains, 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 these 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 improvised 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. What a pleasure, what lovely days succeeded one another for them whenever they went to amuse themselves together in the shade of that aerial shrubbery! It was if they were spending their spare time in the finest of all parks.

At last, these pleasures that Mother Nature only offered for three quarters of the year 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 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 little round hole would appear in the frost through which, the glass having been defrosted in that patch of pane, they could signal to one another; then, sometimes an icy blue piercing eye sparkled through that little round perfect ice-free peephole, and sometimes a friendly one, twinkling and smiling, as sweet and golden as honey. Those were the leader and his lieutenant, who were saying bonjour or bonsoir, depending on the time of day, to one another. 
From their humble garret, they watched the snowflakes descend, through a frame of equally brittle branches; Combeferre said that it seemed to him that he saw crystal flowers waltzing through the air, while Enjolras saw crystal throwing-stars or blades instead. 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.

On the following day there was a clear frost, the windows were frosted over with the laciest ice flowers and ferns either one had ever seen; it was a beautiful white and icy blue day indeed. The winter passed by like the refrain of a song, and very soon the springtime came. The sky cleared, the sun shone bright and warm, the young green leaves and shoots burst forth and grew greener, the red-throated swallows returned from southern lands and built their nests on the eaves. Windows were re-opened, and the leader and his lieutenant found themselves sitting once more next to one another, and spent long afternoons once more in their little makeshift garden high up on the roof, up there, high above over all the other rooms and stairs and landings. The two roommates tended to themselves, locked away in safety high above the Rue des Grés.

But how did they get the idea for the makeshift garden in the first place?

The idea of growing flower boxes came 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 was even ostensibly in love with the Moon herself, for she was the addressée of some of his love poems)... 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 outside 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, yet with a smattering of golden freckles along the nose and cheekbones; and he had large and dreamy eyes as blue as Enjolras', yet not icy at all, and more of a greenish shade with a tinge of hazel; 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 that all the freckles vanished in his flustered flush; 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. In fact, the shy boy had not only got a pair of plant pots on the windowsill, but a window full of flowers.

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: perched right outside the windowsill, there was a large wooden crate filled with soil, where the young medievalist grew herbs he needed, meant for using in the kitchen, such as chives, parsley, spearmint, chervil, carrots, little radishes... and, besides, a few sweetpeas which were in bloom, for it was mid-springtime, like little fragile butterflies, as well as scarlet poppies, 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. The one source of joy in his life, beyond literature and storytelling and his belief in free love, came from the beautiful rose bushes and trailing vines he thus carefully nurtured in boxes on the crumbling balcony outside his garret window.  

In time, the rose bushes had shot forth long branches heavy with their huge, rosy blooms, which, entwined with the blue moonflowers, 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 his favourite poems and watching the roses, the poppies, and the moonflowers 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 rosebush and its blossoms.
The flower box had been placed perpendicular to the drainpipe, longways over the gulley, so that it jutted out half-way to the window across, and the long filaments or tendrils of the beautiful sweetpeas and moonflower vines which the young dreamer had sown hung down over the side of the crate, trailing down over the sides of the crate into the void and the street below, or climbed and trailed around along the window frames, making long growths and twining around the window, bending over to each other, curving towards one another; in general creating something rather like a wonderful wedding arch of greenery and clustered butterflies and magenta pompoms of petals, while the lovely blue moonflowers formed, all around, just like a vaulted faery woodland of azure cockades. 

"I grow all of these plants in this makeshift garden not only for the table, for their fragrance, and due to the beauty of it all, to add some colour; 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. How beautifully, how marvellously the roses and moonflowers bloomed that springtime!

"He doesn’t look like a Jehan, you know? The Jehan we’ve read about is this noisy wild-living sort of guy who might give his brother Claude Frollo a headache. But my Jehan is different. His hair is a sort of ashy blond, and his eyes are like hazel. He likes dressing in odd colours with floppy hats. He’s thin as a rake, but there’s nothing so frail about him. So people think he’s a foppish poet, but no, my Jehan is a lion. You should see it in his eyes.” 

Those were beautiful springtime days. How beautiful and fresh it was out among the rose bushes and the moonflower vines, which seemed as if they would never leave off blooming; they only wrapped their fragrance around the three friends and grew heavier on the vine by the day, as if with expectation. The pink velvet pompom roses gave off an extraordinary perfume, a scent without an equal, as if they would never have to wilt. Jehan Prouvaire whistled with the blackbird, recited old love poems to the blue-tits, played music on his recorder to the honeybees. The flowers were so pretty they dried them or pressed them in the books for keepsake. Jehan was so skilled in making them, that Combeferre had suggested why not he to sell them to various interested people and their household could afford another cup, then a pillow and new slippers for everyone?

He keeps a bush of miniature pompom roses in his bedroom, in a crate by the window.

He’s had the roses for years, now-- he had brought them from home when he first moved to Paris for school.

It’s funny, he thinks, that these roses have been watching him for so long. They have seen girls come and go, have seen his friends play cards in his room, have seen him deep in his studies and deep in a bottle of wine, have seen him in moods ranging from ecstatic to morose.

Jehan thinks that maybe his roses know him better than anyone.

If roses could mourn, he thinks that they would mourn for him.

The unrest is growing by the day, and Enjolras’ intensity with it.

The revolutionaries plan and plot and prepare.

Jehan has thrown in his lot with the greatest group of men in Paris, the ones with the clearest eyes and bravest hearts. The ones who dare to dream of a future so much better than the times they live in now.

He thinks that great men don’t often live long lives.

He doesn’t know if he is a great man.

Sometimes, he thinks that he wants to be.

Other times, he thinks that all he wants is to finish his studies and tend his roses and live quietly to the end of his days.

He is too restless for that, though. When there is change to be had and progress to be made, he wants to be there, contributing.

Perhaps that makes him a great man.

Perhaps, in the times they live in, that makes him a doomed man.

Perhaps his roses will outlive him, he thinks, as he clips the dead leaves from the little bush.

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  self-educated, having just taught himself literacy, 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, exiled Poles, 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 had been the one teaching his roommate to polish his reading and writing skills 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 as if they were 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. He’s thin like a reed, and with dark floppy hair that is like wires. He has a long nose that makes him look a little like a hawk but his eyes make him look peaceable… or sharp. He has a savateur’s build, that I have to say. Very simple in bearing; he’s true wisdom personified; one has to dig deep and find it.

“What is the matter?”

“Everything,” Jehan says softly, because a world in which Feuilly and his clever fingers and sharp eyes and intelligence cannot find work better than hard manual day-to-day labour because he dared to stand up for his rights cannot possibly be right.

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, who had kissed the flowers goodbye as he took his leave of Prouvaire, 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 for a makeshift garden, which in his case also contained more useful plants, edible flowers and herbs meant to use in their own kitchen as well as to add some colour, upon the windowsill. Most remarkably, nasturtium, whose fire-red petals stood for victory in battle; and pansies, with catlike features, that symbolised freethought. It had been, furthermore, Combeferre's idea not only to grow the herbs which they needed for their supper, but also to entwine the nasturtium vines around along the window frame, when they grew too long for the trellis; these plants stretched out their long tendrils, wreathed them round the window, making long growths and twining around the window, bending over to each other, curving towards one another till the tendrils tangled themselves with each other, so that it seemed that the frame of the skylight was made of green leaves and flamelike flowers; and also that, instead of setting the box parallel to their windows, they could set it across, to place the crate perpendicular to the drainpipe, longways over across the pipe so that it jutted out half-way to the window across theirs, and looked for all the world exactly like a redoubt of flowering greenery. 

"Enjolras," Combeferre supposed, "has never had a garden of his own. He does not look prepared to uproot weeds with his hands; he looks slender, fierce but very small-boned, his hair shining, his cherry-red overcoat and scarlet waistcoat 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, a sensualist to the core, 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 wide eyes, and his long, clever fingers were covered in impeccable white society gloves, even in a lecture hall; the finely-chiselled aquiline nose and prominent high cheekbones were infallible signs to recognise him as a Gascon, even one sans beret; he was slender-legged, 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 and song, his lungs already tarred with cigarette soot, and one could see nothing but fire within him. He looked even more dashing with the dramatic scar running down his left cheek. It was a duelling scar: he had got it when he was a first-year student, upon arriving in Paris. It was the longest scar anyone had got that year and he was very proud of it. A boy, then a young man, who saw the world as something to revel in. He was the centre of any party, the teller of tales, and the heart of every warm touch. Even when one who knew him walked alone, that person was surrounded by his presence. Needless to say this arbiter elegantiarum wrote satirical verses every now and then, and even one or two risqué plays for the Vaudeville that the director of said theatre refused to stage and outright rejected (for, apparently, those shows were even too outrageous, too racy, for Vaudeville standards!). In short, he doubted superiorly of anything and everything. Courfeyrac had that whimsical and rakish 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, the life and soul of every event, 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.
Why did Courfeyrac consider him a partner in crime? Plenty of the other students were smart-mouthed enough to appreciate his comments better, and even more of them were rambunctious enough to participate happily in his escapades. Why had he chosen to bestow—or was it to inflict?—his company on Enjolras, who was quiet and well-behaved and mere steps away from the bar? Enjolras still wasn't quite sure whether Courfeyrac amused or exasperated him. And now he was obliged to worry about whether they would be caught sneaking in forbidden books, and whether what Courfeyrac wanted there was merely the same thing Enjolras himself longed for...
Courfeyrac at the same lecture hall had roughly the effect of a live firework lobbed into a box of cartridges. He was, in a word, incorrigible. He had been sent there after causing too much trouble living at home, but his parents had objected not so much to his defiance (which he had, gleefully, in spades) as to his habit of seducing the chambermaids. Or at least that was the word going around among his classmates. Whatever the original incident had been, it grew, fed on rumour and exaggeration, until Courfeyrac had acquired the reputation of a veritable twentyish Don Juan Tenorio. Enjolras, unaware that Courfeyrac was perhaps not as complicit in this reputation as he appeared, wasn't sure whether to be charmed or extremely irritated by him. To keep from finding out, Enjolras did his very best to avoid him. 
Courfeyrac, however, was not very easy to avoid. Was he really more ubiquitous than the other students, or was he just impossible to ignore? Hard to say. At any rate, there he was, talking back at the professors and sneaking off to smoke pipes with the kitchen wenches and generally making himself noticeable. The most irritating thing about him was that underneath his habitual flippancy he often had opinions Enjolras agreed with, and he would champion them in what Enjolras considered the most counterproductive ways imaginable.
He looks well enough with his dark curly hair and his nose that he’s always complaining about. He’s not even that tall, really. Gentlemen take to how earnest he looks. Ladies fall for his eyes. And I’m always happy to say that he’s the most honest warm soul around who draws so many friends to him.
Though he gave the first impression of a show-off and a scoundrel, and a swaggering upper-class dandy to the core, 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 (Ever heard of a Gascon Cadet who wasted away on a sickbed? That is completely against their code! All the Gascons sincerely believe that dying for one's beliefs is the only truly worthwhile thing one can do with one's life; one who is convinced he is going to die young in battle doesn’t want to be too friendly with others or compromise to make something of his life!). 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 or cane which concealed, like a scabbard, a perfectly dissimulated hiltless rapier blade, which Courfeyrac could draw (by pressing a release button on the pommel, then pulling on the handle, with the distinctive shing or tzing sound of swords being unsheathed, to reveal the blade) and wield as deftly as any musketeer of the King's Guard, or any Gascon Cadet, 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; he was the life and soul of every event. 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 Meaux, a provincial town not far from Paris, yet whose roots were not far from Calais (and the other one's seat was most frequently empty); while Combeferre had only one (who sat right next to him), 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, introducing first the top students in the Faculty of Law.
Bahorel had starred in the June Uprising of 1822, at the funeral of young Lallemand. He was a fighter. That much one can tell from looking at him. Broad in the shoulders, knobbly in the hands, with hair to cover the scars on his face. He has this great booming laugh and a build that can credibly produce it. So this, combined with this red waistcoats makes him look like anything but a Sûreté officer and everything like a merry whippersnapper, brave to the point of foolhardiness, a chatty cathy to the point of eloquence, an hole in his purse to the point of generosity; his opinions were scarlet, not loving a quarrel unless it was an uprising, nor an uprising unless it was a revolution; always ready to break a cobblestone, to unpave a rue, to thwart a government only to see the effect of it. Having held back several grades, he would have been at the top of the Law degree if he had not been as lazy as he was brilliant; he took great care not to ace his studies, having chosen for a motto "AVOCAT JAMAIS" and for a coat of arms a nightstand table in whose drawer one could see a graduate's mortarboard cap. Whenever he passed before the Faculty, which happened quite rarely in fact, he buttoned up his peacoat and undertook what he called "hygienic preventive measures:" he said of the portal of the Faculty, "quel beau vieillard!" and of its dean, M. Delvincourt, "quel monument!" The few times he attended class, it was to look for inspiration: the subjects of the lectures furnished him with chansons in macaronic French-Latin-legalese hodgepodge, and in his lecturers the models for some hilarious caricatures! A farm boy from a secluded valley in the Pyrinees, he said that his parents were peasants, not bourgeois; and that was the reason why they were intelligent and had passed their cleverness down to him. 
Bahorel, a whimsical young man, lived in between various cafés scattered on both banks of the Seine; the others had customary preferences, while he had none. Errare humanum est (erring, as both making mistakes and wandering, is common to all humans), while strolling, flâner, is typically Parisian, especially for a country boy who always finds new things to do in the capital. In spite of that lackadaisy manner, he had a piercing intellect, and was far brighter than he seemed from the first impression.

Lesgle's father was a northerner from Calais, but he himself had been born and raised in Meaux, a provincial town in the Île-de-France region (not far from Paris), where the family had established themselves after the King had given Lesgle père the command of the local post office, either consciously or unconsciously punning on the famous seventeenth-century orator known as L'Aigle de Meaux. For that reason, his classmates at University had nicknamed him "Bossuet", taking for his nom de guerre the surname of the aforementioned orator (whether it was Courfeyrac or Bahorel who first launched that quip has not gone down in history, but what matters is that it stuck and was set in stone).
This Lesgle, dit Bossuet, was a tall and fair, merry lad who had suffered so much bad luck that he had grown inured to it, developing a particular brand of black humour. As a little boy, he had overturned a casserole full of hot water for the supper soup and scalded away all his head-hair; after a week of bedridden convalescence, he consoled his worried parents and siblings with the thought that they would never again have to worry about combing or washing his hair anymore. As a Law student at the University of Paris at twenty-five, his head still was the spitting image of a billiards cue-ball with a prominent aquiline nose; in winter and thin lips and scars all over him from hard living, he was always coiffed with a woolly beret, which he discarded in the warm seasons, and he did not care at all about purchasing a wig to conceal his most conspicuous quirk, of which he was rather proud in fact; in fact, it earned him another nom de guerre, that of "the Bald Eagle at the Musain."
Ever since, Lesgle's specialty had been and still was not succeeding in anything, and he laughed at every mishap that crossed his path. His family had once had a home of their own and a little grain-field; the lad himself had had nothing more decent to do than losing that little farm and field to the local toff at cards, so that his parents and siblings had to live as tenants in Meaux town and give their all at odd jobs to afford that University degree. There had been and there still was nothing left for him at his old home. He was learned and he was bright, he had esprit as well, but he always put his foot in his mouth or stumbled upon some obstacle head first. Everything deceived him; whatever he was building would crumble right upon his head. If he chopped firewood, he cut off some fingertip or another; he even did this whenever he had to read, as a paper-cut. If he had a mistress, he discovered, as suddenly, that she had a sweetheart of her own. Since his life had been jinxed for as long as he existed, Lesgle was always in such merry, high spirits. He also had a motto: "J'habite sous le toit des tuiles qui tombent", i.e., "I dwell beneath the roof whose tiles or shingles fall down." Since happenstance was an everyday occurrence he could foretell, he was little astonished by whatever bad luck took his path, confronting it with utmost serenity, and smiling at the tricks of destiny like someone who knows how to understand and enjoy a pleasant, good trick. Though he emptied his purse as quick as a young fellow can, his pool of good mood was inexhaustible; though he often came down to his last sou, he never came down to his last laugh. Whenever adversity knocked at his door, he cordially saluted that old acquaintance (should auld acquaintance be forgot...?), heartily shook hands with her, and was close enough to her to address her by nickname: "Bonjour, Miss Fortune!"
Those frequent strokes of bad luck had made him whet his wits; he was always resourceful, and, though most often out of money, he always found a way to earn some more and to make, whenever he pleased, some outrageous expenditure. One night, he went as far as treating one Henriette, a silly, gossipy wench, to a supper worth one hundred francs; the event inspired him, in the climax of the orgy, as he handed over the money, to make this memorable quip: "Fille de cinq louis, tire-moi mes bottes!"
(Of the translation of this quip, the reader might be left wondering. The original lines were spoken by the seventeenth-century orator Bossuet, l'Aigle de Meaux, on the funeral oration of Queen Henriette; but the Lesgle of the nineteenth century, crassa Minerva, laced it with some sexual innuendo!).
Just like Bahorel, Lesgle slowly inched his way towards the profession, making his way through the Law degree in his own personal style. As for a home in Paris, he had very little of it, sometimes sleeping on the rue under the moon when the nightly weather was fair, and taking refuge underneath Charenton Bridge if it rained or snowed. Fortunately, he was most often roommates for free, out of kindness, with this classmate or that one, but most frequently with Joly, or Jolllly as he was called, a two years younger (that makes twenty-three), eccentric medical student.

This Joly, pale and dark-haired, lanky and with dark circles for eye-bags that gave him the air of a malnourished panda with a messy bobbed bedhead, was the Imaginary Invalid as a young man. What he had learned from his degree (and already in late childhood and early adolescence, from perusing the works of his father, the Dean of Medicine at the University of Montpellier), and losing his mother and all three of his siblings to a cholera epidemic, an experience that also left him overprotected for most of his childhood, was far more to be a patient and far less to be a physician; he always perceived himself to be experiencing the symptoms of whatever disease he was studying. At twenty-three, he believed himself to be terminally ill, and spent hours staring at his tongue, or at his eye-bags, in the mirror. Aside from frantically tidying everything he had to touch, until he was reassured that the objects in question were perfectly clean and free from prospective infection. He had read somewhere and believed that the human body was magnetised, just like a compass needle and like the Earth itself; and thus, whenever he went to bed, he always ensured that his head was facing south and his feet were facing north, in order to ensure that, during his sleep, the circulation of his blood was not disturbed at all with interferences from the great magnetic field of the whole planet. Whenever a storm was going on, no matter if it was an electric storm or a snowstorm, he always put his fingertips to his throat and checked his carotid pulse, mentally counting the number of heartbeats. This obsession is still frequently reported in medical students, who study frightening diseases for the first time and routinely experience vivid delusions of having contracted such diseases. The condition is associated with the fear of contracting the disease in question. Aside from that, he was the merriest one of them all. All of those contradictions -young, crazy, sickly, cheerful...- added up to a great combination; to the recipe for a most agreeable eccentric whom his friends, pulling out all the stops when it came to consonants, nicknamed Jolllly, with four Ls, as if he were some four-winged living thing, like a dragonfly or butterfly. It was Jehan Prouvaire who, not content with the lad's surname already reflecting his lovable and friendly personality, first told him, as a compliment: "Tu peux t'envoler sur quatre ailes (ie sur quatre Ls)". A compliment that everyone else, but first and foremost Courfeyrac, gradually picked on; that this lad could soar and take flight himself on four L-wings, as well as calling the young invalid Jolllly.
Jolllly had also got the customary quirk, which might be called a tic, of touching, even rubbing, the tip of his nose with the pommel of his walking-stick. This tic is the sign of a clever wit, as you may have seen, dear reader, knowing others who do the same, especially when they are deeply sunken in thought. And thus, he became the medic of their secret society, and always took care of any of them whenever they fell ill or injured. Every rash and cough and dizzy spell, even the slightest paper-cut on a fingertip, was treated with his intense medical care. The glasses make him look like he’s feeble, his smile is too bright for someone in a serious profession and he’s just an inch taller than me. But have you seen him in the thick of trouble? He’s a warrior with a cane and a healer who packs a punch.

The former two were the bright sparks of the Law degree whom Enjolras and Courfeyrac, or rather mostly the latter, encouraged to join their secret society; while Combeferre approached the last and youngest, that adorably quirky medical student about whose pretend conditions he had so frequently reassured him. Within two or three days, their secret society had three worthy lieutenants more within its ranks... though there were still frequent discussions of what their little after-class brotherhood was to be called as a group. Potential names were as frequently discarded as they were suggested, most often because the leader himself found that there was something wrong with those names, something that did not click with their purpose. Would they ever find the right designation? That we shall find out soon!

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 descend 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 Hucheloup, 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 the 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 scrap 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 narrow ruelle ironically named the 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. 
Throughout that decade, ostensibly indifferent, a certain revolutionary shiver careened through the air, an echo which had returned from the depths of those days when the Bastille had fallen. The youth of France, and of many other nations, was (we might say) moulting. The adolescents and twenty-somethings transformed without even doubting, by the passage of time itself, just like a larva into chrysalis and imago, or like a tadpole into a frog. The hands of the clock stir, as well, within spirits, and everyone took the stride forth that they felt they had to take. Royalists turned to liberals, and liberals shifted even more towards the left.
This rising tide was made out of thousands of flows and currents, in whose very fluid nature it lies to combine into mixtures, leading to the most singular among combinations of ideologies. Some of them were passionate about the absolute, looking forwards towards infinite possibilities; the absolute itself, due to its fixed nature, pushes spirits upwards and gives them wings to soar free. There is nothing like dogmatism to give rise to a dream. And nothing like a dream to give rise to the future. The utopia of today is the flesh and blood of tomorrow.
A mysterious new dawning was threatening the establishment, which was suspicious and criticised; this being a token of the zenith of revolutionary ideas. The subconscious thoughts of the powerful encounter the subconscious thoughts of the populace. The hatching of insurrections is the riposte to the planning of coups d'état.
In those days, there was in France no single organised secret society like the Italian carbonari, the Prussian Tugendbund, or those within the subjugated nations of the Habsburg Empire; but rather, here and there, obscure up-and-coming groups branched off. Like la Cougourde in Aix-en-Provence, or in Paris, among other societies of the same persuasion, the one led by Enjolras, whose name was being still debated upon.
They were few and far between, a secret society in embryonic state; one would even say a coterie, if coteries ever abounded with heroes. Their rendez-vous point was, ut supra diximus, the backroom of the Café Musain, where they most usually held councils and reunions. 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.
The friendship in between all those young men had closely knit them together into a family, a band of brothers. Not all of them were students, and not all of them were southerners, yet they made no distinction about these facts. They made a remarkable group, indeed.
All those young people, so diverse, and still so similar, had one single religion: their belief in Progress. They were all direct descendants of the French Revolution. Even the slightest-minded among them turned solemn after hearing of 1789, or even as much as only '89. Their respective parents had been either royalists, Jacobins, Thermidorians, or on the neutral side of the conflict, but they did not care; that pêle-mêle which had preceded them, who were still young, was a thing of the past and nothing that mattered to them; the pure blood of principles coursed through their veins. They all attached themselves, without any intermediate nuances, to their incorruptible right and their absolute duty.
Affiliated and initiated, they secretly sketched ideals.

“Jehan,” Courfeyrac says, in a rare moment of solemnity. “I would be lucky to see the world as you do.”

Jehan does not know what to say.

What does one possibly say to a statement like that?

So he stays quiet, as is often his wont, and smiles and looks at the ground.

Courfeyrac laughs and teases him about the way he is blushing, and the moment passes.

When Jehan Prouvaire was a little child, his mother had worried for him.

“My only child, and there is something odd about him,” she had said.

“You speak so little,” she had said.

“You frighten me, always sitting there looking at me, never saying a word. Go play, my child,” she had said.

Jehan had never possessed the need that some children seemed to have, to speak to hear their own voices, to garner attention.

He had been a quiet child, with few friends and no siblings, and none of the rambunctious energy many boys possess.

He had been too busy learning and watching life go by.

Even as a child, Jehan had been filled with wonder at the world around him. (See the way those finches hop along the branches and the way the sun looks through a cloud and the vibrant colors of the flowers in his mother’s garden.)

Even as a child, Jehan fell in love easily and often.

Quiet boys do not always grow into quiet men.

Jehan does exactly that, however, and adulthood finds him mild-mannered, mostly-pleasant, sometimes-melancholy, still fond of songbirds and the way the sun looks through a cloud and flowers, and possessing a peculiar air of timidity that occasionally disappeared entirely when he was worked up about something.

Jehan had been a quiet child, with few friends.

He is, for most purposes, a grown man now, still quiet, and it cannot be said that he has many friends, precisely, but the friends he has are larger than life.

Sometimes, Jehan thinks that it is odd that so many people seem to lack the ability to see what is in front of their eyes.

Years of watching has translated into seeing, and it has served him well.

(He falls in love with the way the moon seems to watch him at night. The slightly curved lips of the girl who works in the bookshop across from the café. The sound of rain hitting thousands of rooftops across the arrondissement.)

Or not so well, as it were.

(There are so many people starving in the streets and there are not enough jobs to go around and there are mothers with dead babies in their arms and hungry children clinging to their skirts.)

It makes things difficult, occasionally, because by nature, he is both highly empathetic and highly observant.

He sees, and so he feels.

He sees the suffering all around him.

He knows he is fortunate, and he feels guilty for it.

He sees, and so he is struck with a burning desire to change things.

Quiet men are not always passive men.

The main part of the Café Musain is, at most times, a lively place, buzzing with a warm energy.

The backroom that those young students frequent is chaotic and calm by turns, and never seems to reach a happy medium.

Jehan loves the room, for its slightly crooked walls and creaky floorboards and cobwebbed corners, for the way that it seems a little too small to hold all of them at once but always manages to accommodate everybody that finds their way in, for the way the warmth spreads from the fireplace on cold nights.

He also, he supposes, loves the room for the people it contains.

He never loves the room more than when Enjolras speaks in a low, tense voice, eyes flashing, with everyone’s attention on him. When Courfeyrac stirs up a lively debate between his friends, which nearly always culminates in a shouting match. When he and Combeferre sit and discuss some lecture or essay as the others drink themselves into oblivion. When he watches Feuilly absent-mindedly doodle on a stray piece of paper as they talk. When Joly tries to convince them that he is, as a matter of fact, seriously ill.

He loves the room because he belongs. 

He can sit and watch, and speak when he has a mind to, and not fear that he has no place with these men.

They are all different, from varying families and social classes and interests, each of them that gather here.

It is of no consequence, Jehan thinks, because they are all the same in the only way that matters.

They yearn for change.

Jehan has his role in this peculiar group of young men.

He is the dreamer, the one who can be found sitting and staring out a window with a blank look on his face.

He is the poet, the one who scribbles on napkins and collects words and strings them together into thoughts and especially feelings.

He is the one who can be counted on to be kind, the one who can be counted on to pass no judgment. The one who can be counted on to tell no lies.

(Jehan may speak less than the others, but when he speaks, only the truth passes his lips.)

He is also the youngest, and as a result, the others seem to take particular care to make sure he does not come to harm.

He thinks that this is what it means to have brothers.

The others keep an eye out for him.

He does the same.

He does so surreptitiously, because no one likes another to notice his struggles.

Jehan notices them all the same.

He is an only child, and his family is well off. He has never wanted for anything, has always been able to fund his studies, has always had clothes on his back and a roof over his head and food on the table.

This makes him, if anything, more acutely aware of the fact that some of his fellows are not so fortunate.

He doesn’t meddle.

He knows, instinctively, that sometimes, when pride is all one has left, they cling to it all the more fiercely.

There is a moment in which he locks gazes with Enjolras. Enjolras’ blue eyes are blazing, and his mouth is stern, unapologetic. There is something in those blue eyes that accepts their fate, and welcomes it. There is not a touch of regret in his expression, although perhaps there is sadness.

Jehan draws strength from his leader and his friend.

Their leader was a sheltered lad only in his twenties, not a veteran who had fought in a great many battles and campaigns, and he had never lost any of his closest comrades to enemy fire, but still there lingered within him the premonition, the uncertainty, that their entire clique's destiny was to be exterminated by the National Guard during a violent repression.

One fine springtime 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 local 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. 
Their paths had crossed right after crossing the Seine at the Charenton Bridge, since the lecture halls were on the Left Bank and the way home meant they had to cross the river (well, Courfeyrac lived not far from the lecture halls themselves, but there were still things to discuss at the Musain).
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.

It was that evening their paths crossed with that of another young man, whose destiny would entwine with that of everyone else, and especially with Enjolras' own. For either accident or chance willed it that these three encountered the hazel-eyed, raven-haired young man who would be the fair leader's second roommate, the one mentioned at the very start of this chapter.
It all started quite suddenly as they passed by the local macaronnerie, when they were surprised to find that staggering out of a shady ruelle, five or six older low-lives of the arrondissement came across the three students and drew their pocket knives, with sinister grins and piercing looks in their eyes. Within an instant, Courfeyrac had stormed forth, unsheathing his canne-épée with that distinctive shing or tzing sound, to fight for defending the other two; yet, being only one to a half dozen, though he managed to parry most of the blows sent towards him with the swordsmanship of a Gascon aristocrat. Their bodies were lithe and kept up their condition and away from boredom... yet an outstretched leg from one of his opponents, laid before his own ankles, made him lose his footing and collapse on the ground in a crumpled heap, groaning in pain as he clutched his sprained left foot and made an effort to stand upright, with his rapier for a crutch, as one of those thugs held him down, while the others closed in on his friends. Enjolras was first and foremost a leader, and Combeferre a scholar, and both of them were cornered, pinned to the display window of the macaronnerie; in short, given his own injury, the Gascon himself doubted that they would be able to defend themselves against so many stronger opponents...

And right then, as suddenly as the band of muggers had crossed their path, a catlike silhouette of an adult male human, in a crouching stance as graceful as it was threatening, suddenly stepped from out of the ruelle and pounced upon the thug who held Courfeyrac pressed against the ground. The swordsman gasped in awe as, thrusting his left leg backwards, the stranger pivoted, turning around, then aimed a kick and deftly scored a glancing blow of his left heel, a fine escarpin powered by solid muscles, to the middle of his opponent's throat, knocking the air out of his lungs and causing the shocked thug to crash land on the cobblestones, putting his cupped hands to his face, blood slipping through his fingers, his face turning strangely pale as he collapsed. 
"Allons," the martial artist laughed and talked to himself gently, but loud enough for Courfeyrac to hear what he said, "all it takes is to recall that one came to this world on the docks of Marseille..."

Within the blink of an eye, as Courfeyrac scrambled up on his feet, wincing and leaning on his canne-épée (it was not hard to get back up, for the feelings of awe at this glancing coup de figure made him forget the pain in his sprained foot), the unknown fighter was crouching like a frog, right behind the men who had cornered the other two students before the macaronnerie. Leaping into the air with all of his strength, the stranger then brought his left heel down on one of the muggers' shoulder-blades, and his right heel down upon those of another; both of those who had been struck were thrown off-kilter and driven into the ground, unconscious. While the fair leader and his learned lieutenant could only look on with bated breath, the thugs who remained unscathed looked at one another and rushed towards their companions, waking them up with slaps on the face and a shout about "retraite!"
The savateur had ostensibly seen all of this, in spite of his now carefree stance, for he had leaned all of his body weight towards the right, leaving his left leg suspended in mid-air. As expected; the left leg had the effect of a strung rope placed upon the precipitated, hasty retreat course of his opponents, who, taken off-kilter, fell upon their faces about five or six strides away before scrambling up to their feet and storming away as far from such a savateur as possible.

Now left the victor and the master of the fight, the unexpected saviour of Enjolras and his lieutenants could finally enjoy some well-deserved rest, leaning all lackadaisy against the nearest lamp-post, taking a steel flask from his belt, raising it to his lips, and drinking a deep swig, as he dried up the perspiration from his brow with the sleeve of his shirt. 
Grantaire returned to Paris some two or three months after he left. Outwardly he looked no different -- his skin perhaps a bit darker from the Mediterranean sun, but still outwardly the same. He talked less, gambled more, drank more, however.
"Aaah, j'avais uneu soif!" he sighed as loud as he could, as he drew the hip-flask from his lips and put its cap back into place, licking his lips and incisors to taste the drops of eau-de-vie that lingered upon them. He shrugged. They were so common, these pointless drunken fights. What a shame that those were no worthy opponents, with a threshold for liquor way below his own!

The victorious lush, who 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 with the blackest hair either of them had ever seen. The first time scowling and the other expressionless, with a slightly crooked nose -that probably had been a result of falling from a tree or of a street fight- beneath a pair of bloodshot hazel eyes, slightly popping like a frog's, flashing wistfully in a stubbled dark face, tanned by the sun and the sea breeze, the shade of café au lait, framed by matted, curly raven hair and matching whiskers; furthermore, he was long of limbs yet not too tall, and only slightly chubby around the waist, but still a bruiser to the core; his chest looked like a powerhouse through that dark green paisley waistcoat, and the muscles in his long limbs throbbed beneath a humble, worn shirt and pair of trousers. He had rough, strong, graceful features that were young in expression and happier than their experience. 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, his kicking legs poetry in motion; 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 bronze-tanned 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, an urge which that first deep draught had been unable to quench. 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, tall and lean, nearly of a height with Grantaire but not so broad through the shoulders. His fair curly hair was tied at the nape of his neck, the colour of summer wheat fields. He was neatly dressed in a scarlet waistcoat, soutached with braided 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 shiny gold hair, spilling over his shoulder as ripples of captive sunlight, formed curls and glittered in a halo of a magnifique golden yellow, framing in a ravishing shade of blond his heart-shaped face, which resembled a white lily-bud, due to his fresh, clear pale translucent skin; his high brow and fine high cheekbones commanded respect. His eyes were brightly shining and dark-blue, the colour of cornflowers. Grantaire thought of his own hands, calloused from ship-ropes and fights and dotted with tiny dark flecks from powderburn, and now continually stained with paint (the left palm even more so than the right, for Grantaire was left-handed), and smiled as he watched the boy's face with wonder and admired his alabaster skin. It was very different from his own darker one. He looked almost as a doll, but there was blush to his cheeks and warm breath flowing over his fine lily hands...

The other young man seemed surprised to see him standing there in front of him, and a little taken aback, but after a moment he smiled tentatively, and Grantaire saw then that although his eyes were sad, when he smiled, fine lines appeared at their corners as if he had once laughed a great deal. 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, and finally, because Grantaire's heart was pounding so hard that he couldn't seem to find anything intelligent to say, "Your features are beautiful;" soon his own hazel eyes had drunk that beauty up, leaving no drop in the bewildering cup, and still the cup was full... As his hands connected with the blond's to give him that pull, something inside Grantaire's chest moved. Like something in his heart had clicked into place. A sense of rightness — or completeness. He frowned, but then felt it again, almost recognising it. It was a strange feeling. It reminded him of something, something he could quite grasp. Like when he caught a scent of his late guardian's cooking and he knew what it was but it wouldn't come to mind until the meal was served and he realised that it was bouillabaisse, or fricassé, or whatever. Or when he was looking for a very specific piece of the puzzle that would reveal the whole picture. His heart was thrumming in his chest, as if waiting for him to realise something.

Grantaire could but stand in awe of the ephebe's exceeding loveliness. That heart-shaped face, lilywhite and gracefully reserved; the cascade of honey curls that it was framed in; the straight-lined nose; the adorable mouth with an expression as serious as it was delicious brought to his mind thoughts of the most noble Hellenistic statuary, as did his limbs and matching slender waistline... and, aside from that most pure and pristine perfection of his every feature, he was in possession of a charm so unique and personal that his beholder thought he had never seen such an attainment in either nature or visual art; his golden hair, washed with nectar and still scented with it, thick curls straying like ripples of light over a purely white neck and flushed cheeks and falling prettily entangled on either side of his head —hair so bright that the flame of the street lamp winked in the radiant light reflected from it. Tenderness and softness presided, ostensibly, the existence of the stripling. His skin was clear and his cheekbones high, his icy blue eyes lit from within like an ember you thought you had put out. Thick, curly hair attacked the air around his head, barely contained in a riotous ponytail. Others had taken utmost care not to put a pair of scissors to his splendid locks, that, like those of the Tireur d'Épine (that ephebe pulling a thorn from his footsole), curled above his forehead and ears, and, far lower, between the shoulder-blades, beneath the ribbon tied at the nape of the neck; a golden ponytail curled upon his left shoulder. The baggy sleeves of his shirt tapered downwards until they cuffed his fine childlike wrists, and the hussar's waistcoat, braided or frogged with its soutaches and trimmed with lacy embroidery, endowed the certain figure with a certain halo of pampering, just like in a boy-doll of the finest porcelain. Now sitting at a half-profile or three-quarters view through Grantaire's eyes, he had thrust one of his feet in front of the other, like a mermaid's tailfin --he wore spats according to the latest fashion-- and had cupped his cheek in his left palm. Was he ill? His complexion was as white as marble or icing sugar, in stark contrast to the dark golden frame of curls and ripples around. Or was he simply a pampered lordling, the fruit of whimsical and doting love? Grantaire thought rather of the latter scenario. For all people of an artistic nature are in possession of an innate tendency, as sensual as it is treacherous, to consecrate the injustice that creates beauty, and to sympathise, respectfully, with the preferences of the aristocracy.
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: "Granntaire-a... it has been a pleashure..." Then Grantaire's heart was pounding so hard that he couldn't seem to find anything intelligent to say, "Your features are beautiful." Quoth he in a bit of a huff, trying to rid his mind of that tugging sensation.
"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. His voice was like a cello. "Enj... Enchanté. Pleased to make your acquaintance..." he sighed, as he bowed from the waist and clicked his heels sharply together.
There it was again. That feeling.

