By TW for HisPrincessHope – a story about Enjolras' first crush. While our Augustin has never been set upon by heady Eros, he was not exempt from that hero-worship that colors every man's life. As we shall see, there was one august personage for whom he cultivated in his earliest youth a most solemn and heartfelt devotion – a devotion which has never yet waned, despite his discovery of other great men better remembered by fickle Historia. Mark how it all came to pass...
At fourteen years old, Augustin Enjolras possessed already the beauty of a woman, the intellect of a sage, the stubbornness of a mule - and the temperament of an apostate undertaking his penance. What heresy could such a child have committed, to class himself among those failed martyrs of the ancient Christians? How could a boy who knew so little of life have faced and failed such a challenge already? The judgment was entirely of his own making, for he had profaned his greatest hero. In a sentence: to save himself, he had betrayed the ideals taught him by OMNES OMNIBUS.
And who was Omnes Omnibus? The stuff of which a child's dreams are made, if that child is keen enough to appreciate him. A mouthpiece, a voice only: ALL FOR ALL. A man who had so lost himself in service to a higher call that even his name was no longer his own. As a boy Augustin constantly escaped the uncle's house where he spent his summers and lived upon the quays of Nantes, dreaming that his hero might one day reappear to rally the people of the city. Such courage! Such oratory! It was for his sake that Augustin studied rhetoric with such passion, for although he was quite capable of learning anything he chose, he only studied that which he found to be of benefit.
This devotion which was to be so enduring was born of a most singular document: the Confessions of one Moreau, baptized André-Louis. An unsuspecting visitor had left them much too near to petit Augustin's eye-level, and it was stolen by the unrepentant child before his parents could discover and snatch it away. The romance and adventure of the latter chapters interested him little, but at the beginning of the book lay the moving tale of Omnes Omnibus. For a long time he completely ignored everything which followed the hasty flight into the Breton countryside, reading over and over the brief account of the death of Philippe de Vilmorin and the two inflammatory speeches of Rennes and Nantes. What he learned from these Confessions was supplemented by his continual search for those willing to recall the days before the Revolution.
"And what of Omnes Omnibus?" he would whisper, once he was confident that his interest would not be discovered to his father. "Can you tell me anything of – of him?" And occasionally, they could – but more often he was simply sent back to the streets, where he would watch the people pass by, and the boats on the river, and the poor beggars who sang and mocked the rich men who were blind to their plight. What would his hero do? Augustin would wonder as he walked along the quays and saw riches and misery so close together. Why, Omnes Omnibus would never stand for this, and neither should he! (As he had only but skimmed the majority of Moreau, he labored for some time under the false impression that his redemption had been completed by those speeches in Vilmorin's name, and that he had remained an apostle of Liberty to the end of his days.) Though he was as yet unschooled in republicanism, he began then to turn to the people he saw in the streets, and to converse with them as he imagined Omnes Omnibus might – concerned, confident, and entirely self-effacing. He played at being the great rhetorician as other boys play at soldiers, policemen, assassins. How he escaped trouble, a beautiful and trusting child alone in the city, must be mostly credited to the fondness that many of the fishwives developed for him. Augustin's recaptures grew fewer and fewer as he learned to escape and to disguise himself, and in between them he developed a love for roaming the city and a profound respect for the common people, both of which were to follow him into his adulthood. But we pass out of our tale; let us return.
The summer that Augustin was thirteen years old, he had the bad fortune to be given a set of Desmoulins' pamphlets by a bookseller friend with whom he had begun to discuss anti-royalism the summer before. The book was noticed, searched for, and found almost immediately – and Moreau's Confessions with it. The boy was called before his uncle.
"What is the meaning of this devilry?" hissed that good royalist, tossing the offending revolutionary compendium at the boy's feet. "You dare to bring this trash under my roof?"
Augustin looked down at the book coolly – he had not even had the chance yet to open it, but it came highly recommended. "I don't know that it's all as bad as that sir."
His uncle tore off a glove and slapped Augustin across the cheek with the insult of a bare palm. The child Enjolras turned red under the blow, but did not flinch. "Then you are accursedly ignorant! You are an Enjolras, on your mother's side you are a du Maine. We have stood beside the throne since the days of the Valois, and it is your duty to defend it! Your blood compels you to act honorably and with dignity and respect towards your venerable ancestors and the institution of the peerage of France. Has no one taught you these things?"
The boy's thoughts skimmed over all he had seen of his family's behavior; and besides, in truth they were only among the most minor of the nobility, whether his uncle liked to admit it or not. "I have heard it all my life, but I have never seen it practiced."
M. du Maine flushed in turn, in anger. "Your forefathers, insolent enfant, have fought and died in the service of the kings of France as long as there has been one to serve. Your mother won't tell you this, but your own grandfather lost his life to the Terror. It was the words lying at your ungrateful feet that killed him, but he died with honor and loyalty to his rightful king!"
