Page 1451 - les-miserables

‘Be easy.’
He jammed his hat on resolutely and departed.
A quarter of an hour later, the back room of the Cafe Mu-
sain was deserted. All the friends of the A B C were gone,
each in his own direction, each to his own task. Enjolras,
who had reserved the Cougourde of Aix for himself, was
the last to leave.
Those members of the Cougourde of Aix who were in
Paris then met on the plain of Issy, in one of the abandoned
quarries which are so numerous in that side of Paris.
As Enjolras walked towards this place, he passed the
whole situation in review in his own mind. The gravity
of events was self-evident. When facts, the premonitory
symptoms of latent social malady, move heavily, the slight-
est complication stops and entangles them. A phenomenon
whence arises ruin and new births. Enjolras descried a lumi-
nous uplifting beneath the gloomy skirts of the future. Who
knows? Perhaps the moment was at hand. The people were
again taking possession of right, and what a fine spectacle!
The revolution was again majestically taking possession of
France and saying to the world: ‘The sequel to-morrow!’
Enjolras was content. The furnace was being heated. He
had at that moment a powder train of friends scattered all
over Paris. He composed, in his own mind, with Combe-
ferre’s philosophical and penetrating eloquence, Feuilly’s
cosmopolitan enthusiasm, Courfeyrac’s dash, Bahorel’s
smile, Jean Prouvaire’s melancholy, Joly’s science, Bossu-
et’s sarcasms, a sort of electric spark which took fire nearly
everywhere at once. All hands to work. Surely, the result

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