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psalm_onethirtyoneHokay. Hi. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
prouvairesylvie? I have a small present for you. <3
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YES THAT'S RIGHT IT'S
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The last two chapters of Picture Portrait Gallery, neatly finished nearly two years after the fact. :D Naturally you have co-ownership of this present with the inestimabletocandoalaire, assuming she is not, in fact, dead. Enjoy!
Edit: In case, as is likely, you have forgotten what this story is even about by now, here is the entire thing on the incredibly shiny and awesome site Manon made for me: The Picture Portrait Gallery.
As Combeferre brushed into Bahorel and Feuilly on his way back into the café and nearly jostled the parcel from Feuilly's arms, he smiled gently and apologetically at them; Bahorel smiled back, although it was really more of a grimace, and laughed and Feuilly swore and ignored him entirely. Combeferre did not sigh, although the greater part of him longed to. Richard's damned friends were so difficult to get along with, all of them temperamental or disturbed: none among them could truly be called the worst, as they were equally unbearable.
Here he desired to laugh, but did not. It would only come out scornful, and he couldn't have that. But it was a funny thing that Richard so longed for equality, and here it was presented in a paragon of itself by these seven young men Richard insisted in dealing with primarily day after day. Seven men, wholly equal; equally annoying, equally loathsome, equally a waste of Richard's time.
There was no good in it, this revolution. There were no people so downtrodden that when they needed to be saved they could not reach up and do it themselves, without the aid of others. If the people of Paris truly needed to be freed, they would free themselves. They did not need poor Richard to work at it night and day, slaving away and making himself sick and troubling himself always with this seven who could hardly work together because they were so busy troubling among themselves or behaving with arrogant assurance. We don't need to work, they as much as said. We're too good to do anything but listen to you and then laugh at what you say.
Or was that just Courfeyrac?
And, pardieu, were not most of them just this shade of insane? What should one call Joly's constant fear of illness, if not madness? To be a hypochondriac was all very well, but to starve himself and punish his flesh and bear up all the while, waiting to die while doing one's homework--what was that but a mind that bore all the diseases Joly claimed for his body?
Then there was the matter of Prouvaire, their gentle poet. He was gentler than Combeferre ever pretended to be, seemed ready to cry over a flower; him with his girlish form and dewy eyes, like the young boys that old kings used to call to their chambers. It disgusted Combeferre more than he could express, which was just as well, since he would never be asked to express it.
This was his secret: that he was in the whole rotten business for Richard only, and hated the rest of them with all his heart.
Richard, at least, was a good man. A fool, but a good man, and one whom Combeferre would follow loyally. Oh, he did his best to dissuade him--that was what Feuilly had walked in on earlier--did his best to assure Richard that the revolution he dreamed of was a farce. Paris wouldn't stand behind him, so what was this but an attempt to catch death in his hands? Nine schoolboys, if Grantaire could even be counted, did not make an army. Here Richard would protest that there were others, that these nine were the core of the rebellion and everyone else helped form the rest; they were the heart and those who rallied with them the body. But there were none who rallied with them, Combeferre insisted.
Richard was blind to this. People came to hear him talk because he was beautiful, and inflamed souls with his words, but there was not a man who came who would not go home and forget about it afterwards. That, he tried to explain, was what people did. They were momentarily filled with the wonder and the joy and the righteous anger, and then they remembered that they had a family to support, or an exam to take, and they had jobs, or they were only students, and someone else could fight if there was fighting to be done.
They all think that there are many others, and so they all leave, thinking 'who will miss just one?'. Then there is no one. Then you are alone, unprotected, unsupported, unheard of--the people who listened will claim they don't know who you are, you rabble-rouser--and you are slain. It's no use.
Richard ought to have forgotten it.
But he didn't listen, he kept striving, and Combeferre couldn't leave him to strive and die alone, so he stayed and lost time from his life and had to tolerate and keep the peace between those damned seven and their damned ways. He had to talk to Grantaire and pretend to be interested in him, had to soothe Feuilly and then watch the man walk away without even looking back at him, wholly ungrateful. He had to endure Courfeyrac, of all people--though not as often as most people, because Courfeyrac was always off courting and drinking and couldn't be found half the time.
And speak of the Devil, pardieu.
"Hullo, there," Courfeyrac said, swinging through the door. "Have I missed everybody? I passed four of you on the way out."
From his corner, Prouvaire remained sleeping. Grantaire looked up from where he was drinking, waved, called out something made unintelligible by wine and gin. Courfeyrac at once swept over, clapped him on the back, and then swept away again, divesting himself of his overcoat and gloves.
"Damned cold," he announced. "A man would think the poets were liars. Enchanted springs, indeed. Fair blossoms, warm breezes, delicate scents, indeed! Someone's burning trash, the trees are stunted, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if it began to snow."
Combeferre murmured something non-committal. He hated this man, truly more than any of them. Courfeyrac was the worst. He and his smirking smile and his careless ways, as though nothing in the world mattered but him, and everyone should know it. He spoke with languorous authority--why, here I am! Do you worship me? Of course you ought to, you know. I shall laugh at you if you don't--it was disgusting. If Combeferre might have been permitted by his Holy Father to send one of them screaming to hell, it would be Courfeyrac, and he would have gladly watched and said good riddance over the fading echoes.
