This hall,
It was a pun which we should do wrong to smile at. Puns are sometimes serious factors in politics; witness the Castratus ad castra, which made a general of the army of Narses; witness: Barbari et Barberini; witness:
Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram, etc., etc.
The Friends of the A B C were not numerous, it was a secret society in the state of embryo, we might almost say a coterie, if coteries ended in heroes.
They assembled in Paris in two localities, near the fish-market, in a wine-shop called Corinthe, of which more will be heard later on, and near the Pantheon in a little cafe in the Rue Saint-Michel called the Cafe Musain, now torn down; the first of these meeting-places was close to the workingman, the second to the students.
The assemblies of the Friends of the A B C were usually held in a back room of the Cafe Musain.
This hall, which was tolerably remote from the cafe, with which it was connected by an extremely long corridor, had two windows and an exit with a private stairway on the little Rue des Gres.
There they smoked and drank, and gambled and laughed.
There they conversed in very loud tones about everything, and in whispers of other things. An old map of France under the Republic was nailed to the wall,– a sign quite sufficient to excite the suspicion of a police agent.
The greater part of the Friends of the A B C were students, who were on cordial terms with the working classes.
Here are the names of the principal ones.
They belong, in a certain measure, to history:
Enjolras, Combeferre, Jean Prouvaire, Feuilly, Courfeyrac, Bahorel, Lesgle or Laigle, Joly, Grantaire.
These young men formed a sort of family, through the bond of friendship.
All, with the exception of Laigle, were from the South.
This was a remarkable group.
It vanished in the invisible depths which lie behind us.
At the point of this drama which we have now reached, it will not perhaps be superfluous to throw a ray of light upon these youthful heads, before the reader beholds them plunging into the shadow of a tragic adventure.
Enjolras, whose name we have mentioned first of all,–the reader shall see why later on,–was an only son and wealthy.
Enjolras was a charming young man, who was capable of being terrible. He was angelically handsome.
He was a savage Antinous.
One would have said, to see the pensive thoughtfulness of his glance, that he had already, in some previous state of existence, traversed the revolutionary apocalypse.
He possessed the tradition of it as though he had been a witness.
He was acquainted with all the minute details of the great affair.
A pontifical and warlike nature, a singular thing in a youth.
He was an officiating priest and a man of war; from the immediate point of view, a soldier of the democracy; above the contemporary movement, the priest of the ideal.
His eyes were deep, his lids a little red, his lower lip was thick and easily became disdainful, his brow was lofty.
A great deal of brow in a face is like a great deal of horizon in a view.
Processing your request, Please wait....
