1.
Enjolras disliked being compared to a statue. Maybe that was because, for all the brain under those golden curls, he still couldn't quite understand why everyone thought he was so special. The rest of them were only birds and yes, they could fly, but even birds eventually got tired and had to land. Especially a small and tired and rather crippled little bird like Grantaire.
But the statue was tall and stable and brilliant, rising up in the sky and looking over Paris, France, them... It didn't matter that everyone seemed small in comparison to him, they didn't envy him - they felt protected in his golden glow, under his sapphire gaze. And for a tattered little bird who only had the strength to fly up to his shoulder, the statue was the whole world. The bird could perch there and rest his tiny, almost clipped-off wings and he could try to look at the world from the statue's point of view. Or he could hide at his feet from the wind and the rain and feel happy that even when the world looked cold and grey, there was always something golden and beautiful in it.
But, of course, the nature of the statue was such that he didn't want to be the one golden and beautiful thing. He wanted the whole world to be golden and beautiful so he kept asking the birds flying around his head and perching on his shoulders to take the gold and the sapphires and everything he had down to the people.
Grantaire could never make himself do it and he couldn't help wanting to cry when anything was taken away from his statue. He would never see him as less beautiful, or less tall and strong, but he didn't understand why good things should be hurt for the benefit of a world which was much less good. Yet deep down in his heart, as much of a heart as a little tattered bird could have, he knew that he would always stay with his statue, come what may.
And he had stayed. Even after everything possible had been taken away and he had refused to help with that and it seemed like the world was still grey and cold. But by the end of it, being the last one there was still more of a privilege than a small bird like that would have ever known if not for the existence of gloriously tall golden statues.
'Good-bye, dear Prince!' he murmured, 'will you let me kiss your hand?
'I am glad that you are going to Egypt at last, little Swallow,' said the Prince, 'you have stayed too long here; but you must kiss me on the lips, for I love you.'
'It is not to Egypt that I am going,' said the Swallow. 'I am going to the House of Death. Death is the brother of Sleep, is he not?'
And he kissed the Happy Prince on the lips, and fell down dead at his feet.
- Oscar Wilde, "The Happy Prince"