"What, you doubt it? And here I supposed you were the one among us most likely to take me at my word. Sacre, everyone's gone; it will be a quiet evening, won't it? I suppose I shall have to stir things up." He called for Louison, ordered a drink, kissed both her cheeks. He was always moving, never pausing, like a bright whirlwind.
"Please don't," said Combeferre gently. "Richard is tired to-night."
"Of course."
"I'm just going out with Joly and Bossuet. I suppose you don't wish to join us?" Don't, he thought silently. Don't say yes.
"No, no, I'm afraid not. I've got plans. But thank you for the invitation."
"Of course, Isaac."
"You had better watch out, you know. If you go around calling me Isaac instead of Courfeyrac, everyone will suppose we're brothers or some such nonsense, and then they'll expect me to call you Alexandre, and really, I don't want to do that."
"I beg your pardon."
Courfeyrac laughed.
Combeferre collected his grammar, which was what he had come back for in the first place, from the chair at their old table, and put it into his pocket. Courfeyrac had received his drink and given Louison another kiss for it. Combeferre tried very hard to ignore him.
Carefully he knocked upon Richard's door and put his head in.
"Good evening, Richard. I'm going out with Joly and Bossuet now."
Richard looked up quickly, shielding the table from his eyes. "Thank you. Have a good evening." That was so unlike him that Combeferre came into the room.
"Are you quite all right?"
"Yes, of course."
"Joly said you wanted him to put up pamphlets."
"That's right," said Richard, although he seemed for the barest second to hesitate. This hurt Combeferre more than he imagined he could be hurt. Why would Richard not trust him? Why would Richard lie to him? he asked himself.
"I don't want you to be hurt."
"I'm aware of that. You are equally aware that I am prepared to be when it is necessary."
"Why must you be so distant to me?"
"When you are not so quick to put down what I believe in accomplishing, I may be slower to cast aside what you say. The others are waiting for you, are they not? Good-night."
For a moment, he thought to protest. He nearly reached out to Richard, but Richard looked at his hand so distastefully that he did not; merely he turned away and left the room, shutting the door behind him. This was the second time he had so left that evening. Combeferre paused in the main room of the café, looking out the window. In the distance he could see Joly and Bossuet under a streetlamp, speaking together.
He was not really a bad man, was he? No, of course not. There was no great wrong in despising the company of these men. After all, he never showed it, did he? He treated them well, for Richard's sake, went about with them and smiled, laughed, joked, talked with them, all with perfect ease. No one would have suspected that they were not his dear companions, and if that were so, how could he be a bad man--he who held the dislike only in his mind, and in all respects to which they were privy so seemed to esteem them?
It was quite all right.
Was that not what his mother used to say, that those who did no bad acts could be excused their bad thoughts? At least, she had said something like that. She was a fair woman, small and slender, dwarfed by both her husband and her son, but she had a wise temperament and a good hand. She knew proverbs that held meaning. She had raised her son properly, taught him well for the world.
An only child, Combeferre had grown up with her full attention, and had been the sole subject for her wisdom; he had taken it to heart, and now did his best to live by it. She had told him, for example, that idle hands were the devil's workshop, and he truly believed it. He did his best always to be busy, whether it was with school, or going out or speaking with Richard's seven, in order to preserve the tenuous relationships they had with one another.
Even when they did not respect Richard, he did this. Even when they were nothing more then indolent, foolish people determined to waste Richard's strength and his time by pretending to listen to him.
Most of them were so turbulent in their heads that they could be nothing but trouble at any rate, even if so many other ifs came together--if Richard got together his revolution with enough men, if he was able to find a good position of attack, if they were men enough to stand with him. Even if all this were accomplished, with so many troubles within themselves, it would be like expecting this body of Richard's to work properly with a diseased heart.
No, a diseased heart cannot hold a body up.
Not with the anger in Feuilly's mind, or the foolishness in Bossuet's, the pathetic femininity of Prouvaire's, the rough stupidity of Bahorel's--these minds, all filled with flaws, could hardly be expected to provide themselves as generals to Richard's dream.
It was only a dream. That was the true core. There was no heart of brave, determined men. There was only a dream of Richard's that could not possibly come true.
Combeferre sighed, and started for the door.
"Give everyone my love, will you?" Courfeyrac called out.
"Yes, and have a good evening, Isaac," Combeferre answered.
Pardieu, he thought, as he opened the door and left the café. What a ship of fools they were! And he was the worst of the lot, because he had not yet abandoned them to their fate. He knew he was wiser and better, and certainly truer to Richard than they were, and yet he did not leave them; he continued for Richard's sake when certainly he ought just to leave. He hurried after Joly and Bossuet, who still waited. It was best to get this over with as quickly as possible. Then he could go home and be alone.
~~~
Courfeyrac sat down at his table with his drink, leaned back in his chair, and smiled. At least it had been a successful evening. Occasionally he thought that all his evenings were successful, that always went it began to be dusky in the sky and a strange half-light fell upon everything, some part of him became more alive, and began to search and attempt things and struggle for answers and light. It was the perfect time, then.
He cast a glance over to Grantaire's table. Poor fellow, already falling-down drunk. It never did take him very long. For all his flippancy, Courfeyrac really did regret what had happened to Grantaire, and often wondered whether there were not some way to reverse it.