A boy with a curling-up mouth and a voice soft as fresh-fallen snow. With those words came the wanting. And all was changed. Irrevocably.
"That'sh a lovely shurname..." Grantaire slurred in his usual regional accent, 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 Ennjolrash, and you too, messhieurs; I may 'ave been born an' raished in the Catalan willage, not far from Marsheille-a, 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. "The Mushain, you shay?" Grantaire said, musingly, as he went through his little mental index of cafés and eateries and gathering places he’d discovered since he’d been in Paris,"this charming little café with a back room, that has a separate entrance by stairs? The wine ish terrible, but it’sh quiet and the shtaff doesn’t bother you if you come in. The backroom isn’t terribly big, come to that, but ten or a dozen men should fit in there comfortably, and the corridor to the main café is long and narrow, so you wouldn’t be heard by anyone except the woman who comes through to the washroom that’s also back that way."

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 (already the Marseillais accent gave him away), but also a classmate of theirs. That empty chair by the window, second-to-last row, 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 hall, with 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, where his fellow illustrators David d'Angers and Charlet had sat down decades ago (in fact, Grantaire claimed that he occupied in that tavern the very seats where those illustrious artists had once sat down!), as did, at the very time when this story takes place, the then up-and-coming literati Honoré de Balzac and Victor Hugo (whom our Marseillais had quite often shared a round of drinks and a meal of wings with); 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 (and in the Left as well), 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.

Grantaire had not always had these rooms in the non-descript building on the rue on the rue Hyacinthe, and neither those in the more recent garret along the Seine in that arrondissement. When he’d first arrived in Paris, he’d lived in a quartier populated by artistic painters, but when he realised he was growing out of the profession, during the beginning of his quest to “know” Paris, he stumbled upon this street and its environs. On the Place Saint-Michel there were cafés, and there were students. It was situated in a convenient area, and while Grantaire didn’t much care for gardens and flowers and la Sorbonne, he did like the cafés and the people in the area. 

Once he explored a small stairway, and found himself in a deserted and stuffy back room of a café called Musain. A lady came out, surprised, and named herself as Louison, the waitress and dishwasher in the establishment. There used to be Bonapartists who met in that backroom, she explained, and ever since the Bourbons re-ascended, the Bonapartist club never met any longer at the Musain, and thus they hardly had any business, and hadn’t for years. So Grantaire, out of pity, bought some wine and dinner. He filed away the information: the backroom was nice, the location was convenient for students, the wine was terrible, and the food was palatable. He went out again.

Anyway, in spite of that first impression, 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; all the backroom revealed was, aside from his conviction, that the fair leader liked to keep things neat and tidy. Everything was gleaming clean and in its place. That rag-tag band of university students, most of whom were also southerners. While Combeferre examined Courfeyrac's injury from up close, and then, reassured that it was only a sprain, helped a visibly more tense Joly to tightly wrap the swordsman's left calf and ankle in bandages, Enjolras introduced the others to Grantaire, explaining that this coarse young man had saved his life and shown them the way to the Café Musain. 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 bandaged 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, and he was surprised when they had a conversation afterwards consisting of more than a few sentences. It turned out, after a few quiet and courteous, though direct, questions, that Enjolras was a Law student with an idealist, political mindset, and was looking for others of like mind. 

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 throat to completely dry up, and 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, who had something erotically feminine about him, as well as a gravity that was deep within the look in his eyes, whose source was evidently in his spirit, and not at all in his outward looks. Was this only Grantaire's imagination, or did those icy blue eyes glitter amusingly? His head was reeling again, and he felt a thirst rise in his throat once more... 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."
"Are you here with somebody else?"
Grantaire finished his drink and shook his head. "It's just me I'm afraid. My parents died so many years ago and left me only the family name. But I've made it work for myself. I can afford my university degree, I sell my pictures and do odd jobs here and there and have traded well enough to provide more than enough for myself."
"That's awful," Courfeyrac said. "We're so sorry to hear that. Living all by yourself must be terribly lonely." They all looked carefully at the savateur and decided he could be not than only a few years older than any of them.
"This is my life of cooking and gardening. Of écarté and strong drink. Of cats and artwork. I am surrounded by my loves. What is there to be sad about?" He sighed. "But you are right, it does get lonely."
Courfeyrac reached out and grasped the Marseillais' hand in both of his own. "We will visit you, no matter how messy or how many kitties there are at your place. And maybe you would like to come home with any of us. You shouldn't live so out of the way by yourself. Surely it's not safe."
"That's very kind of you," Grantaire replied. "But I can protect myself." 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, whom he had not kissed since he could not remember how long ago. 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 anise-scented 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; then, once he had wet his whistle, he cleared its pipes clean of phlegm, licked his lips and incisors to taste the few anise-flavoured drops that lingered upon them, and began to sing this drinking song, which was quite popular in Montmartre in those days, ceaselessly out of 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!



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!



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!



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!



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 (skipping classes even more frequently than Bahorel himself!) to live in such constant excitement, to spend in games and strong drink, in dance and song and other pleasures, the time they should better have spent in studying. Indeed, Grantaire was that kind of feeling-extolling person, the kind who revel in experiences of 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 sensualists who were known in those days in France as joyeux viveurs. And an even more extreme example of one, that made Courfeyrac look like the upper-class heir he was right from the start.

"See, there they march, the National Guards," the fair leader said seriously, one springtime evening that a regiment of that military unit was marching down the Rue des Grés. 

"Yes, I've seen them," said Grantaire, laughing at the fanciful turns the blond's imagination, or what he called "idealism," sometimes took, and laughed with light worry. He wasn’t conceited, but too eager for his own good sometimes. He was convinced that if he was happy, everyone else around him would be. Therefore no challenge or obstacle was something he couldn’t overcome. The enthusiasm and daring was his motto for everything.

"Don't laugh," Enjolras warned, though his mouth twitched. "These are not not soldiers you want to mess with." For he and his lieutenants knew, from this moment onwards, that it was true that they meant serious business, that they were a real threat; thus do children and idealists and other children at heart find it so easy to believe in anything that they see, no matter if what they see, or rather what they believe they see, is by no means always the truth.

"Ah! bon! Only let them dare try to harm us," said Grantaire staunchly, in that particular tone of swaggering of his, for he had a bad habit of thinking that his own courage and strength and irony would protect him from any threat. "Qu'ils viennent donc! Let 'em enter our place, and I'll give 'em a coup de figure on the hooter, moi, and then they'll know!" And, as the others retreated not to get struck by his feet, he kicked in the air twice or thrice, but was sober and well-trained enough not to crash land on the floor. "I could beat 'em!" Thus he exclaimed all confident in the best standard French he could muster (for Grantaire had learned the way of speaking of middle-class Parisians, not to be made fun of or reduced to a stereotype, yet intoxication always made that effort slip away -- he spoke standard French when he was sober, and Marseillais patois when he was drunk).  

Of course Grantaire was old enough not to believe such stories, but Enjolras’ storytelling abilities made everything he said sound possible. Therefore the savateur's outburst broke them all from a lulled state and all companions frowned. Enjolras more so, but since the boys were used to his grumbly attitude, they didn’t take much weight from his reaction.

"I reiterate, you shouldn’t be so cocky. With them... there is no compromise. They listen only to the Crown, and to challenge them is very dangerous.”

“Aaah, it’s just a silly story. What could they do anyway? Freeze me and keep me in a castle?”

“Possibly. But there are worse punishments from the Crown than that. The people who offend the ancien régime greatly receive unspeakable torments, which turns them to the exact opposite of who they want to be. Good, well-meaning people become bad and caring only about themselves.”

As Grantaire laughed with light worry, Enjolras smiled faintly, a Mona Lisa smile, but he changed the subject to more pressing concerns, and for the rest of the evening and the next day he felt uneasy, though he couldn't have said why.

“Barrot?” Enjolras sniffed. “He’s a monarchist who gives lip service to the good of the people while still clinging to the king’s coattails.”

Combeferre frowned in that slightly-disappointed fashion that generally meant that he was about to ask Enjolras to ‘be reasonable.’ “He’s far more our friend than our enemy.”

When Enjolras merely sneered at this, he added, “Even you must admit that he would be improvement over Perier,” referring to the minister who had sent Marshal Soult and the army into Lyon to suppress the silk weavers’ revolts all the while pretending that it wasn’t a legitimate expression of workers’ grievances caused by economic distress but instead some kind of imaginary plot to restore Charles X to the throne. “Small reforms are better than no reforms.”

“No,” their newest member put in, “small reforms are politicians’ way of keeping the mob pacified by pretending to listen to them while truly preserving the status quo.”

“Precisely.” Enjolras stabbed a finger triumphantly in that direction. “You see, Combeferre? Our new comrade agrees with me.”

Enjolras frowned, sitting forward in his chair. “There I must disagree. The people as a whole need to rise up in support of the revolution or it won’t work. The people are the republic, they must be involved. It’s already happening,” he added. “They’ve risen in Lyon, and the national guard sided with the people and joined them, for all that Perier and the army put a stop to it.”

“It must happen soon.” Feuilly put in. “The spirit of revolution is spreading across Europe. Belgium has rebelled against their tyrannical ruler and Poland is trying to throw off the chains of Russia, for all that our France refuses to help them.”

Here, another lieutenant revolutionary shook his head. “It’s more complicated than that,” he told Feuilly in a friendly tone. “France cannot afford to court the enmity of Russia, and doing so would only worsen her prospects for change. Even helping Belgium got us more of Perier in power; we would have done better to leave them to it.”

Enjolras couldn’t think how to answer that; responding to Belgium’s call for aid had been the only right and moral course of action, but it had, as said before, also provided an excuse to keep Perier in power.

Feuilly would likely have responded hotly, but Enjolras cut him off.

“I know you’ve studied the matter as much as you can, but you underestimate its complexity, as I said. France must look to her own interests first.”

He’d made no friends there, Enjolras thought, as Feuilly stomped off to join Grantaire and Bahorel at one of the Musain’s other tables, where the two of them appeared to be building some kind of structure out of glasses and wine bottles. Everyone knew how Feuilly felt about his mother’s homeland.

Of course, he reminded himself. And not everyone understood that the fight for liberty was universal; their newest member was too focused on France’s need to look any further, and France’s need grew more obvious by the day.

“I wouldn’t question Feuilly’s knowledge of Poland,” Combeferre said mildly. “He’s made a special study of it.”

Feuilly flopped gracelessly down in the chair beside Bahorel, swaying sideways out of range with the skill of long practice when the other man attempted to elbow him in the ribs.

Bahorel made some remark that prompted a burst of laughter from Grantaire, and for a moment, mirth transformed Grantaire’s face so that he looked almost like another man, someone bright and charming and unexpectedly appealing.

It was slightly disconcerting, and Enjolras hurriedly looked away before Grantaire could catch him staring and make mock of him.

“I’m sure he has studied hard,” Combeferre was saying. “But we were speaking of Barrot…”

“You are all going to die, and for what cause?” Grantaire’s voice rings out, and he is drunk as usual.

The others barely notice by now, although Combeferre casts him a disapproving look.

Jehan says, “For France, and her people. For the world, and her people. If we must die, so be it.”

“So it shall be,” Courfeyrac says, smiling impishly. He, too, has perhaps had one drink too many. “We shall all perish in our mission to save the world from injustice, and we shall be remembered for years to come. Vive la République!”

“So be it,” Jehan repeats, firmly.

He says it, and he believes it. 

He does.

But conviction does not completely drown out fear.

Courfeyrac turned over a shabby-looking bucket buried at the back of the closet to reveal a small stack of books. "Good, we got almost all of them. Some novels by Benjamin Constant and Mme de Staël—Rousseau's Confessions—and, ah, I didn't think we'd be able to get hold of this one!" He held out a tatty-looking book whose cover said, simply, History of the French Revolution.

Enjolras stiffened. "There must be some mistake. Who wrote that book?" he demanded. "Is it true, or Jacobin propaganda?"

"Does it matter?" said Courfeyrac. "The author is anonymous to prevent government reprisal, and yes he has clear opinions, but it's impossible to write about the Revolution without having an opinion. What matters is that now you've seen both sides. Before you'd only heard of what made the Revolution terrible; now you've heard of what made it great. Form your own conclusions."
He went on to explain that Grantaire's work in the visual arts was so beautiful that why did the fair leader not pose for him? An Enjolras crossdressing as Marianne painted by him would be sure to increase the number of their allies, and and improve the appearance of the backroom. The other young men seemed surprised to see him gesture dramatically while talking about crossdressing, and a little taken aback, but after a moment he smiled tentatively, and a surprised Enjolras saw then that although his eyes were sad, when he smiled, fine lines appeared at their corners as if he had once laughed a great deal. And he found himself wondering why those dark eyes were so sad when the lush had plainly known laughter once, and had such a good sense of humour and rapier wit; and why he'd never noticed before how beautiful visual art could be, and whether he might have found a man who would prove to be a true friend. Even more so than his closest lieutenants. 

And that, even though the mere thought of donning a peplum and wearing his hair loose, cascading upon his bare shoulders, sounded preposterous. Ridiculous. Standing still while this other man stood with at least charcoal in hand and sketched... However, as Grantaire agreed to take the commission, Enjolras thought that he was ever a master at putting on a brave face.

With great concentration, Jehan recited a fragment of the ode he was working on, addressed to an indifferent mistress. Not his mistress, precisely, he explained, for he did not currently have one (the Moon notwithstanding), but more the idea of a mistress.

When he got no response, he poked Grantaire with the stem of his pipe, frowning. “Are you listening to me?”

Grantaire leaned his head back against the wall, eyes closed, and blew out a long stream of sweet-scented opium smoke. “You must find another audience for your lyrics,” he said, after some little time had passed. “There’s no use speaking of romance and melancholy to one who’s already grown sick of them.”

“Make a mock of me, then,” he shrugged. “Only tell me what you think. I wish to capture the passion of love and the despair it engenders, and the seeking of the soul for an object of devotion even if it be yet a symbol.”

Grantaire snorted, nearly choking himself for a moment on the smoke. “A lot of stuff,” he sneered, when he had his breath back. “But I should not be surprised. I know what you romantics are like. To be Châteaubriand, or nothing!”

“One can be a royalist and still write brilliant novels,” Jehan pointed out mildly. It was difficult to be annoyed by anything after half a pipe of opium, even Grantaire’s best attempts to be obnoxious.

“Don’t let our noble leader catch you saying that,” Grantaire returned.

“Enjolras is many things, but he is not a literary critic.” He wasn’t even sure if Enjolras read poetry or novels, let alone drama, having never seen him with anything other than Republican newspapers or Buonarroti’s history of the Conspiracy of Equals. Thinking about it, Jehan couldn’t even say what the other man had come to university to study; whatever it was, he had set it aside to study Revolution instead.

Grantaire shook his head. “Men like him do not admire art, they inspire it. Did Cleisthenes write poetry, or Epaminondas any plays?” He gestured with the pipe, sending smoke trailing through the air. “No, his works of art were the victories of Leuctra and Mantinea.”

Jehan patted out the spark that had drifted down to singe a tiny pinprick in his bedclothes, and tugged the pipe from Grantaire’s grasp. The other man rambled on, about art and revolution and the impermanence of both, and possibly about the way sunlight gleamed on Enjolras’s hair; he had stopped really listening sometime around the description of the classical purity of the brushstrokes in Delacroix’s Death of Sardanapalus (“There is art that reflects reality for you. Lust and brutality in the foreground and decadence in the background. And he’s called a genius for some mawkish tribute to a revolution that changed nothing.”).

Jehan drew on the nearly-exhausted pipe again and then set it aside on the wash stand that was his bedroom’s only other piece of furniture. He closed his eyes for a moment, his head spinning pleasantly, and then opened them to find Grantaire listing sideways, still talking.

Jehan tugged him down to lie with his head in his lap, so that they were sprawled on the mattress together, no longer in any danger of falling off. For a few minutes, or possibly longer, he lay there, Grantaire’s head a heavy weight on his stomach and his voice a distant background noise, and contemplated the stanza form of his ode. Ought it to be irregular? Or perhaps not an ode at all, but something more classical, or rather, less classical, one of the medieval forms.

Sometimes the most difficult thing about poetry was not keeping to form, but choosing one.

Grantaire’s hair was thick and curly, almost wiry, and sprang back into shape after being flattened. It was curiously hypnotic.

Grantaire broke-off midway through a remark about which café in the Latin Quarter served the best coffee, with some tenuous connection to the slave trade and none at all to art, and blinked up at him. “What are you doing?”

“Your hair is all funny,” Jehan informed him. “It won’t do what it’s supposed to.”

“It matches the rest of me,” Grantaire said, with what might have been false gravity, and might have been real. “What was I talking about?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and since it was the best way of making Grantaire stop talking, leaned down and kissed him.

“Oh,” Grantaire said, when he pulled back. “Are we doing that?”

A few lazy caresses were all Jehan could summon the energy for. The opium had filled him with a pleasant lassitude, making it seem unimportant that Grantaire wasn’t the imagined delicate-but-remote female object of his romantic fantasies, and robbing the desire that his warm weight in Jehan’s lap was nevertheless stirring of any real urgency.

They never spoke of these encounters afterwards, or even really acknowledged what was happening while they were occurring. It wasn’t a true communion of body and spirit as a man would have with his mistress, but it was… comfortable. Friendly. And with nothing at stake but a few moments of half-drowsy pleasure, he didn’t even blush.

When, after relaxing sleepily into Jehan’s arms, Grantaire sighed something that sounded a lot like Enjolras’s name, he discretely pretended not to have heard.

Another meeting of Les Amis de l’ABC was over, his friends had dispersed, and Grantaire was left staring into his wine glass and wondering once again what he was doing there.

He had been as ardent a believer in equality and the universal rights of humanity as any, once, but then he had grown up and looked around himself and realized that as nice as those ideals – as any ideals – sounded, they were unattainable in real life, crumbling and tarnishing under the weight of reality. All people acted in their own self-interest, unless they were saints or fools.

His friends were very likely both, and their naïve idealism was doomed. If their efforts on behalf of republicanism ever accomplished anything, it would only be to get them arrested and tried as insurrectionists.

He drained the rest of his glass and was pouring himself another when he caught sight of a sharply-dressed dandy still sitting at one of the tables across the room, absorbed in a stack of notes.

“Courf', my friend,” he called out, before he could reflect on it and consider that the other man might perhaps wish to be left alone to read or study, “come and have a drink with me. I have a full bottle and no one to share it with.”

The Gascon looked over at him with his eyebrows raised, seeming surprised to be thus addressed. Then he smiled, folded up his papers and stuck them inside his coat, and came over to take a seat beside Grantaire.

“Ah, that’s more like it.” Grantaire poured him a glass and held it out, careful not to let any of the wine slop over the edge. “You seem so serious-minded a fellow that I thought you would refuse.”

Now Courfeyrac accepted the glass and lifted it in a toast before taking a sip. “Oh, I would never refuse such a generous offer.” He produced a grubby set of cards, although by the time the stars came out they had abandoned playing écarté and were instead exchanging some of the ideas they had all come across at University - new ideas, ideas of progress, and democracy, and rebellion. 

Half a bottle later, he had unbent sufficiently to begin discussing politics and literature (he showed the good sense to agree that Julien Sorel was an idiot and that Jehan’s beloved Sorrows of Young Werther was sentimental tripe) and his own experiences with Paris, where he, unlike most of the young students in the Latin Quarter and in Montmartre, had lived in nearly all his life.

Courfeyrac was proving not quite as good a drinking companion as Bahorel, who could always be counted upon to start an entertaining fight, nor the ever-cheerful Bossuet and Joly, but better than Feuilly, who had to keep sober workingman’s hours, and better by a long shot than Enjolras, whom Grantaire had never seen drunk and probably never would. He wouldn’t lower himself that way, would likely see it as base and beneath him and a waste of time.

What was it about Enjolras that made the most ludicrous sentiments sound like divine wisdom when coming from his lips?

He ought to resent him for making him want to believe them, but he couldn’t even do that, so firmly ensnared was he. Every once in a while, when Enjolras was truly fired up with conviction as he ranted about yet another injustice or talked about the Republic he believed in the way some men and women believed in any god they chose, Grantaire found himself just as caught up by his enthusiasm as the rest of them.

It only lasted for a moment, and then he would come to his senses again and feel even more hollow and disgusted with the world than before, but to feel something that strongly again, something that wasn’t self-disgust or loneliness or boredom, was more addictive than opium or wine or eau-de-vie, and Grantaire had never had any self-control.

“Everyone comes to Paris full of bright hopes and expectations,” he said, as roundabout answer to the latest comment. “I myself was going to be a great artist, and spite my father, bless his soul, with my success.”

He wasn’t sure himself if he meant that to be sincere or critical. Preserving some slim hope of reconciliation with his parents likely meant more to Enjolras than he let on; the total loss of all familial ties left one cut-off and adrift, defendant entirely upon the generosity of friends to satisfy the need for companionship.

Who knew that better than he did, the jester and hanger-on of a group of men who, if they ever stopped to think about it, would realize how little he had in common with them?

He poured himself another glass and took a long swallow, washing the bitterness out of his mouth before he had time to taste it.

“Let us hope,” someone else echoed. Was he irritated with him? He seemed as if he might be. People generally were cross when Grantaire started talking.

“I talk too much,” he said, by way of both explanation and excuse. “You needn’t take it to heart; no one else does. They have all learned better by now that to mark anything I say after the second bottle.”

Mostly that was a blessing, because Grantaire said a great many things that he didn’t actually mean. Once he got going, either drinking or talking, it was generally impossible to stop himself; the words just spilled out until someone told him to stop. If it stung a little to be told to quiet himself, it was also the only way to make him cease being a nuisance to others.

That was also the same evening when the dark lush was introduced to the anthem of liberty; for, after that quip on National Guards, Combeferre, who had a fine lyric tenor voice, asked him whether he had ever heard a song called La Marseillaise. Only the title sounded familiar to Grantaire, giving him a sense of déjà-entendu.

"Well, you may at least recall a verse of the lyrics or a snippet of the tune," Combeferre adjusted his spectacles on the bridge of his nose. "You are a born and bred Marseillais, after all..." The darker student shook his head. "Well, maybe if you listen to the first stanza and the refrain... every Frenchman in his twenties should have learned that song!" Then, clearing his throat, the more learned companion filled the backroom with a loud, clear, passionate rendition of the anthem of free France, and as he sang, he thought of classrooms, theatres, lecture halls, and the fulfillment of the Enlightenment:

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...


It was hard for Grantaire to learn this song by heart (as Combeferre and the other lieutenants, and even his dear Enjolras, had done), though both the tune and the lyrics sounded strangely familiar, but in the end he got accustomed to the refrain, and he repeated the song with his beloved leader and his lieutenants; soon, everyone in the backroom of the Musain was quick to raise their voices, all together as one, and sing in chorus:

Marchons, marchons,
qu'un sang impur
abreuve nos sillons!

After several weeks of the constant assault upon his ears, the artist-student eventually grew so used to it that he no longer noticed it, and indeed, when patrons visiting his workshop asked if it wasn't rather inconvenient to paint in such a noisy location, he used to blink at them in confusion and wonder aloud what they could be speaking of. 

Yet still the lyrics made him raise an eyebrow in disbelief. 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, to struggle with his physical weakness by harsh training until he could literally kick his way out of trouble; 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; the scepticism that marred his intelligence had not left a single ideal intact within him. 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, where the Rhône emptied into the blue waves, as he dreamed of someday going to Paris and study art, and becoming a great visual artist. And, in fact, upon arriving in the capital, he had first been apprenticed to one of those realist painters, but spent most of his short apprenticeship not dabbling paint on little pictures, but rather pilfering apples from the gardens of wealthy Parisians (just like he had done with citrus fruits in his native Marseille!). It was then, after his stint into academic painting, that he subsequently turned towards the Law degree. 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 his canvases 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 for some bones (left over from the chicken or the eel stew du jour) he could give the stray cats for them to clean of meat or fish, for he carefully nurtured all of them on the crumbling balcony outside his garret window; and he had done well enough over the years in the capital to provide more than enough for himself. And so, in this fashion, the orphan boy grew into a young man, and the young man's surname was Grantaire.

Furthermore, the prettiest wenches on the Right Bank, indignated by his ungainly features, had coined the quip "Grantaire est impossible!" but the savateur was not the least abashed, not the slightest taken aback; his self-esteem was not the slightest disconcerted. He would cast tender, warm glances at every young girl he came across, seeming to say of each and every one of them, "si je voulais!" and looking for a way to make his classmates believe that he was a favourite among the opposite sex. 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!" 

As we have said before, Grantaire said a great many things that he didn’t actually mean. Once he got going, either drinking or talking, it was generally impossible to stop himself; the words just spilled out until someone told him to stop. If it stung a little to be told to quiet himself, it was also the only way to make him cease being a nuisance to others.

He found himself explaining as much to Louison, and then confessing his greatest worry about his friends – not that they would finally see him for what he was, because that was inevitable, but that they would finally see the world around them for what it was and their own efforts to improve it for the exercise in futility that they were. His dread of seeing the reality of failure crush Courfeyrac’s almost kitten-like enthusiasm, turn Combeferre with his endless faith in the potential of humanity into a cynic like himself when he finally was disappointed once too often, of seeing Enjolras’s fire burn out – and Louison nodded sympathetically and poured him another glass, and another.

Grantaire mostly lost track of the rest of the evening after that.

The first thing that registered when he awoke was the headache. It was worse than usual, pounding intensely enough to make him feel nauseous.

He closed his eyes and lay still, willing himself not to be sick. He was in his own lodgings, the cramped, single room he rented from a middle-aged landlord and landlady thankfully tolerant of late payment, which was generally a positive sign. He’d woken in worse places.

Most of the previous evening was a blank. He remembered drinking with the others at the Musain and then stumbling home through the streets, while he tries to string together words in the correct order to tell the other man where he lived. He had no clear memory of reaching home, though obviously he had, but he vaguely recalled someone, presumably the roommate he had (did he ever have one in the first place?), pulling his boots off.

Nice of him, Grantaire thought. It would have been even nicer if he’d paused to smother Grantaire with his pillow before leaving and spared him the necessity of waking up at all, but one couldn’t have everything.

Why was the water pitcher on the other side of the room? Usually he remembered to leave it by the bed so it would be near to hand when he woke up.

No, he’d broken it last week by tripping over it and had to buy a new one, which he’d carefully placed atop the washstand where he couldn’t fall over it when getting in and out of bed. Stupid of him. Drinking so much that he made himself ill was also stupid, and he told himself, once again, that he would remember to stop before he reached that point next time.

The sheets were twisted around him, damp with sweat even though the room was cold. Grantaire made a face and levered himself up, swallowing hard as the room swayed around him and his stomach lurched. Moving intensified the pain in his head.

The chamber pot was still under the bed where it belonged, which saved him from having to be sick on the floor.

He sagged back to the mattress afterward, feeling only slightly better for emptying his stomach, and belatedly realized that he was naked.

He didn’t usually manage to take his clothes off before succumbing to the twin influences of alcohol and Morpheus. No wonder he was cold.

He pulled the clammy sheets back up over his shoulders and told himself that he would get up and get some water to wash the taste out of his mouth in a minute.

When he woke up again, the angle of sunlight coming in through the window declared silently that it was afternoon, and his mouth was so dry that the thirst was even worse than the lingering headache.

It wasn’t until he was standing naked next to the wash basin, after he’d used the chamber pot – for its intended purpose this time – and finally gotten the drink of water he’d promised himself that he noticed the fresh, red bruises on his neck and the inside of his thigh.

Before there were les Amis de l’ABC, Grantaire was a different being indeed. At the age of eighteen, he had already spent several years studying under a well-known realistic painter. It was not the École des Beaux-Arts, to be sure, but by the end of those several years, he was perfectly well instructed in various classical techniques, as well as some modern ones, and was bored with it all. The master wasn’t unduly overbearing; Grantaire had some shreds of talent as well as a firm grasp on the techniques; but in the end there was nothing left holding Grantaire’s attention.

It wasn’t that Grantaire lacked, entirely, talent or interest in painting itself. The things he made, the works he had turned out, were not at all poorly done. And, after all, he had gone to Paris to study originally because he wanted to get out of the Midi, to study something that was not available to him in his hometown of Marseille, to stay away from the painful heartbreak of losing those who had raised him -- indeed he had had to steal the jar of tips from that little shop into financing him while he studied in Paris. In his savings, there was not enough money for his painting lessons, which he hoped some admirers would sponsor, later on; there was only enough for the trip to the capital and for settling down once he had moved to Paris. It was Madame Grantaire, in spite of or because of her terminal condition, who convinced him that the boy’s talent did not deserve to be wasted without some sort of training, or at least a period where Grantaire could apply his energies to it and determine whether it was, in fact, an appropriate way to spend his life -- there was always a chance he turned out to be set against the profession, after all. This was enough to get the lad to agree, begrudgingly, so off to Paris went young Grantaire, ready to embrace the world of painting and illustration and see where his abilities and ambitions would take him. Thinking he could find some more people to join him and then, if they could make more people join their clique, they all could become a famous group of artists. And, once they became famous, he’d let his friends from Marseille attend their exhibitions and everything.

Only his ambitions fizzled out once the reality of the ateliers and apprenticeships sunk in upon him. And then he noticed how many artists there were in Paris -- how many poor bohemians in bedraggled clothing trying desperately to make a living from their brush -- how frustratingly difficult it was to sell a painting, and then to make any kind of money on the work sold. The hours upon hours spent in actually producing a painting: sketches, the tedium of mixing all the colours necessary for the final work, painting painstakingly layer over layer, waiting for each layer to dry before adding another. Grantaire soon enough discovered that his ambition wasn’t strong enough and his mind not nearly patient enough to really continue in this way as an occupation, a way of life. Yet while it didn’t take him very long, once in Paris and installed with a well-known painter as an apprentice, to discover his lack of real calling for it, it took hardly any thought at all to realise that he didn’t want to tell his foster family or his friends back home anything of it. 

Grantaire saw no reason to tell his adoptive family he’d given up his studies, since that would mean being strong-armed into the family business in order to pay the medicines for and tend to his foster mother, who had been slowly deteriorating from a melancholia that all doctors had dismissed as totally hopeless. She was the only person who had ever loved him, or at least taken him in in the hour of need, and whose surname she had given him. As much as Grantaire was not fond of the art studies, he hated the thought of the dull business life behind a counter even more. So he continued writing letters home, the only difference being that he made the details of his studies more and more vague.

Grantaire therefore had to find another occupation to fill his hours. He applied for a Law degree, and, in the meantime, he took up the study of experiencing life in the capital. When he stopped to think about it, he really rather disliked Paris. It was ugly, it was devilishly cold in the winter (he missed the Midi and its frostless milder weather in the winter, but he would no sooner admit it than Zeus himself would give up chasing pretty young girls), it was hellishly hot in the summer (he missed the Midi and the cool sea breezes that blew along the coast in the summer, but he would no sooner admit that than Hera herself would learn to get used to her brother-husband’s philandering), and, though springtime and autumn were all right in the capital, the streets were narrow and meandering, it was full of people, and it smelled bad. Even worse than Marseille.

But all things considered: Paris was better than a stuffy atelier that reeked of turpentine, alcoholic painters' apprentices who rarely bathed, and drying paint; and much better than a lonely over-large family house with an older brother he had despised, or than a lonely dockside tavern with a foster mother for whom the very sight was the only thing that would induce him to tears (not that he would admit that any sooner than Hephaestus would give up his lustful pursuit of Athena); so he stayed in his small flat in the garret of a townhouse on the Rue Hyacinthe and laid aside the brushes and canvases for dice, dominoes, and wine. 

Grantaire never entirely abandoned his artistic pursuits, or the Law degree that he had contrived to attain, against all odds. From time to time, inspiration would strike upon him like a thunderbolt from Mount Olympus, and he would spend full afternoons intently at work. It wouldn’t take long: days, or, on occasion, merely a few hours, before he threw his brushes and paints and canvas back into their corners and went out again to drink and be merry with friends he had made. It was too solitary a pursuit for him to be able to focus upon for very long; Grantaire was himself not a very solitary man and could not abide too-lengthy periods of being alone.

By the time his nineteenth birthday had passed, Grantaire had amassed a wide variety of friends, in various corners and social circles and classes. There was Deslauriers, the only one of the painter’s apprentices who had studied alongside him that he still liked and who therefore still knew all the best gossip in the art circles; there was Bergeron, the bookbinder who’d been arrested several times for sedition and who knew all the best political cafés; there was Gaulois, who had an income of seven thousand a year and more while he waited for his father to die and leave him an enormous inheritance, and was therefore very generous with it as well as being terrible at dice, which made him fast friends with Grantaire, especially when Grantaire had found himself in debt; there was Perreault, a painter who’d spent many years bitter by the lack of sales his (admittedly mediocre) paintings had brought in, but who also adored food and knew where all the best entrées could be found for the best prices; there was Giroux, the prison guard who taught him all the best slang and was happy to tell spine-tingling stories of the prisoners he watched over while introducing him to the best wine and whorehouses on both banks of the Seine; there were numerous others he could call on for favours, for fun, for a loan, or even for assistance in nearly every matter known to him, and who introduced him to various corners of Paris and each in their own way improved upon his knowledge of life in the capital, his new adoptive hometown.

Though Grantaire had a vast number of acquaintances, the group of those he called friends was small in number, and none of them he was intimate with. However, Grantaire had not been terribly bothered by that knowledge, whenever the thought occurred to him, and truthfully he rarely thought of it. Who had time to be introspective about how intimate one’s friendships were, about whether these friends were really good men and women, people to trust and confide in, when there were many friendly and cheerful people with whom one could drink, gamble, laugh, go to the theatre, and chase pretty women? Never mind that the pretty women, no matter their rank, often laughed cruelly at him and rejected him, almost without fail, never mind that the gambling stopped when one party ran out of money, or that the wine stopped when the bottle was empty, that the fun at the theatre ended once the curtain had gone down.

Grantaire merely hoped his charm would outweigh his ill looks and his only-slightly-less-than-fashionable clothing. He had never had much luck, admittedly, in actually talking one of these women into his bed, no matter how expensive or fashionable his clothes and hat and remarks and gestures had been. Grantaire himself didn’t much care for high society, nor did he really have any interest or ambition in climbing social ladders, but the younger men were entertaining (especially when they were drunk and willing to gamble their not inconsiderable money away), and the ladies were nice to look at, and sometimes even to talk to, if they ever did deign to stay talking with him for more than a few words. He went to see if he could seduce girls, and to gamble. Grantaire was better at dice and dominoes than most men he knew; he could beat nearly any of his café-going friends in a game of billiards; his luck at écarté was second to none. However, any games requiring skill were beyond him if he started to drink, so he balanced his evenings by gambling first and leaning into heavier drinking as the night went on, and his chances of taking a pretty mam’selle to bed dwindled away to nothing: which, truth be told, was very often indeed.

A rambler, a gambler, a libertin, a trickster, and often intoxicated, he greatly displeased those young dreamers at the Musain by singing lewd drinking songs, ceaselessly out of key, for instance this favourite verse (to the latest tune in vogue by Ferenc Liszt):


J'aimons les filles et j'aimons le bon vin...

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:


Marchons, marchons,
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 a spare room in a mansion on the Left Bank, sharing living quarters 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, or had the fair leader pose shirtless before him, only wearing a loincloth, torso and limbs as white and silky as marble; 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 he gradually became more acquainted with Enjolras, the beautiful young Adonis whom he’d met at the fencing academy, and still sparred with in fencing and singlesticks on a semi-regular basis, and for whom Grantaire was still struggling with some sort of deeper affection; 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 flowing in ripples tied at the back with a red ribbon.

And, as Grantaire picked up the paintbrushes to send the first line of a rosy day-dream through every blank canvas, the long-haired page in crimson clad passed down the street outside, and the artist saw his image in the mirror of the twilit windowpane.

The fair leader unbuttoned his starched shirt cuffs, tugged at his sleeves, and then, impatiently, dragged the heavy material over his head and crumpled it in his hands. Sunlight dappled the pale skin of his shoulders and glinted on the fine hair on his forearms. Enjolras fenced; not with his feet, but with a cold steel blade. His muscles were long and lean. Sweat dampened the heavy linen of his shirt and gleamed on his forehead.

It was entirely unfair, or so Grantaire thought, that his best friend should have such ridiculously long eyelashes.

‘How like a prince he bears himself!’ he murmured. ‘Society is indeed a tyrant to deny me the pleasure of looking out upon the world and weaving sweet fancies about it. Henceforth I shall not obey, but shall daily steal away in here, to weave in secret what law and custom will not allow me to do openly.’

So he kept on working on his ephebes and sun-gods, peering ever in the mirror, lest perchance the long-haired page in crimson clad should slip by and Grantaire not see him. The bright sheen of his fair hair was a guiding star beacon that dispelled all inner darkness, a luminary that 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 when he worked at his signs 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; and after three or four days' of repeated visits followed by Combeferre moving away and Grantaire taking his place in that garret opposite the Musain, the two men became fast friends.

All that springtime, the two would sit together in the long, balmy evenings, sometimes in the room they shared, surrounded by paintpots and brushes and with half-painted signs and portraits making a rainbow of colour around them, and sometimes at the Café Musain, where the dark-haired student sipped his anise or eau-de-vie as he listened to the blond's fiery discourse, spoken in a voice as blithe as a reveille call. "I have seen you paint," he had said. "It is time you had a closer look at my own work."

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 improvised 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 by moonlight under the lush span of flaming petals. What a pleasure, what lovely days succeeded one another for them whenever they went to amuse themselves together in the shade of that aerial shrubbery! It was if they were spending their spare time in the finest of all parks.

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, not even Bahorel or Lesgle 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.

The next time he met Enjolras at the lecture hall for a before-class bout of fencing, at the usual time of a weekday morning, he was surprised when they had a conversation afterwards consisting of more than a few sentences. It turned out, after a few quiet and courteous, though direct, questions, that Enjolras was a Law student with an idealist, political mindset, and was looking for others of like mind. 

At that, Enjolras smiled. “You have answered my questions exactly, without even hearing all of them. Why don’t you meet me there at the Musain on Friday afternoon? I’ll bring some friends.”

“But I’m hardly a serious or politically-minded or even a proper student...” Grantaire began to dissuade him, but Enjolras would have none of it.

