PART I

Creating a Rebel

The year was 1790. In southern France, in the town of Uzès, there was an area that had been caught between the country and the village. There were houses and shops, but the houses were farther spread apart than a city, and short stretches of green grass divided them each. There were streets, but the pavement was cracked, there were ruts in the roads, and grass and weeds broke out from between the stones and grew in the streets. Just beyond this settlement, there was a meadow of tall, green grass, colorful wildflowers, and plants that trembled with happiness as the wind blew over the meadow. Beyond this there was a green forest, blooming in the splendor of summer, swaying merely in the breeze, singing with the joyful song of the birds, who sang endlessly with high, clear, and beautiful voices. Across from the meadow, there was the large house of a man loyal to the King of France and disdainful to the Revolution. Within this house there lived a man named Jacques M. Enjolras.

The man was rich. Very rich. He was an only child, born into a rich family, and when his parents died, he received all of their inheritance. He had no need to obtain a job, no need to work, no need to trouble himself with the struggles of life. He was rich, proud, arrogant, and selfish. He looked down on the world, on Paris, on the streets, and on the poor with dignity, with pride, and with superiority. He held his head high, deeming himself better than the word. He thought this is rightful and earned place. God had placed him above it all, and so he thought himself a king, the world his slave. Never once, did he turn his head to glance upon the poor, the homeless, and the miserable with anything but smug pride. Never pity, never compassion, never mercy. He was selfish, greedy, and he had a heart like stone. He clung to his money, he kept it, worshiped it, and wasted it.

He called himself a Christian, he attended Sunday services at church, but this was for his statues not for his faith. If, indeed, he believed that there was a God, at all, he did not trust Him. He may have believed that He was existent, but he did not believe in Him. He did not believe in anything.

The man took great pride and delight in enjoying the pleasures of the life that had been made for a "deserving man" such as he. He kept several mistresses, enjoyed them, used them, and abandoned them. He told women that he loved them, and then he left them. He wasted and lost much of his fortune gambling, hoping to make a handsome franc, and losing everything. Even more, his money was devoured as he used it to purchase alcohol. The man was a sinner, a liar, a gambler, a libertine, a drinker, and on more nights than less, he became drunk. He was proud, dishonest, selfish, greedy, sinful, lustful, and terrible. He was a dreadful man, a horrible Christian, a wretched sinner, and worse beyond this all, he was a terrible father.

The disaster came about in the year of 1809. Unwed to the woman who became pregnant with his child, the father of this young girl pleased with Jacques to marry her. She was a very pretty girl: long, blond, and curly hair that fell down her back, blew in the wind, and glowed white in the sun; smooth, fair skin, pure and white; fine, white teeth; long, elegant lashes; big brown eyes; rosy cheeks; and the face of an angel. Her father was rich, and the old man agreed to give Jacques much profit if he took in his daughter as his wife. Because of these two things, the girl's beauty and her father's money, and because the girl was carrying his child, Jacques agreed.

He married the woman, she became his wife, and she lived with him in his fine house before the meadow. This did not, however, stop him from bringing in other mistresses and enjoying their company, as well. It did not take long for his wife to discover this, and when she protested against this absurd behavior, Jacques, intoxicated by alcohol and brutal in nature, struck her across the face, screamed at her, and shouted, "I am your husband! I took you in, woman! You do not speak out to me! You respect me! Do you understand!? Or I will send you and that little bastard you're carrying away to suffer and starve on the streets!" He said this after striking his young wife, who was pregnant with a baby.

She immediately fell away, scrambled backward, and curled up in a corner against a wall, trying get away and trying to hide from him. As he screamed at her, she was shocked, confused, and terrified. She held a hand to her face where he had struck her, tears rolled down her cheeks, her heart raced in her chest, her body trembled, and all she knew was utter fear. She did not speak out to him anymore. She was afraid of him.

In the June of the year 1810, the child was born. A son. He was so small, so innocent, and so beautiful. He looked so astonishingly much like his mother. The only difference was his eyes, which had come from his father. Blue, clear, pure, mysterious blue, like the sky before sunset, just as the day is fading away and just before the night is falling upon the earth. The mother called him an angel from Heaven. Indeed, he looked as if he was the child of an angel.

The mother of this boy, came from a rich family. While indeed, she had made a mistake when she had been deceived by Jacques and when she had slept with him, at heart, she was not a bad woman. She was a good woman. She was good, virtuous, kind, gentle, compassionate, and righteous at heart. She was pure until Jacques had corrupted her.

