Late evening, June fourth, 1832.
His desk was a disaster, Jehan realized as he walked into his room after a late meeting on the fourth of June. His desk was in chaos. Not just its usual state of pleasant disorder, but full-blown chaos. All this time trying to help organize an insurrection had eliminated any organization that had ever existed among his papers and books.
How does Combeferre do it? he wondered. Somehow, the busier he is, the neater he is. It's just not fair.
"I'm jealous, Czarina," he said to his cat, who was asleep in the middle of his bed. The cat—who, true to her name, was a regular feline empress—opened one eye, looked at him, and went back to sleep.
Jehan lit a couple candles and went over to the table, where he emptied his pockets. The usual things—his penknife, some scraps of paper, friction matches, a handkerchief—but mostly, cartridges. Courfeyrac's cartridge box had reached its limits that evening, and since no other suitable container had presented itself, Jehan and Bahorel had stuffed the extras into their pockets. He put them in a drawer under his clothes, hoping he'd remember them in the morning.
He sorted through the other things. Most of the papers were insignificant, but there was one—there it was—one that he wanted. The beginnings of a poem that had come to him while he was out that afternoon. It was going to be a villanelle, he remembered, as he looked at the six scribbled lines. Late though it was, he was in the right mood for poetry. He would finish it—sit down at his desk and—
Except that he didn't have a desk. He had an ocean of unruly paper.
And that meant sorting.
"You'd think I was a dictator of some sort, the way my desk always rebels against public order," he muttered as he pulled over a chair. "There's really no cause for this sort of insurrection!"
Ah well, books first. He was still reading Rousseau's Social Contract, but his volume of Chenier could be put up. He was finished with King Lear. Why was the dictionary out? Oh, right, he'd been inserting Combeferre's correction. Shelley could stay, and his Italian copy of Dante had to—he was working on a translation. Pascal's Penséeswere borrowed and needed to be returned, but that would have to wait.
"And I won't have time tomorrow." He looked at the cat again. "Can you run it back for me, chérie? Or are you still too much of an aristo to do your share of things?"
No answer, and that was it for the books.
The papers were a much bigger mess. They were everywhere. A letter from his mother, notes on a play he'd seen at the theatre, a fragment of a love poem. There was his part-writing assignment from a class in music theory. Still unresolved…he hadn't figured out how to work his way into the ending cadence. He wrote the word finish in the top corner and set it aside. Beneath it was an arrangement of Ca Ira for flute, violin, and piano…he'd finished it up the other day. He marked the word revise midway down the second page, then reconsidered and struck it out.
There was his Dante translation work, broken off in the middle of a line, and there was the article on education he'd started last week. It was very poorly organized, he realized as he skimmed over the paragraphs. REVISE! he wrote in the margin.
Oh, look, his landlady had left him a note. The cat had behaved well while he was gone, she said, and she had posted his letter as he had asked. There was the change from the postage money he'd given her.
He set the couple of coins aside. He was glad that his return letter to his mother had gotten off. It was only a page long, hardly more than a note, but he'd write a fuller response after the funeral and the projected émeute. Oh, there were his dabblings in learning English…a couple conjugations, some vocabulary, some simple sentences. He'd always meant to get Courfeyrac's friend Marius to help him, but he always forgot.
Well, he'd dealt with the worst of the clutter, at least. Jehan shoved a few more things out of the way, found a clean sheet of paper, and set to work at completing his villanelle.