“Nonsense; I’ve watched you move during our bouts, and our conversations, though it’s true they have not covered anything political, have been answer enough for your character. Even if you do not have the convictions and political ideas that I have, you will still be a very valuable acquaintance and friend to join me there. After all, I wouldn’t have known where to meet without you.” Enjolras spoke simply, without guile, with a small smile, and Grantaire found himself agreeing. Their bodies were lithe and kept up their condition and away from boredom. 

Grantaire went to the café Musain an hour before the appointed time of the gathering. He again wandered around the neighbourhood, and found the building on the Rue des Grés, the same townhouse in which Enjolras lived. “Rooms to let,” read a yellowing sign on the door. Some impulse took him, and he inquired of the concierge what rooms were available. When he ascended to the fourth floor, and saw the three rooms facing to the south and east, Grantaire rented them immediately. No matter that he still had some months to go on his current lodgings by the Seine; something told him these rooms would be better. He was still trying to talk himself into continuing his painting studies, and said the bright sunny windows would be all the better for it. And the vague but pleasant notion of Enjolras being in the neighbourhood attracted to it even more -- even if Enjolras was only there occasionally for meetings during the day, he would be near him sometimes.

Every time Grantaire sat by the window, discarded paints and half-finished canvases strewn around the room, and watched the sun rise, the only thing that he could think of was Enjolras. The blue of the day sky, just before the sun turned it shades of soft orange and pink, reminded him of Enjolras’ eyes, darkened in concentration as they crossed blades. The golden halo of the sun brought to mind the flowing mane of hair that blew around Enjolras’ face and head as he moved. The sudden explosion of light and warmth and movement evoked Enjolras' voice, gestures, his very presence.

He did not expect that both of them would wind up visiting one another, both for studying and for sparring bouts, and eventually sharing the same room to live in; the same warm stove, the same plants in the flower box upon that sill, and an empty bed next to that of the fair leader definitely settled the affair.

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 esplanade de Saint-Jean, the lovers lost to him due to his paltry rank and homely features, the kind landlady who had adopted him killed brutally ("for mercy's sake," they had coldly told him) in her own tavern. And, though Enjolras knew nothing of lovers or brothers or guardians, 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. The leader woke that 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 Grantaire the secrets that he himself kept in his heart, the dark memories that he scarcely admitted even to himself, and the fragile, inescapable certainty he felt every time the savateur looked at him. And on good days, he thought maybe he could see an answering certainty in those dark eyes, just waiting for him to speak.

One Saturday night Grantaire went with Gaulois and several of his friends to a supper party, thrown by a lady known to Gaulois but not the others. Grantaire had nearly run out of money on his allowance, and didn’t dare to ask Enjolras or the landlady for more money, since the last time he invented an excuse, both of them threatened to find out for themselves whether oil paints cost as much as Grantaire claimed. Of course Enjolras sent the money last time, acknowledging in a post-script that he knew “sometimes young men got into scrapes”, but that he wouldn’t countenance hearing of it again. Grantaire, not wanting the landlady or Enjolras or any of his society friends to discover his deception over his studies, therefore did not go into debt by visiting his tailor for new clothes for this party, and merely hoped his charm would outweigh his ill looks and his only-slightly-less-than-fashionable clothing. He had never had much luck, admittedly, in actually talking one of these women into his bed, no matter how expensive or fashionable his clothes and hat and remarks and gestures had been. Grantaire himself didn’t much care for high society, nor did he really have any interest or ambition in climbing social ladders, but the younger men were entertaining (especially when they were drunk and willing to gamble their not inconsiderable money away), and the ladies were nice to look at, and sometimes even to talk to, if they ever did deign to stay talking with him for more than a few words. He went to see if he could seduce girls, and to gamble. Grantaire was better at dice and dominoes than most men he knew; he could beat nearly any of his café-going friends in a game of billiards; his luck at écarté was second to none. However, any games requiring skill were beyond him if he started to drink, so he balanced his evenings by gambling first and leaning into heavier drinking as the night went on, and his chances of taking a pretty mam’selle to bed dwindled away to nothing: which, truth be told, was very often indeed. The world was a mean place that he feared, and the best one could do was distract oneself from time to time with liquor or dancing.


This Saturday night at this Left Bank estate was much like the others he spent with Gaulois’ friends: Grantaire had won several louis from a particularly inebriated middle-aged gentleman, who had to be helped out of the party by two friends before one o’clock had struck. Grantaire had had several drinks by now, but was still fairly sober.

“Grantaire! there you are,” a voice cried out to him. Grantaire turned, obligingly, a glass in one hand and a ready remark; but he didn’t immediately recognise the young man who was striding towards him with a wide smile (and in clothes that, while stylish and expensively cut, were somewhat ill-fitting on his less than slim frame).

“Yes, here am I,” he replied, companionably enough -- it did not disconcert Grantaire to be greeted by strangers; all the more opportunity to make new and interesting friends. “I’m afraid all this wine has gone to my head, however; and if we have been introduced I sincerely regret that I’ve forgotten it.”

The young man thumped him on the shoulder, still smiling -- probably drunk already. “Don’t feel bad, it was only just the once. I’m Courfeyrac. Do you remember that day several weeks ago when Enjolras introduced us? I didn’t stay long, though.” Oh yes: once Enjolras’ name was mentioned, Grantaire immediately remembered everything with perfect clarity.

“Of course I recall it. I didn’t know you belonged to this circle.”

Courfeyrac, who looked a good deal younger than Grantaire himself, only chuckled. “I suppose you could call it that.” He nodded at the middle-aged man being helped out of the door nearby. “My uncle, actually. My father sent me off to Paris to begin my studies at la Sorbonne -- law school, of course, my father seems to think it’d be respectable to have an attorney in the family -- and old Papa sternly demanded that I regularly check in with Uncle, and he’d know if I don’t because Auntie is always writing to Mama. So once a month I pay the familial duties. It’s not so bad; none of his friends can play nor hold their wine, so it’s at least amusing for a night’s diversion now and then. Say! why don’t you play a few games with me? I’ve noticed you haven’t been playing this last half hour, and that you’ve won quite a bit yourself, and not to mention it should be far more interesting to play with someone who doesn’t need to be taken home before the game is over.”

Nodding, Grantaire smiled. “I could play a few games, now that you mention it. Find us a free table, then.” He could hardly help but like Courfeyrac: the young man knew exactly how to make him at ease, knew exactly what to say or to suggest that he would happily agree to. Cards and wine! And, of course, Courfeyrac knew all the ladies, some of whom would stop by the card tables to flirt with him. This Grantaire hardly minded, even if none of the ladies paid any attention to him, because Courfeyrac’s inherent charm and good looks were certainly pleasing to the ladies and therefore afforded Grantaire a view which he could hardly expect otherwise, for most of the women were young and beautiful. Ah! said he to himself, after a group of three such women left them smiling and tittering about Courfeyrac’s latest witticism, if only those girls would look at me like that! But he didn’t utter these thoughts aloud, didn’t even feel any real bitterness or sadness or disappointment in the lack; it was hard to begrudge his friend Courfeyrac the female attention, considering how genuine and deep was the younger man’s pleasure and joy in women.

Courfeyrac, despite his confidence and friendliness, really was no good at dice or cards, as it turned out. But he was as cheerful at losing, Grantaire discovered, as he was at making friends. 

Just as their last game was drawing to a close, and right before Grantaire collected the boy’s last louis from him, a lady came to find him. This woman wasn’t young like the others, but had a studied elegance and a certain gravitas that marked her as somehow above many of the others there. Perhaps she was a relation of Courfeyrac’s: he thought the facial features seemed similar. Grantaire didn’t make himself too conspicuous this time; however, he sensed an end to their games. Which, strictly speaking, wasn’t so bad, because the games might have ended anyway unless Grantaire had been willing to let his young friend win his money back.

“Monsieur le baron de Courfeyrac! I’ve been looking for you all evening.” The lady, most surely his aunt, leant against the table, giving Courfeyrac a look of (feigned) aggravation.

At the sound, Courfeyrac cringed. “Madame! not the particle, I beg of you.” Nonetheless, Courfeyrac stood and bowed, then was led away elegantly, leaving Grantaire alone once more.

It was past two o’clock by this point, and Grantaire decided to go, while his luck was with him. He finished the glass of wine that was by his elbow, thoughtfully, then made his farewells to the few remaining friends still at the party. Since it was far too late to call a cab at this point, he elected to walk, rather than ask whether any of his acquaintances were willing and ready to allow him passage in their own conveyance home. Home was across the river, nearly halfway across Paris, but the night was cool and crisp, and he didn’t mind the walk. He was still, at this time, in reasonably sound physical shape, and Paris at night was considerably less ugly and unpleasant than Paris during the daytime.

But that last glass of wine, he decided some fifteen minutes into the walk, was a bad idea. He hadn’t reached the point of stumbling drunkenness just yet, however the wine allowed his mind to ramble on, unchecked. That young man! Courfeyrac! He could casually mention the name of Enjolras, only to remind Grantaire of the introduction, and now all he could think of was that fair hair, flowing behind him like a river of gold while they were engaged in a bout of fencing... or was it really fencing? And from there, his thoughts coursed to ever more private and embarrassing thoughts, thoughts which Grantaire ferociously continued to deny ever having at all, even to himself. Grantaire quickened his pace, and took a shortcut home, trying to quell the thoughts and images springing unbidden to his mind if only just until he could reach the privacy of his own rooms.

It wasn’t the first time it happened, and it certainly won’t be the last. Grantaire lay awake with his thoughts until dawn broke outside his window. Saturday nights, after parties, were often the only time that Grantaire had the opportunity to see the dawn. This was another one of those occasions. The sight of the dawn made Grantaire smile faintly, bringing back more memories of Enjolras.

Enjolras... ah! a man worthy of whiling away daylight--and nighttime!--hours solely on the contemplation thereof. It made him think of the beginning of their acquaintance, smiling vaguely as he stretched out in his comfortable seat by the window.

Every time Grantaire sat by the window, discarded paints and half-finished canvases strewn around the room, and watched the sun rise, the only thing that he could think of was Enjolras. The blue of the day sky, just before the sun turned it shades of soft orange and pink, reminded him of Enjolras’ eyes, darkened in concentration as they crossed blades. The golden halo of the sun brought to mind the flowing mane of hair that blew around Enjolras’ face and head as he moved. The sudden explosion of light and warmth and movement evoked Enjolras' voice, gestures, his very presence.

And now, this very morning, after the party in which Courfeyrac had managed to make him think of Enjolras while it was yet dark, Grantaire began to ask himself why: Why it was that Enjolras had, more and more, begun to fill his mind. Previously, it was only occasionally -- but now, now he’d spent nearly an entire night thinking of him, and that made him uncomfortable.

“Could it be just foolishness? After all, I meant to go to bed with some pretty lady tonight,” mused Grantaire, half aloud, still sitting by the window. “Maybe it’s just been too long-- but how could I desire him? He is all masculine energy despite the beauty and grace, there is nothing in him that resembles a woman, and yet--” Grantaire broke off, thunderstruck at the notion: he’d very nearly admitted to himself that he desired Enjolras. What! after all these years in Paris, wholeheartedly chasing and loving pretty women, to turn out an invert! But the indignation hardly lasted a few minutes, because Grantaire found himself smiling at the thought. 

“Ah, well,” said he, undressing to get a few hours’ sleep, “Perhaps I do. Perhaps it will pass. I don’t see him so very often; and he has a charm about him that is hard to resist. I can hardly be blamed if I do desire him, and as long as I don’t try to act on these misplaced desires, nothing will ever come of it.” And Grantaire settled down to sleep, satisfied with this revelation and subsequent explanation.

In the morning the concierge knocked on his door, and said he had a letter. Grantaire was surprised -- his allowance wasn’t due; it was the wrong time of the month for his tailor and other creditors to nag him again; his foster mother was too weary to rise out of her sickbed since years ago; his friends rarely used the post at all. However, it was a letter from the new landlords at the tavern in the port of Marseille, urgently calling him home. Grantaire would have ignored the letter outright had it come from any other source in his native hometown, but a certain tone he detected in this letter made him seriously consider it. He considered it so seriously that on Wednesday he went and booked conveyance back to his southern town.

Grantaire returned to Paris some two or three months after he left. Outwardly he looked no different -- his skin perhaps a bit darker from the Mediterranean sun, but still outwardly the same. He talked less, gambled more, drank more, however.

His friend Gaulois noticed it one day, in the billiards room of some café, when Grantaire finished three more bottles of wine than usual and seemed intent on demolishing yet another. 

“Grantaire! Look at you, wasting your money on such terrible fare!” He spoke cheerfully, trying not to allude to any reason behind the heavier than usual drinking. “A good friend of mine is having a great big party tomorrow. Come there-- he’s got a really good cellar, and you can have your pick of the best wine. He’s also friends with plenty of pretty girls and decent fellows to drink and gamble with, if you want.” Grantaire could hardly refuse, even drunk and unhappy as he was, he recognised his friend’s goodwill and, of course, how could he want to pass up a party with expensive wine, pretty women, and lots of rich friends to gamble with?

So Grantaire put on his most fashionable clothes (clothes that, alas, didn’t quite fit as well as they used to, thanks to Grantaire’s less-regular bouts at fencing and singlesticks bâtonplay and savate and tennis, a lapse he hardly noticed since he returned from the Midi) and went to Gaulois’ friend’s gathering.

After a number of glasses, Grantaire had to concede that Gaulois was right: his friend really did have a great wine cellar, and all the good wine was going pleasantly to his head, and having drunk a good amount of the wine he could even agree that it was a good party with good people as well. He wandered into a hushed discussion in the corner, involving some not-so-good friends he’d met through other, similar, parties thrown by Gaulois himself.

Grantaire began wandering his old haunts again. His sudden, hasty departure from the drug-ridden orgiastic parties he’d been to left a great hole in his Saturdays, and it wasn’t more than a week before Grantaire realised that he missed the drug parties. Not because of the company -- because the drug had gotten into him, and that bothered him more and more as each day passed and the longing, the urge grew stronger and more difficult to suppress. Desperate to forget about the extended nightmare that the drug had caused, Grantaire finally went that Saturday evening to find his friend Perreault, who was usually to be found at Mère Saguet’s.

“Haven’t seen you in weeks, old friend!” Perreault slapped him on the shoulder in friendly greeting. “You look terrible. Don’t tell me you’ve been painting again -- too long in a studio can make you frightfully and unfashionably pale.”

“No, nothing of the sort,” Grantaire quickly assured him. “Just... a few unpleasant things happened, and I don’t want to think about them anymore.” Although previously he had not minded telling Perreault about his off-colour, occasionally unsavoury, excursions and adventures, there was something embarrassing, something altogether distasteful about admitting his fixation and attachment -- addiction was a word he didn’t know or understand, but it would have applied had he thought of it. It wasn’t that Grantaire felt any reservation about diminishing himself in the eyes of a friend -- in fact he wasn’t the sort of man to care, particularly, what others thought of him -- it was that to admit it aloud, even to someone who wouldn’t judge nor condemn him, would be to bring it into the cold light of day and allow it to become a truth, a reality, a fact almost as unpleasant as the ones he had originally wanted to escape when turning to substances.

Perreault called the waitress and instructed her to bring two more bottles of the best wine they had, as well as another of the establishment’s famous chickens. “Drink, then. Best thing to wash away all your troubles with -- and mind you don’t forget the chicken, you can’t have forgotten how good they are here. But above all, get drunk, my friend. Whatever your troubles, the wine will help ease it. Wine is as much a part of our lives as Paris itself is, so you might as well enjoy it and let everything else go.” 

Grantaire took the advice enthusiastically -- so enthusiastically that he drank twice as much as he had six months before, thrice as much as he had done just a year ago.

In a corner at the café Voltaire, Grantaire was enjoying his wine and brandy, when a familiar face joined him. 

“It’s good to see you again,” exclaimed Courfeyrac. “Although some may not say that. You look ghastly, Grantaire,” he continued, with a remarkably blunt cheerfulness that few men besides Courfeyrac could pull off without insulting their conversation partner. “You’ve been drinking.”

“The bottles didn’t reveal my present occupation to you, then?” Grantaire raised a glass sarcastically towards Courfeyrac. 

“I meant that you’re drinking far more than I’ve seen you drink -- drinking to get drunk, rather than merely to enjoy the wine. Not that it’s my business, of course,” he added hastily, seeing the dark look descend on Grantaire’s features, “but one wonders, you know. I’ve watched my uncle pass out dead drunk at all those parties we used to meet at, and you never seemed the type to take wine in favour of life.”

Grantaire shrugged and offered Courfeyrac some of the wine -- readily accepted -- and continued after a gulp of the brandy. “Life! What a bastard thing, life. They say it was given to mortals as a gift -- well, don’t speak to me of any gods; they don't exist. Nothing exists, nothing is certain, only my bottle and the truth that it will, sooner or later, be emptied. And, may it be emptied sooner rather than later. Ah, my friend! I cannot drink enough wine, cannot swallow enough brandy, cannot have enough eau-de-vie to block out the unpleasantness of life. I can’t help but think, life is a result of someone’s negligence. The gods, perhaps. The gods are dead, too, the gods have all abandoned us, and here we are, we unfortunate mortals, making our way through life, suffering through all its indignities and all its calamities as best we can, until some day other men encase us in a bit of wood and put us in the ground, there to rot for the rest of eternity. Life...! What old fools the gods, to give us a life like this. At least he had the decent good sense to let us have wine. Life would be interminable without it. Wine, and women. What I wouldn’t give, for a pretty wench to come and sit on my knee right now, and bring along some more wine while she’s at it!” Grantaire exclaimed, letting his empty glass fall onto the table. He stared at it for some moments, then righted the glass, refilled it, and resumed his rant. “But I was talking about gods, wasn’t I? Oh, what a cruel joke it was! to bring one into the world, to give one hopes and dreams. To tell him, ‘here is what you can hope for! here are possibilities for which you may reach! here are things in which to believe! here are ends towards which you can and ought to strive.’ And then to throw him obstacles, to throw him pain, and suffering. To show one all of these things, things which one cannot have, things which are not real and yet in which one believes and clings to -- why? Because he is alive, my friends. Because we have been granted a life. What total nonsense, indeed. Life is merely a brief inconvenience to be endured, as long as one must, and in which one must find whatever pleasant diversions one can, and that is all there is.” Grantaire snorted derisively and promptly downed the entire glass, the glass with which he had been gesticulating throughout the entire declamation, in one fell swoop, then sat contemplating the empty bottle and glass -- brooding, even.

Courfeyrac, who pretended not to have understood the largest part of what Grantaire had said, thumped his shoulder in sympathy. “Bad luck, eh? It’ll change eventually -- that is, unless you are Bossuet.” A pause, in which Courfeyrac scratched his chin thoughtfully with the end of his cane. “You have met Bossuet, haven’t you?”

“The Bald Eagle from your meetings at the Musain,” said Grantaire, indistinctly, not looking up. “I seem to remember him.”

“You should come to the Musain again,” cried Courfeyrac with a smile. “There are some new recruits there, you know. Men you might even like. And, I should mention it now that I’ve thought of it, Enjolras has asked after you, since he found out that you and I know each other and have bumped into each other from time to time.”

“Enjolras!” This made Grantaire look seriously at Courfeyrac. “Does he, now.” The thought of Enjolras was instantly sobering, even after all the wine and brandy he’d consumed. The thought of Enjolras was better than coffee, he thought cynically, for clearing one’s mind; and even more ubiquitous -- how many men were coming to him and mentioning Enjolras to him! It seemed a vast number, even though it might have only been two or three.

Courfeyrac nodded--then stood, after a voice across the room hailed him. “I do feel rather bad about leaving you alone here, but there’s my friend with whom I am engaged in billiards. I promised to meet him for a game, and here I am keeping him waiting. But I am serious, you know. Come to the Musain some day. It’s a little different, our group is, from what it was a few months ago the last time I saw you there.” He nonetheless bought Grantaire another bottle of wine before going off to join his game.

“Good man,” Grantaire mused in a slurred undertone to himself, halfway through the bottle, after having regained his previous state of inebriation, “good friend. Maybe I will go back to that café Musain someday soon after all.”

He dreamt that night of Enjolras. As always, only the single mention of the name brought all the memories and associations flooding back into Grantaire’s mind. That single-minded determination and focus; that golden hair and dazzling smile and the high smooth forehead and the charming lashes; that firm conviction; those soaring ideals. And, as always, the wine and the lack of belief or noble thoughts turned the beautiful pure Enjolras into merely an object for Grantaire’s corrupted and perverted desires -- desires which he still would not name or admit to. He could however, admit to himself that he had an excessive, perhaps almost obsessive, fondness and tenderness towards Enjolras. Notwithstanding all the things he had said to other men against having convictions, or the rants he had made against men’s lofty ideals, nothing was more beautiful to him than the sight of Enjolras’ deep, pure, unwavering belief in everything. Grantaire grew more certain with every passing day that he was certain of nothing; that he believed in nothing, cared about nothing, wished for nothing. He doubted everything, scorned all -- all was useless, foolish, unimportant, worthless, valueless, argued he, whether to himself or others. Yet it was Enjolras he adored, Enjolras he believed in, Enjolras he dreamt of, Enjolras he saw as the ideal of manly virtue. Enjolras was the exception to everything.

If he was to go back to the Musain, only Enjolras could draw him back there -- only Enjolras could keep him going there. Grantaire himself recognised the deep-seated depression that had ushered in his implacable cynicism, but the doubt and scepticism and lack of any real belief had always been there, he knew; it was only the drink and the events of the past six or twelve months that increased them tenfold, a hundredfold. But the thought amused him -- he, to go to the Musain! Where he knew Enjolras had his friends, that little coterie of politically-minded students, with whom he didn’t belong! But for whom he’d started to grow a special fondness nonetheless.

Perhaps he would pay another visit to the café Musain. But first, another glass of that brandy...

Tonight’s tavern was away from their usual haunts, but Grantaire had sworn that it had decent wine, pretty serving women, and the best pot-au-feu to be found on this bank of the Seine, and as usual, he’d turned out to be right. Jehan wasn’t sure how it was that his friend found these places, but his recommendations for dining establishments, boxing and savate and fencing salons, and used book shops were generally infallible.

At the moment, it was the aforementioned pretty serving women who were the topic of conversation.

“No, look,” Bahorel was saying at his elbow. “You write all these poems about romance. Let’s see you get some experience. What about her?” He indicated a woman who was occupied in bringing wine to one of the nearby tables. “Or better yet, the young lady over there.” This second example was a young woman whose elaborately trimmed bonnet proclaimed her most likely a milliner’s assistant. She was sitting with two other working women, all of them seeming quite unconcerned by their lack of male accompaniment, and was laughing at something one of her companions had said. “See how she laughs. A good nature is the first thing to look for in a mistress.”

Jehan’s protests that one couldn’t simply choose when and where to fall in love had gone unheard, so he tried a more direct method of refusal. “If I wanted advice about women, I’d ask Courfeyrac.”

Bahorel snorted. “Trust me, nothing Courfeyrac suggests works for anyone other than Courfeyrac. The last time I tried it, a woman slapped me.”

Lesgle, seated on his other side, turned his attention from the remains of his dinner with a grin. “Were you wearing that waistcoat?” he asked.

“What’s wrong with my waistcoat?” Bahorel demanded, putting a hand to his chest to touch the garment in question, which was bright blue and garishly embroidered with peonies. “It’s dashing. I, unlike our starving poet or your friend there with the ugliest scarf in Christendom, am a man of style and substance.”

“Yes,” Grantaire called from where he and Joly were engaged in steadily draining another bottle of wine. “Enough that you’ll shortly be wearing a waistcoat with whalebone and tight laces in order to reconcile your substance with the current styles.”

“Hah,” Bahorel laughed. “Those nipwaisted affaires are for prancing soldiers, mincing lawyers, and silly young men like Courfeyrac’s Marcus. I’m of good, solid peasant stock, with a solid man’s build.”

“Marius,” Jehan corrected absently. “His name’s Marius.”

“I am no judge of waistcoats,” Lesgle said. “Perhaps you should ask the young lady over there her opinion on it.”

Bahorel grinned, displaying strong, white teeth and one crooked incisor, then drained his glass and got up. “Maybe I will.”

He sauntered off to try his luck with a confidence Jehan could only envy, and after a brief exchange, had the girl laughing up at him. Bahorel charged headlong into every endeavor, and more often than not, his boldness was rewarded.

Thus far, the boldest thing Jehan had done had been to send a poem in to a Parisian newspaper for publication, whereupon he’d had to face the excruciating embarrassment of having his friends read it to one another aloud. He had a little volume of poetry almost ready to send to a publisher now, and when he finally succeeded in bringing it out, he was going to do so under a nom de plume and tell none of them. Considering the content of several of the more politically motivated poems, a nom de plume would likely be necessary anyway.

Sometime later, after Bahorel and the girl had disappeared to someplace more private, Bossuet nodded to where Joly had laid his head down on his folded arms, giggling helplessly at something Grantaire had said, and suggested that they bring the evening to an end. “Much more of this,” he said, “and I’ll have to carry him home.”

Joly looked up, shoulders still shaking with mirth. “Shall you sweep me off like Bahorel with his fair lady?”

“No,” Bossuet returned, with an affectionate little smile. “I’ll carry you over my shoulder like a sack of grain, and I’ll most likely drop you.”

This struck both Joly and Grantaire as hilarious.

Jehan, eying Grantaire’s flushed face and the boneless way he was slouched in his chair, found himself wondering if one of them was going to have to carry him home as well. Before he could voice the question, someone else did it for him.

“Which of us is going to escort our other friend home?”

“We can take him back to our place,” Bossuet said. “Musichetta will understand.”

“Very understanding, Musichetta!” Joly, put in, nodding.

Jehan sighed, and prepared himself, for friendship’s sake, for the prospect of a good twenty minutes’ walk out of his way in the bitter cold. “No, we don’t need to put your mistress out. I’ll take him back to his own rooms.”

“Here, what’s this,” Grantaire protested, seeming finally to realize that he had become the topic of conversation. “I do not need an escort. I can find own way home.”

Jehan was about to reply that the length of time it had taken him to notice that they were discussing him all but proved that an escort was necessary, and that an unwary drunk making his way home on his own was likely to be robbed in the street, when one of the others spoke up.

“I live a good deal closer to him, unless I mistake you address. I can do it.”

“That would be most kind of you-“ Jehan began.

“Are none of you listening?” Grantaire interrupted, rather more loudly this time. “I’ve drunk far more than this and never lost my way yet. I don’t need a minder, especially not you!” He stabbed an unsteady finger in that direction.

Now Lesgle had clearly learned over the past few weeks not to take anything Grantaire said while drunk to heart (an important lesson when dealing with their friend), for he merely sighed and cast a long-suffering glance toward Jehan.

“He’s often like this,” Jehan told him, feeling the need to defend Grantaire despite the fact that the others seemed unoffended. “He doesn’t truly mean it.”

Grantaire, of course, was still protesting when the barmaid hefted him to his feet and led him out, followed by Bossuet and a still giggling Joly, but it made Jehan easier in himself to know that someone was making certain his friend got home safely. Grantaire didn’t take proper care of himself, and trying to make sure he did so was much too large a task for one man to tackle alone.

It had begun to snow, the tiny flakes drifting down to draw a veil over the worst of Paris’s sins. Beautiful, silent death for those who had nowhere to sleep but the streets. Perhaps, Grantaire reflected, there were worse fates. At least one’s corpse would take longer to begin to rot. Dignity in death: what more could a beggar ask for? Other than a roof over his head, food, warm clothing, or some scrap of notice or pity from an indifferent public too intent on worrying that treading through accumulations of snow would spoil the polish on their boots to notice the poor wretches freezing in it.

He explained as much to his companion, and got only a few affirmative noises in return.

Considering how thoroughly he had disgraced himself in front of him while drunk last time, This was the very last person Grantaire wanted to have assisting him. When they reached the steps of his address with no mention being made of last time, however, he began belatedly to hope that perhaps the other man had realized after the last meeting at the Musain that Grantaire would prefer to pretend the entire incident had never happened.

Could he truly blame him for assuming that Grantaire was available and eager for it? It wasn’t after all, easy to find other men inclined that way, let alone ones you already knew and could consider friends.

He’d been rude, hadn’t he? He should apologize. Really, it was generally safe to assume, in any situation, that he’d done something for which he ought to apologize.

The front steps were slick with ice, and only a helping hand on his arm kept him from losing his footing. The hand remained there while they climbed the stairs to his rooms, which seemed to have grown much longer and somewhat uneven since the last time he’d climbed them, maneuvered through the doorway and into his accommodations.

Grantaire smiled back then, relieved that he’d understood, that he was going to put the whole incident aside and speak no more of it, hold no ill will over it or his churlish refusal of assistance earlier. He didn’t have so many friends that he could afford to alienate any of them, and his unspoken arrangement with Jehan was not something that could be duplicated with another. Not and have any prayer of keeping the whole matter a secret.

He reached automatically for his cravat, trying to re-tie it with fingers that felt half-numb and unusually clumsy. Those last few glasses he’d drained before leaving the tavern were beginning to take effect in earnest now, bringing a sudden wave of light-headed dizziness and a further flush of heat to his face.

Perhaps he hadn’t made himself clearly understood? “I’m leaving it on,” he told. “I plan to sleep in my clothes, like the dissipated layabout I am. It will save me dressing again in the morning.”

It was untrue – he certainly didn’t plan to sleep in his partially-undone cravat, which was likely to half-strangle him in his sleep – but he neither wanted nor required any help undressing. Where Joly’s touch would have been kindly but impersonal and Jehan’s affectionate... Part of him wanted to just surrender and let another take care of him, let him strip off his clothes and pull off his boots and tuck him into bed where he could close his eyes against the dizzying movement of the world and sleep, but at the same time, something was suggesting dimly but urgently that that would not be a good idea.

“You should take more care with your dress,” quite conversationally, as if Grantaire hadn’t even spoken. “That last button is about to come loose, and even if it weren’t, this waistcoat is much too large.”

Grantaire began to protest that it had fit when he bought it, and that it hadn’t been intended to be one of those overly constrictive garments for men who desired to show off their figures, because he had enough sense not to make a mockery of himself in styles meant for men considerably more blessed by nature then he had been, only to recall himself partway through. “Why am I debating this with you? I told you to leave me be. Didn’t you hear me?”

Grantaire found himself flat on his back on the bed, the world lurching and spinning around him.

And really, some half-hysterical part of Grantaire’s brain babbled, such an obvious witticism ought to have been beneath him. But then, apparently there were many things which weren’t beneath him, Grantaire being the obvious exception.

It was some months, many long months, after Grantaire’s long sojourn to the South and subsequent nightmare, until Grantaire really remembered Enjolras and his friends who met at the café Musain.

Grantaire was stumbling home around sunrise, half-drunk after another night where he passed out on an unfamiliar floor. At this time of the morning, he surmised, his mind still fuzzy from all the alcohol he’d consumed the night before, the political students wouldn’t be there, as they usually came in after classes, in the afternoons and evenings. He went up the back stairs to the private back hall -- the door still left unlocked, as it always had been -- and pushed the door open, confident he’d be alone for a little while for breakfast.

He was wrong. The only occupant of the room turned around, his face illumined by the few candles in the back room.

“Grantaire.” A small smile from Enjolras. “It’s been a long time since you’ve stopped by.”

“You! here for breakfast! I never expected to see you here.”

“It’s unusual,” Enjolras allowed, “but it was on my way, so I thought I’d stop by for at least a little while.” He gestured at the table. “You haven’t been here in so long. I should tell you things are a little different now.” Grantaire sat across the table from Enjolras, silently, and waited for him to continue.

“Since you have last joined us for the evening, Courfeyrac and I, and some of the others who came often, have decided to make the gatherings somewhat less informal. It turned out that while we have our differences we still have some very strong political opinions, and so we have formed a society -- a secret one -- in order to achieve those political aims. Shall I tell you more about it? Shall you join us in our designs to resume the republic of France?”

“What! Republic, you say?” R finally burst out after a silent moment of contemplation. “So you’ll go and champion the laughable idea that is the republic! to lose your head for the most ridiculous of reasons! What then, shall you, too, storm the Bastille? Stir up the populace, whip them up into a frenzied mob? Robespierre and Saint-Just and all those other fools who trod that path before you? Is it, then, to be allons enfants de la patrie? Will it be le jour de gloire est arrivé? You’ll sing the Marseillaise in the streets! You’ll riot, you’ll swarm the streets, waving about a great big tricolour flag? To throw yourself in with those group of idiots known as the Jacobins! Do you, then, embrace the path of Danton, Desmoulins, Marat? You fancy yourself a friend of the people! Ah! the people will betray you, you know, they do not care for you! And you! You fight for your republic! You would lay your life down for France, you would lead yourself and your friends to death! and all for your country, your dear Patria--”

With a word, Enjolras peacefully interrupted Grantaire. “Yes.”

Enjolras’ calmness unnerved Grantaire. Grantaire stopped speaking. He closed his mouth, he sat down, and looked back at Enjolras, stunned by the simple way in which Enjolras stopped him.

“You--” Enjolras paused for some minutes to contemplate Grantaire in silence -- Grantaire dared not break it -- and continued in a very quiet, very serious tone, no longer meeting Grantaire’s gaze. “Ah. I see now what you meant, some months ago, when you tried to dissuade me from inviting you to join our group. I had meant to ask you to join us then; I came to see if you would join us now. I see now that I was mistaken in your character after all.” Enjolras stood then and put on his hat again. “Forgive me. I have some engagements that I cannot ignore any longer.” He went out, without a further word or even glance at Grantaire.

For some time, Grantaire gazed unseeing, unthinking at the flickering candles before him. Then, at the sound of the door opening again, this time the door from the corridor to the main café room, he shrugged and looked up. “Ah! Ma belle Louison, how long it’s been! Bring me wine. Oysters, too, for breakfast, but above all wine.”

Even early in the morning, the Musain was warm; the fire in the bread oven had likely been burning since four or five o’ clock, so that customers could have fresh croissant rolls with their morning chocolate or coffee.

Enjolras’s own coffee had gone cold while he and Combeferre discussed strategy. Whether they ought to hold any form of demonstration outside Raspail’s trial, or whether it would be counterproductive. Whether to take up a collection to fund another society’s republican newspaper, or whether to give the money instead to fund a circulating library for workingmen that both Combeferre and Feuilly wished to support.

Combeferre was quoting Thomas Jefferson on the need for a democracy to educate and enlighten its citizens, and that ‘the one who reads nothing at all is better educated than the one who reads nothing but newspapers,’ when Courfeyrac, Grantaire, and Courfeyrac’s little puppy of a roommate stumbled in through the Musain’s door, accompanied by a burst of cold air.

“Have a care with the door,” Joly protested. “Sudden cold drafts can unbalance-“

“Yes, yes,” Courfeyrac cut him off with a wave of the hand. “We’re all going to sicken and die of the influenza.”

“You shall,” Grantaire said. “I shall not. I have it directly from our learned scholars of medicine that alcohol prevents contagion.” Contrary to his words, he actually appeared to be sober for once, or nearly so. Apparently, the hour was too early for even Grantaire to have begun drinking.

“When surgeons rinse their hands in it, if Labarraque’s Solution isn’t available,” Combeferre said. “Not when it’s drunk.”

Joly sniffed, and adjusted the red flannel object he was wearing wrapped around his neck in lieu of a cravat. He had offered to fashion Enjolras and Combeferre similar decorations of their very own, to protect them from catching a chill, but both had turned him down.

Bossuet had reportedly already lost his. Enjolras suspected that for once, the loss was not an accident.

Then he cleared his throat, and returned the topic to the relative merits of circulating libraries versus newspapers (he was firmly on the newspaper side of the argument, and both he and Combeferre had been trying to win Enjolras over to their respective sides of the debate for some minutes).

The newcomers took their seats, including Courfeyrac’s roommate. Enjolras hadn’t seen the ‘Baron de Pontmercy’ since he’d quarreled with him over Napoleon, and was tempted to make some disparaging comment about the Corsican, or enquire if the young man was intent on joining their discussion, or was merely present in hopes of acquiring a free breakfast, but he seemed so honestly pleased to be invited to sit with them that Enjolras couldn’t bring himself to be deliberately cutting.

Eventually the fair leader delivered such a hard set-down in response to one of Marius’s ill-informed questions that Courfeyrac openly protested. “Marius means no harm. He is merely seeking information. You will never win converts to our cause that way!”

After Courfeyrac threw his weight in on Combeferre’s side of the argument and the general decision fell in favor of education over publication (“We are, after all,” Courfeyrac had commented, “Les Amis de l'ABC,”), he withdrew from the discussion and directed his attention toward Grantaire, who was seated on his left, slouching over his coffee and largely ignoring the conversation.

The conversation turned from republican endeavors to Joly’s current favorite topic of la grippe, and he and Combeferre began debating the possibility of contagion and the merits of bloodletting as a preventative for fever.

Marius’s plaintive request, after a few minutes of this, that they not discuss lancets and leeches and noxious vapors while others were eating, was met with general support from all non-medical members of the company.

Enjolras was not possessed of a weak stomach, and long friendship with Combeferre had inured him to the prospect of insects and surgical techniques being discussed at the breakfast table, but familiarity with these subjects had not rendered them any more interesting to him. At least, he reflected, the prevention of disease was more relevant to the common good than the collection and categorization of lepidoptera and beetles, if equally dull.

He turned his attention to his cold coffee, which he had neglected while he and the others talked. The Musain’s coffee was generally good, strong enough for the flavor to withstand the addition of a great deal of milk, but not bitter enough to require much sugar, unless you were Courfeyrac and preferred every hot beverage you drank to have the same sickly sweetness as breakfast chocolate.

Under the hum of conversation, his ears caught a sharp intake of breath from Grantaire.

That close, Grantaire’s unruly hair must be tickling his nose, and he’d be able to smell the musk of his skin… which presumably smelled of opium smoke or stale wine or eau-de-vie or something else entirely unappealing, Enjolras reminded himself.

Grantaire jerked away, his spine stiff and his shoulders hunched up in a way that looked almost defensive, the same posture he adopted when Enjolras was exasperated into being particularly harsh with him.

Hurt by his leader's words, Grantaire came abruptly to his feet and stormed out without a word. The others could only watch as he stormed out, like he had many times before. It seemed as if their friendship had been permanently severed.

