United States or Yemen ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
They took aim, point blank, on both sides: they were so close that they could talk together without raising their voices. When they had reached this point where the spark is on the brink of darting forth, an officer in a gorget extended his sword and said: "Lay down your arms!" "Fire!" replied Enjolras. The two discharges took place at the same moment, and all disappeared in smoke.
Javert, with his back to the post, and so surrounded with ropes that he could not make a movement, raised his head with the intrepid serenity of the man who has never lied. "He is a police spy," said Enjolras. And turning to Javert: "You will be shot ten minutes before the barricade is taken." Javert replied in his most imperious tone: "Why not at once?" "We are saving our powder."
"Besides," observed a voice in one group, "it is easy enough to talk about leaving. The barricade is hemmed in." "Not on the side of the Halles," said Enjolras. "The Rue Mondetour is free, and through the Rue des Precheurs one can reach the Marche des Innocents." "And there," went on another voice, "you would be captured.
At the same time, the click of guns, as they were lowered into position, was heard. Enjolras replied in a haughty and vibrating tone: "The French Revolution!" "Fire!" shouted the voice. A flash empurpled all the facades in the street as though the door of a furnace had been flung open, and hastily closed again. A fearful detonation burst forth on the barricade. The red flag fell.
They recognized the voice of Prouvaire. A flash passed, a report rang out. Silence fell again. "They have killed him," exclaimed Combeferre. Enjolras glanced at Javert, and said to him: "Your friends have just shot you."
Courfeyrac, Enjolras, Jean Prouvaire, Combeferre, Joly, Bahorel, Bossuet, and all the rest ran tumultuously from the wine-shop. It was almost too late. They saw a glistening density of bayonets undulating above the barricade.
While the men made bullets and the women lint, while a large saucepan of melted brass and lead, destined to the bullet-mould smoked over a glowing brazier, while the sentinels watched, weapon in hand, on the barricade, while Enjolras, whom it was impossible to divert, kept an eye on the sentinels, Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Jean Prouvaire, Feuilly, Bossuet, Joly, Bahorel, and some others, sought each other out and united as in the most peaceful days of their conversations in their student life, and, in one corner of this wine-shop which had been converted into a casement, a couple of paces distant from the redoubt which they had built, with their carbines loaded and primed resting against the backs of their chairs, these fine young fellows, so close to a supreme hour, began to recite love verses.
You would fall in with some grand guard of the line or the suburbs; they will spy a man passing in blouse and cap. 'Whence come you? 'Don't you belong to the barricade? And they will look at your hands. You smell of powder. Shot." Enjolras, without making any reply, touched Combeferre's shoulder, and the two entered the tap-room. They emerged thence a moment later.
Relegated, as he was, to one corner, and sheltered behind the billiard-table, the soldiers whose eyes were fixed on Enjolras, had not even noticed Grantaire, and the sergeant was preparing to repeat his order: "Take aim!" when all at once, they heard a strong voice shout beside them: "Long live the Republic! I'm one of them." Grantaire had risen.
The situation of all in that fatal hour and that pitiless place, had as result and culminating point Enjolras' supreme melancholy.
Word Of The Day