There was not, naturally.
He put his boots up upon the chair beside him, and waited for Louison to come out and scold him. She always did. Such an ugly girl, but well-meaning, cared very much for all the people who were regulars at the café, and knew everyone's order ahead of time and usually remembered their names. She reminded Courfeyrac of a distant girl who had once been his lover. A girl--with dark hair, he suspected, casting his memory back. A girl with blue eyes and very dark hair, and a smile sweeter than honeyed wine (he was fond of such comparisons and metaphors, and frequently peppered his conversation with them), and he thought he had loved her very much. After a while, though, they all began to run together.
He had loved every one of them dearer than anything, although he couldn't remember their names any more, for the most part, or where he had met them. He only remembered their faces, and sometimes how they kissed in bed, and whether or not they smiled and blushed when he took them to dinner.
And sometimes the others, the other Amis, called him a cad and a stealer of hearts and a trifler, but Courfeyrac knew he wasn't. He never left his girls unhappy. The girl he had parted from the last week, for example: she was tall and fat and beautiful, breathtakingly beautiful, and they had been lovers for perhaps four months, and that night--a Friday night--she kissed him and told him that she fancied he was growing tired of her.
'Oh, no,' said Courfeyrac, 'my most beautiful one, no.'
She pouted. 'But you do not buy me things as you used to.'
'Well, I am preparing you for marriage. Husbands hardly ever buy their wives presents.'
'What, do you mean to marry me?'
'To make an honest woman of you, cherie,' he said.
'I don't want to be an honest woman.'
'But that is what I long for. A wife to dandle my children on her knee.'
'Wretch,' she said, as she reached for his hand; and he gave it willingly.
'I am. But I suppose if you don't want to be honest, and I must have an honest woman, it's time for us to part.'
'I'm afraid it is.'
'Well, perhaps to part of the best of terms--for, cherie, I love you dearly--I should take you out for dinner and buy you something beautiful.'
'I should like that very much.'
'Then let us go. If it is to be the last evening, it must be a glorious one.'
So they went out and had dinner and he bought her a necklace and a silk fan, and they never saw one another again. He always arranged things to be that way. When he grew tired of a woman--for he was a restless soul--he announced the end in the easiest way possible, and always made sure she was given a perfect evening, the last evening. He expected nothing less of himself. For this they called him a heartbreaker, but what hearts did he break? No, he laid hearts in silk and with caresses returned them to their owners. In some things, perhaps, he seemed careless, but when it came to hearts he was a very careful man.
The woman who was his lover now was a street girl, a skinny little slip with a wicked sense of humour, which she had somehow kept despite her poverty and hunger. Courfeyrac never spent time with her but he made sure there was food involved. Even if she only came back to his apartment to sleep with him, he insisted on a meal at some point. She told him that the other street girls she ran around with were wondering who was feeding her, but she kept it a secret.
Courfeyrac admired and esteemed her. She was twenty-one but looked only sixteen; her growth had been stunted with ill conditions. Some days he longed to introduce her to Enjolras and see what the man said. She was a true example of what Enjolras insisted they were fighting for, a woman who had lived all her life in the worst of circumstances, and who was still brave and cheerful, still ready to defend herself from what she could, willing to steal and willing to be honest, taking life in her hands and using it to the best of her advantage. Why, when Fate offered her a wealthy lover (Courfeyrac had inherited a fortune from his parents when they were killed in a fire) she gladly took him, ate his bread, spent his money, and slept in his bed. Enjolras could not help but admire her, too.
Here Courfeyrac smiled a slightly embarrassed smile to himself. Ah, well, perhaps Enjolras would not appreciate her. He appreciated so little. But then it wasn't his fault--Courfeyrac, who liked every one of the Amis very much, was always ready to defend them--he had serious things on his mind, and if sometimes he was inexcusably serious, perhaps it wasn't truly inexcusable. He could be forgiven the error of looking down his nose at everyone's fun; after all, he was always troubled by ponderous things, and perhaps forgot what it was like to be free from them.
Courfeyrac's parents had died four or five years ago, and being of age then he was able to inherit their land and money. He promptly cleared away the ashy remains of the house, sold the land to the tenants there, moved to Paris, where he continued at the Université, and spent his money on his women and all the other natural expenses of a student's life.
He did not mind admitting to himself that he grew sad thinking of his parents. Enjolras was dismissive of parents, condemning them all to bourgeois complacency, but Courfeyrac remembered his mother as a rosebud of a woman who showered him with love, and his father as a venerable old ex-soldier who smoked a carved pipe and read a great deal of Greek and Latin, and he was not ashamed that sometime he wept over them. He wept that his mother could no longer cluck at his having a different lady to speak of every time she saw him; that his father could no longer shoot Cicero at him over the table like quick gunfire and expect him to deflect it with translations. It was a great tragedy, he told himself, and he believed it.
Feuilly was also an orphan, but his parents had died long ago, and it had hardened him. He could not think with love on his mother, or with a boy's admiration of his father; this, too, sometimes made Courfeyrac sorrowful (his handsome face concealed an easy heart--that is to say, easy because it so easily bled for other people's troubles, and filled with other people's joys). He had tried before to be friendly to Feuilly in order to comfort him, but Feuilly was always closed to him, so Courfeyrac, who said that interfering in other people's business was to the interferer the most charitable exercise imaginable and to the interfered the most cardinal sin, left him alone.