Augustin quivered a little and paused in shock. Finally he replied quietly, "You're right. I was never told this." His gaze flickered uneasily between his uncle's eyes and the book on the floor. As terrible as it was that his grandfather should have been killed, no matter his politics...but he could not finish his thought.
"Well, it's about time you were. You are a young man now and you ought to know." As though he had read his nephew's mind, he pulled from his desk now none other than the Confessions. "Since you have brought us to that most unpleasant business, I don't suppose you can explain this drivel, either?"
Augustin's heart nearly stopped and his eyes flew wide. Already weakened, he stood speechless and helpless before this abuse of his beloved hero.
"Augustin, I demand an explanation."
Augustin swallowed around a dry mouth and stiffened his neck. "It – is not drivel, sir. The Moreau is simply an old favorite of mine –"
"It's clear that you were never properly brought up." M. du Maine silenced the boy by raising his hand. "I regret having neglected it so long, but I thought your father had enough sense to instill this in you himself. I will write immediately and tell him what has happened here."
"No!" Augustin leaped forward and clung onto the edge of the desk by his fingertips. "Please, no...Oncle..." The years of his life flashed before his eyes. If his father should find out – oh, he would kill him. He was disengaged enough from his son's education to think that Augustin was a model child and a good monarchist, but if he were disillusioned...if that book had provoked such reaction from his uncle, to be caught with it by his father... oh, it would be terrible. He would never be allowed to go to Nantes again or to go out in the streets alone again – he would never have another uncensored book, another liberal tutor, or another moment of his life to himself...and of course there would be the beating. Not that he cared about the beating, but – it was still something. "Please don't tell him, Oncle! I'll be good from now on. I swear it to you."
His uncle turned a glare on him as he began to write out the letter to his brother-in-law. "You don't want me to tell him because you're afraid he'll punish you. Augustin, you are old enough to know that those who do wrong must receive their just punishment so they can atone and learn their lesson."
The specter of his father's anger loomed before him, utterly blinding the boy. "I – have done wrong. I know I have. I agree with you, those things are – are foolishness. I shouldn't be reading them. But please don't tell him."
As angry as he was that Augustin had betrayed him like this, the elder man had a soft spot for the boy – so like his dear mother. His humility was gratifying. And he did show a willingness to learn and return to his proper path. Boys would be boys sometimes, wouldn't they? Besides, the look in Augustin's eyes was strangely compelling.
Yes. Properly trained that boy would go far – he simply had to be trained first.
M. du Maine calmly sealed up the letter he had written and placed it on the mantelpiece of his study. "Do you see this, Augustin? It's a letter for your father, explaining everything. If you change your ways and apply yourself properly this summer, at the end of August I'll call you in and burn it. He need never know. But at the first sign of trouble, or of bad sentiment from you, I'll mail it right away. Do you understand?"
Augustin shook a little and considered his options. It was a cowardly thing to do - a terrible, cowardly thing to do, and he shouldn't take that deal. He should take his punishment as a man, and stand strong. However, as he stood trembling now before his uncle as a rebellious boy who hadn't even grown past one and a half meters yet, he felt nothing at all like a man. He had no power here; he could do nothing. Reluctantly, hating himself for it, he nodded his assent.
"Good," the man said, and patted his shoulder. "Give me those books, now. You won't want them." The petit Enjolras threw them down on the desk and ran from the room before he could be seen to cry.
The remainder of the summer, in which he found himself rebuffed from wandering out-of-doors again and again and forced into attending business meetings with increasing regularity, was torture to him. During the year that followed, he swore with a vengeance that he must never again betray truth or justice to protect himself. He turned to his rhetoric, to his history and law, and to his republican authors with a passion he had never felt before, and when his height shot up shortly after his fourteenth birthday that January, he felt he was becoming someone truly to be reckoned with. While his ideology remained in its infancy, the groundwork was undeniably there. This one incident, the promise he had made against his principles, took root in his mind and grew almost precisely to the size of his heart. It was a little thing and he ought to have forgiven himself for something he had done when he was only a child, perhaps; but in a way, he never ceased to be a child at all, for he had no cynicism or pessimism in his heart, and no room in his vision for the shades of grey between purest good and purest evil. He hated himself now, but in rejecting himself he did away with everything which might have held him back. He was not a Christian, but he grew to cherish that verse which has stymied so many others, He who wishes to save his life must lose it. Upon that hope of martyrdom, he built much of his strength.
The rest of his life is a well-known story, and we shall not repeat it here; but that is the account of the first devotion Augustin Enjolras held in his heart, and how it consumed him so entirely that he was never the same after.
