I.
April 1789
We are at war here in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. We must be, or why would the Paris garrison be shooting guns at my front door? My front door, I say, speaking largely: my front door, the front door shared by the fat cabinet-maker and his fat wife on the first floor, the fat cabinet-maker’s less-fat maiden sister on the second floor, a succession of thinner and thinner non-entities as you go higher up. Me, I have a room under the eaves, facing the courtyard, a view of trash and dirty sparrows. Some nights when I can’t be bothered to aim at the chamberpot I just piss out the window. Was Diogenes more dainty?
My front door, then, and the Paris garrison. Because it seems there was a riot yesterday. I found out about it when that hulking Bahorel tipped me out of my chair and kicked me awake. (He says he didn’t kick me. All I know is I woke up with his boots near my chin.) “Grantaire, you great clod of earth, uproot yourself and help a friend. I’ve been in a little scuffle, along with some of your neighbors.”
(Parenthesis: I still don’t understand it all. It’s about the wages. They’re saying they’ll starve if Réveillon cuts wages at his factory. Is he really planning on it? And what good does it do if someone knocks old Réveillon on the head? Why should I want that? I sell him patterns from time to time—used to work for him regularly but I got sick of turning up every day. I painted his wife once! Anyway, fifteen sous or forty, they’re lucky to be in a job. I said as much to my neighbor, but he just gave me one of those tight-lipped looks. It turned out he’d been organizing gatherings about it all, trying to get a word with Réveillon for some kind of explanation. Feuilly. He’s a man you can’t argue with sober or you’d hate yourself too much. He taught himself everything. Reading, writing, drawing. Languages. He reads about America, he reads about England, he reads about Brabant. Did you know that Poland is having some meeting to write a constitution? Feuilly knew. He’s a good fellow but I can’t talk to him sober. How can you live with yourself when your neighbor is so terribly brilliant? He finds time to be good too, the devil. You can’t even resent him.)
I said some of that to Bahorel’s foot before he got me sitting up on my bed. That’s when I realized that the noises banging around outside weren’t thunder—and that the pattern on Bahorel’s waistcoat wasn’t its original embroidery. I’d thought it was rosebuds but no, blood had spattered down all over his front. From his nose. “The hell have you been doing,” I asked, and he explained about this little riot. And so here we are, we and the French Guard. “Listen, Grantaire. You stay in here, old thing, this side of the building’s safer than the street side. They’re firing at us. Might bring cannons. Some of the lads and I want to get up on the roof. For the tiles, right? To throw down at the guard, see if they won't budge? Can I reach it from your window? Hey—hey—Grantaire, can I reach the roof from your window?“
I can hear horses, and some girl is shouting. In a minute, a good long minute, I’ll splash some water on my face, wake up, scramble after Bahorel with a pad of paper to sketch on. Maybe I’ll have something better than dirty pictures of our beloved Madame Deficit to sell.
—
“You don’t believe it?”
“I cannot.”
“Grantaire! Grantaire, this man—this scholar—can’t believe the French Guard fired on the houses. On your house. You tell him. —Grantaire will tell you. He drew it. You can buy his picture at any street corner.” It’s nice advertisement but I wish he wouldn’t. I’m busy. I’m looking at lightning playing over a dark cloud. Oh, I know, it’s just some man’s hair, the natural unpowdered pelt of some lawyer or law-student who’s so far ahead of fashion that he doesn’t wear a wig. But looking at it through the muddy dregs at the bottom of this bottle, looking at the strands that have escaped their ribbon to spread over his good black coat, it’s like seeing a storm.
I start to direct them towards Feuilly instead—Bahorel and Feuilly are fast friends now, turns out that when the guard started firing on our neighbors Feuilly lit up like a spark and joined Bahorel in pitching down roof-tiles. A pair of Joves, thundering down. Now he’s out a job and lodgings. As, by the way, am I. But Bahorel’s not one to let you down. He took us both in. (Me, on the condition that I not piss out the window any more. That’s civilization for you.)