He did this for all of the Amis, really, when he thought about it. They all had rough troubles, or secrets that persisted at them to make them unhappy, and he would gladly have taken on their every burden, but no one ever seemed to wish to confide in him. He was satisfied that they felt they could manage by themselves. Instead he tried to be as cheerful and good-humoured as possible, so that everyone might at least enjoy their time spent with him and forget about the things that sad heavily upon them.
Even Joly--he was, truth be told (and he laughed to himself), a little frightened of Joly, foolish as that was. He was afraid that if he dismissed Joly's illnesses in his spirited way, he might make a wound deeper than any of those Joly imagined on his person. There is, he said to himself, nothing more worse than being laughed at when you truly are ill, and perhaps I shall laugh at him and instead of taking it as a friendly accident he shall suppose that I scorn him when he really does need help--well, wouldn't that be wretched?
"Am I a fool?" he said aloud to the room. "I am a fool, aren't I? And melodramatic, when I take my mind to it. I suppose there's really no explanation for my avoiding him, and I should really bear up and resolve to do better."
"Ahh, quiet!" Grantaire roared from his corner. "What're you going on about?"
"I could ask you the same question," said Courfeyrac, as he twisted about in his chair.
"What?"
"Oh, my good fellow, I'm not going on about anything, so what are you going on about, asking me that question?"
"Oh, leave him alone."
Courfeyrac glanced up. Enjolras was looking at him irritably.
"Hullo! Good to see you."
"Yes," Enjolras answered, perhaps with some distraction, putting a sheaf of papers under his arm.
"Are you heading home?"
"Yes. It's late."
"Shall I walk with you?"
"I prefer to walk alone."
"Well, that's all right." Courfeyrac smiled. "Go safely, then, and don't get hit by anyone, and I'll see you to-morrow with any luck."
"Yes."
Courfeyrac watched him go to the door with a great deal of fondness. He was their leader, their first knight, the commander of their expedition, the tip of their sword. He led them forward with learning, until they'd mastered that learning and could put it to use. Then he would lead them forward with a gun and a knife, with cannon and brave shouts, and they'd do something incredible, they truly would.
Behind him Louison was waking Jean Prouvaire, who stirred slowly. "What time is it?" Courfeyrac heard him murmur, and Louison answered, "Ten o'clock. You had better have your supper, M'sieur Jean."
Grantaire had got up from his seat, swaying, and stumbled out to take a piss behind the café; the other patrons, of which there were very few, were speaking of going home. Courfeyrac supposed he would soon be alone, and he rather liked the idea. Of course he loved people, but it's always pleasant sometimes to be alone. Solitude and companionship, he thought, are two essentials of life.
He had finished his drink, and he put his glass down and the money for it, along with a considerable tip for Louison. Let the girl have something. Enough of the patrons were so impoverished, being students, that they could hardly pay for their drinks, let alone leave something for the serving girl. Courfeyrac could afford it.
It was strange, sometimes, to be so fond of all of them. They didn't like each other, of course. It didn't take a genius to see that. But he did.
"That's folly," he said, again speaking aloud.
Prouvaire had a good hand at writing, one that would better with age, and Courfeyrac respected it with laughter. Everything was better respected with laughter. So that was Prouvaire, and even Joly--when Courfeyrac wasn't being an ass, as he told himself, he could see the wisdom in Joly, unexpected for a man so young; his talent at taking his hands and discerning the cause of an illness the way people used those funny sticks to discern water under the ground. He could touch and say there, that's why. There, that's where. It was magnificent. And Bahorel, such a strong fighter, only matched by Bossuet's bravery and his good spirit, he always getting up again after he fell.
Grantaire kept them from becoming too lost in ideals. He asked the hardest questions. Courfeyrac was well-aware that they usually disregarded him, but what he said was what they had to listen to the most, and Courfeyrac did listen. Sometimes he repeated Grantaire so Enjolras would hear the words. Then there was Feuilly, angry and cold, angry and hot, angry and right there on the streets, one of the people this whole business rested upon. Like Peter, Courfeyrac thought. We're building on what he brings us, what he tells us, the people he tells of us. There are people we can't approach, because we mean well but we've been given the wrong forms and backgrounds to do anything. Feuilly goes to those people like an ambassador who was born in the country he's gone to visit. And Combeferre keeps our peace. He stills our anger when it ripples too much.
That's the thing, he thought. Every one of us is necessary; every one of us is valuable. Like it or not--really, like one another or not--we need each other, we need every single one of us. We're lucky enough to have it. We've been given the brains and the leader to use it.
Courfeyrac looked at the tabletop, tapping it thoughtfully but without vexation. In the corner, Jean Prouvaire was wrapping up his supper to take him, and Grantaire was still outside. The café was empty now, except for the girls wiping off the tables and wishing for a second wave of customers. As Prouvaire went out and a burst of the cold air swished inside, blowing Courfeyrac's hair away from his forehead, he stretched himself and stood, calling out for good-bye kisses and for Louison to get her tip.
When it was over, he thought, his girl would be very pleased. Whether he meant the night, or the revolution, or something else entirely, wasn't clear, not even to him.
prouvairesylvie? I have a small present for you. <3...
