Chapter Text
November brings with it a douter to snuff out the dying candle-flame of daylight. Having drowned the blazing fire of autumn leaves in a pailful of frigid rainwater, it watches the fields become barren and the streets turn gray, a gutter-framed mirror of the leaden sky.
No wonder, then, that the human spirit tends to become equally subdued. Usurpers and tyrants rest easy on their thrones, for they know that this is not the season for insurgence; lovers look at the object of their passion with a newfound detachment; poets weight their rhymes with melancholy and artists drench canvases in cobblestone gray.
The evening is chill and damp, as November evenings are wont to be. Paris is not silent – no city ever is – but the passersby hurrying across the boulevards are scarce and most shop-fronts have been barred shut for the night.
Were a man walking down the Rue Sainte-Anne inclined to glance upwards, he would note that light was on in the room above the Café Musain.
The room in question is modestly furnished; it has three tables, accompanied by four age-worn chairs each; a coat-rack by the door that opens to the stairwell; and, flanked by a poker stand, a small fireplace, over whose mantelshelf there hangs a rather unexceptional painting of fruit in a wicker basket.
It is in front of that fireplace that a certain monsieur Enjolras is beginning to lose his patience.
“Though I personally cannot see why you come here at all, I can guess at an excuse,” he says, standing in front of the grate with his arms folded over his chest. “After all, you are among friends, and perhaps the occasional frivolities in which they indulge are restitution enough for the shortage of women and wine. But the grounds for your staying after the company has gone – that I cannot fathom in the least.”
Grantaire, the victim of his reproach, appears unbothered by the scathing tone.
“Ah, but you yourself have not yet retired.” Seated comfortably – nonchalantly, even – with one elbow resting on the table behind him, he shows no sign of contrition, delivering his answer with an air of a man bored but good-humored.
At this, Enjolras uncrosses his arms and gestures to the sizable pile of papers in the fireplace, now near-completely reduced to smoldering ash.
“For a reason, and a pressing one, too.” He reaches for the poker. “Conspiratorial correspondence is hardly something that can be left strewn about in a public establishment. Bahorel seems to have forgotten to burn this week’s letters. That is quite unlike him; I imagine he must have had a more urgent matter to attend to. Don’t you?”
“Shooing me out into the cold of the night – how heartless! Have you not a sand’s grain of consideration for your fellow man, vengeful Achilles?” Grantaire throws his hands into the air, feigning affront. “It pains me to hear that my presence is so unwelcome.”
Enjolras takes a coal-smudged envelope from table Grantaire is leaning on, then casts it into the flames and watches it ignite. “If you are not here to help–”
“How do you know that I’m not?”
“Are you?”
“No. But I am not hindering your noble letter-burning pursuit, either.”
“Inaction is all the more an affront to common sense. Squandering my time and yours.” Untended and unfueled, the fire has almost died down.
Grantaire stands up abruptly; his chair, in a final feat of acrobatic bravado, balances on two legs for a second, then falls to the ground with a dull thud.
“Common sense? You call all this – this parroting of the charbonniers – these surreptitious congregations, the hushed talk of revolt, the scheming and agitation behind closed doors – you call this common sense?” There is a frenzied edge to his voice. “You read the press, do you not? And so you must have seen how this fared in Poland. Those heartsore schoolboys and smooth-faced officers – and thousands of them, too – they took to the streets and bade au revoir to the tzar, and for what? To be forced to flee the country, to argue over politics in the back-rooms of Parisian hotels and to beg Louis Philippe for a stipend?”
Lamplight haloes Enjolras’ fair head with a crown of gold; silent and poised, with the poker still in hand, he suddenly becomes terrifying in his beauty – look, Rafael of Urbino, is does he not put your Michael to shame?
His reply comes with all the acute elegance of a well-honed blade.
“They fought valiantly; and though they were defeated, the price Petersburg had to pay for subduing Warsaw is what secured the success of our brothers in Belgium. Were the failures of our predecessors to entirely discourage us from attempting to achieve what they couldn’t, we would still be wearing deer-skins and living in caves.”
The argument does not seem to appeal to Grantaire; whatever blind fervor that has taken over him refuses to be reasoned with.
“What makes you think your bid to ignite an insurrection is the one that succeeds? Were the Trois Glorieuses not enough? Are you never going to be content with the state of the world? Your principles make you revolt; and that is because they make you naïve.”
Enjolras is tempted to tell him, Your lack of principles makes you revolting, but he recoils at the play on words; in lieu of an immediate answer, he restores the poker to its proper place and turns to address the challenger.
“And yet you care enough for the common cause to read about the Polish émigrés.”
He sits down and reaches for the half-empty glass of water that someone had left on the table. Grantaire says nothing; in fact he does nothing at all, still as a pillar of salt. Silence shrouds the room.
Unceremoniously, it is broken by the creaking complaint of floorboards when Grantaire makes his way to Enjolras’ table. He leans against it casually, as if the heated exchange had never taken place.
“Ah! I know why I am here,” he declares, clearly satisfied with himself.
Enjolras leans back, equal parts exasperated and intrigued. “Why?”
“To test your virtue.”
The effect of his words is instantaneous. Enjolras looks up, mortified. His face blanches and colors in quick succession. “My virtue? Pardon me?”
Grantaire, in turn, remains impassive and does not lose composure, save for the hint of a smile that lifts the corners of his mouth, betraying his amusement.
“Patience. They say it’s a virtue, is it not? I am here to test your patience,” he explains, unperturbed, and adds, almost as an afterthought: “What else could I have meant?”
Triumphant, he seems to be enjoying himself immensely; the same cannot be said of Enjolras, who sets down the now-emptied glass and shakes his head. “Oh, nevermind. I was under the impression that this was going to be one of those obscene taunts that you are so fond of.”
“Indecent implications! Ah, and yet you were the one to make that association.” He announces this verdict is delivered with a self-contented glee, then bows his head. “Besides, it would take a greater man than me to tempt you.”
As soon as the last syllables of that sentence ring out, everything else becomes menacingly still; almost as if someone had fired a grape-shot through the window-frame. On the street below, a lone cart trundles over the cobblestones.
Though stunned into silence at first, Enjolras does not take very long to recover. He rises to his feet and faces Grantaire, whose features have frozen into an amalgam of terror and regret.
“A man? What are you suggesting?” The tone – measured, level – all but demands a reply.
“I did not – I thought– God damn, I forget myself. I apologize. Please do not take offense and pay no mind to what I said.” Anyone well-acquainted with Grantaire would be astonished by how rueful ill-at-ease the man sounds.
All the more startling, however, is Enjolras’ response, as instead of pursuing the line of interrogation, he waves his hand in dismissal, then takes a hesitant step forward.
“I know that you are one of those who… take lovers of either sex. Profligate that you are, you make no secret of it. It only figures that you did not mean to insult me, and so I am not offended.”
Grantaire’s eyes widen. Fear morphs into surprise, surprise – into relief.
“Oh. In that case… I suppose I am going to deprive you of the pleasure of my company and wish you a good-night.”
He straightens his back, dusts the lapels of his coat and makes his way to the door. When his fingers wrap around the tarnished brass handle, he pauses for a blink of an eye; and it is in that moment of stillness that, at the other end of the room, Enjolras mutters, “You were wrong.”
Whether or not he was talking to himself is irrelevant and indeed impossible to tell; either way, Grantaire hears him and swings around to answer. “No doubt that I was. About what?”
“It does not take a greater man than you.”