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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.
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.
"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.
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."
The insurgents were here conversing in a low voice, without moving, and there was perceptible that quasi-silence which marks the last stage of expectation. Overhead, at the small window in the third story Marius descried a sort of spectator who appeared to him to be singularly attentive. This was the porter who had been killed by Le Cabuc.
"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.
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."
The mouse, plus the cat, is the proof of creation revised and corrected." Combeferre, surrounded by students and artisans, was speaking of the dead, of Jean Prouvaire, of Bahorel, of Mabeuf, and even of Cabuc, and of Enjolras' sad severity. He said: "Harmodius and Aristogiton, Brutus, Chereas, Stephanus, Cromwell, Charlotte Corday, Sand, have all had their moment of agony when it was too late.
"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.
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.
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