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...
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YES THAT'S RIGHT IT'S
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The last two chapters of Picture Portrait Gallery, neatly finished nearly two years after the fact. :D Naturally you have co-ownership of this present with the inestimable
tocandoalaire, assuming she is not, in fact, dead. Enjoy!Edit: In case, as is likely, you have forgotten what this story is even about by now, here is the entire thing on the incredibly shiny and awesome site Manon made for me: The Picture Portrait Gallery.
As Combeferre brushed into Bahorel and Feuilly on his way back into the café and nearly jostled the parcel from Feuilly's arms, he smiled gently and apologetically at them; Bahorel smiled back, although it was really more of a grimace, and laughed and Feuilly swore and ignored him entirely. Combeferre did not sigh, although the greater part of him longed to. Richard's damned friends were so difficult to get along with, all of them temperamental or disturbed: none among them could truly be called the worst, as they were equally unbearable.
Here he desired to laugh, but did not. It would only come out scornful, and he couldn't have that. But it was a funny thing that Richard so longed for equality, and here it was presented in a paragon of itself by these seven young men Richard insisted in dealing with primarily day after day. Seven men, wholly equal; equally annoying, equally loathsome, equally a waste of Richard's time.
There was no good in it, this revolution. There were no people so downtrodden that when they needed to be saved they could not reach up and do it themselves, without the aid of others. If the people of Paris truly needed to be freed, they would free themselves. They did not need poor Richard to work at it night and day, slaving away and making himself sick and troubling himself always with this seven who could hardly work together because they were so busy troubling among themselves or behaving with arrogant assurance. We don't need to work, they as much as said. We're too good to do anything but listen to you and then laugh at what you say.
Or was that just Courfeyrac?
And, pardieu, were not most of them just this shade of insane? What should one call Joly's constant fear of illness, if not madness? To be a hypochondriac was all very well, but to starve himself and punish his flesh and bear up all the while, waiting to die while doing one's homework--what was that but a mind that bore all the diseases Joly claimed for his body?
Then there was the matter of Prouvaire, their gentle poet. He was gentler than Combeferre ever pretended to be, seemed ready to cry over a flower; him with his girlish form and dewy eyes, like the young boys that old kings used to call to their chambers. It disgusted Combeferre more than he could express, which was just as well, since he would never be asked to express it.
This was his secret: that he was in the whole rotten business for Richard only, and hated the rest of them with all his heart.
Richard, at least, was a good man. A fool, but a good man, and one whom Combeferre would follow loyally. Oh, he did his best to dissuade him--that was what Feuilly had walked in on earlier--did his best to assure Richard that the revolution he dreamed of was a farce. Paris wouldn't stand behind him, so what was this but an attempt to catch death in his hands? Nine schoolboys, if Grantaire could even be counted, did not make an army. Here Richard would protest that there were others, that these nine were the core of the rebellion and everyone else helped form the rest; they were the heart and those who rallied with them the body. But there were none who rallied with them, Combeferre insisted.
Richard was blind to this. People came to hear him talk because he was beautiful, and inflamed souls with his words, but there was not a man who came who would not go home and forget about it afterwards. That, he tried to explain, was what people did. They were momentarily filled with the wonder and the joy and the righteous anger, and then they remembered that they had a family to support, or an exam to take, and they had jobs, or they were only students, and someone else could fight if there was fighting to be done.
They all think that there are many others, and so they all leave, thinking 'who will miss just one?'. Then there is no one. Then you are alone, unprotected, unsupported, unheard of--the people who listened will claim they don't know who you are, you rabble-rouser--and you are slain. It's no use.
Richard ought to have forgotten it.
But he didn't listen, he kept striving, and Combeferre couldn't leave him to strive and die alone, so he stayed and lost time from his life and had to tolerate and keep the peace between those damned seven and their damned ways. He had to talk to Grantaire and pretend to be interested in him, had to soothe Feuilly and then watch the man walk away without even looking back at him, wholly ungrateful. He had to endure Courfeyrac, of all people--though not as often as most people, because Courfeyrac was always off courting and drinking and couldn't be found half the time.
And speak of the Devil, pardieu.
"Hullo, there," Courfeyrac said, swinging through the door. "Have I missed everybody? I passed four of you on the way out."
From his corner, Prouvaire remained sleeping. Grantaire looked up from where he was drinking, waved, called out something made unintelligible by wine and gin. Courfeyrac at once swept over, clapped him on the back, and then swept away again, divesting himself of his overcoat and gloves.
"Damned cold," he announced. "A man would think the poets were liars. Enchanted springs, indeed. Fair blossoms, warm breezes, delicate scents, indeed! Someone's burning trash, the trees are stunted, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if it began to snow."
Combeferre murmured something non-committal. He hated this man, truly more than any of them. Courfeyrac was the worst. He and his smirking smile and his careless ways, as though nothing in the world mattered but him, and everyone should know it. He spoke with languorous authority--why, here I am! Do you worship me? Of course you ought to, you know. I shall laugh at you if you don't--it was disgusting. If Combeferre might have been permitted by his Holy Father to send one of them screaming to hell, it would be Courfeyrac, and he would have gladly watched and said good riddance over the fading echoes.