So, right, I start to direct the argument to Feuilly, since he’s a man for earnest discourse, but Bahorel leans on me so hard that the words come out in a wheeze, and maybe he has a point. Better not to draw attention to the sober printer-of-cabbage-roses-turned-rooftop-rioter, Hephaistos-turned-Zeus. Ares? Me, I’m just a drunk artist who hasn’t done anything more illegal than draw a scene hundreds of people saw with their own eyes.
While I’m wheezing, Bahorel’s scholar speaks again. This one does wear a wig, and he has little spectacles perched on top of it. “I ask your pardon, sir—I should have said that I could not believe it, not that I cannot now. It is so far out of the natural order of things, Paris soldiers opening fire on Paris houses, that at first my mind rejected the story.” There, you see? We’re all wild radicals here, or something like that. More friends for Bahorel and Feuilly. I go back to my study of electricity: my study of Spectacles’ friend. He hasn’t turned his face to me yet. Probably it will be a disappointment. You’d have to look like an angel to match that hair, to match the voice I’ve been listening to this last quarter-hour, to match the stupid muddy metaphors I’ve put together. Bahorel hadn’t heard them; Bahorel has been in a corner with his arm around a girl and just came back in time to pick a quarrel. But I’ve been listening and it’s all political philosophy. The rights of man. I’ve always thought the rights of a man extended as far as starving under whatever hedgerow shelter he can defend from the wild dogs: but these two men—no, this one man—makes the social contract sound like more than words. (Don’t get me wrong, Spectacles knows his stuff too. But he’s not Prometheus come into this grubby café with the gods’ fire.)
And now I have to scrap that metaphor because he’s turned his head for a moment, glancing in this direction—he can’t see me, I hope, my head is pillowed on my arm behind a wall of bottles—and no mere Titan is adequate for comparison. Hermes, maybe? The perfection of boyish youth, the winged words? Or, no, perhaps—
“A glass with you, sir?”
“…Ganymede?” No, I don’t think that works. But anyway, who's this interrupting ass?
“Well—it’s de Courfeyrac, to tell the truth. But I take your address as a compliment. And I’ll take this empty chair as a seat, and you’ll take this glass as a peace-offering. It seems that your friends and my friends have found religion together. By religion I mean politics, and by politics I mean only the purest and highest of ideals. Which is a thing of beauty, but I can’t help noticing that my own empty seat has been converted into an altar, bearing up the exceptionally well-tailored frame of your large friend there, a friend so large—and so well-tailored—that I hesitate to mention his situation vis-à-vis my empty chair. So I said to myself—Well, de Courfeyrac, here’s another empty chair, with a new friend next to it if you only make an effort.”
May, 1789
So I’ve made myself valuable lately. I spent two days sober, powdered, and shaved, introducing Feuilly to my various printing associates. Because you see, the poor devil is still out a job. The name Réveillon isn’t a good reference. Even before the riot he didn’t win friends in the guild system. It seems his workers suffer for it. We’ve been to eight or ten different shops, men who buy my scribblings to turn them out into the illustrations generally called “curious,” or else into political allegories as the case may be. They’re happy to see me, happy to meet a skilled workman friend of mine—and then the Réveillon business comes up and they start looking at us from the sides of their eyes. They cough, cover their faces: a bit dusty in here this morning, sorry. Do they think he’s a rabid dog, going to leap at their throats? Or is it the old feud between the wallpaper-men and the copperplate-men? But someone’s wife’s widowed sister is struggling to keep up a little publishing business, might take on a craftsman who knows how to draw and to engrave if he doesn’t mind short wages, not too short you understand but times are very hard and if he thinks he could make do… Et cetera.
So that’s one use for me. And now I’ve made myself valuable by knowing a woman who drives a little cart between Paris and Versailles every day. Ducks. She transports ducks. Ducks and geese. Why is this valuable? Because, you see, everyone with any hint of a soul wants to see the procession tomorrow. The opening of the Estates-General. Necker—the name is on everyone’s lips like a prayer and in the last days I’ve learned to speak it too—Necker has advocated double representation for the Third Estate. That’s us. (Mostly: there’s one little fellow among my new best friends who’s supposed to be studying to be a priest. An only son, and rich, turned priest? There’s faith for you! He writes devout poetry, like some medieval ecstatic, completely out of fashion. But it seems he’s finding new beliefs. The Third Estate may keep him yet.)