The Musain’s door slammed shut behind him, and for a moment there was nothing but silence.

“Well,” Enjolras observed after a moment. “That was an entirely new method of disrupting our meetings. Whatever prompted that?”

Courfeyrac shrugged, confusion and some slight hurt visible on his handsome face. “I have no idea. Monsieur Grantaire is in a foul mood this morning, and that’s for certain.”

Joly offered him a reassuring smile. “It will be the hour,” he told him. “Our friend is never at his best before noon.”

Grantaire was half-attending to Joly’s lecture on the ill effects of cold and damp, most of his attention on the lingering ache in his head and the heaviness of his eyelids (it was entirely too early for anyone to be awake) when a hand settled with entirely too much familiarity upon his thigh.

He jerked upright, unable to still an exclamation of surprise as fingers stroked insinuatingly toward his groin.

Grantaire went cold, save for the still-tender marks on his neck and thigh, which seemed to burn like brands. He had put it out of his mind before, telling himself that he must have met with some accommodating young women before finishing out the evening, or, more likely, that he had somehow injured himself falling out of bed or tripping over his own feet, and those marks were the result of that and not, not what they looked like.

Enjolras was looking at him, he realized, staring at the both of them.

Once outside, it was easier to breath. The cold air cleared his head, and by the time he had returned to his apartment, he had calmed down enough to properly consider the other man’s words.

He had done foolish things while drunk before, awoken with an empty purse and the rent due tomorrow, with bruised knuckles and sore ribs from fights he couldn’t clearly recall, with half his friends not speaking to him and the serving girl in the Corinthe near to spitting in his face, but this was a new low, even for him.

Grantaire sat down on the floor of his rented room, his back against the side of the bed, and a bottle of wine in his hands. In his own room, he didn’t bother with the trouble of a glass.

The negative aspects of facing the world while sober had always outweighed the benefits, or if not always, then often enough as made no difference. This, though… He rubbed at the mark on his neck again, and downed a healthy swallow of wine.

Had he really lain with another man while drunk and forgotten the entire thing? He couldn’t do that. It was dangerous in more ways than one. What if it had been a stranger, some unknown man capable of doing god knew what him? He could have woken up with more than just the marks of a lover’s mouth on himself. He could have been sodomized, beaten, robbed, not woken up at all. He had been often enough in the less salubrious parts of Paris to know what fates befell unwary grisettes and barmaids and prostitutes too desperate to be careful in their choice of customers.

His unspoken arrangement with Jehan was one thing, but this was quite another. The rest of his friends would be a great deal less tolerant of him and various excesses if they knew.

And Enjolras… Grantaire had made no real secret of his feelings toward him, but most of his friends had likely not guessed their true nature. Jehan knew, and Joly and Bossuet had almost certainly guessed, though they had never said anything on the subject. Others had spoken of it in a way that made his admiration for Enjolras sound sordid, like nothing more than base physical attraction, no different from a drunken sexual encounter had while Grantaire was unable to control himself.

What he felt for Enjolras was more than that, purer than that. He might be lovely to look at, but what truly drew men to him and captivated was his spirit.

And if Enjolras knew that he was having drunken sex with other men as a substitute for him, he would be disgusted. Hell, Grantaire was disgusted with himself. Enjolras’s passions were all clean, fine things like justice and patriotism, all disinterested and remote. Whereas he…

Again, he asked himself what might have happened if he hadn’t been drinking with a companion.

He shook himself, more violent and deliberate than a mere shudder of distaste, and upended the wine bottle to drain it to the dregs.

It could have been anyone.

The world was still too steady around him, and his thoughts still too clear. A second bottle was called for. A third, even, if it came to that. He didn’t want to think about this anymore.

“Oh, no, thank you.” Combeferre waved away the suggestion of a second order of coffee. “The second volume of Boisduval’s General History has come out,” he went on. “I shall have to economize in order to purchase it.”

No one asked him what manner of book this General History was – not even Grantaire, who was usually swift to seize upon any excuse to distract them all from political discussion. Undeterred, Combeferre began to explain anyway. “It’s a comprehensive study of the Lepidoptera species, with colour plates. I have the first volume already, and the detail is remarkable. Every vein of the wing is shown, and the coloration of the-“

Enjolras returned his attention to the scrawled draft of a pamphlet they had asked him to look over. The man’s handwriting was nearly as dreadful as Bossuet’s, without the excuse of Bossuet’s perpetually splitting pen nibs and tendency to write with his left hand when he thought no one was looking.

He and his friends were gathered in the upper room of the Musain, where they could speak freely with the map of the Republic looking down on them. Or rather, most of them were gathered; Bossuet was attending a lecture on the law this afternoon, and Bahorel was out somewhere avoiding attending one. Joly was absent as well, though whether it was due to his studies or to his finally succumbing to the influenza he worried so about (or to his imagining that he had), Enjolras did not know.

No sooner had Combeferre paused to marshal his thoughts than Courfeyrac, ever adept at conversation, diverted him to the topic of universal education, and the need to have free education for all children in all towns in France. This being a topic even dearer to Combeferre’s heart than his favorite hobby, he readily abandoned Lepidoptera to discuss it.

“Women are in need of education as well, perhaps even more so. They may not study at the universities or grandes écoles, even though their faculties have the potential to be the equal of men’s.”

“Let us have basic schooling for all first,” Enjolras protested, abandoning his pamphlet, “and then we can concern ourselves with higher education for women.”

He and Combeferre had debated this topic before, and his friend responded as he always did. “Who will teach the virtues of citizenship and the ability to reason to the next generation if not their mothers?”

“Well,” Courfeyrac put in, “technically, the free village schools would do that.”

Combeferre frowned. “Now you are playing devil’s advocate. We’ve discussed this before, Courfeyrac; I know you agree with me.”

“Perhaps I’ve changed my mind. It’s the prerogative of the fairer sex to do so, so therefore it may be my prerogative when discussing them.” He grinned playfully at them both and spread his hands. “Perhaps I may come back to your way of thinking once more. Enjolras and I shall allow you to persuade us.” Courfeyrac rested his chin upon his hands and gazed at Combeferre with an attitude of reverent expectation.

Combeferre was no doubt prepared to do just that – though he would not have succeeded, since basic schooling for all children would always be of more importance than advanced learning for a few, be they female or male – when the conversation at the neighbouring table caught Enjolras’s attention.

Combeferre, as usual, stepped in to mediate. “It takes time for the nobility to overcome their background. Remember when Marius first started coming and got into that argument with Enjolras over Napoleon?”

Feuilly smiled at that, his nose wrinkling slightly. “Yes, but that’s Marius.”

Courfeyrac nodded. “Marius is always full of misplaced enthusiasm. Like a puppy.” He said the words with a fondness Enjolras couldn’t quite reconcile with the awkward, overly-naïve youth who occasionally appeared at the society’s meetings with the air of a man who had wandered in by mistake. Courfeyrac had a habit of adopting strays; he’d done it to Enjolras himself when he had first arrived at university, sweeping him into his social circle as swiftly and easily as if they were longtime intimates.

“But he didn’t patronize me, for all his stupid ‘Baron Pontmercy’ cards,” Feuilly said.

“I’m not fond of him either.”

The voice came hesitantly from the far corner, where Grantaire was currently huddling with a bottle of wine. He’d been there when Enjolras had arrived, already looking half-drunk, and he hadn’t so much as looked up from his glass the entire afternoon.

“I don’t… He-“ Grantaire broke off, silent for a moment, and then he burst out, with unexpected vehemence, “He’s a liar and a hypocrite, and I wish he’d stop coming.”

A hypocrite? This, from the man who openly lacked faith in their cause and seemed to see their group as naught but a source for amiable drinking companions?

“He’s done more for the revolution than you ever have,” Enjolras snapped.

Grantaire appeared to deflate, slumping further over his half-empty glass, and Enjolras quashed a momentary pang of guilt. He had not, after all, said anything that wasn’t true.

He said as much to Feuilly, and got a sour grunt in return, followed by a grudging acknowledgement that possibly he meant well, but he was incapable of not being condescending about it.

Equally unwillingly, Enjolras found himself forced to admit that indeed, the other man often appeared convinced that he knew better what was good for the people he fought for than they did themselves.

When he looked over again sometime later, Grantaire was gone.

***

Grantaire awoke to the consequences of a night spent drinking, his mouth dry and foul-tasting and his head aching dully. By the angle of the light coming in through his window, it was near midday, and for a while he simply lay in bed, contemplating going back to sleep.

He had slunk home in shame and misery yesterday after his argument with Enjolras – if one could call it that, considering his own feeble lack of a rebuttal for the other man’s words – and drunk himself to sleep, trying to think about anything but the one he loved.

Sleep would not return, and at last Grantaire was forced to concede that facing the day was inevitable. He had no food in his apartment, and only a single, half-empty wine bottle in the way of drink, and he would have to leave to procure himself both necessities.

If he went to the Musain, the others would be there. The same held true to a lesser extent for the Corinthe, and the little wineshop near Joly and Bossuet’s rooms in the Latin Quarter, and the tavern at the Barrière du Combat, and the bakery on the Boulevard du Maine. Any one of his regular haunts held the risk of meeting with someone he knew.

There were any number of establishments farther away that he could visit, where he would be assured of being left in peace, but the prospect of more hours with nothing but his own thoughts for company was nearly as unwelcome.

For half a moment, as he sat on the edge of his bed with his aching head in his hands, the thought was tempting. He could simply stay inside his rooms, and never see anyone again, never have to see the look in their eyes when they discovered what he had done, never have to fail to succeed at any endeavour or earn disappointment or censure, never have to try.

Except that then he would be alone. He couldn’t, he knew, survive that way. And he had only half a bottle of wine left.

So he splashed some water on his face, made a half-hearted attempt at shaving, and went to the Musain.

Enjolras was not there, thank the gods he didn’t believe in, but several of the others were, as well as a pair of students he’d never seen before, one earnestly hanging on Courfeyrac’s every word and the other obviously bored.

Courfeyrac was in his element, effortlessly charming and full of contagious enthusiasm. In any other man, Grantaire would have thought that open smile and easy manner an act, assumed that cheerful enthusiasm for the dignity of the working man feigned and that open disgust for the privilege of the nobility and the wealthiest of the bourgeoisie merely a façade put on to deflect attention from his own privilege. In this instance, however, he knew it to be nothing less than the truth.

His friends were better men than he. It was why they did not believe him when he told them how little the ordinary person on the rue cared for equality or freedom, so long as their belly was full. They judged the world by their own examples.

Grantaire sat quietly with his wine, letting the conversation wash over him and drinking steadily until he was able to relax, stop worrying that Enjolras would walk in at any moment, and start contributing to the conversation again.

Enjolras was not there today, and he found himself almost relieved by that, still smarting from the weight of his disapproval last time. It was somehow easier to talk without Enjolras's presence, especially when he was a little drunk and Bahorel was there to keep egging him on.

He was halfway through an explanation of why England's supposed lack of slavery was all so much hypocritical bullshit since they still possessed slaves in their colonies and their mill workers often lived in conditions little better than slavery - and wondering how had he gotten from singlestick and boxing moves to the British Empire’s sordid economic practices - when the fair leader walked in.

His presence was a bucket of ice water thrown over Grantaire’s happy drunk.

Grantaire broke off midsentence, swallowing hard as a wave of sudden nausea went through him. He groped mentally for the thread of his commentary but it had left him entirely. His former sense of ease and relaxed warmth was gone, and instead he felt dizzy and out-of-control, his heart hammering.

Automatically, he hunched his shoulders and slouched lower in his chair. Grantaire knew himself incapable of controlling his face or his tongue at the best of times, much less when half-drunk, and he was filled with a terrible conviction that everything he had done must be written on his face for all to see. Silently, he pleaded for the others not to look at him, not speak to him.

What if he did and Grantaire said something stupid and revealed the shameful truth? What if someone said something? Everyone would know.

"Grantaire?" Joly asked. "Are you all right? You look distinctly ill."

Grantaire knew the moment the other man caught sight of him by the little smile that pulled at his lips.

He felt distinctly ill. Joly wouldn’t be leaning toward him so solicitously if he knew what was actually wrong. "Too much wine," he blurted out, and lurched to his feet. "You'll have to excuse me."

By the time he made it outside to lean against the wall, he no longer felt as if he were going to be ill. It was all right. It was fine. He was fine. He would just go and find some other café or wine shop to drink in, one out of the way of their usual haunts. Maybe that little one on the left bank that sold the surprisingly affordable sweet Anjou, or, no something dry and red would settle his stomach better—

An arm slipped around his shoulders, and Grantaire went stiff, stomach cold and hollow...

“I’m fine,” Grantaire stammered, his tongue feeling thick and clumsy. Usually, the difficulty was in curbing his tongue, but for perhaps the first time ever his mind was empty of words. “I- I have a headache. Too much wine. I’m fine.” He ducked away. “I’m leaving now. To go home. I’m fine. You- I’ve no need for any help.”

Grantaire could feel his face heating, a painful flush that had nothing to do with alcohol. “Don’t say such things,” he hissed. “Someone might hear you.” Even he never spoke so freely of the crude details of sex, not even with grisettes and prostitutes.

Grantaire eyed the drifts of filthy snow that piled in the gutters and along the Musain's walls, the still-unmelted remnants of the past two snowstorms, blackened with soot and frozen to a hard crust, and shuddered at the thought of kneeling in it. He'd rushed outside without gloves, and the cold was already seeping through his clothing.

At those words, some of the sick, nervous fear in his gut was replaced by anger.

Belatedly, Grantaire recognized the threat, and the nausea from before came rushing back, thick in his throat. “Don’t,” he begged. “Don’t tell them.”

“What would Enjolras say, I wonder, if he knew the true reason why you hang about us? Or Bahorel, if he knew how eager you were to debase yourself with a man, any man? He’d think twice before drinking with you again, I imagine.”

He would, Grantaire knew. Any man would. It was a minor miracle that his friends had put up with him thus far, and if they knew everything… his mind couldn’t conjure up the details, couldn’t produce anything beyond a panicked horror at the idea of the others knowing he’d been used as a whore and been brought to enjoy it.

This would be easier if he were drunk enough to shut his brain off, but of course, that was what had led him here in the first place.

The snow was frozen hard, enough so that it crunched underfoot.

He told himself that what he was about to do couldn’t be terribly difficult, that prostitutes did it all the time, that he’d do it for Enjolras without a second thought.

The very idea of invoking Enjolras’s name at that moment seemed a kind of sacrilege, and Grantaire forced his image from his mind.

For someone who claimed to be good at singlesticks, Grantaire seemed to be uniquely bad at it; he was, granted, much more nimble than Enjolras had expected and he was quick to use his scarf to deflect a blow, but Grantaire kept tangling their feet together and setting them tumbling onto the floor, offending both Enjolras’s spine and his dignity as Grantaire repeatedly rubbing against his groin provoked a reaction.

Grantaire’s latest misstep had Enjolras falling on his already bruised tailbone, Grantaire’s solid weight pressing him even harder against the floor and Grantaire was already mumbling an apology, incapable even at getting up as his hips jerked once and Enjolras found himself letting out a breath that sounded too much like a moan.

“Grantaire,” Enjolras said, speaking very low and forcing Grantaire to look him in the eye by tugging on his curls, “you are going to finish what you very clearly started and we are never going to talk about this again.”

It was so cold that he could feel the ache of it inside his ears, and his fingers were going painfully numb inside his gloves. Snow had started falling again, tiny flakes like frozen sand instead of the soft, white feathers of last week, and Grantaire was beginning to wish he had taken Joly up on his offer of a hideous red flannel object to wear in place of a cravat. He doubted that it would have done anything at all against the ague or the influenza, but at least it would have been warm.

Staying in bed in his apartments would have been warmer yet, but he had forgotten to buy food or drink yesterday after… after he’d left the Musain, and by midway through a day of consuming neither wine nor solid food of any kind, his hands had begun to shake.

At least now that he was outdoors, he could blame it on the cold.

He was already regretting his decision to walk to the market instead of simply buying food ready-made at the Musain and carrying it home. He had originally decided that the market would be less expensive and therefore worth the longer walk, but now that he was actually out upon the streets, the extra few sous were seeming less and less significant.

This far into winter, there were few vegetables or fruits for sale, save for dried mushrooms, cold-weather crops like fennel and turnips, and the remnants of this autumn’s apples. He bought several of those, along with butter and bread – his room contained no facilities for cooking, making it necessary for all meals eaten there to be either cold or ready-made – and was about to turn back and head for home, with plans to stop only at the warmest-looking wine shop along the way, when he caught sight of a small form darting between the market stalls.

He recognized the child almost immediately as one of the gamins who often hung around the edges of the crowd when Enjolras spoke outside. He sometimes ran messages for students, and Bahorel had hired him several times to delivers billets doux to mistresses, and once to take a message to someone at the law school so that he himself wouldn’t have to step inside it.

Gavroche. That was his name.

Grantaire hailed him, reaching into his pocket for the change left over from his purchases. Then, seeing the way the boy’s raw, red fingers were clutched around a croissant roll – studded with currants and most likely stolen from a baker’s cart – he reconsidered. Cold was likely a worse threat than hunger right now. He did not know where Gavroche slept at night, but he was relatively certain that it was on the streets somewhere, and in weather like this, a child sleeping outside could easily freeze to death.

“Ha, wine-cask! Want me to deliver a letter?” The child stared up at him, too-wide mouth stretched into an impudent grin. “There’s an extra fee for postal delivery in the snow.”

“Not that your sobriquet isn’t apt,” Grantaire said, “but hasn’t anyone told you that you ought to address your elders by ‘monsieur?’”

“Monsieur Wine-cask,” Gavroche parroted back with mock obedience, “would you like me to deliver a letter? Or should it be citoyen for you, since you’re one of those republicans?”

Grantaire found himself smiling, recognizing beneath the bluster and swagger the familiar aspect of a boy who knows he will never be a pretty child, and so makes his best effort to be clever and amusing instead. “It’s all the same to me,” Grantaire told him. “But I have a commission to fulfill as a good republican. We can’t have our most reliable messenger taking ill from the cold, so I’m to offer you the hospitality of my apartments for a night or two, until the weather breaks.”

He knew it for a foolish idea even as he offered – if the child did accept, he would very likely rob Grantaire blind – but looking at the way he shivered in a thin, inadequate coat, hands raw with cold from a lack of gloves, he extended the invitation instinctively. He owned little that was valuable enough to steal anyway, and the loss of it would be small compared to having a child’s death on his conscience.

The smile faded from Gavroche’s face, replaced by a look of distinct suspicion. “And what would I have to do in return for this hospitality, monsieur?”

Grantaire felt a fool as be belatedly realized that a child in his circumstances would of course be suspicious that his offer of a bed for the night was not truly free. He felt sick for a moment at the thought of what the Gavroche was likely afraid the price would be, remembering the feel of wenches' hands on him, and shook his head. “It is freely offered. You need do nothing except refrain from doing away with me in my sleep and stealing all my worldly possessions.”

Gavroche looked unimpressed, and Grantaire rushed on, before the boy could proudly refuse to accept charity.

“My landlady is sentimental about children,” he said, reaching for the first excuse that came to mind, however thin, “and if she believes I’ve taken in a young cousin for a few nights, she might be more inclined to overlook my overdue rent.”

Gavroche’s shoulders relaxed out of their pugnacious stance. “Out of money, huh?” he asked. He made a show of thinking things over for a moment, and then nodded sharply. “I suppose I could do you a favor,” he said, with a cocky little grin, “since you’re one of Bahorel’s friends. But you’ll owe me for it.”

“Twice over,” Grantaire agreed, accepting Gavroche’s hand to shake, man-to-man. “For I’ll earn our leader’s favor as well. I told you I’d been given a commission.”

Gavroche nodded, and took a bite out of his stolen bun. “Just so you know,” he said, speaking through a mouthful of crumbs, “you’re a terrible liar.”

Grantaire led the way to the wine shop and then back to his rooms without dignifying that with an answer. In the back of his mind the thought occurred to him, but he shoved that notion out of his head. Surely even he was not despicable enough to hide behind a child.

It was already too cold for any civilized man to venture out, and the snow showed every sign of getting worse. He wouldn’t come calling in weather like this. He wouldn’t.

If he did, Grantaire told himself, he’d send the boy away.

***

As it turned out, he had no need to send Gavroche away. Two days later, Gavroche was out.

Grantaire had no idea what the boy did during the day, and had not asked him; he was relatively certain that if he did, Gavroche would cease staying with him, and the past two nights had been bitterly cold, the weather showing no signs of breaking.

He'd given Gavroche the heaviest of his blankets to make a pallet on the floor, and pressed himself close against the wall behind his bed, where the building's chimney ran through the wall, so he could soak up the warmth that radiated through the brick and plaster.

Grantaire was still huddled there, unable to sleep any longer but lacking any impetus to get out of bed...

Grantaire sat up, unwilling to simply lie there. He was suddenly painfully aware of the fact that he wore only his shirt and his thickest pair of stockings; beneath the inadequate shield of his bedclothes, he was very nearly naked. "What are you doing here? Get out!"

And for a brief, disturbing moment, Grantaire was reminded of Enjolras, whose reaction upon seeing both his room and his person in such a slovenly state would have been open and deserved contempt. “Your friends are worried."

Apparently, Grantaire wasn’t worth the kind of anger that the profligate expense of Louis-Philippe’s civil list or the blindness of the self-satisfied petite-bourgeoisie merited. “And our leader is very short on patience where you’re concerned.”

It was nothing but the truth – and not even something Grantaire could blame Enjolras for, since he wouldn’t be moved to patience with himself in Enjolras’s place, either, supposing that some version of himself could ever have the strength of principle or will to occupy Enjolras’s place – and yet hearing it put so plainly still made his stomach twist and something inside his chest burn.

“You really think they’ll listen to you? You’re a parasite, a useless hanger-on; they don’t want or need you.”

Grantaire’s face and eyes both grew hot, and what little pride he had finally rebelled. This was his apartment; he didn’t have to sit here and listen to this.

“This is your only purpose, your only useful contribution to the cause, to serve better men. You know it – why else do you look at Enjolras like that?”

Grantaire swore through clenched teeth, his eyes watering. “Leave him out of this.” It was worse than blasphemy to drag Enjolras’s name into an act like this. Every aspect of this scene would have filled him with disgust. 

Enjolras disdained the act of physical love, even with women. At times, he seemed even to disdain physical pleasure itself as mere indulgence; not just the sexual kind, but all forms of it, from the exhilaration of a good fight to the savor of a good meal. His ideals were enough for him.

To see Grantaire not just submitting to this, but actually gaining pleasure from his own debasement, would be the last straw that forever did away with Enjolras’s already strained tolerance of him.

“He’d never appreciate what you have to offer, what you were nearly gagging for..."

After a few minutes, the prospect of Gavroche walking back into find him sprawled on the bed, half-naked and stinking of sex, was enough to impel him to his feet and over to the wash basin. He threw the shirt into a corner, sponged and scrubbed at his legs and torso with the cold water, and was in his shirtsleeves with his hair still wet and dripping when Gavroche came strolling casually back in.

The gamin glanced from Grantaire to the rumpled bed and wrinkled his nose. “You were serious about not having money, weren’t you? I thought you students didn’t have to do things like that, stealing and stargazing.”

Grantaire stared at him for a moment, before the child’s meaning sank in. Then he started laughing, unable to help himself. After all those threats and blackmail, it seemed it didn’t actually require a word to anybody to make Grantaire appear a male whore. Even children could tell what he was, despite the fact that he’d taken no money for it. “Don’t tell my landlady,” he gasped, once he’d regained the power of speech.

Gavroche screwed his face up into a grotesque wink, and held a finger to his lips. Then he dropped down to sit cross-legged on his neatly folded pallet of blankets, and stared up at Grantaire expectantly. “So, now that you’ve got ready cash again, what are we having for dinner?”

Grantaire merely shook his head, unable to bring himself to tell this entirely un-innocent child that he had neither asked for nor been paid any money.

He was startled out of a doze by the sound of someone knocking on his door.

Grantaire lifted his head, squinting across the room at the source of the sound, and decided that it wasn’t worth the bother to get up to answer it. Let whoever it is go to the effort of opening the door himself. He certainly had last time.

The knocking went on. The thought occurred to him that it might be Gavroche, but then he dismissed it. Gavroche would not have bothered to knock.

The boy had left yesterday, and Grantaire suspected from the absence of the blanket he’d been using as well as several of the smaller items from Grantaire’s shaving kit, presumably pocketed in order to be sold, that he wasn’t coming back. He’d left behind the basket of food he’d purchased with Grantaire’s money -- at least, the money was missing and the food was there, so Grantaire assumed it had been purchased -- sitting pointedly atop the washstand. His version of a thank you, Grantaire presumed.

Alone once more, Grantaire had settled himself against the wall last night with a bottle of wine and a second-hand copy of Nodier’s Infernaliana that he’d borrowed at some point from Jehan, but ghosts and demons had failed to hold his attention, and he’d ended up finishing the bottle and falling asleep.

“Grantaire!” someone called from the other side of the door. “Open up so I can go and tell Joly you’re alive.” The tone was good-natured, despite the words, and the voice.

“L’aigle?” Grantaire called back. The word came out as a hoarse croak. He swallowed, rubbed at his bleary eyes, and staggered to his feet to go and greet his caller.

He shouldn’t be surprised that one of his friends had come to enquire about his well-being, and yet he was anyway. He had nearly grown used to the idea that he was a member of their circle on sufferance, accepted only as long as none of them knew about what he had done, and he wasn’t feel enough to think that he could hide that forever.

It hadn’t occurred to him that while they still remained ignorant, his friends would naturally be concerned about his sudden absence.

He opened the door to find Bossuet standing in the hallway, his trousers and the skirts of his coat wet and dripping with slush. “There you are,” he said cheerfully. “I brought rolls for luncheon. Or, well, I meant to.” He held up a basket partially filled with soggy, soot-smeared objects that might once have been loaves of bread. “They were rolls, before I encountered a patch of ice and they and I both took a tumble.”

He’d intended to send him away, with the first excuse he could think of to explain why he’d been absent from their meetings, but looking at Bossuet’s dripping coat, slush-covered boots, the beads of water dripping slowly down his unprotected pate, and the poor, destroyed rolls he was still holding out, Grantaire somehow found himself stepping to the side and waving him in. “Most generous of you,” he said gravely.

“I’ll just leave them out here,” Bossuet said, setting the basket down just outside the door. “I can take them with me when I leave, and find some rubbish heap to throw them in.”

He glanced around, taking in the state of the room, and Grantaire braced himself for a disapproving comment, aware of the crumpled and unwashed bed linens, the empty bottles scattered about the floor, and the soiled shirt still lying abandoned in the corner where he’d thrown it. “Not quite the deathbed scene I expected,” he said, and Grantaire blinked.

“We haven’t seen you in nearly a week,” he went on in explanation. “Joly was half convinced that you’d caught the influenza and died of it.”

“I’m afraid not,” he said, only half joking. “Alcohol keeps away contagion, remember?”

“I mentioned that to him, but you know how he worries.”

Grantaire shrugged, looking away. “I had a houseguest to keep me company. Short, fair-haired, and sharp-tongued.”

“We all know how you feel about fair hair and sharp tongues, but I thought your tastes leaned more towards tall.”

It was only light-hearted raillery, he knew – all of his friends knew about his admiration for Enjolras, but only Jehan knew the exact nature of his feelings – but Grantaire still felt his face heating with shame. If he ever had been worthy of Enjolras’s company, he certainly was not now. “Don’t look so excited,” he said. “It was only Gavroche.”

“I know.” Bossuet grinned at him, nudging him with an elbow as if to apologize for the joke. “He told Bahorel he was staying with you.”

He should have long since ceased to be impressed by how quickly news could travel through the student quarter, but sometimes it still caught him by surprise. If Combeferre’s universal education had existed for Gavroche and his fellows – imagining for the sake of argument that they weren’t too busy trying to keep from starving to be able to afford even free schooling – they would likely have ended up running the country. “And yet Joly still spun theories of my imminent demise?”

“I told you.” Bossuet shrugged. “He worries.”

“He shouldn’t,” Grantaire told him, with perhaps a touch more bitterness than he ought to have. “I could give him a dozen reasons to despair of my survival before the week was out, each more self-indulgent and disreputable than the last.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s why he worries.” Bossuet glanced around the room again, his gaze coming to rest on the basket Gavroche had left. “Have you eaten yet? I’m sorry about the rolls.”

“I-“ Grantaire began, and then faltered, as he realized that he couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d eaten anything. He could remember what that last meal had been, but not when precisely he’d consumed it. Had he eaten at all yesterday, or only had wine?

At the moment, with his head still aching from the previous night, the idea of food made him feel faintly sick. But Bossuet looked so crestfallen over his failed attempt to bring breakfast that he swallowed hard and tried to set that aside. “I was just about to. Would you care to join me?”

The two of them ended up perched on the edge of Grantaire’s bed, there being no other seating available. Grantaire forced himself to take a few bites of bread, for the purposes of being sociable, and then abandoned the effort in favor of simply watching Bossuet eat. He’d attempt food again later, he decided, after his stomach had a chance to settle.

“You’ve been secreting yourself away in here all week,” Bossuet said, after a few minutes. “You should come out with us. There’s to be an epic battle in the snow, medical students against law students.”

When Grantaire pointed out that he had studied neither, Bossuet shrugged, nearly dropping his lunch, and told him that since Bahorel was taking the medical side, he and Courfeyrac were to be left to uphold the honor of the law all alone, against the arrayed forces of Combeferre, Joly, and Bahorel. “Unless you come to assist us, or Courfeyrac can convince Enjolras to participate, we are sure to lose.”

“Convince our dear leader to waste an entire afternoon in pointless frivolity?”

“You’ll help us, then?”

The idea of going out, for a snowball fight or for anything else, held little appeal. He would have to smile, and talk to everyone, and somehow contrive to act as if nothing had happened to him.

Grantaire shook his head. “It’s too early for such exertions, and I’ve a headache.”

Bossuet frowned little. “Grantaire, it’s the middle of the afternoon.”

“Precisely. Entirely too early.” He attempted a smile. “Besides, aren’t we all a little old for a snowball fight?”

“One is never,” Bossuet said with false gravitas, “too old for a snowball fight. When you’re an old man of twenty-seven like me, you’ll be wise enough to know that.”

“Well, perhaps I’m too great a fool for snow battles.” Before Bossuet could attempt to persuade him further, he added, “I’ve a headache already; I don’t think getting face-fulls of snow will improve it, nor will having Bahorel put snow down the back of my coat.”

Bossuet seemed to study Grantaire’s face for a moment, frowning. “But we will see you tomorrow at the Musain?” he pressed.

It was easier to agree than to argue.

Once he was alone again, free of any need to put up a pretense, he curled back up on the floor, on Gavroche’s abandoned pallet of blankets, and wished futilely that he hadn’t sent Bossuet away.

By now the lush had figured out what the feeling in his chest had been. Love. A feeling he hadn't experienced so wholly and overwhelmingly since his parents had been alive. That's why it had felt so familiar and yet so strange.

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 and a veil of golden ripples, 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, to the point of being a teetotaller, 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 or some coffee dregs 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..." That the feeling-extolling lush revelled in positive experiences did not imply that he had no way of discerning what is true, noble, right, pure, admirable, excellent, or praiseworthy.
Enjolras was everything he was not. The leader, the hero, the role model Grantaire had always aspired to be: the Orestes to his Pylades, the Euryalus to his Nisus, the Achilles to his Patroclus, the Henry V to his Falstaff, the Romeo to his Mercutio... things he had once been, perhaps, or would have been like, had the deaths of his closest family members not occurred. Every happy memory that could come to mind included Enjolras in some way or another. And he was beautiful -- both inside and out. That long rippling curtain of golden hair which tumbled almost down to his elbows. Those clear azure eyes that saw the world through fire and blood -- like the world still held opportunity and a reason to fight for love and happiness around every corner, no matter what it threw at you. Even Enjolras' hands fascinated him. They were so small and dainty and pale. The stark opposite of his own.
He wondered what it would be like to hold them.
He wondered how long he had had these feelings for his roommate, no matter how deep in his subconscious.
He wondered if he should tell Enjolras.
Soon, he promised himself as he stared out the window into the night sky. He could hear the howling of the angry gales, even if he could see nothing through the darkness. When the right moment arises.
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.

A horrible thought struck Grantaire.
What if the one he loved didn't feel the same way? What if Enjolras just wanted to remain friends? They'd both already gone through too much... They could not stand to lose each other. Not now. Not anymore. 
“If I hear of a good opportunity during this summer, you know, I’ll write you,” he had said. The savateur could not fail to hear the faint note of hope in his voice- the foolish man. He only nodded in response.  
A noble spirit of such quality, furthermore, would not return from the war unless a glorious death bestowed favours upon him; unless he came across the absolute, duty, liberty. And thus, he would die like the hero he was... It was crystal clear for Grantaire that, for all the short time that both of them had spent together, one day the glorious and beautiful death of his beloved, shining alone, on his own, like an apotheosis, from the height of a barricade, while further down and away the others would waver with fear and doubt painted on their faces... would never give him the intimacy of his visions to aspire to put a heart upon that face, but that moment would rather be etched as if flashed by lightning in the mind's eye of the artist, filling his fancy with lurid nightmares ere it was utterly quenched... due to the only one he loved having left everything else in exchange for a death that was glorious, and Grantaire would die alone!
Always a rejected sidekick, always spurned by the one he loved, the dark lush would often say to himself in his cups: "Quel beau marbre!"

When he opened the door to the room they shared one evening, Enjolras didn’t see Grantaire, but then he heard the sound of splashing behind the bathroom door. With a sigh of relief he sat down at his desk, glad to be alone in the bedroom for a bit. He took out the short-answer handout he had gotten from history class earlier that day and began to fill the paper with everything he remembered from the lecture, checking his notes as he went. The assignment was only a few questions, and he had finished the handout when he heard the water shut off in the bathroom. Soon after, the door opened and Grantaire was walking out into the room clutching a white towel around his waist, as Enjolras watched from the corner of his eye.

He was surprised to find, now that he was able to study him, that Grantaire looked like a man, not just a schoolboy. He had noticeable stubble on his cheeks, whiskers and all, while Enjolras couldn’t have grown any if he tried. He had hair on his chest, where Enjolras had none. And he had a dark trail leading down his belly beneath the towel, where Enjolras only had a scant amount of blond hair, so wispy that it was invisible, upon his own solar plexus. Grantaire said nothing to him, going to his drawer to look for clothes. 'Why didn’t you take any with you in there?' Enjolras thought as he watched him dig through an underwear drawer with his back to him. His body looked surprisingly athletic, something Enjolras hadn’t expected to be underneath his unkempt clothing and slouching posture. After all, the Marseillais was so profficient at both savate and singlesticks! He was just studying his broad shoulders when suddenly the towel dropped, and Enjolras saw a little more than he expected as Grantaire stepped into a pair of culottes, unaware that Enjolras was watching.

Enjolras quickly turned his face away, his cheeks burning up, attempting to push the image of Grantaire’s naked body out of his head. 'I usually change in the bathroom,' he wanted to say out loud, to give him the hint that he should too. Was it childish of him to ask for such a thing? He decided not to speak up, though, not wanting to let Grantaire know he had seen anything out of the ordinary.

There was silence between them the rest of the night. Grantaire, now clothed in torn shirt and culottes, sat on his bed to read one of his assignments, and Enjolras took his turn in the shower, pointedly carrying his change of clothes into the bathroom with him. When he returned he curled up in bed with his own book to read, and after some time, realizing that Grantaire had put his away and was lying staring at nothing, Enjolras decided it might as well be time for bed. He set the book on his desk and leaned over to turn off the kerosene lamp, leaving them in darkness.

The dark-haired artist swayed closer and Enjolras almost gagged at the intensely alcoholic breath that was blown into his face, but the fair leader held his composure, knowing that his nighttime would be easier if the lush drifted to sleep on his own, rather than being incensed with him and watchful of his every move.

Sick at heart, stomach churning with hurt and uneasiness, Grantaire turned and went inside his own bed in their garret, 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.

So Grantaire put on his most fashionable clothes (clothes that, alas, didn’t quite fit as well as they used to, thanks to Grantaire’s less-regular bouts at fencing and singlesticks and savate and tennis, a lapse he hardly noticed since he returned from the Midi), and went once more to his older friends' gatherings.

Springtime passed away, and summer after it, in its turn (and most of the students left the capital for cooler coastal regions, including Enjolras and Combeferre for their native Camargue, Courfeyrac for his native Gascony...), and when autumn came with the rentrée, and Enjolras in tow, to a lonely Grantaire who definitely preferred Paris to Marseille and had stayed in the capital in spire of the heat, but still felt that something was missing... it seemed to the savateur that he had never been so happy as he was here, in his little townhouse with the low eaves and thick, warped glass windows, surrounded by his art and with his fair marble Apollo by his side, no matter how much Enjolras detached himself.

And then, just as autumn began drawing to a close, after a number of glasses, Grantaire had to concede that he was right: "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. And so it happened on a day when autumn chilled the air that, 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. 
“I’m not even gone yet—“ Grantaire tells Enjolras, grip loose around the neck of the bottle of Marie Brizard. “Only half the bottle yet, I’m fine, I’m fine—“
The fair leader, standing upright by his side, had lifted his fair, austere visage, clean shaven and harsh like that of a Puritan. "Grantaire!" he had sounded quite cross, "couldn't you quaff your liquor elsewhere, further from here? This is a time and place for ivresse, not for ivrognerie! Do not dishonour the barricades of freedom!"
Those words had had a singular effect upon the Marseillais; it was as if he had received a glass of crushed ice right across the face. He had seemed to have surreptitiously sobered up and, prodding his elbows on the table, he had looked at Enjolras with a pout full of unexpressable tenderness:
"Ple-e-eashe... lemme shleep here..."
"Go to sleep elsewhere. No matter if it's another café; I know well you can fend for yourself and know the way to our garret and to the lecture hall..." Enjolras had ranted, with a piercing stare and his palms on his hips.
Still Grantaire, tender troubled glazed hazel eyes fixed upon him, had replied: 
"Lemme shleep here, mon Ennj... lemme shleep until I die..."
Enjolras had regarded him with a disdainful look of scorn:

"Grantaire, you are incapable of believing, of thinking, of wanting, of wishing, of living, and of dying!"
And the lush had replied, in a deep hoarse voice:
"Tu verras..."
He swayed closer and Enjolras almost gagged at the intensely alcoholic breath that was blown into his face, but the fair leader held his composure, knowing that his leadership on the barricades would be easier if the lush drifted to sleep on his own, rather than being incensed with him and watchful of his every move.
As Enjolras turned his back upon him, Grantaire had slurred, or rather lollygagged, some more inintelligible words. As Enjolras shut the backroom door as he left, Grantaire's head had fallen heavily on the table; his fair deity having rudely and brusquely pushed him back into intoxication.