"What, you doubt it? And here I supposed you were the one among us most likely to take me at my word. Sacre, everyone's gone; it will be a quiet evening, won't it? I suppose I shall have to stir things up." He called for Louison, ordered a drink, kissed both her cheeks. He was always moving, never pausing, like a bright whirlwind.
"Please don't," said Combeferre gently. "Richard is tired to-night."
"Of course."
"I'm just going out with Joly and Bossuet. I suppose you don't wish to join us?" Don't, he thought silently. Don't say yes.
"No, no, I'm afraid not. I've got plans. But thank you for the invitation."
"Of course, Isaac."
"You had better watch out, you know. If you go around calling me Isaac instead of Courfeyrac, everyone will suppose we're brothers or some such nonsense, and then they'll expect me to call you Alexandre, and really, I don't want to do that."
"I beg your pardon."
Courfeyrac laughed.
Combeferre collected his grammar, which was what he had come back for in the first place, from the chair at their old table, and put it into his pocket. Courfeyrac had received his drink and given Louison another kiss for it. Combeferre tried very hard to ignore him.
Carefully he knocked upon Richard's door and put his head in.
"Good evening, Richard. I'm going out with Joly and Bossuet now."
Richard looked up quickly, shielding the table from his eyes. "Thank you. Have a good evening." That was so unlike him that Combeferre came into the room.
"Are you quite all right?"
"Yes, of course."
"Joly said you wanted him to put up pamphlets."
"That's right," said Richard, although he seemed for the barest second to hesitate. This hurt Combeferre more than he imagined he could be hurt. Why would Richard not trust him? Why would Richard lie to him? he asked himself.
"I don't want you to be hurt."
"I'm aware of that. You are equally aware that I am prepared to be when it is necessary."
"Why must you be so distant to me?"
"When you are not so quick to put down what I believe in accomplishing, I may be slower to cast aside what you say. The others are waiting for you, are they not? Good-night."
For a moment, he thought to protest. He nearly reached out to Richard, but Richard looked at his hand so distastefully that he did not; merely he turned away and left the room, shutting the door behind him. This was the second time he had so left that evening. Combeferre paused in the main room of the café, looking out the window. In the distance he could see Joly and Bossuet under a streetlamp, speaking together.
He was not really a bad man, was he? No, of course not. There was no great wrong in despising the company of these men. After all, he never showed it, did he? He treated them well, for Richard's sake, went about with them and smiled, laughed, joked, talked with them, all with perfect ease. No one would have suspected that they were not his dear companions, and if that were so, how could he be a bad man--he who held the dislike only in his mind, and in all respects to which they were privy so seemed to esteem them?
It was quite all right.
Was that not what his mother used to say, that those who did no bad acts could be excused their bad thoughts? At least, she had said something like that. She was a fair woman, small and slender, dwarfed by both her husband and her son, but she had a wise temperament and a good hand. She knew proverbs that held meaning. She had raised her son properly, taught him well for the world.
An only child, Combeferre had grown up with her full attention, and had been the sole subject for her wisdom; he had taken it to heart, and now did his best to live by it. She had told him, for example, that idle hands were the devil's workshop, and he truly believed it. He did his best always to be busy, whether it was with school, or going out or speaking with Richard's seven, in order to preserve the tenuous relationships they had with one another.
Even when they did not respect Richard, he did this. Even when they were nothing more then indolent, foolish people determined to waste Richard's strength and his time by pretending to listen to him.
Most of them were so turbulent in their heads that they could be nothing but trouble at any rate, even if so many other ifs came together--if Richard got together his revolution with enough men, if he was able to find a good position of attack, if they were men enough to stand with him. Even if all this were accomplished, with so many troubles within themselves, it would be like expecting this body of Richard's to work properly with a diseased heart.
No, a diseased heart cannot hold a body up.
Not with the anger in Feuilly's mind, or the foolishness in Bossuet's, the pathetic femininity of Prouvaire's, the rough stupidity of Bahorel's--these minds, all filled with flaws, could hardly be expected to provide themselves as generals to Richard's dream.
It was only a dream. That was the true core. There was no heart of brave, determined men. There was only a dream of Richard's that could not possibly come true.
Combeferre sighed, and started for the door.
"Give everyone my love, will you?" Courfeyrac called out.
"Yes, and have a good evening, Isaac," Combeferre answered.
Pardieu, he thought, as he opened the door and left the café. What a ship of fools they were! And he was the worst of the lot, because he had not yet abandoned them to their fate. He knew he was wiser and better, and certainly truer to Richard than they were, and yet he did not leave them; he continued for Richard's sake when certainly he ought just to leave. He hurried after Joly and Bossuet, who still waited. It was best to get this over with as quickly as possible. Then he could go home and be alone.
~~~
Courfeyrac sat down at his table with his drink, leaned back in his chair, and smiled. At least it had been a successful evening. Occasionally he thought that all his evenings were successful, that always went it began to be dusky in the sky and a strange half-light fell upon everything, some part of him became more alive, and began to search and attempt things and struggle for answers and light. It was the perfect time, then.
He cast a glance over to Grantaire's table. Poor fellow, already falling-down drunk. It never did take him very long. For all his flippancy, Courfeyrac really did regret what had happened to Grantaire, and often wondered whether there were not some way to reverse it.
