's. I am capable of that. My shoes are
capable of that."

"Do you know anything of those comrades who meet at Richefeu's?"

"Not much. We only address each other as thou."

"What will you say to them?"

"I will speak to them of Robespierre, pardi! Of Danton. Of principles."

"You?"

"I. But I don't receive justice. When I set about it, I am terrible. I
have read Prudhomme, I know the Social Contract, I know my constitution
of the year Two by heart. 'The liberty of one citizen ends where the
liberty of another citizen begins.' Do you take me for a brute? I have
an old bank-bill of the Republic in my drawer. The Rights of Man, the
sovereignty of the people, sapristi! I am even a bit of a Hebertist. I
can talk the most superb twaddle for six hours by the clock, watch in
hand."

"Be serious," said Enjolras.

"I am wild," replied Grantaire.

Enjolras meditated for a few moments, and made the gesture of a man who
has taken a resolution.

"Grantaire," he said gravely, "I consent to try you. You shall go to the
Barriere du Maine."

Grantaire lived in furnished lodgings very near the Cafe Musain. He went
out, and five minutes later he returned. He had gone home to put on a
Robespierre waistcoat.

"Red," said he as he entered, and he looked intently at Enjolras. Then,
with the palm of his energetic hand, he laid the two scarlet points of
the waistcoat across his breast.

And stepping up to Enjolras, he whispered in his ear:--

"Be easy."

He jammed his hat on resolutely and departed.

A quarter of an hour later, the back room of the Cafe Musain 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 slightest complication stops and entangles them. A phenomenon whence
arises ruin and new births. Enjolras descried a luminous 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 revolu