A/N: I realized that the chapters of this thing are getting longer by the update.
Insanemistosingmore: The others will not exactly find out, just yet. I have a scene in mind in which some of them get a little suspicious though.
AMarguerite: I noticed that nitpicky thing too. Hopefully this chapter will clear up the matter, since it's written from Courfeyrac's perspective now.
Acquaintance With Responsibility (IV)
Almost as soon as they had crossed the Place du Chatele, Courfeyrac heard Paulette attempting to stifle her giggles. "Now what is so amusing?" he asked her.
"I was just remembering your friend back there," Paulette grinned. "That Monsieur Enjolras. He's quite a charming fellow."
Courfeyrac smiled by way of acknowledgment. It wasn't the first time that any mistress of his had made such a comment upon meeting his handsome friend. "It's not everyday you come across a Greek god walking across Paris," he said.
"Not quite a Greek god, Maurice. He's more like some angel, straight out of a painting," the girl said a little dreamily. "He's so mysterious though. What was all that business at the Rue des Macons?"
"I don't know," Courfeyrac replied, even though at that very moment he was already trying to deduce what Enjolras might have been referring to. "He never openly talks about seditious business when there are women around, so it must have been about something else," he figured.
"Maurice? Are you still here?" he heard Paulette ask after a few moments.
"Yes, yes," Courfeyrac replied, looking her in the face. He felt a pang of worry on noticing Paulette's pensive expression. "What seems to be the matter?"
"I'm afraid I will be out of my job soon enough," Paulette confided. "That harridan who runs the hat shop will put me out when she hears of our child."
"Why that is absolutely ridiculous of her!" Courfeyrac said in an outraged tone. "You're the best girl she's got in her shop, and I don't think she'll be so foolish to let you go over that."
"She doesn't like people to talk."
"If it comes to that, I'm sure you can find a situation."
Paulette shook her head. "How many respectable places will take in a girl when she starts to show and she has no husband to speak of?"
Courfeyrac flinched momentarily at the despondence in Paulette's voice. "I'll help you. I'll start looking for a job myself," he said insistently.
""Will any place take you?" Paulette asked wryly. "You're a student yourself."
"I do have time to spare to help out," Courfeyrac replied. At that moment, a jolt of realization hit him, making him unconsciously grip Paulette's hand more tightly. "I've really got to find out how much asking around Enjolras did," he decided.
"Maurice! I'm not going to just run off," Paulette laughed, lightly freeing her fingers from Courfeyrac's grip. "You're too charming for me to do that."
"I can't help it if I want you near me," Courfeyrac said. They were now outside Paulette's lodgings on the Rue de la Verrerie. After he escorted her to the door of her room, Paulette kissed him on the cheek.
"Will you be alright?" she asked. "You seem rather troubled."
"It's a passing thing. Till tomorrow, Paulette," Courfeyrac whispered before kissing her on her lips. He felt her sigh against him before she stepped aside to let herself into her room.
He quickly headed back outside and walked briskly towards where he could board an omnibus back to the Latin Quartier. "Getting a job is not going to be enough," he muttered, incensed at his inadequacy combined with the evidence of his procrastination. "I was always better at getting these things for my friends, not for myself," he realized.
Upon arriving at his room, Courfeyrac's first business was to locate the notes he had borrowed from Potier; the sheets of paper had nearly been lost under one of Courfeyrac's failed scribbles and a fichu from a long-absent mistress. After salvaging the much-needed papers, Courfeyrac opened his closet and his drawers. He rummaged through these receptacles, and without really thinking of it, began to make a sort of pile of some of his personal belongings right in the middle of his room. Trinkets from past mistresses, a few niceties from his friends, old books, some suits that had gone out of fashion, and his second-best walking stick all went into this frenzied heap of things he was going to sell off the next day.
He had almost been on the point of casting aside even his sword-cane when he felt it loosen somewhat so that the sword was nearly exposed. "What in God's name was I thinking? I am going to need this!" he laughed as he set the sword cane aside near his bed. However the moment after he did this, another dread question crossed his mind.