There was not, naturally.
He put his boots up upon the chair beside him, and waited for Louison to come out and scold him. She always did. Such an ugly girl, but well-meaning, cared very much for all the people who were regulars at the café, and knew everyone's order ahead of time and usually remembered their names. She reminded Courfeyrac of a distant girl who had once been his lover. A girl--with dark hair, he suspected, casting his memory back. A girl with blue eyes and very dark hair, and a smile sweeter than honeyed wine (he was fond of such comparisons and metaphors, and frequently peppered his conversation with them), and he thought he had loved her very much. After a while, though, they all began to run together.
He had loved every one of them dearer than anything, although he couldn't remember their names any more, for the most part, or where he had met them. He only remembered their faces, and sometimes how they kissed in bed, and whether or not they smiled and blushed when he took them to dinner.
And sometimes the others, the other Amis, called him a cad and a stealer of hearts and a trifler, but Courfeyrac knew he wasn't. He never left his girls unhappy. The girl he had parted from the last week, for example: she was tall and fat and beautiful, breathtakingly beautiful, and they had been lovers for perhaps four months, and that night--a Friday night--she kissed him and told him that she fancied he was growing tired of her.
'Oh, no,' said Courfeyrac, 'my most beautiful one, no.'
She pouted. 'But you do not buy me things as you used to.'
'Well, I am preparing you for marriage. Husbands hardly ever buy their wives presents.'
'What, do you mean to marry me?'
'To make an honest woman of you, cherie,' he said.
'I don't want to be an honest woman.'
'But that is what I long for. A wife to dandle my children on her knee.'
'Wretch,' she said, as she reached for his hand; and he gave it willingly.
'I am. But I suppose if you don't want to be honest, and I must have an honest woman, it's time for us to part.'
'I'm afraid it is.'
'Well, perhaps to part of the best of terms--for, cherie, I love you dearly--I should take you out for dinner and buy you something beautiful.'
'I should like that very much.'
'Then let us go. If it is to be the last evening, it must be a glorious one.'
So they went out and had dinner and he bought her a necklace and a silk fan, and they never saw one another again. He always arranged things to be that way. When he grew tired of a woman--for he was a restless soul--he announced the end in the easiest way possible, and always made sure she was given a perfect evening, the last evening. He expected nothing less of himself. For this they called him a heartbreaker, but what hearts did he break? No, he laid hearts in silk and with caresses returned them to their owners. In some things, perhaps, he seemed careless, but when it came to hearts he was a very careful man.
The woman who was his lover now was a street girl, a skinny little slip with a wicked sense of humour, which she had somehow kept despite her poverty and hunger. Courfeyrac never spent time with her but he made sure there was food involved. Even if she only came back to his apartment to sleep with him, he insisted on a meal at some point. She told him that the other street girls she ran around with were wondering who was feeding her, but she kept it a secret.
Courfeyrac admired and esteemed her. She was twenty-one but looked only sixteen; her growth had been stunted with ill conditions. Some days he longed to introduce her to Enjolras and see what the man said. She was a true example of what Enjolras insisted they were fighting for, a woman who had lived all her life in the worst of circumstances, and who was still brave and cheerful, still ready to defend herself from what she could, willing to steal and willing to be honest, taking life in her hands and using it to the best of her advantage. Why, when Fate offered her a wealthy lover (Courfeyrac had inherited a fortune from his parents when they were killed in a fire) she gladly took him, ate his bread, spent his money, and slept in his bed. Enjolras could not help but admire her, too.
Here Courfeyrac smiled a slightly embarrassed smile to himself. Ah, well, perhaps Enjolras would not appreciate her. He appreciated so little. But then it wasn't his fault--Courfeyrac, who liked every one of the Amis very much, was always ready to defend them--he had serious things on his mind, and if sometimes he was inexcusably serious, perhaps it wasn't truly inexcusable. He could be forgiven the error of looking down his nose at everyone's fun; after all, he was always troubled by ponderous things, and perhaps forgot what it was like to be free from them.
Courfeyrac's parents had died four or five years ago, and being of age then he was able to inherit their land and money. He promptly cleared away the ashy remains of the house, sold the land to the tenants there, moved to Paris, where he continued at the Université, and spent his money on his women and all the other natural expenses of a student's life.
He did not mind admitting to himself that he grew sad thinking of his parents. Enjolras was dismissive of parents, condemning them all to bourgeois complacency, but Courfeyrac remembered his mother as a rosebud of a woman who showered him with love, and his father as a venerable old ex-soldier who smoked a carved pipe and read a great deal of Greek and Latin, and he was not ashamed that sometime he wept over them. He wept that his mother could no longer cluck at his having a different lady to speak of every time she saw him; that his father could no longer shoot Cicero at him over the table like quick gunfire and expect him to deflect it with translations. It was a great tragedy, he told himself, and he believed it.
Feuilly was also an orphan, but his parents had died long ago, and it had hardened him. He could not think with love on his mother, or with a boy's admiration of his father; this, too, sometimes made Courfeyrac sorrowful (his handsome face concealed an easy heart--that is to say, easy because it so easily bled for other people's troubles, and filled with other people's joys). He had tried before to be friendly to Feuilly in order to comfort him, but Feuilly was always closed to him, so Courfeyrac, who said that interfering in other people's business was to the interferer the most charitable exercise imaginable and to the interfered the most cardinal sin, left him alone.
