"I couldn't possibly decide," Courfeyrac exclaimed. "All beautiful women are beautiful in their own way. Who am I to dictate to Venus whether she should be a blonde or a brunette?"
"That's all very well," Bahorel said, "but surely there is something that attracts you in particular?"
"Of course there is," Courfeyrac retorted, leaning back on his chair and winking at Louison. "Expressive eyes. Now pray tell me, when those eyes smile at you or sigh soulfully or sing you an aria all by themselves, what difference does it make whether they are blue or brown?"
"If it pleases you," Bahorel shrugged his shoulders. "And you, Enjolras?"
Enjolras looked up from his papers, surprised.
"I couldn't say."
"Not again!"
"Enjolras doesn't care for women's pretty eyes," Courfeyrac sighed. "Enjolras thunders them into oblivion if they dare to so much as smile at him. O, what a crime and what a punishment!"
"I am still determined to find a woman Enjolras would fall in love with," Bahorel insisted. "There must be one such. Mademoiselle Roussaud, for example. She is pretty, accomplished, knows 4 languages, can hardly hide her Republican sympathies, has an embroidered portrait of Saint-Just on her mantlepiece and is dying of love for our oblivious leader."
Enjolras stopped writing for a moment. "I don't think she's… in love with me," he said. It was just like Bahorel to suggest it.
"What, man, are you blind?"
"Well, she'd have said so if she was, I guess."
Courfeyrac sighed. "My dear Enjolras, that isn't how this delightful game works. Ladies generally expect you to chase after them for months before they open their hearts to you."
"Why should I chase after her?" Enjolras said, returning to his work. There was a speech to write for the Courgourde d'Aix, then an article for a leading clandestine paper, a letter to a secret society in Lyon, unfortunately also an essay on criminal law, all in all enough to keep Enjolras busy without having to think over inexplicable ideas such as these. "She's there whenever I come to see her brother. She can talk to me as often as she wants and so can I."
Bahorel rolled his eyes. "For God's sake, her name is virtually Rousseau! Does that hold no attractions?"
"It's a very good name," Enjolras said, distracted. "I said so to Rousseaud himself."
"Well, I won't give up," Bahorel asserted. "Blonde or brunette?"
"What?"
"Hair colour."
"Oh. I don't mind."
"And if you think about it?"
Enjolras sighed and put his papers to the side. It was clear that neither Bahorel nor the smirking Courfeyrac were going to give up easily.
"Red, I suppose," he said, after having honestly thought about it for a moment. "Like in those paintings in the Louvre." He still remembered the day Prouvaire insisted they all go to the gallery and view every painting and sculpture there was on display.
"Auburn or copper, then," Courfeyrac laughed. "That's an unexpected choice. Why?"
"I suppose Patria would have hair like that."
"Delacroix has her as a brunette actually," Bahorel said.
"Well, I've been imagining her this way for a long time."
Since he was twelve, to be precise. Before that time, he had barely a concept of Patria, Republic, Revolution, any of these dangerous topics. His childhood in Aix was a typical bourgeois one; he was as sheltered and indoctrinated as any offspring of an upper middle class family. The only time he stepped outside of the house was accompanied by his tutor who took care to avoid unpleasant spectacles or in a carriage with his father and aunt where a screen could be drawn over the window at any time.
When the 12-year-old Michel Enjolras started lycée, he soon protested to his father that only pampered scions of nobility were driven in by carriage and insisted that he would walk the fifteen minutes it took to get there. He was in for a shock.
On the very first afternoon, Enjolras strayed into a poorer area of town than he was used to. Here the pavements were dirtier and muddier than on his street, the houses seemed to be piled on top of one another and the people passing by were scowling and shivering in their unusually thin clothes.
Of course Enjolras had always known that the poor existed. His aunt was always sending out baskets to 'a needy family'. Yet somehow the image of poverty had never appeared so dark to him, so forlorn.
As the Christmas holidays approached, Enjolras was becoming painfully aware that there something wrong with the world. He, Enjolras, had been taken to the tailor to get fitted for a new coat, blue with scarlet lapels, while another boy in his class had patches on his elbows and those ghosts of people on the streets had no warm clothes whatever.
On the last day of school, Enjolras was out longer than usual. He had a five franc coin in his pockets, of which four francs were to buy some books and one he could spend as he wanted to.
It started raining as he was walking down one of the central streets. Enjolras pulled his collar up and hurried on, thinking that his aunt will surely scold him if he spoiled that new coat.
He was about to go into the bookshop when suddenly he caught sight of something by the door. In the twilight, it looked like an abandoned bundle or a small heap of refuse. Enjolras looked closer and realised it was a little girl.
She was no older than nine and painfully thin, with dirty fingers like matchsticks peeking out of ragged, torn sleeves. Her only protection from the rain was another threadbare rag that she huddled underneath, her shoulders quivering. Her face was covered with dirt and its angular features only emphasized the hungry glistening of her eyes.
