Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
CHAPTER VIII—MANY INTERROGATION POINTS WITH REGARD TO A CERTAIN LE
1621 words | Chapter 363
CABUC WHOSE NAME MAY NOT HAVE BEEN LE CABUC
The tragic picture which we have undertaken would not be complete, the
reader would not see those grand moments of social birth-pangs in a
revolutionary birth, which contain convulsion mingled with effort, in
their exact and real relief, were we to omit, in the sketch here
outlined, an incident full of epic and savage horror which occurred
almost immediately after Gavroche’s departure.
Mobs, as the reader knows, are like a snowball, and collect as they
roll along, a throng of tumultuous men. These men do not ask each other
whence they come. Among the passers-by who had joined the rabble led by
Enjolras, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac, there had been a person wearing
the jacket of a street porter, which was very threadbare on the
shoulders, who gesticulated and vociferated, and who had the look of a
drunken savage. This man, whose name or nickname was Le Cabuc, and who
was, moreover, an utter stranger to those who pretended to know him,
was very drunk, or assumed the appearance of being so, and had seated
himself with several others at a table which they had dragged outside
of the wine-shop. This Cabuc, while making those who vied with him
drunk seemed to be examining with a thoughtful air the large house at
the extremity of the barricade, whose five stories commanded the whole
street and faced the Rue Saint-Denis. All at once he exclaimed:—
“Do you know, comrades, it is from that house yonder that we must fire.
When we are at the windows, the deuce is in it if any one can advance
into the street!”
“Yes, but the house is closed,” said one of the drinkers.
“Let us knock!”
“They will not open.”
“Let us break in the door!”
Le Cabuc runs to the door, which had a very massive knocker, and
knocks. The door opens not. He strikes a second blow. No one answers. A
third stroke. The same silence.
“Is there any one here?” shouts Cabuc.
Nothing stirs.
Then he seizes a gun and begins to batter the door with the butt end.
It was an ancient alley door, low, vaulted, narrow, solid, entirely of
oak, lined on the inside with a sheet of iron and iron stays, a genuine
prison postern. The blows from the butt end of the gun made the house
tremble, but did not shake the door.
Nevertheless, it is probable that the inhabitants were disturbed, for a
tiny, square window was finally seen to open on the third story, and at
this aperture appeared the reverend and terrified face of a gray-haired
old man, who was the porter, and who held a candle.
The man who was knocking paused.
“Gentlemen,” said the porter, “what do you want?”
“Open!” said Cabuc.
“That cannot be, gentlemen.”
“Open, nevertheless.”
“Impossible, gentlemen.”
Le Cabuc took his gun and aimed at the porter; but as he was below, and
as it was very dark, the porter did not see him.
“Will you open, yes or no?”
“No, gentlemen.”
“Do you say no?”
“I say no, my goo—”
The porter did not finish. The shot was fired; the ball entered under
his chin and came out at the nape of his neck, after traversing the
jugular vein.
The old man fell back without a sigh. The candle fell and was
extinguished, and nothing more was to be seen except a motionless head
lying on the sill of the small window, and a little whitish smoke which
floated off towards the roof.
“There!” said Le Cabuc, dropping the butt end of his gun to the
pavement.
He had hardly uttered this word, when he felt a hand laid on his
shoulder with the weight of an eagle’s talon, and he heard a voice
saying to him:—
“On your knees.”
The murderer turned round and saw before him Enjolras’ cold, white
face.
Enjolras held a pistol in his hand.
He had hastened up at the sound of the discharge.
He had seized Cabuc’s collar, blouse, shirt, and suspender with his
left hand.
“On your knees!” he repeated.
And, with an imperious motion, the frail young man of twenty years bent
the thickset and sturdy porter like a reed, and brought him to his
knees in the mire.
Le Cabuc attempted to resist, but he seemed to have been seized by a
superhuman hand.
Enjolras, pale, with bare neck and dishevelled hair, and his woman’s
face, had about him at that moment something of the antique Themis. His
dilated nostrils, his downcast eyes, gave to his implacable Greek
profile that expression of wrath and that expression of Chastity which,
as the ancient world viewed the matter, befit Justice.
