Page 2103 - les-miserables

‘Wait.’
And addressing Enjolras:
‘Do you wish to have your eyes bandaged?’
‘No.’
‘Was it you who killed the artillery sergeant?’
‘Yes.’
Grantaire had waked up a few moments before.
Grantaire, it will be remembered, had been asleep ever
since the preceding evening in the upper room of the wine-
shop, seated on a chair and leaning on the table.
He realized in its fullest sense the old metaphor of ‘dead
drunk.’ The hideous potion of absinthe-porter and alcohol
had thrown him into a lethargy. His table being small, and
not suitable for the barricade, he had been left in possession
of it. He was still in the same posture, with his breast bent
over the table, his head lying flat on his arms, surrounded
by glasses, beer-jugs and bottles. His was the overwhelming
slumber of the torpid bear and the satiated leech. Nothing
had had any effect upon it, neither the fusillade, nor the
cannon-balls, nor the grape-shot which had made its way
through the window into the room where he was. Nor the
tremendous uproar of the assault. He merely replied to the
cannonade, now and then, by a snore. He seemed to be wait-
ing there for a bullet which should spare him the trouble
of waking. Many corpses were strewn around him; and, at
the first glance, there was nothing to distinguish him from
those profound sleepers of death.
Noise does not rouse a drunken man; silence awakens
him. The fall of everything around him only augmented

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