Enjolras stood rooted to the spot, looking from the girl to the customers that went out of the shop and disappeared into the distance without so much as sparing a glance in her direction.
At last, recovering from the shock, Enjolras took a deep breath and went right up to two men in evening dress and glistening top hats that were standing nearby talking.
"Excuse me, monsieur?"
One of the men turned towards him with a slightly scornful smile.
"That girl over there," Enjolras hurried to say, pointing towards the shop, "can't you do anything about her?"
"What, another vagabond?" the man said, twisting his lips in disgust. "The cheek of these creatures. On a respectable street, too."
"Well, boy," the other man struck in, "there's only one thing to be done about such unpleasantries." He took one step in the direction of the girl. "Hey, you," he called out, "clear out of here before I call the police. Clear out, I say!"
The girl started in shock and clambered up, stumbling a few times. It did not seem as if she had enough strength to walk down the end of the street.
"Problem solved, boy," the man said, turning away. "You can do it yourself next time."
Speechless for a moment, Enjolras could not reply, neither could he have articulated the anger that began to simmer in his chest for the first time. He simply threw them an indignant glance and hurried to catch up with the girl.
She staggered in fear, turning her pleading eyes onto him as if he was a policeman.
"I'm sorry," Enjolras said awkwardly. "I didn't mean to cause you trouble. I thought they'd help you."
Examining her closer in the light of the lantern, Enjolras supposed she could even be what they called pretty. To be sure, she was nothing like that girl on a postcard that one of the boys in his class stole from his elder brother and was showing around. Her hair was matted but an auburn tint that his father had once called artistic and her eyes, although too large, had something deep and intelligent in them.
"Well, I'm sorry," he repeated. "Don't you have anywhere to go?"
She shook her head, still looking at him like a frightened rabbit.
"What about your parents?"
"Don't have them," she finally whispered. "Never had any."
"So how do you get food then?"
She shrugged her shoulders. The shoulderblades were sticking out like fireplace pokers.
Suddenly Enjolras remembered the five franc coin in his pocket. He pulled it out and offered it to the girl. Instead of taking it, she seemed to freeze, staring at him as if he had just given her a diamond.
"Well, go on," Enjolras said, pushing it into her small hand. "I don't really know how much it'll buy but I'm sure that you'll at least have a decent meal."
"Let me carry your bag, m'sieur," she suddenly said. "Or I can sing you a song. I know Ma grand-mère and Le réveil du Père Duchesne. Would you like to hear it, m'sieur?"
"Why on earth?"
"I have to repay you," she insisted, her eyes shining with gratitude.
"Oh, don't be silly," Enjolras cut her off. "It's what anyone would do." Though, remembering the two men and the passers-by, it really did seem as if…
There was a sudden gust of wind. The girl shivered and rubbed her arms, nearly tearing off a sleeve in the process.
Enjolras had another idea. He took off his coat and threw it around her shoulders, wishing there was something else he could do, something that would guarantee that there were no more little girls shivering and hungry on the dirty streets.
"I'd better go," he said, before she could start thanking him. "They'll be wondering where I was."
In fact, he was ashamed. Ashamed that he was walking along that street, still relatively warm in his lycée uniform, going home, to his father and aunt, where dinner and comfort awaited, while this little shadow would wander the streets and settle down near another shop, probably happier than ever from the meagre offerings he could give her.
He remembered the few girls he knew, children of his fathers' friends, sisters of his classmates. They seemed an entirely different species with their rustling white dresses, ribbons and plump cheeks. Why, Enjolras wanted to shout to the silent passers-by, why could these girls have new dresses and music lessons and books while this one went in rags and starved? Was she any less pretty and clever than them?
The argument he had with his father that night was the first one that Enjolras could classify as political. From that day onwards, Enjolras became convinced that there was indeed something terribly wrong with the world and, what was worse, that few people wanted to fix it.
As he grew up, it became more evident what that something was. It could be summarized in one concept - that not all little girls were equal.
And so, when he imagined Patria - France - he saw two images in his mind. One was the glorious woman of Delacroix, resplendent in the light of victory, hair flowing in the wind of liberty; the other a shivering waif huddled in rags at the corner of the street, having all the potential to grow into the first yet never able to do so until that time when momentous changes would be implemented in this country.
"Enjolras? Enjolras!"
Enjolras snapped out of his reverie and looked back at Bahorel and Courfeyrac.
"Leave him be, Bahorel," Courfeyrac sighed. "I shall take it on myself to break the news to poor Mademoiselle Rousseaud next time I see her."
"Hey," Bahorel protested, "I wouldn't mind doing that myself."
"Oh no," Courfeyrac said with a smug smile. "I think my approach will be best. I'll tell her that unfortunately our beloved Enjolras has eyes only for Patria. Here she might cry and I shall take great pains to talk her out of, for I am wounded deeply by the tears of ladies. 'Enjolras may do as he pleases,' I will say, 'however I myself am ready to console her any way she thinks best!'"