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Courfeyrac, as he demolished the wine-shop to some extent, sought to console the widowed proprietress. "Mother Hucheloup, weren't you complaining the other day because you had had a notice served on you for infringing the law, because Gibelotte shook a counterpane out of your window?" "Yes, my good Monsieur Courfeyrac. Ah! good Heavens, are you going to put that table of mine in your horror, too?
It is three o'clock; at four we shall be dead." As they could no longer eat, Enjolras forbade them to drink. He interdicted wine, and portioned out the brandy. They had found in the cellar fifteen full bottles hermetically sealed. Enjolras and Combeferre examined them. Combeferre when he came up again said: "It's the old stock of Father Hucheloup, who began business as a grocer."
A room on the ground floor, where the bar was situated, one on the first floor containing a billiard-table, a wooden spiral staircase piercing the ceiling, wine on the tables, smoke on the walls, candles in broad daylight, this was the style of this cabaret. A staircase with a trap-door in the lower room led to the cellar. On the second floor were the lodgings of the Hucheloup family.
This oddity had attracted customers to his shop, and brought him young men, who said to each other: "Come hear Father Hucheloup growl." He had been a fencing-master. All of a sudden, he would burst out laughing. A big voice, a good fellow.
The wine-shop alone remained open; and that for a very good reason, that the mob had rushed into it. "Ah my God! Ah my God!" sighed Mame Hucheloup. Bossuet had gone down to meet Courfeyrac. Joly, who had placed himself at the window, exclaimed: "Courfeyrac, you ought to have brought an umbrella. You will gatch gold."
In the billiard-hall, Mame Hucheloup, Matelote, and Gibelotte, variously modified by terror, which had stupefied one, rendered another breathless, and roused the third, were tearing up old dish-cloths and making lint; three insurgents were assisting them, three bushy-haired, jolly blades with beards and moustaches, who plucked away at the linen with the fingers of seamstresses and who made them tremble.
All the four-footed furniture comported itself as though it had but three legs the whitewashed walls had for their only ornament the following quatrain in honor of Mame Hucheloup: Elle etonne a dix pas, elle epouvente a deux, Une verrue habite en son nez hasardeux; On tremble a chaque instant qu'elle ne vous la mouche Et qu'un beau jour son nez ne tombe dans sa bouche.
Let every one be a member of the French Academy and have the right to embrace Madame Hucheloup. Let us drink." And turning to Madame Hucheloup, he added: "Woman ancient and consecrated by use, draw near that I may contemplate thee!" And Joly exclaimed: "Matelote and Gibelotte, dod't gib Grantaire anything more to drink.
An instant later, the horses were unharnessed and went off at their will, through the Rue Mondetour, and the omnibus lying on its side completed the bar across the street. Mame Hucheloup, quite upset, had taken refuge in the first story. Her eyes were vague, and stared without seeing anything, and she cried in a low tone. Her terrified shrieks did not dare to emerge from her throat.
Nothing was lacking in the capture by assault of the Hucheloup wine-shop; neither paving-stones raining from the windows and the roof on the besiegers and exasperating the soldiers by crushing them horribly, nor shots fired from the attic-windows and the cellar, nor the fury of attack, nor, finally, when the door yielded, the frenzied madness of extermination.
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