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, puffing little clouds into his cupped palms. To stave off the bitter cold, another round of spirits would be needed. And thus, he took forth a glass and poured himself a drink to get some warmth inside him. Not only did he need strong drink to warm himself from within, and took a swallow to warm himself up, 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... Poor Enjolras, having had to deal with the over-masculine creep whose oily black hair and impossible attitude were renowned throughout the lecture halls and the arrondissement. And yet there were many girls who admired the ground Enjolras walked on, thinking him a god amongst mortal men. Which suited him perfectly as this was most surely Enj's opinion of himself also. If one drink helped, then two ought to help twice as much, thought he, and poured himself another. A drink is a great comfort, and two are even better... but three, to someone like Grantaire? 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... Grantaire did not want to think about his months, years, lustrums at home in the Midi, he did not want to remember anything that he had seen, that he had heard and spoken of, that he had borne witness to, that he had experienced. In the thrall of whatever drug within his reach, those bitter painful memories became wispy and intangible. Then he rolled his bright hazel eyes with ecstasy, as the last drop trickled down his gullet. The effects weren’t as strong, now he was used to most strong drinks that 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. A drink is a great comfort, and two are even better... but three, to someone like Grantaire? 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, taking huge gulps followed by loud gulps which resulted from the quenching of his empty thirst; he swallowed the precious liquors down to the last drop, until the strong eau-de-vie and brandy he had downed finally (finally!) went to the young man's head and made him stupid -though, sadly, not exhilarated-. Somehow, two drinks had turned into three, and three into... twelve. Now the room was spinning as he tried to rise up. At last, his head began to feel heavy; and soon the drink made him so sleepy that he sank gently over, 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, with a full stomach and head swimming, drunk on sorrow and on wine and eau-de-vie, 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 cats 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.
But these are not things he can share with a child; the last is not something Grantaire would share with anyone—
Grantaire shares all of what he has left to give in the face of grief and it is not enough, it will never be enough. Grantaire was a drunk, and a foolish one at that. Foolish and drunk and in love—intoxicated on both liquor and despair. 
Rêveries, and nothing more. Forever beyond his reach. 


We French people in general are sensitive to beauty, more sensitive than the subjects in other kingdoms, I think. We love a fetching face especially, but we also admire a rosy sunset, a sweet scent, a fine singing voice. And when we’re not pleased, we’re displeased. 

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 felt heavy as it gradually declined, and he fell into a deep sleep. Somehow, two drinks had turned into three, and three into... twelve. Now the room was spinning as he tried to rise up. 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 gently yet heavily out of his seat and lay prone, stretched along the floor. His eyes shut and he fell asleep, staggering slightly ere he collapsed. 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. In sleep there is no thirst to feel, and no sorrow either, but still dreams can mirror simultaneously in the flesh and blood.

In Grantaire's wet dreams, Enjolras is carrying him home, the liquor in his body too much for his broken heart to handle. He eased his coat from his shoulders and began untying his cravat. His fingers brushed against Grantaire’s chin, rasping against the stubble that always grew there by this point in the evening, and Grantaire felt his face heat. He smiled down at Grantaire in a way that made his stomach twist with something that was half guilty arousal and half unease, and let go of Grantaire’s cravat.
Perhaps he hadn’t made himself clearly understood? “I’m leaving it on,” he told the other man. “I plan to sleep in my clothes, like the dissipated layabout I am. It will save me dressing again in the morning.”

Right before he became completely senseless, he quietly wished upon a star the same words he had lolled, in too slurred a tone, to the leader as the latter left the Musain: that he might be able to either become stronger and make his heart unbreakable, or forget Enjolras entirely...  

Sometimes, secrets have a power over us that we can only dispel by saying them out loud, even if no one's listening.

He let the draught drag him under and wished desperately that he might be permitted never to awaken.

Little by little, he began to come to his senses with a pounding headache, right before sunrise; his head throbbing with pain and his throat parched with thirst, all the strength sapped from his limbs. 
Silence. Grantaire blinked several times -- he was awake, finally. The room was sideways -- very well; his head lay on the table, his face partially obscured by his own arm.

Why was it so quiet? Grantaire suddenly remembered the leader's piercing stare framed in cascades of golden light, last thing he remembered before the all-encompassing darkness of the drunken slumber that had overtaken him the day before. 
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... he shook his and then, an early snowflake that was falling outside, or a spark from the flames in the quinquet, or a shooting star that fell from the skies, 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, now glowing a bright, baleful peridot green... and in the end became a lovely, regal-looking lilywhite young lady, tall and of slender figure, all dressed in a thin green kirtle as green as poison, glittering like peridot, and composed of trillions of little leaves linked together, dotted with wilted wildflowers here and there; her head covered and coiffed in a crown of ivy and maidenhair. The snowflake or spark or shooting star, whatever it might be, had grown larger and larger, until it became the figure of a young woman, taller than Enjolras, 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 icing sugar or Carrara marble, her green veins seen through the lilywhite, icy cold skin that seemed to shine like moonlight, glittering to the point of dazzling his eyes; yet she was alive, and, in the middle of that translucent crystal, her eyes glowed poison-green 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, her graceful frame didn't seem to be walking, but rather soaring slightly above ground, which made her appear even more ethereal.
She was dignified and incredibly beautiful, so delicate and elegant and gentle, dazzling and graceful with thick chestnut hair and beautiful green eyes; she was stunning but ostensibly made of ice or sugar or marble—shining and glittering ice, or icing sugar, or Carrara marble, dark green veins through translucent skin and all -- and yet she was alive; her eyes sparkled and shone like bright first-magnitude stars in the darkest of winter skies, but there was neither peace nor warmth nor kindness 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, that he shook his head to rouse himself, she nodded at the threshold, then lowered her gaze towards him and raised a left hand, as delicate as a lily, to greet him; beckoned with her hand, just like an invitation for him to come to her.
Faint green light swirled from her fingertips, passing through the crack in the door and floating towards its unassuming victim; the savateur felt a tinging sensation up his spine and gasped, crashing on the floor.
She nodded towards the threshold and waved her hand. He was somewhat alarmed, but curious, and it seemed that he heard her speak his name in a sultry yet childishly whimsical Voice that lit a spark deep inside him, making him want to obey her wishes.
Hearing that voice, honeyed but deep and practically purring, Grantaire sat up immediately, ignoring the pains that shot through his back, his neck, his head.
Grantaire was no fool; he would not need to be told twice. A grin quirked at his lips as he felt a shift in his emotions, like his luck was finally turning around. This maiden could bring him happiness as he'd never imagined!

She had been wandering all over Montmartre for days without finding the right sort of heart, and she was starved for a good show.  Then one day-the autumn equinox it was- as silent flurries of leaves fell, at last she saw her chance. Two men walked beside each other through the streets; their breath in puffs as they spoke about meaningless things. She stood there watching the two men, and she whistled a warning, but the men ignored her.  That was the trouble with humans-they never paid attention.

On first glance, if you were a stupid faery who didn’t know any better, you might have thought that the man with golden hair, hard eyes, porcelain skin, and a careful mouth, was the icy one. He certainly seemed as cold as the wintry air.  But the Green Faery could feel the fire of the man’s heart; his love burned hot. It was well tended. No, he loved few, but when he did love, he loved passionately, and his heart would never turn to ice. But the other man with raven hair and glittering eyes and sun-kissed skin; his heart was dark with love hidden away and shut up in shadows. 

The golden man was a revolutionary leader surnamed Enjolras and his bright-eyed friend was a savateur and visual artist surnamed Grantaire. The two of them were talking about classical myths as they walked through the twilit arrondissement on their way home from the lecture halls. The darker man could hold the conversation without thinking much about it, or feeling much about it. He hadn’t felt much of anything at all since Enjolras had told him that General Lamarque's state of health was getting worse. He was neither happy nor sad nor angry. It was a thing that would happen, and neither one would do nothing to stop it.  The world was a mean place that Grantaire feared, and the best one could do was distract oneself from time to time with liquor or dancing. He even suspected there was a man who Enjolras might love, and that was fine. It was better after all. There could be an even better scenario. It was crystal clear for Grantaire that, for all the short time that both of them had spent together, one day the glorious and beautiful death of his beloved, shining alone, on his own, like an apotheosis, from the height of a barricade, while further down and away the others would waver with fear and doubt painted on their faces... would never give him the intimacy of his visions to aspire to put a heart upon that face, but that moment would rather be etched as if flashed by lightning in the mind's eye of the artist, filling his fancy with lurid nightmares ere it was utterly quenched... due to the only one he loved having left everything else in exchange for a death that was glorious! So Grantaire would do his daily routine everyday, or maybe someday he would get a chance to do something more fun. Eventually he would grow old alone and die... until one day liquor or whatever poison would take its toll, and Grantaire would die alone. And if he felt desolate inside, well that was life. One had to get by, and when a person was as afraid of something as Grantaire was, there was usually a very good reason. So he listened closely to fear.

The poor innocent soul, light-headed since he had awakened, 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 and stared at her like a man out of his wits 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 glassy peridot eyes, that pierced one with an incessant flashing green glare, were fixed upon and burned into his own, as if searching into his very soul. As if she had torn his ribcage open, exposing his heart and all its fiery passions to the faint light and the cold wintry air of the Right Bank in that bleak witching hour, while she stood watching him, calculating. The moment his hazel eyes met her dark green ones, he felt something in him lock. Like his whole body was frozen and he was under her control. A spell by her beauty. And she was beautiful. Unlike, and yet like, Enjolras. He struggled to be. She was perfect. Everything a person should be. 
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 glowing the same bright, baleful 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. Since the cup was made of fey crystal, the first drops had immediately evaporated as they fell therein, and that vapour took on strange abstract shapes, like spirals and tendrils. 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. I say this is a precious drink, for not in vain have I had to pour my own blood herein, so that the draught turns as sharp as a two-edged sword blade. This elixir assuages every pain, even life's greatest tragedies and heartbreaks, cures all disease, and crystallises for life the sweet delights of youth... and it gives you really amazing dreams. Drink, my warrior, and forget all your sorrows..." And her voice as she spoke was as sweet as the sweetest song, 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.

The Lady laughed: the richest, most musical laugh you can imagine. As a matter of fact, he had never heard Enjolras laugh, and had been missing that sound for as long as he had known the fair leader.

She looked up at Grantaire. “Are you interested in it, too? I can invite you along if you’re curious. We’ve got quite a lot of the stuff.”

“Sure, I’ll join you,” allowed Grantaire, always willing to try something new, even if he didn’t know what was exactly being offered to him, “the dreams sound like fun, after all, and I’ve quaffed in plenty.”

“They’re very... disorienting, the first time,” cautioned she, but only in order to entice him further. "Not, mind you, that it was very unpleasant,” she added hastily, “only quite unnerving at first, if you are not expecting it. Too much of it does things to your mind.”

“Then it certainly sounds worth at least a try,” agreed Grantaire. “As for trying, and not liking it, well... you could take a pretty girl home and bed her, but if she isn’t quite satisfactory, you don’t have to keep her around, after all. Just leave her for another man who’ll like her better. Just the same with a wine you don’t like or a liquor that isn’t quite right, either. It’s only a plant sap, or your blood as a sap, after all -- what harm can it do to try? Besides, I should like to see what sort of dreams it produces; I’ve met Marie Brizard all too many times, and sometimes one hopes for something a little completely different.”

“Ah! I like that! You’ve quite the way with words, my friend,” quoth she, knowing all too well that Grantaire was not yet acquainted with the powers of this mysterious substance, but that he was equally enthusiastic about experiencing it for himself. “There, it’s settled! I have waited a long time for someone dear like you," she whispered softly to him in the darkness, her touch as possessive as it had been in his wildest dreams, 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. 

She offered him another cup with another warm liquid, so he took a sip. He was parched with thirst, but the drink tasted awful. The young man didn’t want to be rude, and his thirst overpowered him as well, so he pretended he liked it and finished it all. Weirdly enough, it did help him feel less foggy. The woman played with her long, dark brown hair and rose her eyebrow expectantly when he was staring at her over the cup, one draught from which, as she averred, would make him cease to love and cease to feel such sorrow. "Wait, my star-crossed warrior; you will be happy, you will dream and forget... yet your awakening will not come with a smile as until now..."

“Excuse me, but - where am I? And who are you?”

She didn’t seem a bit fazed by his question. Perhaps a little sadness crossed her gentle features. Grantaire noted he couldn’t tell what her age was, though he was sure she was older than him. There was a strong mature air around her, the way she carried herself so elegantly and spoke with loud clear voice. 

"You’ll soon be home of course! And I’m your most beloved mistress. You just came from your studies and the journey took a toll on you. You slept for half a day!”

The way she said it, it felt right, so he didn’t question it anymore. But hours of sleep rushed him to a bathroom, where he relieved himself (in a chamber pot that all the lieutenants of the secret society shared). She was laughing all the time, waiting at the door and chatting about people and things he didn’t remember. When he came out, he got increasingly nervous and thus the lady rested a hand gently on his shoulder. She gave him courage to ask once more.
"So... who is - everyone - exactly?”

“Hm. So you were more tired than we initially thought.”

She hummed in contemplation. 

"If this draught can make me feel better... So much as safely I may drink... Feel a tickle in my throat myself." Such was his thirst that he did not doubt for an instant, and that he could hardly wait. 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 and blinking his eyes 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!"
"Fool! 'Tis not," the Green Faery replied, 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." The way she said it, it felt right, so he didn't question it anymore.
Once more, she held the cup below her slash wound and refilled it. The liquid in the cup began to hiss, to boil, to flame, and sparkle and flash (just like the brandy on a crêpe suzette), a confused mass of voices issued from it, but confused as they were, if Grantaire were clearer of head, he would have understood each of them, so sharpened would be his senses otherwise, he would have heard each and every voice of his former life, and be forced to listen attentively. Alas, such was not the case.
As the lady bent down over the cup, the splendour of the flaming sparkling draught was reflected by her face, which appeared lighted up with a peridot-green quivering light. She looked fearful and beautiful, sinister and majestic, like a queen or czarina of the flaming spirits of her cup. Now a wilder foaming, flaming, hissing followed: a chaotic confusion of all the voices within, rendering it impossible to understand a single one of them clearly; then an awful sound like a scream of death (if Grantaire were sober, he'd fancy hearing his own voice in agony, yelling louder and shriller than ever heretofore), and all was still. The flames quivered and died away. All was dark around.
"Drink," commanded the lady in green, and the savateur made an effort to approach his lips to the cup, while she bent his heavy head down to it, and he drank. The draught that had just before been flaming, was icy cold now, and as he emptied the cup, he felt a deadly chill passing over his whole self, stealing into his innermost heart, and felt all the glow and fire of his soul, all passion, dying slowly away, felt all consciousness of burning pain and inner torture escaping, eyelids closed, everything disappeared from his thoughts as his head swam dizzily, the bright lights and smiling face dancing before him.
"Alea iacta est!" said the Marseillais, tossing to the floor the little crystal glass whose content he had just quaffed to the last drop; the tears and the emptiness in his chest eventually subsided, though he continued to swallow repeatedly, as if he'd swallowed something unpleasant and it had lodged in his throat.
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; he first felt it as a tickle in the back of the throat, then his mouth went dry and he found himself surrendering all of his strength to exhaustion and, though the draught was icy, feeling far hotter blood course through his entrails and then through his veins. Never had he tasted a liquid like that, and the sensation, the feeling, that it left inside him could not seem more delicious; it was truly scrumptious indeed: he saw the liquor lie glowing and creaming in the bowl, like melted peridot mixed with galaxies; he inhaled its sweet bewildering odour and, scarce knowing what he did, the young man raised it to his lips and drank deeply. In a moment, he was electrified with delight, a rapturous tranquillity pervading his whole frame; he felt intoxicated with pleasure which sprang from no cause and tended to no object, yet was ready to be reflected and multiplied from all objects around: he seemed incapable of thinking, and happier than any positive thought could make him. All thought of Enjolras, all thought of the past, all thought of the future, were completely suspended: he only knew of all these glad sensations ecstatic like never before.

The minute the fiery liquid coursed down his throat, he was addicted. The more he drank of that, the more he wanted to drink; a strange new thirst, a craving unfamiliar, had entered his body with the green liquid that drifted through his body, looking for and searching for and finally finding his heart. The sinister draught had already entered and stained his heart, which would soon irremediately be quenched and hardened and turn out like a crazy diamond. He felt no more pain, but the fey blood was there, within his system, 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, suddenly wishing for a refill and shaking the empty cup in her direction, to show her that it was empty and that she had to refill it. "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!" he raised his cup.
So thirsty was he that he felt he had never tasted such a refreshing or such a strong draught, one so warming or fiery, 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, he felt himself reanimated with a heat like none before; a glowing thrill of happiness swept over him, as if every sorrow and vexation had utterly 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!" 
No sooner had he swallowed but that mouthful when he felt himself restored and reanimated —he recalled that he was young, strong, alert, powerful— just as if he had slept and drunk his fill; though it seemed to him, every now and then for a single instant, as if he had drunk too much. The joy of living was in his blood, he felt as if everything belonged to him by right... why should he worry? Everything is for us to enjoy and revel in! The stream of life is a stream of elation; thus let us ride on it, let ourselves float on its surface, no matter if the undertow may tear us deeper in...  He felt a glow of joy pass through his veins, and, as he let the draught plunge deeper, he fancied that his right hand was grasped by another. And he put his strong arms around her, and gazed into her wonderfully clear eyes, no longer as dark as they had seemed before, when he was sober. It was only for a second, and in this —who could explain it clearly?— was it the spirit of life or of death that filled him? Was he raised on high or did he sink down into the depths of the lethal abyss, deeper and even deeper?
"The joy I feel has made me thirsty; but I dare drink nothing but this... How then am I to live?"
And his pallid, lilywhite, dry cheekbones regained colour for that 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 upon his chest.
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, telling him that his own cold steel flask would make the liquid lose its spell and turn as weak as spring water; he thanked her for the phial and put it carefully in his pocket, to use it as a cure for whatever troubles might cross his path. And, as she left and shut the door behind her, a loud clank could be heard outside, as if a great feathered wing, like those of a pegasus or alicorn, was passing before the door and grazing it with its wing-tip, so that the panel struck the lush in the chest, knocking him to the ground. For a second, it also seemed to him that a huge black, winged shadow was passing by the shutting doorway, and as if it flew past the window outside.

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 the savateur 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 inside them, anywhere 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. 
It was more than one drop of this long-forgotten shimmering liquid that Grantaire had received, that had found its way not only into his throat, but even lodged itself right into his heart, embedding itself so deep that nothing could remove it.
For all the rest of the night, feeling his elation gone, feeling weary and drowsy indeed, he slept as soundly as a dethroned king on the eve of execution, dreaming of nothing but his poison-green draught. The time that passed between the hours, and even during the hours, seemed to both drag by and fly by all at once. Grantaire had very peculiar impressions of everything — just as he had been warned of beforehand, before he had even taken the first drop — and had very hazy but extremely colourful memories of things that he said, did, saw. Though his remembrance of exact events was extraordinarily spotty even if he concentrated, the plain fact of the matter was that the very act of inhaling the bittersweet draught, and allowing the drug to play havoc with his senses, provided him with a very welcome escape from the unpleasant and very real memories of recent occurrences. 

That first night with the drug, he remembered the next morning having a very long and involved conversation with the potted plant he sprawled out next to on the floor, about something he wanted to do with the plant trying to talk him out of it, and the drink only encouraging him. He couldn’t remember what the topic of discussion was, after the drug had worn off, however. The half-formed memory bewildered and baffled him, but after only this first night, it only made him curious enough to return again, to knock back the draught some more.

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. (No foul play discovered, although why such a healthy youngish man had keeled over would remain a mystery for the ages.) It took several slowly-dragging hours for him to awaken, and when he awoke it was not only with the usual pounding headache. Then, once he had come to, everything was denatured to him. The light hurt his eyes, the screams of delighted gamins pierced his ears, and, most relevantly, it hurt in there, in the left side of the chest, where the heart sat. 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 the trappings 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 which was 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 own feet. 
"What am I supposed to show you?" the leader asked, dejected; he drooped his hands like a loose doll and frowned. “Show me! Make me understand!” The bitter laughter didn’t fit on the blond's pretty face at all. He narrowed his eyes, grinning mockingly. Inviting the lush to fuel his ridiculing more. Grantaire hated it; hated, no, loathed to argue with him. It made his head throb, and put a painful pressure on his chest as well.
"Grand... R?" Enjolras asked, suddenly afraid, and tugged at his wrist to let him see.
And his roommate drew a sharp breath as if he had been struck in the chest, clutching the left side thereof, and his tankard fell from his hand as he breathed in a quick sharp gulp of autumn air. "My chest hurt for a moment... Something's the matter with my heart... something has entered inside me, and it has penetrated all the way down into my heart," he said faintly, wincing all the while. And then, soon after, "I can't stand the light..." He pushed away the lily-hand that clutched his wrist and shoved the other one off his shoulder. "Let go! I’m fine now.”
Enjolras, in spite of being most usually detached, tilted the lush's head back, pried his eyelids open, and peered into his eyes as he blew into them, but could see nothing but the usual bloodshot vessels and glazed irises, betraying that it was ostensibly a mere discomfort of the morning after... "Does it hurt?" he asked, a bit awkwardly.
Grantaire squinted, blinked, adjusted his eyes to the light, scrambled up to his feet. Then he jerked back in surprise at the leader's voice. It was bitter and hard, sharp and lifeless.
"I'm all right, je crois que c'est parti... That's enough!" came at last a reply like the cracking of a whip. The other student was like as a doll, mute and didn’t manage to say anything when Grantaire made that riposte, shoving him away with a vicious swing of the left arm. Just like shoving a ragdoll aside. What a horrible bad place was anywhere near Enjolras for him to stay at, what a person the leader had become... Cheap luster of his uniform resembling tinfoil, beauty of a tin soldier instead of a human flesh. What a nightmare has this become! Like his eyes. What had happened to his eyes? They were still the blue he’d always known them to be, but they were glacial, icy. Cold.
“What’s wrong? Like you care,” he snapped. His chest heaved, his lip curled. His hair stood on end, the pitch black waves a dishevelled mess, as if he’d been ripping and tearing at it for hours. 
And thus, instead of thanking the one who had just blown into his eyes and who seemed to take so much part in his suffering... when Grantaire 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. Que voulez-vous? That was the effect of the fey blood. As euphoric as the draught was, it made reality seem that much more grim and impossible to bear.
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 phial full of a bright green liquid and kept on perusing those notes. Never before had he tried a drink with so special a taste, nevermore had he tasted a nectar so scrumptious. He liked it so much that he repeated it once or twice. Maybe it made him feel like he was stalking enemies. Maybe it made him feel alive. Like the future wasn't closed off. That his problems were insignificant, and he could rise above them. Maybe it made him feel like he could do something different... even be something different.
The time that passed between the drug parties, and even during the drug parties, seemed to both drag by and fly by all at once. Grantaire had very peculiar impressions of everything — just as he had been warned of beforehand, before he had even taken the first drop -- and had very hazy but extremely colourful memories of things that he said, did, saw. Though his remembrance of exact events was extraordinarily spotty even if he concentrated, the plain fact of the matter was that the very act of inhaling the bittersweet draught, and allowing the drug to play havoc with his senses, provided him with a very welcome escape from the unpleasant and very real memories of recent occurrences. 
Grantaire did not want to think about his months, years, lustrums at home in the Midi, he did not want to remember anything that he had seen, that he had heard and spoken of, that he had borne witness to, that he had experienced. In the thrall of the heart-freezing drug, those bitter painful memories became wispy and intangible.

He was ill for three or four days, during which, quite unexpectedly, in spite of his state of health, he frequented the lecture halls of the Faculty. The lecturers 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, already clouded his senses, his heart hardened and frozen, for the lecture. He couldn’t remember what the topic of discussion was, after the drug had worn off, however. The half-formed memory bewildered and baffled him, but after only this first night, it only made him curious enough to return again, to retrace the experience once more. 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; his mind, so lucid and sharp until that point, had become blunt and confused. 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 last evening, and five or six evenings more, at the Musain, the others realised that Grantaire behaved no longer like himself. He was no longer feeling ill-at-ease the least, in fact he seemed completely recovered, but the effect of the drug lingered within his system. 

Everything else changed in appearance, and that for the worse. The cheerful fire in the quinquet shrivelled to cold embers under smoke-stained glass. The walls leaned, peeling paint, and the threadbare carpet revealed a splintered parquet floor. And his own heart felt as if it had frozen near solid. Some instinct told him that if he could only touch Enjolras, their mutual love might thaw the ice. But when he glanced across the way, he fell into such despair that the intrusive feeling was quenched as quickly as it had flared up.

One night when the hail was pattering against the windowpanes like a volley of grapeshot, 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-a'sh 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. It was not he himself that spoke, but the ice in his heart. 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 turned and 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. There's nothing the matter with me!" 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 just plain 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. Not only was he looking at the others like he wanted nothing more to do with them, his unexpected mood swings were frightening, and he was tearing the tricolore off the wall. And never in all their years of friendship had anyone heard the tone he was using now.

"Grand... R... que fais-tu? Eh... 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. He'd only kicked the map of France over and snorted: "Who needs ideals? They're useless and a waste of time. Why don't you find something better to do, Enjolras, like I have? Go learn to cook or something."
The whole backroom fell silent, in an ominous atmosphere of tension, until the savateur chided the others once more:
"Why shtill looking sho glum? Oh, if only you knew how shcary you are when you look like that! Et moi, 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! I've alweady told you that you're quite shcary...!" His expression was utterly blank, devoid of all emotion. There was no sparkle in those wide hazel eyes, the smallest flush in his rounded face drained. His mouth formed a hard line, and everyone else, even Enjolras, flinched reflexively. It was not Grantaire himself that spoke, but the ice in his heart. And, furious, he launched a powerful, disdainful kick that left a muddy footprint right in the middle of the map of Republican France. What a horrible bad place for him to stay at, what a person the leader had become... Cheap luster of his uniform resembling tinfoil, beauty of a tin soldier instead of a human flesh. What a nightmare has this become!
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 sword-cane 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, all transfixed by the change of heart that had just taken place within his new companion... 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 the others' solicitous concern by swearing that he had never felt better in his life, and that the intoxication was completely healed. "Bon, donc, je crois que c'est parti! No, I'm fine, really, I have not idea what that was but those pains are gone now." But it was not healed, and he was wrong, more wrong he could not be; whatever had entered into him, and penetrated all the way into his heart, was not gone at all. Too late! The pain had stopped now that it had settled, but the poison was very much still there.
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.
“It’s only fair, after all,” Grantaire chortled, “I don’t remember your name, either.” A pause. “Or, really, any of you, but I suppose that’s soon remedied, if we’re to be meeting again.”

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. Now he was railleur without being pleasant, sometimes brutal, and most frequently indifferent. He still had esprit to spare, indeed, but he did not use his wits for anything else than for enraging everyone, and his roommate first and foremost. 
Over the next few weeks, the relationship between the two of them steadily grew strained. Every time Enjolras tried to talk to him about his feelings, telling him that he should open up to them once more, he'd turned volatile. The last conversation had ended with a furious yell of "How could I have ever thought you were beautiful?" as he'd marched out and slammed the door. 
And it wasn't just the leader who was suffering. The others had told him of his moody silences and sharp retorts whenever they tried to talk to Grantaire to find out what was bothering him. It was as if he was a completely different person, they said, not the Grantaire they knew.
"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 sing a Marseillaise as a duet with me, or read some more of Euryalus and Nisus on their midnight raid to me." He knew that that was Grantaire's favourite story, as well as his own, and thought that maybe reading it, or sharing any other of the few favourite activities the two of them had in common, would bring his friend back to himself.
But Grantaire snorted derisively and went back to knocking back another draught from his phial, the liquor making his throat go pop and rise and fall steadily. Then, he licked his lips and incisors to taste the few drops that lingered upon them. "That story and 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? There is no difference at all between sins and virtues, and there is no reason for that you call patriotism, for war corrupts each and every nation to the core. Of course I agree with you and all of your cronies that freedom is nice... but how good is it when you are dead?" 
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.

The fair leader caught his elbow, making him break the rêverie he was lost in. They stumbled and the heavier savateur made Enjolras sway dangerously with his weight. They kept their balance only so so. Nothing could have prepared either one for what came next though.

"How are you so...?! You didn't learn anything from me properly!"

He stabbed his middle finger into Enjolras' chest, who didn’t know if the words or the gesture felt more like a dagger. Grantaire was furious and by each second he grew more agitated and made the leader recoil backwards awkwardly. He got him cornered and into a back corner of the lecture hall, far from the door. He grabbed his red waistcoat with both fits and leaned close in to Enjolras' face. He never saw the savateur so angry before and could barely hear what he was saying over his own heartbeat.

“I. Said. Go. Home. Leave me alone! You’re pathetic!”

The latter he shouted straight to Enjolras' face at point-blank range and shoved him hard, making the blond lose his balance completely. The fair leader fell down on the thick floor tiles, banged his head and ripped his right trouser leg on the knee. His face contorted from the pain and with thudding in his head he reached out to his knee to hold the bleeding scrape. When he focused a little bit and the momentarily nausea passed, he looked up above himself.

“Enj, I...”

And Grantaire stood rigid near him with a lost expression and looked like he couldn’t decide if he was sorry or not. As if he was fighting to aid Enjolras or storm away.

"Grand... R, what's going on? This isn't like you at all..."

And by the time he got home, his right leg was completely stiff with the frozen blood from the knee.

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 (he tore the books from the others' hands, saying that those stories were only good for dreamers, and that he himself was a realist, who was not amused anymore at all by such ridiculous hogwash), and that when he was told stories he'd always be if-ing and but-ing; what's more, no matter the occasion – he not only argued with, but even mocked the narrators themselves; and made fun of poor Courfeyrac himself, mimicking his Gascon accent in voice impressions of an exaggerated patois and poking fun at his foolishness. Quite soon, what he did towards the Amis, Grantaire did as well for everyone else: 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 all the inhabitants in the arrondissement, and he stalked every person he mocked through the rues, whether Louison the barmaid with that oversized wart on her chin, old Madame Hucheloup's bristly moustache, Joly's tendency to check his heart-rate, Prouvaire's awkward tendency to blush until he turned like a peony... He was not afraid at all of counterfeiting the fair leader or any of his lieutenants, their speech, their quirks, and making everyone else laugh at the expenses of the one he was impersonating. All that was peculiar or disagreeable in a person he would imitate directly, all while stalking the victim of his raillery, and his were so well-made impressions that people would burst out laughing, and comment on his cleverness. Any quirk they had which was at least slightly bizarre or ridiculous, he counterfeited 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, able to zero in on and counterfeit so irreverently their quirks, had suddenly developed within him. While they were insulting pantomimes they were so cleverly done that everyone laughed a lot when they saw his impressions, saying: "Ce garçon est malin, il a de l'esprit. Il est très intelligent!" 
Soon he learned to mimic everyone in the whole street. Before long, Grantaire was able to walk and talk exactly like all the people living in the whole district and studying at the Faculty; soon he could imitate the way everyone in the whole arrondissement spoke or walked. He had a good eye for their little peculiarities and knew how to copy them; saw whatever was peculiar or silly about them and copied it. He knew how to zero in on and imitate anything odd or unappealing or eccentric about a person, until people began to say: "That boy has a good head on his shoulders, screwed on right! He's got a sharp head on him, has that lad!" A good reader of people and their faults, they said about him. Those who weren't horribly offended or irritated by the behaviour, anyway.
Later, Grantaire would strike only from behind, cutting to the quick all the flaws he would see, making mockeries of the virtues he once had lauded.
All that was peculiar or disagreeable in a person he would imitate directly, all while stalking the victim of his raillery, and others would comment on his cleverness. He did this so cleverly that it made everybody laugh, and before long he could mimic the walk and the talk of everyone who lived on that street. Everything that was odd or ugly about them, Grantaire could mimic so well that people said, "That boy has surely got a good head on 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; it was truly the coldness in his heart that made him act so cruelly when before he had been so kind and light-hearted.
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.
Then he went home and did not open his garret window for many days after that. "This precious liquor... it takes away all sense of toil and pain. To stave off the cold," he listlessly told the others. "I just see things differently now..."
He lost interest in the pastime of telling and listening stories, 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... as Combeferre felt the spectacles being torn from off his nose and ears, making him see everything through a haze. All the while Grantaire, after this sudden swipe, cruelly mocked Combeferre by donning his glasses, perching the pair of spectacles on the bridge of his own nose, adjusting them by the bridge of the glasses, and stalking him from behind, while grimacing and imitating his voice and copying the way he talked perfectly. He did such a good job of a Combeferre impersonation, speaking in mock Latinisms and all (he could do it just like Combeferre did and make nearly everybody laugh), that people would burst out laughing. The young scholar himself, however, put on the bravest of brave faces, while the leader was not the slightest amused, remaining as still and as pale as a marble statue.
Every Ami, every member of the ABC was painted lovingly in those early days, before Grantaire took to this strange liquor as a way of coping, before his pain grew too great to be beautiful any longer.
At Grantaire’s hands, in Grantaire’s eyes, all of those paintings were all beautiful once. The scars and the hurt were brushed away and made to glisten in Grantaire’s eyes. Enjolras was cold the way marble was cold, was warm the way that sunlight was warm, as opposed to the ice and the fire that live within him now.
Later, Grantaire would strike only from behind, cutting to the quick all the flaws he would see, making mockeries of the virtues he once had lauded. Day by day, week by week, and little by little, he changed into someone colder and more piercing, as autumn gradually gave way to winter. It seemed that the coldness in the air of the bleak seasons was seeping through layers of cloth, then through hairy skin and thick flesh, quenching the warmth in both his heart and his head.
That was not everything that the new Grantaire did, and there was not much left of his old self. He no longer made drawings or paintings, or the whimsical caricatures that had been the others' favourites. Instead, now everything seemed freakishly distorted to the lad, everything around him; everyone noticed the change in him, how he showed disrespect for his leader, poked fun at his friends, and played cruel pranks that caused those who knew him well great distress. Moreover, now Grantaire was not at all afraid of making piercing, snide remarks, this time of icy sarcasm, caustic, detached of joy; the taste for such critical self-expression had suddenly developed within him. As the days rolled past, he became a very bitter, very vindictive young man.
What must have been the strangest of it all, his pastimes, too, were now far more dangerous than they had been before; they became everything but sensible. 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 off out to the streets with rolled-up sleeves, in a passionate yearning, often even armed with a billiards cue held in the hand at the end of 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 was reckless, without regard for his safety and the others. People barely got out of his way and in the end they simply left, because no one wanted to argue with him. He didn’t seem to listen at all. He became super critical, restless, easily irritated at the world around him.
He would also gamble and cheat more frequently at écarté and at dominoes, risking the money Enjolras gave him (after Grantaire himself had spent his earnings from odd jobs away, as usual) and told him to be careful about. 
He didn't cover their plants against the cold or move the box indoors, either, and when the first frost came, they withered and died, and the fair leader tried not to notice, and told himself he didn't care. Sometimes the others saw Grantaire in the street with one wench or another, never the same one, and Enjolras told himself he didn't care about that, either. 
Moreover, the lush now listlessly ate little to no solid food, and lived solely upon that rapidly-ebbing enchanted liquor. The more he drank, the more he needed to drink. 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, the one who cared from him the most, and who still pitied him with all his heart and gave him a second chance--, if Grantaire himself 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.

The experience he had in dream after dream was far more interesting than reality itself. He remembered a girl -- long blonde hair (or was it darker?), arranged enchantingly to frame her face and shoulders -- beautiful, dressed in alluring clothes which had the most fantastic colours, colours which seemed to sing to him even as the girl smiled at him, kissed him, seduced him. This experience was so pleasant that he knew, absolutely was convinced, that this was the most wonderful substance he had ever encountered. 

Thus he allowed himself to consume as much as he was able -- often more each time than ever before -- and never even notice the effects it was having on the rest of his affairs. 

Grantaire did not want to think about his months, years, lustrums at home in the Midi, he did not want to remember anything that he had seen, that he had heard and spoken of, that he had borne witness to, that he had experienced. In the thrall of the heart-freezing drug, those bitter painful memories became wispy and intangible.

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.

For the rest of the day Grantaire did all he could to get away from Enjolras and the others. It looked like he was mad and closed into himself for some reason. And the others were breaking their minds over what could possibly have happened, looking for a reason how he could have gotten upset. It must have been his own fault.

Shoving out through the back door of the Musain, he rushed upstairs into the bathroom, twisting the copper taps until water swirled into the porcelain basin. He splashed water into his face once, twice, three times, but it wasn’t doing anything, wasn’t changing his blurred vision, or easing the panic that flowed through his veins.

Stalking into the bedroom he shared, he flung off his jacket and scarf, pulled his sweater over his head. His body shuddered; sweat broke out and pooled at the base of his spine, pearled on his forehead. His heart thudded, his brain felt like it was ready to explode into a thousand pieces. Dropping to the floor, he curled into a ball, rocking himself backwards and forwards as his body burned from the inside out.

Hate and fire and fury licked at his skin, burned his blood, and wormed its way into his heart. As his eyes closed, and his breathing laboured, the thoughts he’d had not twenty minutes before disappeared, to be replaced by something he never, ever thought he’d feel.