The whole barricade hastened up, then all ranged themselves in a circle
at a distance, feeling that it was impossible to utter a word in the
presence of the thing which they were about to behold.
Le Cabuc, vanquished, no longer tried to struggle, and trembled in
every limb.
Enjolras released him and drew out his watch.
“Collect yourself,” said he. “Think or pray. You have one minute.”
“Mercy!” murmured the murderer; then he dropped his head and stammered
a few inarticulate oaths.
Enjolras never took his eyes off of him: he allowed a minute to pass,
then he replaced his watch in his fob. That done, he grasped Le Cabuc
by the hair, as the latter coiled himself into a ball at his knees and
shrieked, and placed the muzzle of the pistol to his ear. Many of those
intrepid men, who had so tranquilly entered upon the most terrible of
adventures, turned aside their heads.
An explosion was heard, the assassin fell to the pavement face
downwards.
Enjolras straightened himself up, and cast a convinced and severe
glance around him. Then he spurned the corpse with his foot and said:—
“Throw that outside.”
Three men raised the body of the unhappy wretch, which was still
agitated by the last mechanical convulsions of the life that had fled,
and flung it over the little barricade into the Rue Mondétour.
Enjolras was thoughtful. It is impossible to say what grandiose shadows
slowly spread over his redoubtable serenity. All at once he raised his
voice.
A silence fell upon them.
“Citizens,” said Enjolras, “what that man did is frightful, what I have
done is horrible. He killed, therefore I killed him. I had to do it,
because insurrection must have its discipline. Assassination is even
more of a crime here than elsewhere; we are under the eyes of the
Revolution, we are the priests of the Republic, we are the victims of
duty, and must not be possible to slander our combat. I have,
therefore, tried that man, and condemned him to death. As for myself,
constrained as I am to do what I have done, and yet abhorring it, I
have judged myself also, and you shall soon see to what I have
condemned myself.”
Those who listened to him shuddered.
“We will share thy fate,” cried Combeferre.
“So be it,” replied Enjolras. “One word more. In executing this man, I
have obeyed necessity; but necessity is a monster of the old world,
necessity’s name is Fatality. Now, the law of progress is, that
monsters shall disappear before the angels, and that Fatality shall
vanish before Fraternity. It is a bad moment to pronounce the word
love. No matter, I do pronounce it. And I glorify it. Love, the future
is thine. Death, I make use of thee, but I hate thee. Citizens, in the
future there will be neither darkness nor thunderbolts; neither
ferocious ignorance, nor bloody retaliation. As there will be no more
Satan, there will be no more Michael. In the future no one will kill
any one else, the earth will beam with radiance, the human race will
love. The day will come, citizens, when all will be concord, harmony,
light, joy and life; it will come, and it is in order that it may come
that we are about to die.”
Enjolras ceased. His virgin lips closed; and he remained for some time
standing on the spot where he had shed blood, in marble immobility. His
staring eye caused those about him to speak in low tones.
Jean Prouvaire and Combeferre pressed each other’s hands silently, and,
leaning against each other in an angle of the barricade, they watched
with an admiration in which there was some compassion, that grave young
man, executioner and priest, composed of light, like crystal, and also
of rock.
Let us say at once that later on, after the action, when the bodies
were taken to the morgue and searched, a police agent’s card was found
on Le Cabuc. The author of this book had in his hands, in 1848, the
special report on this subject made to the Prefect of Police in 1832.
We will add, that if we are to believe a tradition of the police, which
is strange but probably well founded, Le Cabuc was Claquesous. The fact
is, that dating from the death of Le Cabuc, there was no longer any
question of Claquesous. Claquesous had nowhere left any trace of his
disappearance; he would seem to have amalgamated himself with the
invisible. His life had been all shadows, his end was night.
The whole insurgent group was still under the influence of the emotion
of that tragic case which had been so quickly tried and so quickly
terminated, when Courfeyrac again beheld on the barricade, the small
young man who had inquired of him that morning for Marius.
This lad, who had a bold and reckless air, had come by night to join
the insurgents.
BOOK THIRTEENTH—MARIUS ENTERS THE SHADOW
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