Yes, that’s us. The Third Estate this evening, rattling along in a muddy cart, taking turns hopping down and walking because we don’t all fit. Those who know how, can ride: de Courfeyrac appeared on the scene with two horses for our journey. (There’s a Hermes for you, by the way.) He spun out a story about them prancing up to him in an alley, shaking fairy-dust from their manes. By the time he was done we were all laughing too hard to mind that he has the money to rent horses. So good old Lesgle is bumping along in the saddle like a country curé, and jolly Joly rides next to him, laughing at his jokes from behind an enormous handkerchief. Combeferre is up front with the light glinting off his spectacles (still perched on his wig), chatting with our Auntie Goose. It seems he knows how to drive this contraption; it also seems he has read about an improved treatment for waterfowl afflicted with—oh, some affliction of waterfowl, don’t ask me, but it’s something that carried away half our hostess’ flock last year. I’m perched behind him on a stack of empty crates, ostensibly working on a series of sketches documenting our progress. So far I’ve drawn Enjolras in five different lights. Such beautiful marble.
The beautiful marble looks up. I know he wants to say something to Combeferre, and here I am in the way, but Enjolras has a warm smile even for me today. Perhaps I even exist in his world today. I might be someone. “You know, Grantaire, I’m pleased you’ve brought your work with you. We need every eye-witness tomorrow. I believe it will be one of the greatest days in our history.”
June 1789
Up and up I move in the world, like a…thing that goes up. Where’s our Eagle-of-words when you need him? Bossuet—oh. Hum. He’s got Joly’s girl on his knee. Does Joly know? Oh, well, he must, as he’s standing next to them. The left hand knows not what the right hand is doing, they say, but they never met a left and a right hand like our Lesgle and Joly.
Where was I? Yes, going up and up in the world. De Courfeyrac’s a gem, a pearl, a lovely round and glowing pearl—whose cousin or aunt or god-knows-what is thick as thieves with David and his dozens of students. What’s that, old Grantaire, you’d like greater scope for your prodigious talent, your talent that would illuminate us all if we only lifted the bushel off of it? Why, let me just have a word with a friend. And here we all are, drinking to my first day as a student in a Real Studio. He’s the man of the hour, three cheers for Grantaire, his face may look sour, but he’ll drink you under your chair.
Up and up, shaking the mud off my shoes, right? But here I am looking at my friends’ backs. They’ve got a letter from Enjolras and Combeferre: a letter from Versailles. All the latest news. Something about the king and Mirabeau and Bailly. Some great turn of events. Another greatest-day-in-our-history. I should pull myself to my feet and join them there. Take my place in the glow of history. Or the future, whichever it is—sometimes it's one, sometimes the other, to hear them talk. Rome in one direction, Progress in another, and here in the present we’re reading about Mirabeau and Bailly and a crowd of black-coated deputies in the rain. Haven’t I drawn a dozen Mirabeaus by now, Mirabeaus for sale? And what a face to draw. As bad as my own. Believe me, I’m no Narcissus to drown in my reflection. Did Narcissus drown? Or did he merely waste away? I don’t recall now. Give me a wine-barrel and I’ll drown in it.
I’m on the floor now, and I don’t really remember the decline and the fall but it’s funny when you think about it, isn’t it? I bellow bloated metaphors day in and day out but here I am on the floor because I can’t reach my enlightened friends there in the future and why should I speak in a metaphor when things like this happen in every-day life.
“Hey, easy now, you’ve cut your lip,” someone says. “He’s laughing, it can’t be too bad.” “It can if it’s my carpet he’s bleeding on. Hey-up, Big R, on your legs. We’ll put you to bed.”
July, 1789
Joly is sobbing. We’re in the northern fringes of the city, out by the barrière Blanche. Why? I know why I’m here: because I heard Enjolras say “Some of us must go—” and was already standing to volunteer to make up for…well, never mind. For my sins. Why is Joly here? (More importantly, why isn’t Bossuet here? I don’t mind Joly soaking my waistcoat, not in the least, but I don’t know what to say to him and where is Bossuet and where is Enjolras?)