I couldn't so much as twitch without agony, and my throat was as raw as though I'd drunk broken glass, but of course that had nothing to do with anything truly being wrong. I suppose leaving me festooned with scars, and the sensation of lingering damage, would fit.

Soon the qualms ceased, and the depression gave way to sleep, and to shocking dreams; he was bound hand and foot, his ankles tied together and his wrists as well, behind his back, and he count not stir a limb, nor even slither forwards. Parched with thirst, he heard around him the gurgling of fountains he had not the power to reach; and though he thought he felt the spray of their waters sprinkling his face, still not a drop fell into his gaping and wide-stretched mouth; and he gasped and gasped to catch some, like a stranded fish drowning in air, until, maddened with the torment, he made one single violent effort, and, bursting his bonds, he found... what else could he find?

Through his haze, he could hear Enjolras at the window, shifting, scrabbling at the
dormant roses in the window box. His lip curled, and he snarled, his hazel eyes flashing coldly. What the hell was the stupid twat doing out there?

Dragging himself to his feet, oblivious to the sweat dripping from his body and wild look in his eyes, he slammed the shutters open, glaring across at a pale Enjolras where he stood, surprise and shock on his face, just inside the window.

“What’s wrong?” He could hear the quiver in the blond's voice, delighted in it, revelled in it.

“What’s wrong? Like you care.”

“Of course I do!" He saw Enjolras lean forwards, and his body moved without a thought. He reached towards his roommate, yanking on his queue, hard... strands like golden threads ripping from his scalp, and the fair leader bit his lips to swallow the pain. He wanted the blond to feel pain. Maybe, once upon a time, that would have affected him. Not anymore.

“Of course you don’t,” the savateur hissed. He pulled on that long golden hair again, so he was close enough to practically feel the shock in his roommate's eyes. "Monsieur 'too perfect for anyone and everything’ Enjolras. A glorious death will call your name from the barricades; your followers will expect an example, and their leader will give them; in his delirium he will surrender his body to the bullets, and his soul to liberty. Shining alone, on your own, like an apotheosis, from the height of a barricade, while further down and away the others waver with fear and doubt painted on their faces! Risking it all at one turn of pitch-and-toss, throwing yourself into certain harm's way, and death will envelop you like a halo of fire and blood; to death and glory you will also tear many of your followers along, as you disappear into the gunsmoke, the blood, and the panic that will then darken everything... We others would all have to retreat, and your heroism would be useless; right? Well, I don’t care anymore. I hate you, Enjolras. If I never see you for as long as I live, it will be too soon. You and your stupid waistcoat and your stupid queue. And your stupid flag and your stupid singing. And your stupid fucking revolution." He let go of Enjolras' hair and cupped his cheeks, the look in his no longer bloodshot or dilated eyes suddenly changing once more to one of crystal-clear lucidity. 

"For one thing - I dream. And when I dream, I am mad. Last night, for instance - I wasn't a man any longer... - tasting dust and blood in my mouth - dust and blood... And then I had hydrophobia - rabies - children scattered and fled as I came - men and women tried to shoot me - someone set down a great bowl of water for me and I couldn't drink. I couldn't drink..." Grantaire stood there, hands gripping the sill, his breathing heavy. Sweat dripped down his forehead, caused his shirt in shreds to stick wetly to his chest. He puffed out impatient without sparing his roommate a glance.

 He paused. "I woke up. And I knew it was true. I went over to the wash-stand. My mouth was parched - horribly parched - and dry. I was thirsty. But I couldn't drink, Enj... I couldn't swallow... Oh, Enj, I wasn't able to drink..." 
His hands were clenched on his knees. His face was thrust forwards, his eyes were half closed as though he saw something coming towards him.
"And there are things that aren't dreams. Things that I see when I'm wide awake. Spectres, frightful shapes. They leer at me. And sometimes I'm able to fly, to leave my bed, and fly through the air, to ride the winds - and fiends bear me company!" 
His eyes, the pupils widely dilated, stared into the sunshine. He leaned suddenly sideways as though collapsing.  
"Oh, there isn't any doubt. It's in my blood. It's my family heritage. I can't escape... I don't know. It isn't I who do these things - it's someone else who comes into me - who takes possession of me - who turns me from a man into a raving monster who wants blood and who can't drink water... There's someone in my head, but it's not me..." 
After a minute or two, Enjolras asked: "I still do not understand why you have not seen a doctor? After all, Joly is worried about your state, and Combeferre wonders what might have gotten into you..." 
The dark savateur shook his head, and the fair leader was left with a gaping mouth when the other man spoke up. "Don't you really understand? Physically I'm strong - like ever before. I might live for years - years - shut up between four walls! That I can't face! It would be better to go out altogether... There are ways, you know. I'd rather take my own way out!" 

Then he turned, walked to the bedstead and settled very comfortably into the covers. His hand draped over the backrest and he patted with the other on the area next to him. “Ah! Of course I do. Now won’t you sit down? I’m bored and could use some company.”

Enjolras was momentarily stunned and it took him a moment to react, but he sat down in haste and high strung. It was almost as if Grantaire was the same old one. Playful… why didn’t he say anything before? Perhaps the effect of whatever drug he had taken into his system was already wearing off?

“Now, do you want it or not?” He flipped his fringe to the side, it falling back into place regardless and his heavy lidded eyes roamed over Enjolras in a way they had never done before. He looked defiantly at the fair leader, who did not response to the challenge. Still he had to admit that Enjolras was incredibly handsome. Just like a prince in a storybook they read as kids. Somehow unreal and unbelievable. And he couldn’t put his finger on it.
"Or… did you come for something else? Perhaps? Hm.” The dark savateur leaned towards him, his gloved hand touching lightly on the blond's lower jaw and his face was so close that Enjolras could feel his breath. Something to bring glimmered in a bloodshot hazel eye but the fringe fanned over it so Enjolras didn’t catch a good view of it. All was happening so fast, he just arrived and gotten to know Grantaire's state of health after all and… now he was… The lips on his own felt cold, startling Enjolras, but it was the tongue swiping over them and trying to breach inside that made him part with Grantaire. “Wait… I…,” the fair leader protested weakly, the wet mouth over his jaw and neck sending shivers down his spine. It was so wrong! 

He swayed closer and Enjolras almost gagged at the intensely alcoholic breath that was blown into his face, but the fair leader held his composure, knowing that his nighttime would be easier if the lush drifted to sleep on his own, rather than being incensed with him and watchful of his every move.

“Perhaps, you’d like to take home a more memorable souvenir? Yes?” The gloved hand pushed up one end of the scarlet waistcoat without much care and mapped his side, trying to pull his shirt out. “Wow, Enj. You’ve grown up so much! Look at those thighs, I wonder what all you could do with those. Jump? Or other nice things?” Grantaire gave up in his haste on the shirt and simply grabbed the blond and pushed him over himself. The shifting position and loss of balance startled Enjolras to an action and he was pushing the savateur's greedy hands away. The other man didn’t seem to catch the cue and simply found another place to grope the blond at at. “Stop it! I said stop!” His glare was so furious, after the measured calm of his voice, that Enjolras reeled backwards. "How could you?" Grantaire snarled. He was flushed, colour hectic along his cheekbones and at the tips of his ears, hands white-knuckled.

“What’s the matter? Not in the mood? Oh, don’t lie, I could see how you lust after me, the minute you came here. You want a little fuck! Say it!” The pretty lips whispered into his conch-shell ears like spiders weaving a sticky web around his mind, they didn’t fit into his mouth and made Enjolras retract in horror. He scrambled to his feet and stared horrified at the stranger he once knew. Grantaire lounged on the bedstead, his fingers wiping his own saliva and his calm disinterested voice graced the blond's hearing. At least it felt like the audience he was granted turned out to be over. “Well, you grew up fine, yes. But you are no prince, no archangel, no Apollo. Was an interesting experience. Perhaps some other time.” 

And then he jumped up as if nothing happened and fixed the state of his coat. Now Enjolras was barely done composing himself and anger filled him, bitter disappointment and pity. This was worse than Grantaire not remembering him, worse than not caring at all. The Marseillais found him disgusting. Perhaps there was no hope anymore and he turned into something beyond the savateur’s reach, but still… 

“Grantaire, is this true?” he asked, trying to keep his tone as neutral as possible. Perhaps there was some mistake, some misunderstanding that Grantaire was now too embarrassed or afraid to correct. Grantaire was not entirely unappealing, could be infuriatingly charming at times despite his slovenly habits and irregular features, and he himself was both charismatic and handsome. Perhaps it had not been as one-sided as Courfeyrac believed, and his friend had drawn the wrong conclusion after witnessing a lover’s quarrel, or--

Grantaire nodded mutely, still not meeting his eyes.

“How-“ Enjolras’s voice caught in his throat, and he swallowed. No, he thought. No, surely not. “Grantaire, this isn’t like you!” The words burst out, impelled by a sick sense of betrayal; by Grantaire, by his own psyche, which found the entire idea of his colleagues engaged in the act of manly love much too intriguing. No, not love. If it were true, it had been some sick parody of the act of love. “Why would you make up such offensive lies? I know you’ve argued, I know you don’t believe in what we’re doing, but this? How can you say such things?” He knew, even as he said it, that Grantaire would not make such claims baselessly – what man would? – but still found himself hoping futilely that Grantaire would confess it all a drunken exaggeration or terrible misunderstanding.

Grantaire finally lifted his head, staring up at him with hollow, red-rimmed eyes. “With great difficulty,” he answered, “for I find it’s much harder to speak of them then it was to do them. Is that not strange?” He gave a low laugh that was close to a sob. “You do not believe I would stoop that low? Do you know, I believe that’s the kindest thing you’ve ever said about me?”

Enjolras’s stomach twisted and he felt his face flush hot. Self-disgust was not an emotion he was familiar with, but at this moment, confronted with the defeated slump of Grantaire’s shoulders and the raw emotion on the other man’s battered face, he could quite cheerfully have shot himself. “Grantaire-“

“Oh, I will slake my thirst, I will drink so deep... You know,” drawled a drug-thickened voice in his ear, “I probably never tell you this, otherwise, but you’re not half so ugly once the smoke sets in.” Grantaire wrapped his arms possessively around Enjolras' waist, an iron-hard clamp of flesh and blood, attempting to drag him onto bed face-first and assault him from behind, in a manner that suggested this was perfectly usual, yet the fair leader would never let himself be led into it. After a while writhing in the grasp of the Marseillais, he finally reacted by giving him an uppercut in a rage, knocking his dark-haired assailant out.

Once unconscious, he didn’t care anymore, didn’t care about the failure in his assault, didn't care about Enjolras, didn’t care about anything; it didn’t bother him. When Grantaire wearily awoke and found himself alone in the room he shared, he clasped a hand on the edge of each shutter, clutching them so tightly his knuckles were white, and yanked them closed.
Dragging himself over to his bed, after knocking back another swig of the enchanted draught, he stripped off his shirt and threw himself onto the covers. And exhausted, he fell asleep, his dreams a sea of black and a woman in green.

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; it was truly the coldness in his heart that made him act so cruelly when before he had been so kind and light-hearted. 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, or else try to assault him by force from behind like that evening, and, in exchange for such sneers and scorn... something warm and painful stirred within Enjolras himself. This was no longer his sweet, red-in-the-face roommate; it was a mockery of his true self—a cruel substitute. And still Enjolras was certain he would return to his usual self in time.

Time no longer existed for Grantaire. Days were a blur of shapes, of sounds, of images that never became clear. Everything that used to make his heart sing now filled him with fury, made the anger burn in his veins until he swore they were on fire.

He worked in the various odd jobs, and attended the lecture hall, but rarely spoke as he spent hours staring vacantly around in his day-to-day. He scowled, and grumbled, and muttered, and avoided the worried and sympathetic glances of Enjolras and the others. He snapped at his brothers-in-arms, fought with them until they arrived at noses that were bloody and knuckles that were torn. He was reckless, without regard for his safety and the others. People barely got out of his way and in the end they simply left, because no one wanted to argue with him. He didn’t seem to listen at all. 

The nights he spent locked in his room, cutting himself off from the world. He would hear
Enjolras tentatively open the shutters, fingers tapping on the windowsill. Grantaire would wrap his arms around his head, blocking out the sounds his roommate made, the soft sighs and the eventual squeak of the shutters as they closed again. He would think of his roommate, of how awful and heartless and disgusting he was. This blond had led him on for so long, made him wonder if he loved him in return. Had Enjolras ever thought of him as even a friend?

With a snarl he would leap to his feet, crushing knick-knacks from when he was a child, tearing apart pictures he’d lovingly sketched – of the Musain, of the woods around Marseille, of the town square, of the dunes along the coast, of nymphs, of Marianne, of Apollo as Enjolras, of Enjolras as himself.
He would curse, and mutter and growl until all the vile thoughts in his head were spent, then fall lifelessly to the floor, where he would sleep, then wake up and start the entire process again.

Reeling, he took a step, and feeling a sudden chill in his chest-though he was wearing a warm coat-he shivered. They walked on and did not see the cackling fairy flitting from tree to tree behind them.  A chill hit the savateur again, as if someone had spilled cold water inside his chest.  He gasped and clutched his heart.

“Ah!  Ah, cold!”  He stopped in his tracks, and the terrible chill spread throughout his whole body.

“Grand... R, what’s the matter?” the fair leader said.

“Oh… Zeus fucking Leda, my heart…” Grantaire stumbled back a step and looked at Enjolras, his eyes wide and frightened. “Enj! Enj, help me!” He fell back against the wall and slid down into the snow, clawing at his shirt, as if he could tear out the cold feeling.

“GRAND... R!”  Enjolras knelt down beside him.  “What- what is it?  A heart attack?”

“N-n-no,” the dark-haired one stuttered, and he shook violently, his teeth chattering.  “I-i-t’sss c-c-cold! S-s-so cold!”

He was deadly pale. So Enjolras muttered, “Uh, frostbite or…or freezing to death.  We’ll get you inside…”  He tried to lift the savateur up to carry him back home, but he was too heavy.  Enjolras knew he would never make it all the way across to Combeferre's, but he tried anyway,  trudging a few steps with the heavy form in his arms before collapsing to the ground.

The savateur was going still and stiff, and his eyes became opaque. Enjolras watched in horror as his usually warm skin turned blue with frost; the veins in his face visible and grey.  “M-m-my h-h-heart issss…”

The leader himself had begun to tremble in fear, and he opened Grantaire’s coat and jacket and waistcoat and unbuttoned his shirt. The skin of his chest had turned completely to ice and Enjolras only stared at it, unbelieving.

“What…what is this?” he said in shock.

“Enj... Enj..., I-I’m d-d-dying,” came the reply, and he knew it was true.  He felt the creeping specter of death as surely as he had known before that he was alive and that he loved the blond dreadfully.  And just as surely, he knew now that he had been a fool. There was only one thing certain in life and that was death.  What was more foolish than letting fear stop you from loving a person who loved you back, even if everyone said your love was wrong? Now he saw how small he was in the scope of the world; how little it would have mattered in the grand scheme of things if he had only told Enjolras that he loved him, if he had only kissed him once.  No, not once, a thousand times. A hundred thousand times.  But now it was too late- he felt life leaving him already.  

One evening, as soon as winter had arrived and the snow began to fall, when the snow was flying about that one wintry day, Combeferre knocked at the door of his Law student friends' lecture hall, to ask both Enjolras and Grantaire to come to his garret for supper, and for all of them to reconcile. In spite of his good will, little did he know that it would be far from an easy task. Combeferre came at nightfall from a day at the bookseller's, no more cheered than he had been that morning, and by chance the Law students were leaving the lecture hall, to head for the Musain, at the same time.

As soon as they saw him, Grantaire, who hardly ever ate these days, shook his head, saying coldly that he had work to do; he waved casually as if it had been only a day since they'd seen each other in such terms, and not almost a fortnight. Hating himself for being so weak, Combeferre waved back and stood waiting for them, and when Grantaire reached him, he couldn't help noticing the way his nose and ears were pink from the cold, his dark eyes bright against the flush of his cheeks, through frosted spectacles. For a while the others were almost able to fool themselves that it was the old Grantaire from before his change of heart, until their friend brought out a large burning-glass or magnifying glass out of doors, snatching it from Combeferre's pocket without breathing a word, then held out the left arm and sleeve of his own green overcoat and let the sleet and snowflakes fall upon it, and spread out the tail of his coat before himself, like an apron, to let the snowflakes fall on it.

As he spoke and held out his arm and coattails like that, a snowflake drifted down to land on the heavy leather glove he wore to protect his left hand when in combat, and he held it up to the others with a thin, sharp smile, holding the lens to his glove and coattails. "Venez voir a travers le verre! Now look through the glass -- look at them through the glass. Look how perfect it is," he shouted as loud as he could, bidding or rather forcing Combeferre to peer at it through the burning-glass he used for working on the smallest, finest blood vessels. "Much better than your painted flowers, Four-Eyes. So exact and axially symmetrical -- there would not be a fault in it, if only it did not melt." And, in fact, they saw how each and every ice crystal was quite magnified, appeared much larger and looked like a different fractallised hexagon, a beautiful, glittering six-pointed star or a superb wonderful six-petalled crystal flower, and yet, in spite of their equal structure, each and every flake was unique and different from all the others. They were lovely. It truly was a sight to look at. Each snowflake seemed much larger, and looked like a flower of magnificent design, or a six-pointed star. It was marvellous to look at; it was beautiful to see. "Look, how artistic! Isn't thay cunning? They are much more interesting to look at than real flowers, for they are absolutely perfect. There isn't a flaw in them, until they start melting." He would much rather observe the artful, flawless and perfect ice crystals with a large magnifying glass. They were, indeed, beautiful to see. "Regardez! How everything here is arranged with such artistic regularity; is it not clever? Can't you see how fancy these beauties are? Isn't it much more interesting than looking at real flowers or bugs or heartstrings or the structure of the lungs? Than talking about liberty or equality or sacrifice or fighting spirit? These ones are far more interesting, that's what I say! There is not a point of these ice stars that is different from the others; rather, everything is axially symmetrical. There is not a single fault in any of them, they have no flaws at all, they're abso-fucking-lutely perfect -- completely regular --; and yet... What a shame that they liquify so fast! These crystals are quite perfect as long as they're not warm, till they begin to be warmed, at least until their structure melts! If things were otherwise, there would be nothing more beautiful than a snowflake." He smiled brightly at the others, not waiting for an answer. “Of course you can’t see anything, what would you even see without your glasses. Let go! I’m fine now.”
Listlessly, Enjolras agreed that it was beautiful (and Combeferre, of course, agreed as well, but in a more positive tone), and went home, his garret feeling empty and cold without someone to share his supper with. Combeferre followed him and came over that evening, of course, sensing that crack in the leader's icy façade and trying to comfort his broken spirits, but, though his presence felt reassuring indeed, it was not the same. 

"Every snowflake is unique," Grantaire boasted as he held out the magnifying glass. "That's what Combeferre says, but we'll prove him wrong. We've got good eyes!"

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; and thus the drug would be continually entering the system. It would produce certain symptoms - dryness of the mouth and throat, difficulty in swallowing, hallucinations, double vision - all the symptoms, in fact, which the lush himself had experienced. And at night, if he awoke in a startled frenzy and peeked out through the little round hole made in the frosted glass by means of the warmed-up sou, to survey the darkness outside, his eyes flashed with a sickly green glow that lengthened through the air... Even though his temper had even worsened, now he was no longer that aware of things. He lived always distracted, mulling over obsessions of his that made his lips writhe without uttering a sound, furrowed his brow into a frown, and could lash out into any unexpected burst of fury, but that isolated him from all that was happening around as well.

What must have been the strangest of it all, even Grantaire's pastimes now were quite different from before -- they were all turned more serious, they became everything but sensible; he would play rock-paper-scissors against his own shadow, which ensured that he would always win; cheat at cards and at dominoes 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. He was reckless, without regard for his safety and the others... which often ended in a bloody nose, a black eye, or someone crying. It was never Grantaire, obviously; he always made it through unscathed. People barely got out of his way and in the end they simply left, because no one wanted to argue with him. He didn’t seem to listen at all. 

And the others at the Musain 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, as he wore out his welcome with random precision. The others' peace was gone, and Grantaire himself was changed. They found him either harsh or gloomy, or wildly passionate; he was like one who is combatting with some evil spirit, and seldom had even Enjolras the power to quiet him. 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 wore out his welcome with random precision; 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 kept on 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. He went on better for a short time; but, his habits were too old and strong to be got rid of; he soon fell back a little; and was falling fast back, when his illness came so strong upon him. In his fits of rage and tremblings, he was always trying to penetrate Enjolras, though the fair leader always writhed and clawed himself free from the grasp of those iron limbs, night after night. Yet all of those disappointments did nought but kindle the urge for brute force within Grantaire himself. Whenever he looked at the fair leader, all he could see was that the love they felt for each other was something wicked and shameful, and there was no longer any comfort in it for him. Unless he imposed his own will by force, no matter whatever Enjolras was feeling.
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. As the sickness had tightened down on, sinking into, his nervous system, as it continued to go about its work of destroying his established patterns of thought and behaviour, his spirit and his body wavered at unison, under the spell of profound exhaustion; then he fell back into his gloomy musings, or started up wildly and stormed away. 

And thus, Grantaire began to suffer an excruciating thirst. His febrile entrails and his burning stomach demanded more and more liquor for each day; and his brain, clouded and darkened by the exciting draught, was unable to control his own actions. So that, in order to get more of it, Grantaire was able to pay any price. And thus, the emptier his wallet became, the less personality and the less strength of character he had left. 

Finally, he lost everything, both the money he had earned and his personality. He only had his thirst, and, even though he could not drink often, the very air he breathed caused him to get thirstier and thirstier. 
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. 

So he went from day to day, though his life was in a rut, till he thought of what he'd say and which connection he should cut. 

One afternoon, after many -- almost uncountable, perhaps! -- weeks, or even months (well, months to him, but they were actually weeks), of the absinthe parties had gone by, and when he was still letting the effects of the drug wear off, he ran into an acquaintance he used to play tennis with. The acquaintance, whom Grantaire remembered as Claude Julien, asked after him. 

“You know that young man, Enjolras? The one whom you used to practise singlesticks and fencing with, at the academy? The one who sits by your side at the lecture hall?”

“I didn’t know you did,” replied Grantaire, in a sour mood from the headache and lack of true sleep after the previous night’s events. “What’s he got to do with it?”

“Don’t sound like that-- I only wanted to pass along a message. He asked after you. It seems you haven’t been by for the usual bouts in weeks, or even months.” Claude Julien shrugged, his arms folded and an indifferent expression covering his features.

“Been away,” said Grantaire, faking an indifferent air, “then I’d been ill, and then I suppose I forgot. You can tell him, if you see him. Or perhaps I’ll go next week.”

He left Claude Julien on the street, somehow in an even more sour mood. His head ached. He didn’t care if that Claude Julien thought ill of him, or didn’t like him; he didn’t care whether Claude Julien passed a message about his sour temper or not. But there was that name again -- Enjolras! So Enjolras sent a mutual acquaintance to ask after his health, did he. Well, so what, said Grantaire to himself. It certainly isn’t very significant. He went home, and didn’t go out again that night, his head and indeed most of his body aching -- aching because he wanted more of that drug, though he didn’t really realise it yet for what it was, and only believed it was because he had awoken in an uncomfortable position on someone’s floor, after having had only a few hours of fitful sleep: anyone would be ill-tempered and sore after such a night, wouldn’t they?

It wasn’t until the next morning, after a glass or two of strong brandy and a good twelve or more hours of sleep, that Grantaire stopped to think about what he was doing, and whether that message from Enjolras really meant anything, and whether his new Saturday night revels had anything to do with his constant lack of sleep and good temper. And when he thought about it, really thought about all of it, he felt very disconcerted by the realisation of just how many holes were there when he examined those memories of the regular Saturday night gatherings. He felt very disturbed when he noticed how ill-fitting his clothes had become, from a lack of regular exercise and an increase in the wine and cigars and food and yes, that strange green draught, he’d been consuming of late. He couldn’t tell what, exactly, had changed. Oh, Grantaire could pinpoint when and possibly why, but his mind was blurred at the edges, where it had never been before -- he’d had ill-remembered nights of drunken folly, but never before this autumn's drug parties had those ill-remembered nights become badly-remembered days and weeks as well. Monday and Thursday seemed the same; Saturday night could well have been Tuesday afternoon. Grantaire began seriously considering quitting those friends who welcomed him into their circle and introduced him to the Revolution.
He went once more, only this time he restrained himself from indulging too deeply. The effects weren’t as strong, now he was used to the drug, and since the others were so enthusiastic about it when it came to their ideals, they never noticed that Grantaire never took in half as much as they did. And what Grantaire discovered about those nights, about what really happened in those nights, was enough to make him swear the cause of liberty off once and for all.

Grantaire found himself staring blankly at Combeferre’s door, not entirely certain how he had ended up allowing Jehan to drag him here. Jehan had been immovable in his conviction that Grantaire needed to be seen to by a representative of the medical profession, and had simply ignored Grantaire’s insistence that it was unnecessary as if he had not spoken.

He had tried suggesting Joly as a marginally less humiliating alternative, as Joly had known him longer (and, given that it was possible that he and Bossuet shared more in bed than just Musichetta, was perhaps less likely to reject him out of hand upon learning the full circumstances of his injuries), but Jehan had objected that Joly was too prone to anxiety and might simply fall into a panic, and that anyway, Combeferre’s rooms were closer.

“This truly isn’t necessary,” Grantaire protested, a distant sort of dread beginning to replace the dazed numbness that had filled him since he’d revealed himself to Jehan. “He’ll never be able to face me again after this, and who could blame him for it?”

“Any man could, and would,” Jehan said firmly. “He won’t blame you, Grantaire, or be disgusted, or refuse to help,” all possibilities Grantaire had attempted to raise, “or anything of the sort. You were set upon and attacked! What kind of friend would turn you away?”

Grantaire didn’t bother to correct his friend’s misapprehension. He would discover the truth soon enough. Once he learned that Grantaire was nowhere near as innocent in this situation as he’d had assumed, he would likely change his mind, but Grantaire selfishly wished to put that moment off for just a little while longer.

Belatedly, it occurred to Grantaire that maybe Combeferre would not be in. But no sooner had that hope occurred to him than Combeferre opened the door.

He took in the two men standing on his threshold, and frowned. “It’s the middle of the day,” he protested. “What on earth have you two been doing?”

Grantaire’s voice stuck in his throat. Jehan, on the other hand, appeared to have no such difficulties.

“He has been attacked.” He gestured at Grantaire’s face. “May we come in? Please? It is worse than it looks, and-“

“It isn’t, truly,” Grantaire protested. He wasn’t actually injured, save for a few bruises.

“It is,” Jehan insisted. He looked at Grantaire with sorrowful eyes, then turned to Combeferre again. “Please, someone should make sure that he’s all right.”

Combeferre’s eyes had widened behind his spectacles at Jehan’s initial announcement, and he stepped back and waved them in hurriedly. “What happened?” he demanded. “Were you robbed?”

Grantaire felt his face heat. “Not precisely,” he said. Not at all, in fact, but the truth was too humiliating to say aloud, even when half of his audience already knew.

“He was set upon,” Jehan said. “Beaten and, and worse.” He faltered, giving Grantaire an agonized look, either reluctant to expose Grantaire’s shame or too appalled by the entire subject to speak of it.

“Beaten?”

Combeferre began to say something soothing, clearly still not believing him, and then the room’s door, pulled not-quite-to, swung inward abruptly, causing all three of them to jump.

Courfeyrac strolled in, walking stick in one hand and hat in the other, looking quite thoroughly at ease. “The door was unlatched, so I came right—what’s going on; is Grantaire all right?” His relaxed, insouciant posture fell away immediately as he took in the scene, and at some other time, Grantaire might have appreciated the concern.

“Yes,” Grantaire choked out, despite the fact that he could feel betraying tears start to well from his eyes. He tried to blink them back, then reach up to rub at them with one hand when that failed. He was beyond shame now, surely? Tired. He was just so tired.

“No,” Jehan said, immediately on the heels of his statement.

Combeferre had stepped back from Grantaire when Courfeyrac entered, and now turned toward the doorway, angling his body slightly as if to put himself between Grantaire and their newly arrived friend’s curious eyes. “I don’t think we need a larger audience for this. Courfeyrac, if you and Jehan wouldn’t mind-“

This was becoming a farce, as if it hadn’t been enough of one already. “Oh, no, I might as well tell him, too, as long as I’m apparently telling everyone.” The words seemed to come from someone else, another version of himself still capable of good humour. “Why stop here; let’s inform all of Paris!” The laugh that escaped him then almost hurt, catching in his chest like a sob.

Combeferre stepped closer to Grantaire, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Your face is not the worst of it, then?”

Grantaire pulled away, reaching up to touch his cheek, which began to throb again almost as soon as Combeferre mentioned it. “My face is always the worst of it,” he responded, old habit making him voice the jest before he thought better of it. “It likely looks worse than it is. I’m hardly injured, really, just a few bruises.”

Combeferre was studying his eyes, however, and ignored this. “From the size of your pupils, you could have a half-dozen cracked ribs and bruising in the kidneys and not know it.”

“It was only a little laudanum,” Jehan said. He had seated himself on the very edge of one of Combeferre’s chairs, and now perched there staring them, as if ready to leap up at any moment.

Guilty as his concern made Grantaire feel, it was also reassuring. If Enjolras was the best, most principled man he knew, Jehan was one of the kindest. He knew, at least some of it, and instead of being disgusted as many men would have been, was upset on Grantaire’s behalf.

Perhaps he could salvage at least one friendship from this entire debacle. As soon as he discovered that Grantaire had accused him.

Even the bare truth painted Grantaire in a less-than-flattering light, as an easily cowed craven who passively submitted and even went so far as to find pleasure and release in his own subjugation. He might not have carried through on his threat to literally fuck Grantaire bloody –that that degree of roughness in the physical act combined with a lack of lubrication would likely have hurt almost as much as it would have hurt Grantaire himself – but Grantaire had no doubt that he would fulfill his threats to ruin Grantaire’s reputation and credit with everyone from his friends to his landlord to the letter.

“An actual doctor would be of more use to you,” Combeferre was saying. “You know I haven’t completed my studies yet.” He steered Grantaire to the remaining chair and bid him take a seat and remove his shirt, then bent to fetch a surgeon’s kit from the lower drawer of his battered secrétaire.

It looked very professional and orderly, full of little knives and tiny mirrors on sticks and several alarmingly large-looking curved needles. It was very like Combeferre to have pre-emptively bought the tools of his future trade, Grantaire thought, just as Combeferre said,

“You have my solemn promise that I cleaned everything with Labarraque’s Solution after my last visit to the dissection lab. The smell lingers otherwise.”

He probably ought to be disgusted by that, or at least disturbed. Maybe under normal circumstances he would have been, but it was difficult to feel anything other than dread and acute embarrassment as he attempted to unbutton his waistcoat with fingers so numb and clumsy they might belonged to somebody else.

The peaceful, floating sensation brought by the laudanum had long since worn off, but other effects still lingered.

“Who did this? It’s barbaric.” Combeferre touched two fingers to the sore spot at the junction of Grantaire’s neck and shoulder that he’d been left with.

Grantaire flinched away from the probing touch, then took a deep breath and made himself hold still. The greater a production he made out of this, the more pathetic he would appear and the longer the whole process would take. He might as well get the worst of it over with quickly.

Jehan gasped audibly, and Grantaire instinctively hunched his shoulders, sinking lower in the chair. Jehan had been surprisingly quick to believe him when he’d thought Grantaire’s attacker a random stranger. Naturally he would be reluctant to believe him capable of this. Grantaire wouldn’t have believed it himself, until it had begun happening.

“What in the name of... were you fighting about?” Combeferre asked, eyebrows winging upwards.

He had determined to say it, but he found that he couldn’t utter the words while looking into Combeferre’s face, so he directed his gaze to the open dissection kit instead. “We had a slight disagreement over my virtue. Or lack thereof, I suppose.”

“You- what?” Combeferre simply sounded baffled, rather than shocked or disgusted, and Grantaire, risking a glance at him from the corner of his eye, saw only confusion on his face.

Jehan, on the other hand, looked as if someone had stuck him. There was nothing in his appalled expression to indicate whether he believed Grantaire or not.

“He is no friend of mine,” Grantaire spat, a surge of bitterness breaking through the numbness. “His respect is reserved for men he thinks worthy of it; drunken parasites and useless hangers-on are fit only to service their betters. With their mouths, and their bodies.”

“With-“ Combeferre began, then broke off, shaking his head, a quick jerk of denial. “Grantaire, you’re drugged,” he went on, placatingly. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

Jehan was shaking his head as well, both hands pressed to his mouth, his eyes huge. He appeared as if he were about to cry.

Grantaire felt his own eyes heat with a ridiculous urge to cry himself, as much from exhaustion as from anything else. He was so very weary. The laudanum was supposed to have helped, to ease his mind and let him sleep, but all it had done was loosen his tongue, and now he was here. Now he was here, with no choice but to spill everything. He had to make them believe him, because if they did, it would stop, and that would make the destruction of Grantaire’s reputation, friendships, and self-image almost worth it. Even if they cast Grantaire out of their society as well, at least that would have no further hold over him. He couldn’t threaten to expose Grantaire once Grantaire had nothing left to lose.

Vindication, Grantaire reflected, was bitter indeed. “I told you he wouldn’t believe me,” he reminded Jehan.

Courfeyrac arched an eyebrow. “... forgot himself enough to start brawling with Grantaire?” He turned to Grantaire, the beginnings of a grin on his lips. “What on green earth did you say to him?”

Grantaire dashed at his eyes again, wanting for a dark moment to shout at them all, to beat that innocent grin off Courfeyrac’s face. Why had he allowed Jehan to drag him here? Combeferre thought him drunk and raving, Courfeyrac was clearly not going to believe him either, and Jehan was now attempting to make irritating little shushing noises at him, petting at the air as if he wanted to touch Grantaire but didn’t dare.

He might as well say what he would. Better to speak and be called a liar than keep silent and know himself a coward. “I said no,” he said, as distinctly as he could with his mouth swollen and his tongue still thick from the remnants. He touched his face, where what had to be a spectacular bruise was still throbbing with a dull heat, then winced.

Courfeyrac’s eyes flew wide. “What-“

Grantaire rounded on Jehan, who had his hand out as if he’d been about to pat him again. “Don’t look at me like that! I’m not some poor victim. I got myself into this. You think this was the first time?” he demanded. “This was just the only time I was man enough to refuse. In every way everyone could want me, drunk and sober.”

Now Combeferre looked appalled as well; apparently enough detail had been given to satisfy him that this wasn’t some drug-induced fantasy. “Grantaire-“ He broke off, voice strangled, then continued, “How- how long has this been going on?”

The anger drained away as quickly as it had come, leaving a dull emptiness behind it. “Weeks. Nearly a month.”

Courfeyrac gaped at him. “He’s been ill-using this for-- Why didn’t you say something?”

“fBecause I enjoyed it!” Grantaire spat. “There. Now you know what you’ve been harbouring in your midst.” He slumped forward, face in hands, and wished desperately for oblivion, hating himself, all of it.

The other man’s indignation on his behalf ought to have been reassuring, but all Grantaire could think at his words was that if he had had sufficient faith in his friend’s kindness, he could have told him sooner. This could all have ended days ago, if only he’d been less of a fool.

While he sat there silently, unable to look up and face them, Combeferre, Courfeyrac, and Jehan had begun to debate the matter hotly. Combeferre clearly wanted to believe that there was some less damning explanation.

“I’ve done ‘such things’ as you speak of,” Jehan said hotly. “They needn’t be shameful.”

“They are when a man has to beat his lover into it!” Courfeyrac half shouted.

Jehan was saying something melodramatic about harbouring a viper in their bosom when Combeferre finally, blessedly interrupted,

“Gentlemen, I don’t think this is helping our patient.”

There is a moment of silence, and then Combeferre went on, in a low voice, “If this is true, we can’t in good conscience tolerate this any longer.”

More silence, as the others presumably stared at one another over Grantaire’s head and wished forlornly that they didn’t have to deal with this dilemma.

And then Courfeyrac said the only thing that could conceivably have made Grantaire’s utter destruction as a man complete. “I think we need to tell Enjolras.”

Grantaire started to laugh hysterically again, and then he was sobbing, making a complete spectacle of himself without even the excuse of drink. A few confused minutes later, Combeferre pressed a draught of laudanum into his hands and ordered him to drink it down and go to bed – in Combeferre’s bed, despite everything Grantaire had just told them – saying firmly that there had been enough excitement for today and they would tell Enjolras tomorrow.

Grantaire did as he was bid, too drained to protest. The other three were still talking in Combeferre’s sitting room, voices too low to distinguish the words. It would all be over tomorrow, he told himself. He wouldn’t think about the fact that Enjolras was going to learn of his shame.

He let the laudanum drag him under and wished desperately that he might be permitted never to awaken.

Ordinarily, skies that poured down sleet and streets full of melting slush would have been enough to keep even the most dedicated servants of the republic at home – and indeed, several of Enjolras’s friends were conspicuous in their absence this morning – but the content of this morning’s newpapers had been impossible to ignore.

“They say Madame the Duchess de Berry sponsored the plan,” Combeferre was saying, “but so far she has not been arrested, whether out of respect for rank or sex, or because the police have insufficient proof.”

Combeferre, Enjolras felt, was taking this entire affaire far too calmly. There were times, it was true, when he appreciated and relied upon his friend’s ability to serve as the voice of reason, but there were also times when a little hot-blooded indignation was called for, and the discovery and very public arrest of a Legitimist conspiracy to restore Charles X’s line to the throne through bloody assassination and undo what minimal gains the July Revolution had procured was one of them.

Courfeyrac shook his head. “Bursting into a royal ball armed with firecrackers and planning to assassinate the king!” he said, sounding almost admiring. “It sounds like bad opera.”

Feuilly snorted, full of contempt for both Legitimists and Courfeyrac’s choice of entertainment. “They were betrayed by good manners, apparently. They contacted the owner of the tavern at no. 12 Rue des Prouvaires in advance and told him to expect a large party.”

