It was towards the end of the following evening that the next discussion to silence the room happened. Whatever Bossuet had been saying to Combeferre, he concluded it by citing a date:
"18th June 1815 - Waterloo."
At this, Marius, who had been leaning over his table next to me, with his chin resting on his hand and a glass of water beside him, suddenly looked up.
"Strange, isn't it," said Courfeyrac. "I've always been struck by that number, 18. It is Bonapartes's fatal number. Put Louis in front of it, and Brumaire after it - Louis XVIII and 18 Brumaire - and you have the man's whole destiny - the end triggered by the beginning."
The 18th of Brumaire - a month of the calendar under the Republic that was no more, as I had learned from Enjolras, was the date that Bonaparte came to power, and as everyone knows, the Battle of Waterloo was his ultimate downfall. Enjolras held neither liking nor respect for the former French Emperor, I knew that much - he preferred democracy to a dictator.
He had been sat silently, but now spoke.
"You should say, the crime matched by its expiation."
Marius, the most agitated I had ever seen him since his arrival almost a week before, now stood, and walked to the map of France pinned to the wall. He pointed at the island of Corsica, in a separate compartment in the bottom corner.
"Corsica," he said. "A small island that made France great."
By this point, all other conversation had ceased.
Enjolras, without looking at Marius, responded: "France did not need Corsica to make her great. She is great because she is France."
Marius wasn't going to leave it there, though. He turned to face Enjolras.
"God forbid that I should seek to diminish France. But to associate her with Napoleon is not to diminish her. Let us be clear about that. I am a newcomer among you, and I must confess that you astonish me. Where do we all stand? Who are you, and who am I? Where do we stand about the Emperor? I've heard you call him Buonaparte, putting the accent on the "u" as the royalists do, and I may tell you that my grandfather goes even further and pronounces the final "e" as well. I think of you as young men, but where does your allegiance lie and what do you do about it? Whom do you admire if not the Emperor? What more do you want, what other great men, if that one is not good enough for you?
"He had everything. He coded the laws like Justinian, was dictator like Caesar, and his conversation mingled the lightnings of Pascal with the thunderbolts of Tacitus. He made history and wrote it - his bulletins are epics. He combined the mathematics of Newton with the metaphors of Mahomet, and left behind him in the East words as great as the pyramids. He saw everything and knew everything, which did not stop him from rejoicing like the simplest of men over the cradle of his newborn son. And suddenly Europe found itself listening in terror to the march of armies, the thunder of artillery columns, the clouds of cavalry galloping like a tempest, and saw him towering on the horizon, spreading amid the thunder his two great wings, the Grand Armée and the Vieille Garde, and they knew him for the Archangel of War!"
In the silence, Enjolras bowed his head. Barely pausing for breath, Marius continued:
"Let us be fair, my friends. What more splendid destiny could befall any nation than to be the Empire of such an Emperor, when the nation is France and its genius is added to the genius of such a man? To make the French Empire the successor of Rome; to be the great nation that gave birth to the Grande Armée, sending its legions to the four corners of the world like a mountain sending forth its eagles; to be a nation ablaze with glory, sounding its titanic fanfare to echo down the corridors of history; to conquer the world twice over, by force of arms and by brilliance - all this is sublime! What can possibly be greater?"
"To be free," said Combeferre.
Now Marius bowed his head. Combeferre's cool, incisive words had in turn silenced him.
At this, Combeferre left the room, and most of the others followed, leaving only me in my corner, Enjolras at his table, and Marius, standing by the map still. When he looked up, it seemed almost as though he were going to continue, but Combeferre's voice floated through along the passage, singing:
"Si César m'avait donné
La gloire et la guerre,
Et qu'il me fallait quitter
L'amour de ma mère,
Je dirais au grand César:
Reprends ton sceptre et ton char,
J'aime mieux ma mère, ô gué!
J'aime mieux ma mère!"
"If Caesar had offered me
Glory and war
For which I must abandon
My mother's love
I would say to great Caesar:
'Take back your sceptre and your chariot
I love my mother more, alas,
I love my mother more.'"
Marius was staring thoughtfully at the ceiling, and repeated, half-unconciously, "My mother?..."
Enjolras laid a hand on his shoulder.
"Citizen," he said, "my mother is the Republic."
After that evening, though we saw Marius now and then, he no longer came to the Café Musain. I learned from Courfeyrac that he was no longer living with him in the Hotel de la Porte Saint-Jacques, lacking the money to do so, and had moved further out, to the Salpetriere district of Paris. Courfeyrac had found him work with which he could support himself, translating articles for an Encyclopedia from English and German for a book seller.
YOU ARE READING
Lisette
Fanfiction"Don't put your trust in revolutions. They always come round again. That's why they're called revolutions. People die, and nothing changes." - Terry Pratchett, Night Watch A retelling of part of Les Miserables, from about 1828-1832. Élise was born i...