Last night there was a fire out here. Enjolras says the people are attacking the barriers, the toll barriers that tax the food coming in. Has a force of the Royal Allemand truly been dispatched? Why so many foreign troops now? Doesn’t the French king trust the French people? Obviously not. More troops coming here every day. Maybe they set the fire and blamed the people? An excuse to grind us all into the dirt. Such has been the conversation until my head buzzes with it. Combeferre has heard—but Feuilly was told—and de Courfeyrac read somewhere—that crowd of women on the corner saw it themselves— Bossuet says you can’t go anywhere without tripping over a new rumor.
Bahorel had wanted to come with us but Combeferre clapped him on the shoulder and said, “No, if you go up there you’ll start a revolution.” That’s when Enjolras said that some of us must go and see. There are worse things, Combeferre, than starting a revolution. But to soften the rebuke, he agreed that Bahorel should stay behind. “Go and hear what people are saying in the Palais-Royal. That’s the Forum of our day. Everyone will be out, if there’s news you’ll hear it there sooner than anywhere. I doubt we’ll see anything in the Porcherons.”
What did we see ourselves? Hell if I know. A crowd. I wouldn’t call it a mob. A crowd, out for the evening, heckling some troops or just catching a breath of air. All right—the truth is, Joly and Bossuet and I had stepped into a little place to have a cool drink. We heard shots and we heard a window break and half the people in the tavern went to go see what it was all about. No, all the people—but half of them went to the windows to throw things at the dirty German foreigners while they saw what it was all about and half went to the street to get stuck underfoot while they saw what it was all about. Joly and I in the latter half. The force of things carried Bossuet in a different direction. It was only when we were in the street that some impulse towards heroism took over—took Joly over, that is, not me. Someone was screaming and he said “I’m a doctor” loud enough for a stout lemonade-seller to pull him through the crowd. I guess he didn’t hear Joly’s qualifying statements after that. Not really a doctor—not yet—going to be one soon—advanced studies—oh God, what happened, was he shot? Oh God. Oh God. A wound to the abdomen, perforation of the intestines—
The lemonade-seller and another solid man carried the poor bastard into a carriage they’d found, and pressed Joly in with him. Me with Joly, and then a little girl wailing in German. She was sticky with lemonade and I can’t forget the smell and now, sitting on the steps of house with Joly weeping on my shoulder—and he sticky with blood—all I can think is that I could drink a fountain of—anything.
—
It seems Bahorel had all the fun after all, if you can call it that—he and Combeferre and little Jean Prouvaire, who is never going to make a priest at this rate, not if he keeps skipping classes to run in the streets with wild troublemakers like that Combeferre devil. (I jest.) We’re back in de Courfeyrac’s rooms—the base of operations just now for our embryo political club. It took hours, every street is filled with people, so many people shouting that you can barely hear the alarm bells ringing throughout the city—and while Bossuet and I set to filling Joly with de Courfeyrac’s brandy, Combeferre tries to tell their news in an orderly fashion.
He’s trying to set his wig to rights too—and trying to repair his spectacles—and trying not to glow too painfully bright from whatever pure hope is burning in him. Apparently it was beautiful, whatever it was. Necker’s out. Necker’s out, and that’s a bad thing because he was the hope of the Third Estate and the French economy; Necker’s out, and that’s a good thing because the Palais-Royal was filled with a thousand furious men and women. Everyone running around holding hands, calling everyone-else to arms—to arms! Bahorel saw that some fellow wanted to make a speech, and boosted him up onto a table. There were many speeches being made. Something happened with theaters, and everyone made a general run on green ribbons. That’s as much as I can make out. Oh, and the Royal Allemand made itself loved in the Tuileries, too.
“To arms,” says Enjolras thoughtfully, and he and some of the others exchange looks. In a book you would say “a look of intelligence passed between them.” It doesn’t pass to me. I’ve begun to apply myself to de Courfeyrac’s good, strong brandy. Joly doesn’t need it as much as I do. Joly can sleep the sleep of good faith whether he loses his patients or not. I need something to drown out this incessant ringing of bells.