“Let that be a lesson to us never to make reservations.”

Enjolras resisted the temptation to glare at Grantaire. Any form of attention even negative, would only encourage him. “They were betrayed by police spies,” he said, attempting to sound stern and suspecting he only succeeded in sounding prim and humourless.

“Let that be a lesson to us never to trust our fellow man.” Grantaire raised his glass is if in a toast, casually dismissing the very real fear of every republican and legitimist in Paris.

Grantaire had been absent from the Musain for the past week or so, not that Enjolras had missed him. Were it not for the fact that it was noticeably quieter without the other man there to make a joke of everything, Enjolras told himself, he would not even have registered his absence from his usual corner.

Enjolras turned away, and snapped at Combeferre that of course the duchess hadn’t been arrested yet, aristocratic rank had its unearned privileges, and he could stand to show a little more passion over this attempt to circumvent the people’s will by restoring a rejected monarch’s heir to the throne.

Courfeyrac grinned at him. “You’re just angry that you have to be glad that the King wasn’t assassinated.”

Enjolras spluttered for a moment, but he made too much of a habit of honesty to deny it. “I… well… yes! It grates upon my very soul.”

“Charles X’s grandson on the throne would only have made our position worse,” Combeferre pointed out. He nudged Courfeyrac with an elbow, whether to convey that a little less levity was called for, or to signal appreciation of his jest at Enjolras’s expense, Enjolras wasn’t sure.

“If he ended up on the throne at all. The disorder that would have followed if their plan had proven a success might have worked in our favor.”

That was something Enjolras hadn’t considered, and much though it galled him to think that anything good might have come from the actions of royalists, it was a valid point, as well as something to take into consideration for the future. Their own efforts, as well as those of other republican groups, could just as easily provide opportunities for rival factions, or be the excuse the government needed to enact new repressions.

Feuilly gave a grudging nod. “It’s true. We need to stand ready to respond to actions by other groups who oppose the government, including our enemies. Even if their plans fail, there might still be opportunities in them for us.”

“Or danger.” Combeferre voiced Enjolras’s own worries. “The more unstable the government becomes, the harder they’ll put down dissent. There will be twice as many police spies wandering the streets of Paris after this.”

Enjolras voiced his agreement, only to be interrupted by a snicker from the corner.

Grantaire snorted. He up-ended his glass – his fourth or fifth - and poured himself another; Enjolras wondered with unworthy spite why he hadn’t simply foregone glasses altogether in favor of drinking directly from the bottle. “The people won’t actually rise, you know,” he said, with an air of one explaining the obvious to a child. “They only care about food in their bellies and their own comforts.”

Grantaire sneered at him. “And I suppose you do?” he asked, with almost palpable contempt.

Enjolras felt his face heat. He wasn’t sure which he was more offended by, whether his own elitism or Grantaire’s cynicism.

It was habit to respond to the more familiar provocation first. “Not everyone is like you,” he snapped at Grantaire, “looking no further than their next bottle.”

It wasn’t even noon, and Grantaire was already visibly drunk, his face flushed and his movements overly broad. He was in his shirtsleeves, his coat draped over the back of his chair, his shirt in shreds, and the ends of his shirt cuffs were stained with wine. His cravat was a crumpled, half-tied mess, and he clearly hadn’t shaved in several days.

That alone made Enjolras want to shout at him. It was bad enough that he refused to take even the weightiest of political matters seriously; worse, and even more infuriating, was the fact that he so clearly valued nothing, not even himself.

It was disgraceful. Grantaire was a disgrace, not just as a republican, but as a man. It made something inside Enjolras’s stomach twist angrily, seeing him this way, even though it was far from unfamiliar. It clearly never occurred to the man that his friends might worry about him, or wish him not to make a public spectacle of himself.

“No,” Grantaire returned, sullenly defiant. “Some are hypocrites who think their efforts ‘for the good of the people’ give them the right to treat those around them however they please.”

Enjolras felt a flash of hurt at the unexpected insult, which then immediately flared into anger. How dare Grantaire question his dedication to his ideals? If the other man didn’t like being scolded for his behavior, perhaps he shouldn’t act like a drunken wastrel. “Who are you to accuse anyone of hypocrisy? You who believe in nothing and don’t even bother to pretend to take what the rest of us would fight and die for seriously?”

Grantaire smiled at him, an odd, almost mocking little curve of his lips, and lifted his wine bottle toward Enjolras in a salute. “I believe in you,” he said.

Enjolras’s face went hot, his chest tight with the struggle to suppress his rage. He searched his mind for a proper response to this false sincerity obviously put on in order to mock him, but before he could arrive at one, Grantaire upended the dregs of the bottle into his glass, drained them, and laid his head down on the table, eyes closed, as if finally succumbing to the effects of drink.

“Leave him be,” advised, nodding toward Grantaire’s dark head, now buried in his folded arms. “What else can you expect from him?”

“Better than this,” Enjolras muttered. “And were we to speak of hypocrisy,” he said, more loudly, “we might discuss the futility of a revolution that dismisses the desires of the people because they ‘don’t know what’s good for them.’”

Combeferre said something placating about that being the reason why education for the masses was needed, so that they could properly understand what was at stake and choose for themselves.

Enjolras ignored him, not in the mood to be placated. Thoroughly irritated with all concerned, he indulged himself by bidding Courfeyrac and Feuilly – the only two present who hadn’t said anything to annoy him – a cold farewell, and taking his leave, for once departing well before the meeting was finished.

Grantaire awoke reluctantly, his head throbbing, and experienced a moment of panic when he found his face pressed into his own pillow instead of the hard wood of one of the Musain’s tables. Then he realized that he was still wearing his shirt and trousers, and that said trousers were still buttoned, and relaxed.

It said something about his life these days, he reflected, that waking up to discover himself still clothed save for his shoes and cravat was a pleasant relief.

Now that he was fully awake, he could vaguely recall Feuilly shaking him out of his doze against the table and dragging him home. He’d asked what was wrong, scolding Grantaire for getting himself into such a state and telling him that he was lucky Enjolras had let him off as lightly as he had. Grantaire wasn’t sure how he had replied, or if he had, but he couldn’t have spoken the truth, or Feuilly would have likely left him in the street.

Feuilly had been correct about one thing, though. As cutting as Enjolras had been, he could have been far colder. He far preferred Enjolras’s ire to his indifference.

Grantaire groaned and rubbed at his face, then forced himself out of bed to use the chamber pot. Standing up made the world sway around him, and he had to put a hand to the wall in order to steady himself.

He crawled back in bed gratefully. Even though he’d just woken up, his body ached with exhaustion, and he pressed his back to the warm bit of the wall where the chimney ran on the other side of the plaster and drifted off into a doze again, blanket pulled over his face.

He was jerked back to full awareness by a loud bang, and for a confused half-instant, thought that Bossuet had come to see him again, and had knocked something over.

No such good fortune was his, however.

Grantaire winced involuntarily, the sound of the door falling shut seeming very loud and final. He’d known he was going to pay for that jab when he made it, but the thrill of arguing with Enjolras and having other men’s full attention had made him reckless.

Would it be so terrible if the other found out? Surely Enjolras couldn’t despise him any less than he already did, and while the others might reject him, they would never sink so low as to treat him that way.

Grantaire staggered backwards, head ringing and face throbbing, and found himself abruptly sitting down again as the edge of the bed caught him in the back of the knees.

The headache he had been hoping to sleep off surged back with a vengeance, and he found himself fighting down nausea.

Grantaire closed his eyes and drew a deep breath in through his nose, willing himself not to be ill. 

Grantaire remembered Enjolras’s open contempt as he accused Grantaire of looking no further than his next bottle and smiled bitterly. He’d accepted long ago that he’d never see any expression in those level blue eyes but disappointment and disgust – not for his face and form, because Enjolras cared not for those things, but for the man who lay beneath them. 

Grantaire pressed on, unable to stop himself. There was something almost exhilarating in saying the words, despite the lingering dizziness in his head. Perhaps he was still drunk from the previous night after all.

It was a mistake. Light sparked behind his eyes at the impact, his head surged with sickening pain... hard enough to set Grantaire’s head ringing again.

His eyes were hot with tears of anger, and the harder he struggled, the weaker and more exhausted he felt. His head hurt, his limbs were heavy and clumsy, and everything he knew about fighting scientifically seemed to have gone out of his head entirely.

Until Grantaire ceased kicking and struggling. Spots were swarming in front of his eyes again, and his lungs cried out for air.

He couldn’t hear it over the ringing in his ears. Then there was tearing, stretching pain...

Grantaire lay there limply, eyes focused on a fold of blankets inches away from his face. His throat burned, his face throbbed, and his arse hurt nearly as much as the both of them put together. His shoulder stung from the mark, and his head ached as if it were being gripped in a vice.

Jehan arrived at Grantaire’s lodgings quite determined that he was not going to leave again until he had managed to persuade his friend to come out with him to do something, anything. Aside from a single visit to the Musain that had apparently ended with Feuilly having to half-carry a maudlin drunk Grantaire home and pour him into bed despite the hour being barely past noon, the other man hadn’t shown his face in public for over two weeks.

Grantaire had always tended toward melancholia, but it had never been quite this severe before. He might mope about and drink more than was good for him, but it had rarely kept him from being good company or knowing how to enjoy himself. When Jehan had asked Bossuet and Joly, who had known him the longest, if this behavior was typical of him, Bossuet had shaken his head and said that he hadn’t seen its like in some time, since the days when they had first known Grantaire, immediately after he had left Gros’s salon, and that he had hoped not to see it again.

The door to Grantaire’s room was locked, and Jehan had to knock loudly upon it for some time before it was finally opened.

Grantaire opened the door a cautious crack, only a narrow sliver of his face visible through the gap. When he saw that it was Jehan on the other side of it, he seemed to relax slightly, and pulled the door open the rest of the way.

The apartment beyond was a squalid wreck, wine empty wine bottles scattered over the floor, crumpled clothing kicked into a head in the corner, and a mostly untouched basket of bread and withered winter apples growing stale and moldy atop the washstand. Jehan began to say something chiding about this state of affairs, and then Grantaire shut the door and turned to face him, and he saw the other man fully.

“Your face!” Jehan burst out, interrupting himself. “What happened?”

Grantaire’s lower lip was split, the cut ugly and scabbed-over, and a large bruise was swelling on his right cheekbone. He grinned, bruising giving the expression the look of a pained grimace, and then winced as the tear in his lip broke open again, reaching up to dab at it with the back of his hand.

“Last evening must have been fine indeed, for I’m afraid I can’t recall.”

Jehan found himself smiling, oddly reassured by this evidence of reckless carousing. Grantaire getting into a drunken tavern brawl necessarily involved Grantaire leaving his apartment and interacting with people.

Whatever was afflicting his friend had not gone away, however. Grantaire was holding himself stiffly, like a man expecting a blow, and his eyes kept straying to the open door at Jehan’s back. “Was there anything you wanted,” Grantaire asked, after a moment. “I think I have your Infernaliana somewhere about.”

“Simply the pleasure of your company. We’ve seen far too little of that lately.”

“The weather has been wretched.” Grantaire shrugged. “When the streets are full of ice, a wise man stays at home with a hot drink.”

“Mmm,” Jehan agreed. Or a wine bottle, judging by the number scattered around. Grantaire wasn’t usually this poor a housekeeper; Jehan winced a little at the thought of his borrowed book lying somewhere at the bottom of the debris, the pages soaking up the dregs of a spilled bottle or growing soggy beneath a damp, discarded boot. There was a reason he didn’t lend his personal library out indiscriminately. Grantaire, unlike some of his friends, could usually be trusted to hand books back in a reasonable condition, but whatever was troubling him recently seemed to so preoccupy him that he had no attention left to spare for his own condition, let alone that of his possessions.

Perhaps he’d forgone shaving today simply because of the injury to his face, but Jehan doubted it.

He needed to stop brooding upon whatever was worrying him, to relax and enjoy himself, preferably in a way that didn’t earn him any more bruises.

“I was going to invite you out to supper at that tavern near the Barrière du Combat, but if it’s possible you visited there last night and caused a disturbance, perhaps I’d better not.”

Grantaire began to agree, protesting that he was tired and his head was aching, but Jehan pressed on. “I know of a sure remedy for any leftover aches and pains,” he said, trying for a suggestive smile. He suspected that it fell flat, but Grantaire didn’t seem to notice. He was watching the open door again, arms wrapped around his torso as if he were cold.

Grantaire looked away, frowning. “I’m not good company at the moment, Jehan. Even I wouldn’t seek my own society, had I a choice.”

Grantaire pulled himself free of Jehan’s touch with a violent jerk. “Nearly a month,” he said, voice low and thick with bitterness. He sniffed, rubbing at his eyes with one hand, and swallowed hard. “You imagine me a victim. I complied willingly enough until the bitter end.”

“You-“ That did not sound willing to Enjolras. It sounded, in fact, a great deal like blackmail. By the bitterness and shame in Grantaire’s voice it was very clearly no lie.

“I see I’ve disgusted you,” Grantaire said. “I can’t imagine why,” he added, with heavy sarcasm. “Should I fall upon my dagger like Lucretia, so you may dip your hands in the blood and cry death to tyrants?” He laughed again, the sound edged with hysteria. “I’ll take my leave of you now; do what you will. I don’t care.”

Jehan winced, reaching for him again. “Grantaire-“

Grantaire slapped his hand away. “Stop touching me!” he snarled. “I’ve had enough of all of you.”

The four of them stared dumbly as he rushed from the room, leaving the door open behind him. Moments later, there came the sound of the front door slamming shut.

A few moments went by in silence, and then Combeferre sighed, rubbing at the spot at the bridge of his nose where his spectacles pinched him. “That was ill done.”

Enjolras stared at the open door, feeling sick. A fine advocate of the people he was, that even his friends feared to come to him for help. Grantaire had let this occur to him for weeks – weeks! – rather than do so, and he suspected he had only come to him now because one of the others had forced him to. And instead of offering sympathy or understanding, Enjolras had driven him away.

Combeferre was right; it was ill done of him.

Shame was not an emotion Enjolras was well acquainted with, nor was self-doubt, but he felt them both now.

“Let that be a lesson for us,” Grantaire had observed cynically, after hearing of how the Rue des Prouvaires conspiracy had been brought down by informers, “never to trust our fellow man.”

Grantaire’s cynicism had angered him at the time, but now Enjolras could only wonder. 

And thus, one evening a week after the winter arrived, 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 Musain on his own, his back turned to all those he called "friends" when he was sober, feeling elated to leave them all behind. Without even giving a single explanation, he disappeared, dashing off into that stormy evening; before anyone else cound react, he had turned and disappeared through the backroom door, shutting it behind him with a savage snap. The sleet fell, thick and white, whipping at the few foolhardy people who dared to get outside, covering the street in stagnant cold puddles. About midnight, when the gaslight was glinting dazzlingly off the countless tiny crystals of snow as they liquified and struck everything they came across, he stumbled out of the Musain once more, shutting the door as loud as he could, and took his leave without even saying au revoir. Without another word to Enjolras or anyone else, he was off down the street. It was as though a door had closed in his mind; he did not want to go there any longer.

For the rest of the day Grantaire did all he could to get away from Enjolras and the others. It looked like he was mad and closed into himself for some reason. And the others were breaking their minds over what could possibly have happened, looking for a reason how he could have gotten upset. It must have been his own fault, they had said.

"FUCK OFF! I NEVER DESERVED THIS!!" had been his own riposte, shouted as loud as he could as he turned back and left the Musain, his flushed face burning like wildfire, his heart on fire as well. Hurt by Grantaire's words, the others could only watch as he stormed out, like he had many times before. It seemed as if their friendship had been permanently severed.

Ordinarily, skies that poured down sleet and streets full of melting slush would have been enough to keep even the most dedicated servants of the republic at home – and indeed, several of Enjolras’s friends were conspicuous in their absence this morning – but the content of this morning’s newpapers had been impossible to ignore.

They were all so annoying, and stupid, and unpleasant, each and every one in his own special way, boring him to death... and that was a night he wanted to spend from dark to dawn on his own, spending more and more time by himself, wandering further away so he could get away from them all; 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, dripping down the split ends of his drenched whiskers.

The last conversation had ended with a furious yell of "How could I have ever thought you were beautiful?" screamed right into Enjolras' left ear at point-blank range, right before he'd marched out and slammed the door. Hurt by Grantaire's words, the others could only watch as he stormed out, like he had many times before. It seemed as if their friendship had been permanently severed.

As he stormed off, without even waving goodbye for an instant, without even saying au revoir, even feeling elated to leave them all behind, 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.

A wild swirl of wind surrounded him, the length of his scarf flying behind him, its frayed green edges fluttering in the breeze. He shifted, yanking on the length to pull it back around his neck, when the wind whipped back into his face, blowing the freezing ice and sleet into his mouth, his eyes, down his collar. Shaking his head, he rubbed at his eyes, trying to clear them.

He couldn’t. 

Panic rose in his throat as his vision blurred, and greyed, and darkened. He could still see, but a film coated his eyes, and he was terrified, couldn’t understand what was happening to him, why his world was now seen through a haze.
Stumbling towards the macaronnerie with the darkened world around him, he reached out, letting his hand guide him home. If he could just get there, he could wash his face; rid it of the frozen mass that was covering his eyes. Sweat dripped down his back, trailed rivulets down the skin despite the chill in the air. His legs ached, his arms burned, his head raged; throat raw as though he'd drunk broken glass.

He was agitated with a violent fever, not only suffering, no, burning with thirst; his head on fire, his eyes glowing painful with heat, his throat ablaze, his skin drenched in viscous sweat, the fringe of his wet hair glued to his brow, the nape of his neck quivering, his limbs seemed to refuse to perform their functions -- being weaker than ever before and frozen so cold he could not feel them... so that only the strength lent by despair remained... and that intolerable thirst taking violent hold of him, propelling him forwards to find around him any temporary refreshment. He reached for his flacon, but found it empty; he had forgotten to refill it when he left, he had not given it a thought when he rushed away, and thus he cursed out loud and tore his matted dark hair. The little fruit shops in the arrondissement were all closed, and he had not enough money even to afford a shot of eau-de-vie. Just two sous... He who had never been ill-at-ease before, hangovers notwithstanding, felt suddenly struck down. 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 tremendously thirsty, and though his head was burning hot as though he had fever, his body was cold from the collarbones downwards. He reached for his flask, took it out, only to find that it was empty; he had forgotten to refill it before setting out. He hadn’t thought about it as he stormed out of the Musain. Grantaire had never been ill before in over two decades of life, never knowing what a serious illness felt like, but now he knew how it felt to be ill; he felt that he was --now he knew what it felt like. He was tired and his only desire was to lie down and sleep, but everything about him was soaking wet. He tried to pull himself together, but objects shimmered so strangely before his eyes. He felt exhausted, and, overcome by fatigue, wanted only to throw himself upon the cobblestones, to lie down and sleep, with a threshold step for a pillow; but the rain was streaming down around him, the water falling down from ominous clouds like a volley of silver spears; everything was dripping with rainwater. Finally, he tried to gather all his strength to find the way, muttering and bitter and snapping and full of imprecations about life and the awfulness of people. He tried to pull himself out of it, but every object seemed to dance strangely, bizarrely, vibrating before his eyes, even strange objects he had not beheld before. He tried to pull himself together, but tiny quivering objects danced and trembled before his eyes. His throat and chest seemed iron-bound with red hot clamps, and raw as though he'd drunk broken glass; his whole self trembling and wet with rain and perspiration, he staggered like a sleepy child. Couldn't so much as twitch without agony; only the strength lent by despair remained. The silence was total except for the pouring rain, and among the cobblestones there grew a few clumps of hardy grass that had withstood the frost so far. 

I couldn't so much as twitch without agony, and my throat was as raw as though I'd drunk broken glass, but of course that had nothing to do with anything truly being wrong. I suppose leaving me festooned with scars, and the sensation of lingering damage, would fit.

All of a sudden he noticed something that he could remember having seen in this place before. Suddenly he became aware of something he had never before seen in that place. The savateur had finally pulled himself upright and leaned against a lamppost, clutching his chest as his heart began painfully contracting. He groaned as the agony intensified, before a whinnying and the sound of bells jingling caught his attention. No sooner had he got out on the street and made that effort to find the way that he turned around to see the arrival of a fine, large, magnificent, beautiful rococo calèche which looked as if it had been entirely of darkness, pulled by four white ruby-eyed mares with harnesses all green, that seemed to be made of ivy vines, and caparisoned in the same glittering greenery, that pulled up in front of the macaronnerie, against whose windowpane Grantaire was leaning; the horses were standing not ten feet away from him. A flash of green in his peripheral turned his attention to the occupant of the calèche.
In the carriage sat a regal presence, a gorgeously beautiful lady, clad in a thick pelisse of fresh maidenhair fern and a winter bonnet made of thickly-knit ivy leaves. With a flick of the wrists, her carriage halted. The carriage itself was painted emerald green, and its inner upholstery was of satin in a peridot shade, the colour of wormwood leaves.  
Pulling his jacket closer to his body – despite the sweat that seemed to permanently pearl on his brow and trickle down his back, he still shivered uncontrollably from the cold - and tucking his scarf into his collar, he wandered around the carriage, studying it from all angles.
“So you like my calèche, do you?” The voice spoke from behind him, low, sultry, and throaty. He whirled, his temper already beginning to rise, before he realised it could be her, the woman from that night. She was beautiful, possibly the most beautiful lady he'd ever seen.
"Surely it is she..." Grantaire muttered to himself. "Voilà mon affaire!" and stared up at the calèche's only passenger in awe. She was tall and majestic, elegant, graceful, 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 pelisse and kirtle and gauntlets and shapka likewise of ferns and ivy, and her eyes sparkling green like stars of first magnitude seen through peridot lenses. Those eyes and her lily-like hands were the only features he could see of a passenger who concealed herself underneath her shapka and high-collared pelisse, with a thick Elizabethan collar made of entwining ivy on tree branches. Ringlets of hair, long and auburn, cascaded around her shoulders as she signalled to the coachman and spurred the horses onward.
As the carriage stopped with its left panel right before Grantaire, the lady turned towards him and adressed him with a friendly sign, beckoning over to the lad, as if they were at least acquaintances. One would have said that she knew him already.
"How... how did you get here in the first place, milady?" he asked.
"I came here. To look for someone you cannot know better... You came, sweetheart,” she purred. She leaned sideways, with a wistful smile, and kissed the air in front of him. He ignored it, bowing obediently. 
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. She resembled someone he had once seen, some maiden he had embraced while dancing, somewhere sometime, ere she recoiled before his kiss. That sense of déjà-vu. Surely, he must have seen her somewhere before, perchance in the port of Marseille, or maybe on the trip to Paris, at evening twilight near some provincial town by the Rhône, en route to the capital.
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.
Grantaire was no fool; he would not need to be told twice. A grin quirked at his lips as he felt a shift in his emotions, like his luck was finally turning around. This maiden could bring him happiness as he'd never imagined!
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 clasped her hand and stepped up into the calèche and took his place by the lady's side, tucking himself under his own plain coat and turning to face his new companion. Though her lips hadn't moved, and her expression remained speculative, he felt as if she was smiling. And that made him smile.
The lady in green had offered her left hand, helping him into the carriage. “Come with me, darling. You are far too lovely for this place.” 

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 at breakneck speed as if fired from a cannon, and, after having toured twice around the arrondissement, the carriage cantered away towards the riverbank, 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, out into the frosty Île-de-France countryside. And Paris was left behind far away, worlds away. If Grantaire had not been so transfixed with the female who now was rubbing her left fingertips along his right hand, or so taken up with the fight-or-flight response that overwhelmed his whole self, he would have noticed the rapid change in scenery again and again.
Then the great calèche kept on advancing faster and faster in a northward direction. And 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. Sleet kept on falling so thickly, so heavily, that he could not see two paces away, not even see his own hands on the end of his arms, when he held them in front of his face as they sped on; for still they flew on. He tried to cry out for help, and when they were already far out in the countryside, he shouted for help as loud as he could in fear, but no one heard him scream. It was even hard to breathe for him, at such breakneck speed they travelled along! The sleet whipped all around as he flew forwards; still the sleet beat upon him, and the carriage flew onwards on a vertiginous course, and seemed to have grown wings (for, actually, the pegasi had spread their swan-white wings, and were ready to take to flight at any given moment). Every so often they would leap across a ditch and he had to hold on, in order not to fall off. Every now and then it gave a jump as if it were going flying over maze hedges and deep trenches.
Grantaire felt, time and time 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. Every now and then there was perhaps a leap, as if the calèche were flying over a trench or over a hedge, but there was not enough time to see those obstacles; there was not time to see what it was. He tried to whistle a cabaret tune to encourage himself, to steel his heart, but in vain: he could not, the notes did not come to his mind, and he could only remember a few terms in legalese; the poor lad felt deeply disappointed. The bridge over 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 it slipped away from him; 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, he could not find the lyrics once more; those words could not even choke his throat, for he had forgotten everything he could have done, and all he could remember were nothing but the beautiful symmetry of the ice crystals under Combeferre's burning-glass, and a few notions of legalese that he had been able to retain; and thus, to his great misfortune, instead of singing the anthem, he began to murmur all he could remember: "In dubio pro reo..." And thus he recited more Latin terms in legalese; the poor lad felt deeply disappointed.
There lay a broad expanse of dark, glittering water-flats before them and Grantaire thought to himself: "This is the Seine!" But it was rather a shallow lake or swamp. Then, as they had arrived at the edge of that great expanse of water:
"How are we going to continue our journey?" demanded Grantaire in an unquiet tone.
"Oh! Ne crains rien, fear no more," quoth the lady, "nothing will stop us until we reach my palace."
"And where is that palace?"
"On the icy, stormy shore," replied the lady. "I see that you are as cold as I am, and I wish you to come and live with me, in my kingdom; away from these peasants, away from these bohemians, away from these half-wits... Come and live with me! If you come with me then everything will always be beautiful. Correct?"
Presently she gave a shrill whistle, the horses plunged into the water, and a light-headed Grantaire shut his eyes. Strangely enough, he did not get wet; it was as if the liquid had frozen instantly, breaking the surface layer of thin ice on top as if it were nothing more than hot butter. And, when he opened his eyes, they were all on terra firma once more, as dry as if they had never plunged. If Grantaire had not been so transfixed with the female who now was rubbing her left fingertips along his right hand, or so taken up with the fight-or-flight response that overwhelmed his whole self, he would have noticed the rapid change in scenery again and again. They covered the lake or marsh, through the dense forest, up a riverbed, over the steep hills. They were journeying to far and distant lands. It was not light and not dark either; a twilight that came from the luminescent crystals in the lanterns of the calèche, glimmering everywhere on the walls. What Grantaire did notice, however, was the chill that came with travelling so fast. His body gave an involuntary shiver, despite the overcoat and beret. It seemed as if the female's body held no warmth. Yet he would rather lie down on his seat and fall asleep. Weary was he, rather weary indeed, and his heart was heavy. And thus, he laid himself comfortably to rest upon the warm, soft, green upholstery, and let his weary eyelids gradually shut; his eyes lighted up with hope even as they looked drugged with sleep.
Suddenly, he awoke a little during his sleep, startled by a sudden jolt; the lady in the carriage had stopped, giving the coachman a sign to do so; the great calèche slid to a halt. The person who had driven in it rose to her feet; the passenger was a female: how tall and straight she stood. She had risen from her seat and turned her face towards him, addressing Grantaire with a friendly sign. One would have said that she knew him already.
Now that a strange silvery light like that of the full moon (for it was a moonless evening), but actually that of Venus, appeared from behind the clouds, shining through her lilywhite face, he noticed, as she stood up and turned towards him, that her pelisse and her bonnet, which she had put back on, were not only of the brightest green, but still remained fresh and green and without any frost, in spite of the cold. 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 shapka 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 (or was it rain?), tall and slender and glittering, svelte and regal with her chestnut hair and glittering white skin, and her pale green eyes like chips of ice. She was beautiful, the most beautiful lady he'd ever seen. Long, flaming auburn hair fluttered around her face in waves, the length travelling to the line of her hips. Her dark green eyes danced, her rosy pink lips pursed in a secretive smile. She was shrouded in a lacy dark green fur coat, as dark as night and as green as poison, that dusted the tips of her toes and hid the rest of her body within its warmth.
She was the Green Faery, indeed!
And he remained both awestruck and frightened, struck by her sinister beauty to such a degree that his feelings towards her were both fear and awe, equally poised in the scales as that lady with long, flaming hair and pale, pale white skin sat watching him, calculating. The moment his hazel eyes met her dark green ones, he felt something in him lock. Like his whole body was frozen and he was under her control. A spell by her beauty. And she was beautiful. Unlike, and yet like, Enjolras. He struggled to be. She was perfect. Everything a person should be.
“It’s fine,” he acquiesced with a shrug.
"Fine?” she laughed, the richest, most musical laugh you can imagine, a laugh that sent both a chill and a shiver down his spine. She extracted a slim, white hand from under the heavy sleeve of greenery and tapped a long, nightshade-black-tipped fingernail against her lips, then extended it to him. “I’m sure you can do better than that... Do not be afraid, Grantaire," said she. "You are the one I have sought for so long. For once, I have met a young person that has been made just for me; one that is completely unlike all the others whose paths have crossed with mine... 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; he demanded that question sharply, his mouth twisting in a parody of surprise. He felt once more that chest pain, on the left side right above the heart, and he felt how his own heart fluttered anxiously, spreading its unsteady rhythm up the arteries of his throat and temples, and, blinking, he saw long auburn hair before his eyes, and a crown that was braided with ivy and nightshade and wormwood leaves. 
"We have done well," quoth she, but why are you so cold?"
She advanced on him, almost gliding across the snowy surface. She placed her hand on his chest, fingers trailing up and along the jacket until her palm was resting against his cheek. Her fingers were icy cool. “I know everything about you,” she whispered, leaning forward and resting her lips against his ear. “Absolutely everything.”
When he looked at her and weighed her against all he would be leaving there was hardly a comparison. How could he give up being with someone so perfect? He firmed his resolve and nodded once.
His body shuddered as her breath danced across his ear, and he couldn’t help the way his hands instinctively reached for her, his fingers gripping at the soft green pelisse of braided vines that surrounded her. He clasped her hand and glanced down at the high, firm breasts showcased by the deep décolletage of her dress, made of ivy embroidered with maidenhair ferns and nightshade berries, revealed by the shifting of her coat. She pulled back and smiled, a slow cunning smile that didn’t extend to her eyes, and she slicked her tongue slowly across her bottom lip. “Do you wish to come with me?" she whispered seductively, allowing her eyes to travel, unashamedly, down the length of his body. "You are perfect. Shameless, yet perfect."
“Yes,” he replied without a second thought. 
At that, she smiled kindly. "Who else was born on the winter solstice? Who else was born to hold my elixir? Come, sit with me under this cloak," quoth she. "Viens donc avec moi, je te mettrai dans ma pelisse et je te réchaufferai. I will wrap you in my pelisse of greenery, and that will keep you warm. You'll soon be warm enough..." 
As before, he felt strangely compelled to do as she said. He took a deep breath, then breathed out with all his power, and the Lady of the Green Kirtle gazed at him with her burning dark peridot eyes, so mysteriously; her nostrils widened and her full, red lips, as red as holly berries, smiled quietly and wistfully. And thus, without so much as a second thought to anyone at the Musain, as if it were impossible for him to make any resistance to that order, the dark young man drew a deep sigh and nestled back into his place by the Green Faery's side in the carriage, as she sat down closer to his side and wrapped him in a pelisse of maidenhair and ivy and embroidered with other climbing plants, as he kept on tucking himself under the cover and turning to face his new companion. Though her lips hadn't moved, and her expression remained speculative, he felt as if she was smiling. And that made him smile. Recognising a kindred spirit, someone as cold as he was, though in her case she was naturally a creature of ice, of frost and bitterness and indifference, he agreed with her that the people he'd grown up amongst and that he'd loved throughout his life were ignorant, were savages and simpletons and halfwits, and that he would be better off without them; that he should live with someone of such aristocratic bearing, and elegance, and sophistication, and culture... She was completely unworthy of being addressed in Marseillais patois; he swore that he would only speak to her in the best standard French he could muster.
As she wrapped the living green cloak around his shoulders, he felt, instead of warmth, as if the vines that the cloak were made of were coils constricting Grantaire's chest, gradually squeezing the air out of his lungs. 
"All right... Still frozen?" She made a sympathetic noise and kissed him, just on the jawline. Immediately, his shivering stopped and he was no longer cold. She smiled in delight, and kissed him on the forehead, her lips burning his skin, and yet at the same time colder than frozen bayonets. Then she kissed his brow once more, just a peck on the forehead right between the eyes, and then kissed his mouth for an instant, thrusting a cold forked tongue in to stroke his uvula, toying with his messy raven hair, wet and glued to his brow and temples, with the drenched whiskers glued to his cheeks, and with the rough stubble on his face. "Are you cold still? Are you still shivering? I have waited a long time for a dear brother in arms like you..." 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 will fight together, and everything will be perfect."
"Tu as l'air hardi," quoth he, whispering in standard French, in too much awe to praise her out loud.
"Et toi de même", replied she with a wistful smile.
"You are bold!" -- "And you too!" her reply endowed him with that quality he had previously lost until then.
Feeling better, the lush nodded. "I don't even know your name," he said finally, embarrassed at how he had taken advantage of a stranger's kindness.
"I have many names," she replied, with that smile that was not quite reassuring, but that he found intriguing nonetheless. "Come, brother, you mustn't fret. In the meantime, please stay and fight with me. What do you say?" 
Then Grantaire realized that his new friend lived a somewhat solitary existence here, and that perhaps she was lonely. It was a feeling that he knew well, all too well. It didn't seem so much to ask, for the generosity he'd been shown, to stay for a little while. And so he agreed. He smiled at the Green Faery through blue-tinted lips. 

Yet it was no long before his thirst, which had become a fever, flooded him once more like a rising tide.
"Just one sip of your blood would keep me warm... J'ai une soif d'enfer. I am so dreadfully thirsty. I would rather die than suffer such unbearable, terrible thirst..." he muttered listlessly, with a kind of drowsy thoughtfulness. Instead of feeling warm, 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, right between the eyes. "Je suis déjà demi-mort de soif... give me some because I’m so unbearably thirsty." He was fainting with thirst, he shook convulsively, his whole self stiffening in her grasp, his throat and chest were iron-bound; his ribcage felt like a corset, his carotids like garrote wires.
"J'ai de mieux... Here, I will bring you a draught, a liquor whose equal, sans doute, you have never tasted. Je n’en bois pas; elle est pour toi... You shall have it. I am sure you have never tasted any better, so drink it yourself," she added while, en effet, 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. Such was his thirst that he did not doubt for an instant. 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, at a single gulp. 

