nger giants matched
with colossi. It resembled Milton and Dante rather than Homer. Demons
attacked, spectres resisted.

It was heroism become monstrous.

CHAPTER XXIII--ORESTES FASTING AND PYLADES DRUNK

At length, by dint of mounting on each other's backs, aiding themselves
with the skeleton of the staircase, climbing up the walls, clinging to
the ceiling, slashing away at the very brink of the trap-door, the last
one who offered resistance, a score of assailants, soldiers, National
Guardsmen, municipal guardsmen, in utter confusion, the majority
disfigured by wounds in the face during that redoubtable ascent, blinded
by blood, furious, rendered savage, made an irruption into the apartment
on the first floor. There they found only one man still on his feet,
Enjolras. Without cartridges, without sword, he had nothing in his hand
now but the barrel of his gun whose stock he had broken over the head
of those who were entering. He had placed the billiard table between his
assailants and himself; he had retreated into the corner of the room,
and there, with haughty eye, and head borne high, with this stump of a
weapon in his hand, he was still so alarming as to speedily create an
empty space around him. A cry arose:

"He is the leader! It was he who slew the artillery-man. It is well that
he has placed himself there. Let him remain there. Let us shoot him down
on the spot."

"Shoot me," said Enjolras.

And flinging away his bit of gun-barrel, and folding his arms, he
offered his breast.

The audacity of a fine death always affects men. As soon as Enjolras
folded his arms and accepted his end, the din of strife ceased in
the room, and this chaos suddenly stilled into a sort of sepulchral
solemnity. The menacing majesty of Enjolras disarmed and motionless,
appeared to oppress this tumult, and this young man, haughty, bloody,
and charming, who alone had not a wound, who was as indifferent as an
invulnerable being, seemed, by the authority of his tranquil glance, to
constrain this sinister rabble to kill him respectfully. His beauty, at
that moment augmented by his pride, was resplendent, and he was fresh
and rosy after the fearful four and twenty hours which had just elapsed,
as though he could no more be fatigued than wounded. It was of him,
possibly, that a witness spoke afterwards, before the council of
war: "There was an insurgent whom I heard called Apollo." A National
Guardsman who had taken aim at Enjolra