He did this for all of the Amis, really, when he thought about it. They all had rough troubles, or secrets that persisted at them to make them unhappy, and he would gladly have taken on their every burden, but no one ever seemed to wish to confide in him. He was satisfied that they felt they could manage by themselves. Instead he tried to be as cheerful and good-humoured as possible, so that everyone might at least enjoy their time spent with him and forget about the things that sad heavily upon them.
Even Joly--he was, truth be told (and he laughed to himself), a little frightened of Joly, foolish as that was. He was afraid that if he dismissed Joly's illnesses in his spirited way, he might make a wound deeper than any of those Joly imagined on his person. There is, he said to himself, nothing more worse than being laughed at when you truly are ill, and perhaps I shall laugh at him and instead of taking it as a friendly accident he shall suppose that I scorn him when he really does need help--well, wouldn't that be wretched?
"Am I a fool?" he said aloud to the room. "I am a fool, aren't I? And melodramatic, when I take my mind to it. I suppose there's really no explanation for my avoiding him, and I should really bear up and resolve to do better."
"Ahh, quiet!" Grantaire roared from his corner. "What're you going on about?"
"I could ask you the same question," said Courfeyrac, as he twisted about in his chair.
"What?"
"Oh, my good fellow, I'm not going on about anything, so what are you going on about, asking me that question?"
"Oh, leave him alone."
Courfeyrac glanced up. Enjolras was looking at him irritably.
"Hullo! Good to see you."
"Yes," Enjolras answered, perhaps with some distraction, putting a sheaf of papers under his arm.
"Are you heading home?"
"Yes. It's late."
"Shall I walk with you?"
"I prefer to walk alone."
"Well, that's all right." Courfeyrac smiled. "Go safely, then, and don't get hit by anyone, and I'll see you to-morrow with any luck."
"Yes."
Courfeyrac watched him go to the door with a great deal of fondness. He was their leader, their first knight, the commander of their expedition, the tip of their sword. He led them forward with learning, until they'd mastered that learning and could put it to use. Then he would lead them forward with a gun and a knife, with cannon and brave shouts, and they'd do something incredible, they truly would.
Behind him Louison was waking Jean Prouvaire, who stirred slowly. "What time is it?" Courfeyrac heard him murmur, and Louison answered, "Ten o'clock. You had better have your supper, M'sieur Jean."
Grantaire had got up from his seat, swaying, and stumbled out to take a piss behind the café; the other patrons, of which there were very few, were speaking of going home. Courfeyrac supposed he would soon be alone, and he rather liked the idea. Of course he loved people, but it's always pleasant sometimes to be alone. Solitude and companionship, he thought, are two essentials of life.
He had finished his drink, and he put his glass down and the money for it, along with a considerable tip for Louison. Let the girl have something. Enough of the patrons were so impoverished, being students, that they could hardly pay for their drinks, let alone leave something for the serving girl. Courfeyrac could afford it.
It was strange, sometimes, to be so fond of all of them. They didn't like each other, of course. It didn't take a genius to see that. But he did.
"That's folly," he said, again speaking aloud.
Prouvaire had a good hand at writing, one that would better with age, and Courfeyrac respected it with laughter. Everything was better respected with laughter. So that was Prouvaire, and even Joly--when Courfeyrac wasn't being an ass, as he told himself, he could see the wisdom in Joly, unexpected for a man so young; his talent at taking his hands and discerning the cause of an illness the way people used those funny sticks to discern water under the ground. He could touch and say there, that's why. There, that's where. It was magnificent. And Bahorel, such a strong fighter, only matched by Bossuet's bravery and his good spirit, he always getting up again after he fell.
Grantaire kept them from becoming too lost in ideals. He asked the hardest questions. Courfeyrac was well-aware that they usually disregarded him, but what he said was what they had to listen to the most, and Courfeyrac did listen. Sometimes he repeated Grantaire so Enjolras would hear the words. Then there was Feuilly, angry and cold, angry and hot, angry and right there on the streets, one of the people this whole business rested upon. Like Peter, Courfeyrac thought. We're building on what he brings us, what he tells us, the people he tells of us. There are people we can't approach, because we mean well but we've been given the wrong forms and backgrounds to do anything. Feuilly goes to those people like an ambassador who was born in the country he's gone to visit. And Combeferre keeps our peace. He stills our anger when it ripples too much.
That's the thing, he thought. Every one of us is necessary; every one of us is valuable. Like it or not--really, like one another or not--we need each other, we need every single one of us. We're lucky enough to have it. We've been given the brains and the leader to use it.
Courfeyrac looked at the tabletop, tapping it thoughtfully but without vexation. In the corner, Jean Prouvaire was wrapping up his supper to take him, and Grantaire was still outside. The café was empty now, except for the girls wiping off the tables and wishing for a second wave of customers. As Prouvaire went out and a burst of the cold air swished inside, blowing Courfeyrac's hair away from his forehead, he stretched himself and stood, calling out for good-bye kisses and for Louison to get her tip.
When it was over, he thought, his girl would be very pleased. Whether he meant the night, or the revolution, or something else entirely, wasn't clear, not even to him.