He raised his cup again before bringing it to his mouth—but waited until she sipped before taking a draught himself. She watched him, the bright green liquid pouring over his lips and into his mouth... and he swallowed...
"Que c'est bon!" said he after having quaffed. "Jamais, en effet, je n’ai bu de liqueur si exquise et si chaleureuse, si ardente... This precious liquor... it takes away all sense of toil and pain.
Yet my thirst is too great for a single draught to quench," he said. And his eyes sparkled, and he felt full of life, burning as if his every sorrow and care had disappeared. The exuberant nature of youth shook and stirred within him.
"It is good," he agreed. "I have never drunk something that warmed me so quickly. A moment ago I was freezing and now I feel as if I were sitting before a fire." Those hazel eyes gleamed with new life. All his sorrows and troubles were forgotten, and his natural human desires were aroused— and he took another glass and yet another, and began to feel the rich intoxicant flowing like lava through all his veins.
No sooner had he swallowed but that mouthful when he felt himself restored —he recalled that he was young, strong, alert, powerful—though it seemed to him, every now and then for a single instant, as if he had drunk too much. "I pray thee give me another, and when danger threatens thee I will give thee thy life." The second refill he also drank at a draught. "In mercy, give me but one more," he pleaded, "and twice will I give thee thy life when otherwise thou must perish."
Once more she refilled his cup, and she put it to his lips. The third cupful he also drank at a draught, but as soon as he had swallowed it all his former strength returned at once. There were flames in his eyes, he felt that the blood circulated like wildfire through his veins and arteries, and both his chagrin and his anger, not to mention all the pressure, had vanished utterly; sa gaieté lui est toute revenue, exubérante et folle.
“How good it is!” said he; “I have never before tasted such a warm, invigorating liquor, one so warming and full of fire!!” Natural human feelings arose in him, fresh and lively. And his eyes sparkled with new life; a glow diffused itself over his frame, he felt himself reanimated with a heat like none before; a life and fervour arose in him as it seemed as if every sorrow, every oppression were once more banished from his mind, evaporated, disappearing entirely, and a fresh, free nature were stirring within him. To him returned all the merry moods of yore, exuberant and free from restraint.
"Oh, I will slake my thirst, I will drink so deep..."
“Yes, just so,” said the maiden, as she poured out some more, and eagerly held it to his blue-tinted 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. His eyes shone, a liveliness, a glow entered him, as though all sorrows and stress had evaporated; sparkling, hearty human nature stirred within him — and he began to feel the rich intoxicant flowing like lava through all his veins.
Through his bloodstream coursed the joie de vivre, he felt that the whole universe belonged to him, why suffer? Everything is there for us to enjoy it and to make us happy! The stream of life is a stream of elation, one has to let themselves be carried away by that flow, one has to course with it, that is happiness.
Elle remplit de nouveau le gobelet de son sang et le met aux lèvres du savateur. Il boit. Une vie intense se répand dans tout son être. Il lui semble que l’univers lui appartient. — À quoi bon, se dit-il, se forger des soucis ? Jouissons, soyons heureux. Le plaisir est la vraie félicité.
“The whole universe 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!"
The joy of living was in his blood, he felt as if everything belonged to him by right... why should he worry? "Everything is for us to enjoy and revel in!" The stream of life is a stream of elation; thus let us ride on it, let ourselves float on its surface, no matter if the undertow may tear us deeper in... 
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, that took over his whole self? Was he rising higher, or sinking lower and lower into the unfathomably deep, deadly abyss? He knew not. 
She brought the cup to his lips nodding encouragingly. So he took a sip. Warmth filled him right to the toes and he felt much better.
"Drink," commanded the lady in green, and the savateur made an effort to approach his lips to the cup, while she bent his heavy head down to it, and he drank. The draught that had just before been flaming, was icy cold now, and as he emptied the cup, he felt a deadly chill passing over his whole self, stealing into his innermost heart, and felt all the glow and fire of his soul, all passion, dying slowly away, felt all consciousness of burning pain and inner torture escaping, eyelids closed, everything disappeared from his thoughts.
She lifted the cup to his lips and he drank. He drank. The joy of living streamed through his blood. He felt like the whole world was his. Why worry? Everything is created to enjoy and make us happy! The current of life is a current of joy-be carried along by it—let yourself be carried by it! That is bliss. A feeling of power and happiness flowed through his veins. The world was his and only now did he understand how to live. All was created for our sake, for us to enjoy. The river of life was a river of pleasure; you need only let the current carry you to know a life of bliss. He glanced at the young girl who was someone familiar --and yet wasn't. The girl before him had a freshness about her like new-fallen snow and, like the lavender, she was in bloom; turgent as a ripe melon, she moved as gracefully as the fawn; and yet, surely, like Grantaire, she was a human being, a person herself. And he embraced her, stiffening in her grasp as he looked in those strangely deep dark green eyes for a second, and then... how to explain what came next, how to find the right words? And he threw his arms around her, looked into her strange clear eyes—only for a second-and how to explain in words what he saw? Was it the spirit of life or death that filled him? Was he lifted up, or sunk down into the deep, killing ice chasm, deeper, always deeper? He threw his arms around her and looked into her marvellous clear eyes for a second. Only for a second! And how is one to describe, to tell in words, what he saw in that fraction of a moment? What was it that overpowered him: was it a bit of life that exists in death? Was it the life of spirits that filled him, or was it death? Was he uplifted, or did he take the sudden plunge into the void, even deeper and deeper? Had he been lifted upward or had he been plunged into a deep, death-filled world of ice?
Still he clasped his clamp-strong arms around her, and gazed into her wonderfully clear eyes, no longer as dark as they had seemed before, when he was sober.
She was fresh and white, like snow that had fallen from the skies; bloomingly fresh and soothing like lavender, turgent like a ripe melon, svelte and nimble and light of frame like a young fawn, but still ostensibly as human as Grantaire himself. He clasped her in his strong arms, he plunged his regard into her wonderfully clear eyes. It was only for a second, and in this --who could explain it clearly?-- was it the spirit of life or of death that filled him? Was he raised on high or did he sink down into the depths of the lethal abyss, deeper and even deeper? Que devint-il? How to express a sensation that cannot be expressed; how to explain the unexplainable? He felt himself descend, descendre toujours, toujours plus bas, deeper and deeper into the profound abyss of ice. "Come, give me a kiss," he demanded.
Twining her own arms and clasping them around his waist, the lady in green kissed him once more on the parted lips, this time for a longer lapse; and her kiss sent an icy shiver, a fiery chill like an electric shock, through every vertebra of his spinal column and into his forehead and brain, through his whole frame, searing his throat and every pipe of his lungs; that kiss sank in, he could feel it all the way right down to his heart, which was already like a lump of ice or a crazy diamond... a kiss that sent a chill through his spine into his forehead. He gave a cry of pain, tore himself loose, stumbled and fell. His eyes closed in darkness, but he opened them again. Evil powers had played their tricks. She leaned in to kiss him again, embracing him tightly, and he held onto her, for the strength seemed to leave his body. Ah! Those lips of hers were sharper than bayonets. Her kiss was colder than ice, sucked all the air out of his lungs, and a shudder penetrated all the way straight into his heart, which was already half-frozen. He was seized, from crown to toe, with a deadly cold that ran down his spine and through his limbs, a cold so sharp that such a great impression seared and electrocuted, that it even stopped his heart. Ice and fire and lightning - one does not know the difference at the first touch. A deathly ice-cold quiver like an electric shock passed through him, seizing his limbs and numbing them, as a deathly pallor came over his features, an icy chill shot through his limbs—an electric shock—ice and fire and lightning! From a single quick touch you cannot tell the difference. Those caresses went also quite through to and stopped his heart, which was already almost a crazy diamond; he thought and 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 anxiously to tear himself free from her, but stumbled, falling into her lap. He let out or gave a scream of pain, broke himself free, reeled, staggered, recoiled, tried to drag himself away, until he finally stumbled and fell unconscious upon her knees. Then, everything gave way to the darkness of the night. For a moment all was dark before his eyes, but when he opened them again it was light, the light of a non-existent moon (for the moon was new on that fateful night), and rather that of Venus, shining through the soft translucent skin of a lovely heart-shaped face. The Lady in Green kissed him, and the eternal coldness penetrated his backbone and touched his forehead. He cried out in pain. Tearing himself from her arms, he stumbled and fell. In his eyes the night fell, but then he opened them again. Night closed his eyes. But a moment later he opened them again. Evil's performance was over. The forces of darkness had made their move.

"Drink," commanded the lady in green, and the savateur made an effort to approach his lips to the refilled cup, while she bent his heavy head down to it, and he drank. The draught that had just before been flaming, was icy cold now, and as he emptied the cup, he felt a deadly chill passing over his whole self, stealing into his innermost heart, and felt all the glow and fire of his soul, all passion, dying slowly away, felt all consciousness of burning pain and inner torture escaping, eyelids closed, everything disappeared from his thoughts.

Eh bien, she asked him as she watched him drink, as-tu toujours froid? 

She nodded slyly. “Yes, that’s what I wanted to hear.” Pulling him back towards her, she placed both of her hands on either side of his face, clutching his jaw in her palms. The tips of her fingers slid into his hair, the nails tracing delicately against his skin. She pressed her lips to his hungrily, mouth slanting over his, teasing his mouth open with her tongue. The purr-like groan that murmured in the back of his throat pleased her, and she pulled away, studying his flushed cheeks.

“How do you feel now, Grantaire?"She whispered, trailing her fingertips across the collar of his shirt.
“Hot,” he mumbled, pupils dilated and breath heavy. Hot, yes, but his veins had iced over, blood had stopped pumping. His skin had become cold, like the very air they breathed. Her fingers dusted across the back of his hand, and he vaguely noticed she didn’t feel as cold any more; he found he was no longer cold at all; the lips pressed against his own suddenly quite warm.
“Good. There you are.” She stroked his hair, then her hands trailed down to his wrists, tugging on the sleeves of his overcoat. “I don’t think you’ll need this anymore, do you?” He shook his head, allowing her to slip it from his shoulders. The icy beauty threw the coat into the seat opposite them with a flick of her wrist, then stared back at him. Her gaze didn’t make him uncomfortable, or wary. He took pleasure in it, enjoyed the way she stared at him, and the way he didn’t stop himself from staring back. Enj had never stared at him so openly, so longingly. The li'l twat...

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. Everything went dark before his eyes, his eyes that began to swim with dizziness, but, within a single instant, he opened them again. Midnight had fallen for his eyes, but, making a supreme effort, he was finally able to open them once more. The powers of evil had played their game. Coming to his senses, he could not comprehend that he had been a plaything to sinister powers, that had amused themselves quite much playing with his whole self.
For an instant, he thought he was about to die, and his limbs seemed to refuse their functions, 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, and being drenched to the bones... had utterly disappeared; he did not even shiver the slightest, with either cold or fear. He awakened as instantly as he had fallen unconscious. He soon felt quite well again and no longer noticed the cold around him, he found he was no longer cold at all; the lips pressed against his own suddenly quite warm. 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: he saw the liquor lie glowing and creaming in the bowl, like melted peridot mixed with galaxies; he inhaled its sweet bewildering odour and, scarce knowing what he did, the young man raised it to his lips and drank deeply. In a moment, he was electrified with delight, a rapturous tranquillity pervading his whole flame; he felt intoxicated with pleasure which sprang from no cause and tended to no object, yet was ready to be reflected and multiplied from all objects around: he seemed incapable of thinking, and happier than any positive thought could make him. All thought of Enjolras, all thought of the past, all thought of the future, were completely suspended: he only knew that he was gazing into a sun of loveliness, in which a thousand beauties seemed to converge, while the feelings inspired by his own sun-god were mingled with his new sensations, though the object of the former was veiled in his memory by a dazzling mist. The lady in green occupied his whole fancy, and seemed to be the fountain of all his glad sensations.

"You look beautiful," he said wonderingly, for now he could hardly look at anything else but her beauty. 
The Green Faery smiled sweetly 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; he felt himself to the point of breathing his last. Under the spell of that kiss colder than ice, he had the feeling that the blood froze in his veins, and his heart hardened even more, as everything darkened before his shut eyes. It went right to his heart, which was already half made of ice. He felt as though he were about to die, but it hurt only for half a minute, then it was over. Now he seemed stronger and he no longer felt how cold the air was. 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, he was suddenly comfortable and no longer felt anything else around him, the impression of the piercing cold having completely disappeared; and all at once 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 and everything he had once ever loved, and all at once everything else that remained of the past, everything he had left behind disappeared, was forgotten, and he nestled into the blankets beside her. And it was like a purple haze had set in over his mind, like a thick battlefield fog. The screaming in his head slowly got quieter and quieter, until he couldn't remember why he had been in such pain any more; couldn't remember who he was or what he was doing in that carriage, or why his throat felt raw as if he'd drunk glass shards. For he had lost all of his accumulated knowledge and experience, or at least seventy-five percent thereof, leaving only the thrills he felt whenever he fought with his feet or singlesticks, or whenever he used his rapier wit to torment anyone else. As he finished the last drop, the cup dropped from his loosened grasp, and he fancied a cool tide was rushing on over his head with a musical sound; all suffering left him, the flames of hatred were extinguished like a quivering, dying fire. His sorrows left on trembling through his heart... a mild hand seemed to rest on his head... he saw and heard nothing more. The mirror of his soul left off reflecting the images of life... the past disappeared like a cloud... no thought kept watch at the gates of the future. Grantaire had drunk from the draught that freezes hearts, and the tablet of his existence was like an empty leaf. A blank slate anyone could rewrite.

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. It had been but the beginning of a new career; for, opening his eyes again, he found himself lying in the shade of a calèche window-frame, cradled in her light green kirtle.

Seeing the empty cup shatter by his side, she was sure that he had drunk the charmed liquor; eagerly she perused his countenance, and, reading the deepest fascination in every line of it, she stepped forward, arms hanging loosely by her side. “I’m going to kiss you again before we go any further," she told him, and he nodded, any words he may have had frozen in his throat. He allowed her to rest her hands on his hips, grasping them tightly, and pulled him towards her until their bodies slid against each other sinuously. She sucked his lower lip into her mouth, gazing up at him with eyes that would have stopped the blood of any mortal. And as their lips melded, as her tongue began to tangle furiously with his, the frozen heart of a young man was closed off from love, from hope. From Enjolras.

Though, for Grantaire, Enjolras had ceased to exist.

That night the faint light of Venus, for want of moonlight, shone through the high windows of the dark carriage, and the savateur woke from a nightmare he couldn't remember to find this lovely lady sitting on the upholstery by his side, stroking his wet hair soothingly. The touch was disturbing in some way he couldn't have explained, and yet Grantaire found himself strangely unable to pull away.

"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? Now you must have no more kisses in a while either," she said lightly, "or otherwise I should kiss you to death."
Grantaire, feeling completely recomforted, nodded listlessly as he looked at her dazzling face, having come to his senses once more, though a deathly pallor had come over his features once more. The biting gale stung his cheekbones... yet he felt nought but a caress.
"You look beautiful," he said wonderingly, for now he could hardly look at anything else but her indifferent, loveless, lustful beauty. "Que vous êtes belle!" No, she did not inspire any dread. One look at her. She was stunningly beautiful; he didn't believe he'd ever seen a wiser or lovelier face -- not at all icy like the one he'd seen beckoning to her that time outside the Musain. To his eyes she was perfect. He didn't feel afraid of her anymore; her presence felt no longer sinister, but rather soothing, reassuring, instead. Never had such a charming or such an intelligent visage appeared before him (or so he thought, not even being able to recall the countenance of his fair idol in scarlet), and she seemed no longer made of ice or sugar or marble, like she had looked not long ago at the backdoor of the Musain, when she had made that first overture that had frightened him so much; it didn’t frighten him any more – it made him feel exhilarated. Her beauty was such that it hurt the eyes to look at her, but she appeared no longer as icy as the first time; she had no longer that glacial appearance of yore. 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. Practically perfect in every way. One could not even imagine a cleverer or more graceful or 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, the most beautiful thing he’d seen in his life, or whose face was so clever and whose eyes so wise. By his side, he felt himself paltry, ignorant, homely, ridiculous, unworthy of interest. In his eyes, she was perfect, and he was not at all afraid. After all, his mind had been cleansed back to a half-blank slate, and, all the while she was combing her fingers through his tousled raven hair, 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, and that he could do sums in his head, even fractions, but also make up the wittiest of quips within the blink of an eye; he told her how he could draw and paint some pretty fine pictures, and that he knew the tunes and the lyrics to all the lewdest drinking songs by heart, as well as all the dance steps from the cabarets, and knew the area in square miles of every country in Europe, and what its population was; and explained that metal expanded when it was heated, and all manner of other things, and the lady listened with a serene smile on her face. And when it came to his physical prowess, that he was a great savateur and tireur de chausson marseillais, and equally deft at wielding a walking-stick, or bâton, in singlesticks combat.
The Green Faery smiled sweetly 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 and felt that he surely did not know enough. It then seemed to him that what he knew was not enough, and he looked around him at the darkening sky as the sled flew onwards -- really flying, drawn through the air under its own power. She kept on smiling, and he began to be afraid that he did not know as much as he thought he did; all the time she was smiling, so that it seemed to him that he really knew nothing at all; she drew him close and brushed his fingers through raven hair, listening as he spoke of all things he knew that he recalled people had found clever. And always the Lady wore a smile that suggested Grantaire still had much to learn, and he looked around at their surroundings as they began to fly higher and higher into the storm clouds.
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... you are rightfully mine altogether, body and heart and soul! 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 marvellously 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 raised up high, or did he sink down into the deep, always deeper?
He drank: The joy of living streamed through his blood. He felt like the whole world was his. Why worry? Everything is created to enjoy and make us happy! The current of life is a current of joy-be carried along by it—let yourself be carried by it! That is bliss. A feeling of power and happiness flowed through his veins. The world was his and only now did he understand how to live. All was created for our sake, for us to enjoy. The river of life was a river of pleasure; you need only let the current carry you to know a life of bliss. 
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.

"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 upon his chest; his own failing heartbeat resounded around him and inside him. 
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 all that he knew was not enough, and he looked around him at the darkened sky, up into the huge, huge infinity of outer space overhead, as she flew with him-- flew high up, and 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. She kept on smiling, and he began to be afraid that he did not know as much as he thought he did. 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. He felt quite comfortable, and no longer noticed the cold nor the motion sickness as he looked at her, staring at her like a man out of his wits. She was so beautiful! A cleverer and prettier face he could not imagine. She no longer seemed to be made of ice, as she had seemed when she sat outside his window and beckoned to him. In his eyes she was perfect, and she was not at all afraid, and he knew no fear of her either; in his spellbound eyes, she now appeared to be glorified by a supernatural light of beauty and wit; joy streamed from every line of her face and form into the joyful heart in his chest; as light shoots back from the surface of smooth liquid water towards its heavenly sources. This lady occupied his whole fancy, and seemed to be the fountain of all his glad sensations. She kept on smiling, and he began to be afraid that he did not know as much as he thought he did. He looked up at the great big space overhead, as she flew with him high up on the black clouds, while the storm whistled and roared as if it were singing old ballads.
On they flew over woods and lakes, over marshes and wastelands, and many lands, all through that long, long moonless stormy night, and he saw himself taken with her up into the vast atmosphere, towards the ominous storm clouds; looking out the window, he saw cathedral spires appear and disappear below his feet, as well as goblin-like grotesque gargoyles, and 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 he admired the beauties of the long wintry night, quite high in the pale grey skies, ere they pierced, and surfaced above, that dark coat of thick sky-fog that flashed with lightning, up where the steel-coloured nimbus clouds formed an unearthly landscape of dark grey that flashed bright here and there every now and then, while, far above, all the stars shone twinkling with all their splendid clarity in the moonless firmament; beneath their feet, they heard how a storm brewed, turning the clouds black, the gale blew cold, the first glittering snow crackled, and no living thing made a sound, but they were above the clouds now, and yet the tempest whistled, and raged, and howled, and roared, and clashed, and rang in their ears; it was a fierce melody, one would have said as if it were singing an age-old dithyramb like the ancient warcries of berserkers or maenads; yet, in that state of trance, all that chaotic chorus was but a lullaby to him.
The storm swept on and sang its old, eternal songs. Above moors, forests, and lakes they flew; and the cold winter whipped the landscape below them.
The drugged young man gazed at her, glazed eyes resting upon her features during the long long winter's night; and saw that she was so beautiful, the most beautiful lady he'd ever seen in his life... he could not imagine a more lovely and intelligent face, he could not imagine that anyone could have a wiser or a more beautiful face; and she did not now seem to be made of ice or sugar or marble, as she had when he had first seen her through the backroom door, the time she had beckoned to him. No, she did not inspire any dread. In his eyes she now seemed utterly perfect, nor did he feel any fear. In his eyes she was perfect, and, unafraid, 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 thundered and roared,  the snow glittered, and wolves with teeth like daggers kept pace. He was well and truly lost under the elixir's spell.
For his poisoned heart was growing colder by the minute, and except for a brief moment of fear that he felt at the Lady’s kiss, he felt no pain. He felt nothing at all, ever since. And though he recalled something blood red, red and golden and beautiful, he glanced at the Lady’s lilywhite face, and decided that ice was so much prettier.
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.
Thus flew their calèche over forests and lakes and marshes and wastelands, over crowns of evergreens in snow caps, over many a land or region; they flew over the packs of wolves, and the gray wolves, that had lain down in ambush awaiting their prey, raised themselves, discordantly 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, discordantly 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, 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. Still, far above, all the stars shone bright with all their splendid clarity, Venus especially large and clear, in the moonless firmament on that long wintry night; high above the evenstar shone bright and large, and on it he fixed his eyes throughout that long, long winter night.

With this mindset, the oblivious savateur entered the magical realm, the place where the time flows differently and wondrous things happened on a daily basis. He must have been more tired than he thought because it looked almost as… as if the winter simply hopped over to springtime in a matter of a few meters. 
Very soon they overtook the rising sun, passed it, and left it on the horizon as they went on into the purlieus of the Land of Night and Silence, which lies beyond the great reality.
In the end, when the day was about to dawn once more, Grantaire, exhausted, overcome by weariness and lulled by all that softness and that warmth, slumped down from her embrace and fell asleep, and slept at the feet of the Lady in the Green Kirtle, who gently stroked her fingers through his hair.

He let the draught stronger than laudanum drag him under and wished desperately that he might be permitted never to awaken.

The evil draught, which he had been made drunk with, had laid hold of him and bound his senses so strongly that, when daytime came, he fell senseless upon the carriage floor at her feet, his countenance fixed in the insensibility of drunkenness, and there he lay insensible as one dead, left a living cadaver, her icy cold left hand heavy on his shoulder.

COMMENTARIES:

(I bet my life that you, dear reader, can see a "to be continued" arrow in your mind's eye and hear the guitar riff at the start of Yes's Roundabout in your mind's ear as you picture yourself the last scene in this chapter!)

Rating: Errrrr... somewhere in the Teen/Mature area, considering some of the content!
Summary: All about Grantaire! :D Liz-senpai wished to see (among other things) les Amis doing things outside the revolutionary sphere, so here is a very long story about how Grantaire came to be the Enjolras-loving sceptic Hugo introduced us to.

Author’s Note:
Last minute research was necessary in order to finish this story, unfortunately! I apologise if anything seems rushed, rough, underdone, or just plain unfinished -- even at nearly 10,000 words I can’t seem to finish a story! In any case, research: for part of this story I went looking for some information and in that process I discovered Baudelaire and his Artificial Paradises which, while providing me with some useful if not exactly period-accurate information for a particular section of this story, also convinced me that had Grantaire been a real human being and had survived the riots to live through to the ‘40s and ‘50s, he and Baudelaire could very well have been best friends. Thus part of the inspiration comes from Baudelaire’s poem, ‘L’Aube Spirituelle’, and many details found within this story did in fact come from translations and analysis from some of his other works, so please do forgive me for the slight anachronism of using Baudelaire for a fic set in the 1820s!

On a lighter note ... I found it necessary to name some new characters, 10 or so 6 in fact. Most of you may very well scroll past and not pay a whole lot of attention to these characters or their names or really anything about them, as they are just used to paint a rough portrait or to provide a brief interaction/distraction. However, if any of the readers follow the NHL they will undoubtedly snicker and recognise the names’ origins. In my defence there are a great many French-Canadians who play hockey, and Québecois names are still French, and I did have a lot of hockey-related distractions between Thanksgiving weekend and the new year when I was supposed to be writing this fic.
Hope you enjoy it, readers! :D Many apologies for the disgusting delay -- and for any errors that may still appear in this story.

Well, we didn't quite make it all the way to actual E/R, but there just didn't seem to be a good way to get them together without making the story twice as long, because Grantaire would need time to heal, and Enjolras, time to finish getting a clue (or several) about Grantaire's feelings and his own.

So, if you are reading this chapter and too high strung to read any of the following chapters, consider this preslash and either a couple months later they totally hook up, or you can imagine canon taking its course and Enjolras realizing What Could Have Been at the last moment.

warnings: aside from obvious substance abuse-addiction, R molests Enj and gropes him against his consent, Enj is able to protect himself - R insults and shamed Enj and others. They argue and Enj doesn't take it well.

The Snow Queen's always a good fairytale to adapt ensemble casts to, because Gerda runs into so many different characters while she searches for Kai. I had the bunny for a Snow Queen Enjoltaire AU since long ago. Including whom to cast as the prince and princess, and the robber maiden (some unrequited, one-sided Enjonine, aside from obvious Mariusette!): I knew exactly how they would fit into the grand scheme of things (ie Cosette, Marius, and the Thénardier family). As well as the whole "Enj is Gerda and R is Kai" thing, and not the other way around, knowing who was the most feminine and the most masculine of the two (and, the icing on the cake: Enj is a blond in scarlet, while R has this addiction...). This classic adventure story fits this pairing, just like it fits Jaimienne, like a glove. And I figured out how to fit most of the Les Mis characters into it, to begin. Et voilà, it became my first Enjoltaire, and my first Mizzie, story EVER!!
Furthermore, the Biedermeier style in which the original tale is written unfurled in the 1820s-1830s that are most popular choice of setting for illustrators, theatre groups, and filmmakers when it comes to adapting Andersenian tales. The same historical setting of Les Misérables, long story short. 
But something seemed to be amiss. It took yet another year to realise that the original Andersenian Snow Queen was not the right villainess for the story.
After re-reading/re-watching Les Misérables and re-watching Moulin Rouge that winter 2017, and then a subsequent re-read of The Silver Chair, it suddenly clicked. It just said click when I thought of the Green Faery of Absinthe, as a Lady of the Green Kirtle - click, like that - and the final piece of the puzzle fell into place. It all suddenly made sense. Furthermore, Revelation 8:11 (the third trumpet, the one that affects the freshwaters) speaks of a shooting star that poisons one third of the freshwaters, turning them into absinthe, which leads to many casualties. Ever since my childhood, the imagery of that verse has haunted my daydreams, nightmares, and creative productions, and so has another Revelation imagery of intoxication and druglore: the wine of immorality or fornication in 17, which metaphorically intoxicated, or made drunk, all the nations (in the sense of ethnic groups) and common inhabitants of the Earth! The shard of the shattered mirror of truth was, in consequence, replaced with absinthe - the green blood of the temptress - as the catalyst for Grand'R's downfall. The titular villainess is not my OC, but she is the Green Faery from Moulin Rouge, with a dash of Lady of the Green Kirtle; while the Mizzie characters look as they do in the musical film of 2012... except for Enj's hairstyle: that long golden queue is from the WMT anime and the manga by Arai, aside from the SunNeko Lee manga! And I am as weak for men in low ponytails as for Enjoltaire... (In the anime version, all the characters would be just like in the anime Shoujo Cosette, but the Green Faery would look and act like Alala in Pichi Pichi Pitch!).
A lot of inspiration also came from the Laboulaye story "Perlino" (http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/12120/pg12120-images.html), a Snow Queen/Pintosmalto nineteenth-century French retelling with an addicted, frozenhearted love interest "saisi d'une soif ardente" by the drug he ingests dissolved in liquor, but saved in extremis by a persistent heroine (this is the same plot, but adding Andersen elements and at least slightly queered, starring my Mizzie OTP!). 
I have also been influenced by the temperance tale genre of Biedermeier-Victorian fiction, which, discussing the importance of free will, tells the familiar narrative of a decent and hopeful young person (most frequently male) rendered utterly helpless by their first drink, leaping off the slippery slope into an abyss of despair and depravity, but (in the happiest endings) redeemed at the eleventh hour by a loved one, at the cost of a great sacrifice. In other words, Grantaire was not the only one, but one out of the many similar antiheroes (compare, for instance, Laura in "Goblin Market" or Martín in "La adormidera") in the various versions of one of the nineteenth century's most frequently told narratives, which (coincidentally?) came to prominence in the 1830s! One of the sources I paraphrased was Richard from "The Chimes" by Dickens in a grisly future timeline (Promising young men turn to alcohol, and become hopeless drunks; Richard impregnates the unmarried Meg then drinks himself to death;) but with far less facial hair, of course!
The Tireur d'Épine, that ephebe pulling a thorn from his footsole, is a Hellenistic sculpture which has been replicated and inspiring artists and literary creators through the ages; the most famous one in France was and is a marble by Benvenuto Cellini, a diplomatic gift to Francis I, that, after serving as a garden ornament at Fontainebleau, can still be found in its final resting place in the Louvre (plus, there was also a bronze in the Vatican collection that Napoleon took as spoils of war and kept in the Louvre from 1798-1815; then, along with many other spoils of that war, it was restored to the Vatican as part of the whole Restoration effort). So how could a child gamin in the port of Marseille (whom I picture myself as the logo of Le Petit Marseillais, but looking far more ragged) have heard of it? Most likely by eavesdropping! He could also have seen the Tireur d'Épine or heard of it upon finding his niche in Parisian society, right?
The drinking song sung by R at the start is a version of "La vigne au vin", a real-life military march-tune that was very popular in nineteenth-century Montmartre. 
And, of course, the Brorson hymn in Andersen's original tale had to be replaced with La Marseillaise in this retelling, right?
I watched and re-watched all of Sanji's kickfights in One Piece (kuroashi being Oda-sensei's take on savate), and perused Benedict's fight against a Prussian artisan in La terreur prussienne on this very blog, for inspiration on the moves that our savateur would use.
Of course Grand'R had to get the infamous window seat in the second-to-last row, for emphasis (I know too well that this is a dead horse cliché when it comes to lead characters in anime, but, in spite of the negative stigma, many clichés are fully accepted by the audience, for the same reason as something formulaic, with summaries that are practically interchangeable -like, for instance, any villain-of-the-week show-, works: because of its familiarity. There are also circumstances under which clichés are expected. You're gonna have to learn your clichés. You're gonna have to study them, you're gonna have to know them. They're your friends. Write this down...)!
Yes, felonious does not mean what Grantaire thinks it means. To be fair, one is proportionally more drunk when the potency of the wine one has consumed is suddenly multiplied by a factor of cat. BTW, his kitty self would be a green-eyed mackerel tabby, the spitting image of Findus in the Pettson & Findus storybooks of my childhood (Mum and I even have a living breathing Findus, of flesh and blood, among our pets!); while Courf' would be a more aristocratic chocolate-point Siamese, that has the same rare and delicate beauty...


And I'm following the original story to the point of pastiching style and quoting and paraphrasing significant lines, so there are bound to be some similarities in what we produce.

And oh please write more of this. I love adaptions of the Snow Queen, and I love the way you've fit Enjoltaire into this and still have them true to their characters

Oh, I'm definately going to write more -- I've figured out how to fit most of the core cast and several supporting characters into it, for one thing.

I really love how you incorporate all the different elements into such an authentic-feeling fairytale. It reads like something from the 18th century, with a really consistant and engaging tone. And did I mention the story's hooking me in like crazy? :D

Enjoltaire can feel like such a fairytale pairing...

Thanks! They are very fairytale-like, aren't they? (though usually, lately, I've been mentally comparing them to operas and Greek or Shakespearian tragedies).

I have a hard time believing that Grantaire was not ever at any point interesting or useful or a worthwhile friend to Enjolras, just from their interactions in "Enjolras and his Lieutenants". Enjolras would have scorned his suggestions and rejected his offer to help completely out of hand if that were the case. Because Enjolras takes him seriously, there's therefore got to be something between them other than the believer disdaining the sceptic, despite what Hugo says in "A Group Which Almost Became Historic". Enjolras and Grantaire have this interesting underlying story which was just dying to be teased out, so here (some of) it is.

The Snow Queen was always one of my favourites as a kid, because it's one of the few fairytales out there that has the girl saving the guy (that, and East of the Sun, West of the Moon, or the Duke of Norroway, which I suspect Andersen was at least partially inspired by). Also, Savitri and Satyavan, which has the girl saving the guy from Hades himself (or at least the Asian counterpart thereof), is a really badass story whose heroine and her fiancé overlap a lot with the Prince and Princess in TSQ, not to mention Portia and Bassanio...

Joan D. Vinge has a really awesome sci-fi retelling of it (the novel's called, unsurprisingly, The Snow Queen) that I loved in high school. There is also The Wizard of London, an impressive retelling set in the Victorian era that includes Shakespearean elements.

You really caught the feel of the original story here, and it's amazing how well our Les Mis OTP fit into it.

 
It reads like something from the 18th century

Yay, thanks! That's exactly what I was going for - a sort of Charles Perrault/Brothers Grimm/Lemony Snicket feel (it probably helped that I ripped off Andersen's original prose, and Victor Hugo's as well, like mad at the begining and end of each section).

I don't think I can really take credit for the voice, though, since it mostly consists of copying the style from original and a lot of other fairytales. With occasional condescending Victorian-children's-book-style asides to the reader, just because they're so much fun when Lemony Snicket does them.



Very enchanting, and chilling, this;
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.
He let the draught stronger than laudanum drag him under and wished desperately that he might be permitted never to awaken.
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 one dead, left a living cadaver, her icy cold left hand heavy on his shoulder.

I could totally see R doing that.

Thanks! That final line, and the details about the night sky, are actually taken directly from Hans Christian Andersen's original ("While by day he slept at the feet of the snow queen.") as are the conversations about the tricolore and liberty and snowflakes (the latter is directly in the source tale) and R telling the Lady that he can do those badass moves in martial arts (in the original Andersen, Kai telling the Queen that he can do multiplications and fractions in his head).

This bit: 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.

is directly from the original as well, though of course it's ice, there, not absinthe.

And Grantaire, who hardly ever ate these days, shook his head, saying coldly that he had work to do. As he spoke, a snowflake drifted down to land on the heavy leather glove he wore to protect his hand when in combat, and he held it up to the others with a thin, sharp smile. "Look how perfect it is," he said, bidding Combeferre to peer at it through the glass he used for working on the smallest, finest blood vessels. "Much better than your painted flowers, Four-Eyes. So exact and symmetrical -- there would not be a fault in it, if only it did not melt."

Listlessly, Enjolras agreed that it was beautiful (and Combeferre, of course, agreed as well with a sigh), and went home, his garret feeling empty and cold without someone to share his supper with. Combeferre followed him and came over that evening, of course, sensing that crack in the leader's icy façade and trying to comfort his broken spirits, but, though his presence felt reassuring indeed, it was not the same. 

That is heartbreaking. Like, deeply. 

The beginning of this was so charming and happy I guess I kind of forgot that something bad was going to happen. I'm not really familiar with this fairy tale, so it's doubly exciting, and while I can guess there's a happy end, I'm still very worried... 

The beginning of this was so charming and happy I guess I kind of forgot that something bad was going to happen. I'm not really familiar with this fairy tale, so it's doubly exciting, and while I can guess there's a happy end, I'm still very worried for Grand'R, Enj has to save himm DD: 

Lots of fantastic lines here, I love this style of story telling and you're doing it reallyreally well.

That is heartbreaking. Like, deeply. 

I can only take credit for the second half (the agreeing that the snowflake is lovely and going home to an empty house). The musings on how snowflakes would be perfect if only they didn't melt are from the original. *grins* There's a great deal of woobie!Enj (and woobie!R) in this fic. But Enj gets a happy ending, I promise!

The beginning of this was so charming and happy I guess I kind of forgot that something bad was going to happen. I'm not really familiar with this fairy tale, so it's doubly exciting, and while I can guess there's a happy end, I'm still very worried for Grand'R, Enj has to save himm DD:

This is approximately the only Hans Christian Andersen fairytale with a happy ending, so you're in luck! (okay, they don't all end in death and depressingness -- but I was scarred by The Little Matchgirl and the Ugly Duckling at a young and impressionable age).

- The silk weavers' revolt in Lyon mentioned in the first scene is discussed on wikipedia here.

- Eugène Delacroix's most famous painting, "Liberty Leading the People," was painted to commemorate the July Revolution of 1830. The significantly more salacious Delacroix painting Grantaire rhapsodizes about to Jehan can be seen here: http://www.artble.com/artists/eugene_delacroix/paintings/the_death_of_sardanapalus

- Antoine Labarraque invented one of the earlier forms of disinfectant. Given that Combeferre's supposed to believe in "the suppression of suffering in surgical operations," it seems likely that he'd be in favor of it.

- Jean Baptiste Boisduval was a famous French entomologist, lepidopterist, and botanist. His Histoire général et iconographie des lepidoptérès et des chenilles ... (with colour plates!) was published in multiple volumes between 1829 and 1837. The original watercolours used to create the illustrations are currently held at the University of South Carolina and can be viewed here. (The collection has everything from a perfectly detailed Monarch Butterfly to an equally perfect drawing of the loathsome Eastern Tent Caterpillar*)
*Imagine every tree in your yard covered in these and then imagine never sleeping again.

- "a waistcoat with whalebone and tight laces" - it was fashionable in the 1820s and early 1830s for men to have a narrow-waisted silhouette (as in these period fashion plates), and some men wore waistcoats with built-in stays in order to achieve the right look (and some, such as King George IV of England, rather infamously wore actual corsets).

- I feel like every "Les Amis talk about things" scene in this fic could just as easily be replaced by the words "my research - let me show you it!" (though large sections of the Brick could probably be summarized similarly, so I guess it's in the spirit of canon?)

The Amis are, uh, trying their best? (Sensitivity is, alas, not Enjolras's strong suit)

- The Rue des Prouvaires conspiracy (no connection to Jehan Prouvaire) was a Legitimist (the hard-core Royalists who wanted to boot Louis-Philippe off the throne and bring back Charles X) plot to assassinate King Louis-Philippe at a royal ball held at the French court on February 1, 1832, after which the Legimitists planned to seize power and put Charles X's grandson Henri V on the throne. (Discussed on tumblr with numerous google books citations here: pilferingapples.tumblr.com/post/44534222816/utterlydeceptivetwaddlespeak and here: pilferingapples.tumblr.com/post/80799728662 )

- I think we've included references to Tarquinnus and Lucretia already, but if not: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Rape_of_Lucrece (After Lucretia commits suicide following her rape at the hands of Roman prince Sextus Tarquinnus, her kinsmen swear a melodramatic oath on her blood to overthrow the corrupt kings of Rome)

In this chapter, the Charenton Bridge (over the Seine, in Paris) is a reference to the lyrics "The Advent of Panurge" and the Rabelais story in which it was based. This song instantly brings to mind Parisian university bohemians (and of course, E/R! ;) )

As for those Syd Barrett references... there are some Crazy Diamond lines, and I have always seen that Grand'R is to the Friends as Syd is to Pink Floyd. The addicted, wayward outsider whom the leader still gives a second chance. I will never forget the day I heard Crazy Diamond on the radio in the Swedish woods, played as a dirge because Syd had died...
The whole Enjoltaire shipping for me started with the 2012 musical film and the anime, followed by a re-read of Hugo's novel while listening to various appropriate tunes not from the musical (and a lot of Pink Floyd lines came out for the Amis subplot!). Add my soft spot for lonely prodigies - add my penchant for altered states - add my fujoshi tendencies and their bittersweet story in canon - add a certain foreign service brat senpai who cosplayed as Enj - add a lot of Pink Floyd parallels (Enj as Roger Waters and R as Syd Barrett) - and the rest is history!

If you read between the lines, there is also some Courferre... Enj and 'Ferre being roomies at first and the latter growing the planter box, until R steps in to defend them from some thugs and moves in with his pretty blond senpai, 'Ferre moving in with Courf' and giving our OTP the flower box as a parting gift, with those best wishes... <3

Speaking of which, backstories!! We'll plunge deeper into Combeferre's later on in this tale, as well as our golden-haired leader's (as Enj defrosts and opens up)... I meant, not everyone had a decent backstory, so I took all the time to explain some of my headcanons - including how Lesgle became bald as a cue ball, for instance (three words: pot au feu!). Or how Prouvaire got the rosebush in his window garden (like: he's from Cathar/Troubadour country and his family distills perfumes...). Or why Feuilly is so obsessed with nationalistic movements in the Habsburg and Romanov empires. And Courfeyrac just has to be a Gascon -I mean, he has already got the surname (compare de Sigognac, de Bergerac, etc.), the personality (swaggering, proud warrior), and the swordsmanship to prove it! I wanted to represent the whole South of France (well, Marius and Lesgle are from the Île-de-France, as the exceptions... and oui, Marius will appear with more relevance in a later chapter of this AU!) in the characters' backgrounds to add even more diversity to the roster...

As for the evocation of maenads and their revels, the last canto of Rhododaphne describes their cult quite vividly and passionately: https://archive.org/details/misfortuneselph01peacgoog