2098 Les Miserables
their prisoners, and that there was the headless body of a
soldier in the wine-shop. This sort of fatal rumor is the usu-
al accompaniment of civil wars, and it was a false report of
this kind which, later on, produced the catastrophe of the
Rue Transnonain.
When the door was barricaded, Enjolras said to the oth-
ers:
‘Let us sell our lives dearly.’
Then he approached the table on which lay Mabeuf and
Gavroche. Beneath the black cloth two straight and rigid
forms were visible, one large, the other small, and the two
faces were vaguely outlined beneath the cold folds of the
shroud. A hand projected from beneath the winding sheet
and hung near the floor. It was that of the old man.
Enjolras bent down and kissed that venerable hand, just
as he had kissed his brow on the preceding evening.
These were the only two kisses which he had bestowed in
the course of his life.
Let us abridge the tale. The barricade had fought like a
gate of Thebes; the wine-shop fought like a house of Sara-
gossa. These resistances are dogged. No quarter. No flag of
truce possible. Men are willing to die, provided their oppo-
nent will kill them.
When Suchet says:—‘Capitulate,’—Palafox replies: ‘Af-
ter the war with cannon, the war with knives.’ 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-win-