When the baby boy was born to her, she loved him with all of her heart, his mind, her body, her soul, and her entire being. She would have done anything for him. She would have given her only life to protect him, to shelter him, to comfort him, and to love him. Because of the sleeping baby in her arms, she was happier than she had ever been in all of her life.

No other can understand the love that a mother holds for her child. She who carries the baby, who brings him into the world, who raises him, and who loves him, only this woman can know the sweet, joyous splendor that comes for loving her child.

Yet, with this new joy for the child, came a new fear, was well. She was so much greater afraid of her husband now, because she knew that he would hurt the child. Jacques did not love his son, just as he did not love his wife. He detested them both, as a bother, as a burden, as something that he would have been better off without. He frequently yelled at his wife, he made her work hard, he made her his slave, he threatened her, and sometimes, when he was drunk, he hit her and abused her. She knew that, if given the chance, he would strike the child, as well.

She was right. Sometimes, when the baby would cry, Jacques, drunk and enraged, would leap to his feet, screaming, snarling, slamming things, and breaking things. He would strike the woman, threaten her, scream at her to shut-up her good-for-nothing rat, and swear to her that if she could not silence the child, he would silence it himself.

So, she hid her son from him. She kept him upstairs away from him, she raised him by herself, she cared for him, and she loved him. When he was a baby, she nursed him, she held him in her arms, she kept him close to her always, she rocked him to sleep, she sang to him as he slept, and she kissed his precious head. She named her son without telling her husband. Jacques never knew the name of his child. He never cared.

As the boy began to grow, the woman taught him to speak, to walk, to smiled, and to laugh. She taught him about God and about His Son, the Lord, she read him the Bible, and on Sunday mornings, she brought him to church. When he was old enough, she taught him to read and to write. She taught him the things that he would need to know to one day become a fine young man. She taught him to be good, kind, companionate, merciful, forgiving, patient, respectful, honorable, virtuous, and pure. He listened to her, he respected her, he was obedient to her, and he loved her. The child loved his mother as greatly as she loved him. She was the only person whom he ever loved.

The child learned all of the things that his mother taught him. He was all of these things. Except for one. Even with the teachings of his mother and even as he strove to obey her, it was hard for him to forgive. He could never forgive his father.

Under his mother's guidance, the child Enjolras grew into a fine young boy. Even as a child, he was respectable, good, and very handsome. He looked just like his mother: long, flowing, curls of blonde hair that glowed in the sun like a hallow around his angelic face; skin, fair, smooth, and flawless, like marble; pure, virgin lips the color of a pale rose; and a handsome, beautiful, and angelic face. The only difference was his eyes. She loved him, she adored him, and she was proud of him. But her son growing up was not all such a good thing. No longer an infant, he no longer remained locked away upstairs away from his father.

When the boy was still hardly five years of age, his father began to abuse him. It happened one day that the child Enjolras was upstairs in his room. His mother was downstairs confronting his father, and Enjolras was waiting for her, like she had told him to do. As he sat on the floor, anticipating her to return, he heard an angry, thunderous, terrible voice begin to scream from downstairs. He knew that it was his father. At once, the child was terrified. Not for himself, but for his mother.

Without another thought, Enjolras jumped to his feet, went out of his room, hurried down the stairs, and ran into the room where he found his father screaming at, threatening, and hitting his mother, who was curled up in the corner against a wall, trying to get away from the monster abusing her. Sudden fear stole the boys heart, but with it, anger and fury. Then, crying out like a grown man rather than a five-year-old child, Enjolras shouted at his father and commanded him, "Leave my mother alone!"

Both the mother and the father shocked and confused, they turned their heads and looked across the room to see their son standing in the door way. At once, his mother's face went white and was over come in utter fear. Jacques's face twisted in hideous, outrage, fury, and wrath. He hardly saw his son ever, and now, he found himself looking at his own child, five years of age, who was standing before him, glaring at him with blazing fire in his blue eyes, and ordering him to do something. Jacques took a murderous step away from his wife and toward his son. "What's that you say, boy!?" he snarled at his son.

The child did not recoil. He did not flinch. He did not even look afraid. "I said leave my mother alone," he repeated himself, just as boldly, and his father could not believe his own ears.

