towers of hatred.
It must be cast down. This monstrous mass must be made to crumble. To
conquer at Austerlitz is grand; to take the Bastille is immense.

There is no one who has not noticed it in his own case--the soul,--and
therein lies the marvel of its unity complicated with ubiquity, has
a strange aptitude for reasoning almost coldly in the most violent
extremities, and it often happens that heartbroken passion and profound
despair in the very agony of their blackest monologues, treat subjects
and discuss theses. Logic is mingled with convulsion, and the thread
of the syllogism floats, without breaking, in the mournful storm of
thought. This was the situation of Marius' mind.

As he meditated thus, dejected but resolute, hesitating in every
direction, and, in short, shuddering at what he was about to do, his
glance strayed to the interior of the barricade. The insurgents
were here conversing in a low voice, without moving, and there
was perceptible that quasi-silence which marks the last stage of
expectation. Overhead, at the small window in the third story Marius
descried a sort of spectator who appeared to him to be singularly
attentive. This was the porter who had been killed by Le Cabuc. Below,
by the lights of the torch, which was thrust between the paving-stones,
this head could be vaguely distinguished. Nothing could be stranger, in
that sombre and uncertain gleam, than that livid, motionless, astonished
face, with its bristling hair, its eyes fixed and staring, and its
yawning mouth, bent over the street in an attitude of curiosity. One
would have said that the man who was dead was surveying those who were
about to die. A long trail of blood which had flowed from that head,
descended in reddish threads from the window to the height of the first
floor, where it stopped.

BOOK FOURTEENTH.--THE GRANDEURS OF DESPAIR

[Illustration: The Grandeurs of Despair 4b-14-1-despair]

CHAPTER I--THE FLAG: ACT FIRST

As yet, nothing had come. Ten o'clock had sounded from Saint-Merry.
Enjolras and Combeferre had gone and seated themselves, carbines in
hand, near the outlet of the grand barricade. They no longer addressed
each other, they listened, seeking to catch even the faintest and most
distant sound of marching.

Suddenly, in the midst of the dismal calm, a clear, gay, young voice,
which seemed to come from the Rue Saint-Denis, rose and began to sing
distinctly, to the old popular air of "By the Ligh