"Baby... Sweetheart..." the terrified mother whispered to her child, desperately, fearfully, pleadingly. "Baby, go back upstairs. Mommy will be there soon..."

"He was hurting you," Enjolras said, for the first time in his life disobeying his mother. "I will not let him hurt you."

He had barely finished saying these words before his father thundered across the room toward him, already rising his hand to strike him, and a moment later, Jacques's fist slammed into the boy's face. This was the first time that Jacques hit his son.

Enjolras fell backward and to the ground, stunned, shocked, confused, and dazed. Before he had time even to fully perceive what had happened, his father was upon him, standing overtop of him, screaming in his face, already raising a fist to strike the boy again. Enjolras let out a loud cry as his father and pain hit him again, throbbing through his face and trembling through his skull. For several terrible moments, this room was filled with the horrible sounds of the child crying in pain and fear, of the father screaming at him in fury, and of the mother, on her feet and pulling at her husband's shoulders trying to restrain him, pleading for him to stop hurting her son.

At last, when seeing the chance, the woman threw herself between her son and her husband, and Jacques, already in mid-attack, struck her across her face with his heavy fist. She let out a stifled gasp and stumbled a step backward, but she did not fall. For a moment, she saw her beautiful son on the floor behind her, panting, trembling, crying, his cheek pressed against the wooden floor, his eyes tightly shut, his precious face already swelling and bruising, and a thin stream of blood coming out from his nose. At once, fear, sadness, and pain stole this mother's heart away from her, this heart that beat only for her child. Seeing her little boy like this was a blow more painful than any physical strike that her husband could have inflicted upon this woman.

She quickly turned back to him and raised her tear-filled eyes to look up into the red and furious face and the maddened and crazed eyes of the man. Looking at this man was like looking into the face of a wild beast ready to kill, to devour, to destroy. "Jacques, please, stop it," she whimpered in horror as tears ran down her face. "Leave him alone; he is only a boy!"

"Yes, he is only a boy!" Jacques thundered in the woman's face, steeping toward her as if to strike her again. Perhaps, he considered it. "And I am his father! He will listen to me, and he will obey me, and he will respect me, or he will be sent out of the street, or you hear me woman!?"

"Yes… Yes… Yes, I understand," the woman whispered as the man continued to snarl, "If you want to live in this house, woman, you will keep that little bastard of yours under control! Do you understand!? He got off easy this time! The next time, his punishment will be much worse! Do you understand me!?"

"Yes, I understand," she whispered again, trying to blink the tears out of her eyes.

Jacques glared murderously at his wife for a moment longer, wild hate and rage in his eyes, as if he was contemplating whether or not to strike her again. He turned his eyes to look at the child behind her, and his face became even more hideous in his fury, as if he was contemplating whether or not to kill him. At last, he turned abruptly away from them both and ordered, "Get that thing out of my sight."

Immediately, anxious to hold her child in the protection of her arms again, the mother went to Enjolras and kneeled down beside him. "Baby," she whispered softly, and with the gentle touch of a mother's hand she lightly stroked the back of his head, brushing her fingers through his curly blonde hair. At once, upon feeling his mother's touch, the child raised his eyes to her, and when he saw her, he reached out his arms to her and went to her, wrapping his little arms around her, burying his face against her chest, hiding himself in her warmth and love. For a brief moment, the mother pulled the child into a tight embrace and held him close to her, relief coming into her heart, tears running down her cheeks and the child's. But she knew that she could not hold him for long, as Jacques was still upon them. "Baby," she said softly into the child's ear, "go upstairs and wait for me. I will be there soon."

Still clinging to his mother as tightly as he could, his face still buried in her bosom, he whispered, "I do not want to leave you."

A pang of fear struck the mother's heart, and she looked over her shoulder to see if Jacques had heard this. He had. The man was looking now at the child with such merciless hatred and disgrace that, for a moment, the woman feared that he was going to attack the child again… Or kill him. She turned suddenly away from Jacques, pulled the child away from her, and looked into his eyes. "Go upstairs," she said to him again, this time firmly, ordering him to obey her. "Go now. I will be there soon."

Enjolras did not want to leave his mother alone with this terrible man, this monster, this horrible thing called his father, but he was obedient to his mother. Reluctantly, tears still in his eyes, the boy nodded to her, released her, glanced fearfully at his father, and hurried away. Just as he was leaving the room, he heard his father declare in outrage, "Woman, what is the matter with you!? You are not raising a child! You are creating a rebel!"