"What am I going to do when the revolution breaks out?" he wondered as he straightened out his clothes, looked over the pile one last time before picking up the notes and heading out to the Musain.
The tempest in his brain had not quite cleared up by the time he went into the Musain via the front room and opened the door leading to the passage in the back, not quite noticing that he had upset Louison by doing so. He barely remembered to knock thrice on the door as per the prearranged signal.
"Courfeyrac! You've almost missed it!" Joly said excitedly when he let the troubled dandy in.
"Missed what?" Courfeyrac asked with less interest than he normally would have shown.
"Jehan and Grantaire discussing the possible prophetic merits of Greek tragedy as applied to the present situation---meaning as a mirror of the social ills of the censorship," Joly replied, gesturing to a rather impassioned discussion in a corner that apparently till a few minutes before had been devoted to a game of cards. While Prouvaire listened to Grantaire's discourse on the fall of Thebes, Bahorel and two men who seemed to be bousingots were watching amusedly, cheering on whichever sides they saw fit. In another corner of the room, Combeferre, Bossuet and some other students were engrossed in planning the layout of their latest newsletter.
Courfeyrac chuckled as he watched Prouvaire bring a book out from his school satchel, nearly hitting Grantaire in the face with the sleeve of his bright yellow coat. He scanned the room for a few moments. "Where are Enjolras and Feuilly?" he asked distractedly as he and Joly sat down a little way from Jehan and Grantaire.
"Not here yet. Perhaps they had some previous meeting?" Joly shrugged. "You look quite upset, Courfeyrac."
"The usual trouble," Courfeyrac replied dismissively.
"We can drink about it then---the fellowship of us befuddled men and the vine," Joly said. "Musichetta isn't pleased with me again."
Someone knocked thrice on the door leading to the Rue de Gres. Combeferre, who was sitting nearby, got up to open it. "News from the law school," Potier said breathlessly as he stepped in.
"Did you run all the way from there?" Combeferre asked concernedly.
Potier nodded as he brought out a crumpled newsletter from a hiding place in his coat. Combeferre read it grimly before passing the paper on to Bossuet and the others.
"Censorship and more censorship. We must be cautious with this," Combeferre said as he turned back to his work. "Perhaps we should use some disguise, change the letterhead for a more bohemian-looking one…"
In the meantime, Potier sat down on an empty chair before his gaze fell on Courfeyrac. "You weren't in class today," he said a little pointedly.
"I was making good use of your notes," Courfeyrac said as he handed over the notes with a flourish.
"When are you going to take your own notes, Courfeyrac?" Bossuet ribbed his friend good-naturedly.
"Soon enough," Courfeyrac said. By now, he and Joly had joined the huddle that Combeferre and Bossuet were in, and had almost endangered the layout by nearly upsetting Bossuet's inkstand.
"Yes, the day that Bahorel there decides to go to class?" Potier quipped petulantly. "I was as unarmed as the day I was born when I was called upon in class. I had to resort to my opinions, which considering their color, were not so kindly accepted."
Amid the winces of sympathy, Bossuet gave Potier a sympathetic thump on his shoulders. "Clearly though, you have lived to report on your battle wounds," he said.
Courfeyrac gave Potier a smile of commiseration. "You will have your day against that fossil of a professor."
"Fossil? How unkind. The poor remnant does not deserve such a comparison to something which is decaying even as it stands," chimed in another medical student.
"If Potier is referring to the quality of a professor in being fixed in stone and unchanging, he would be quite accurate," Combeferre pointed out dryly as three more knocks sounded on the door.
"That had better be Enjolras. I was hoping this meeting would end early so I could make amends with my mistress," Potier said under his breath. "I must be catching your share of fortune, Bossuet."
"You are welcome to my share of it. I will merely go borrow someone else's," Bossuet retorted as Enjolras and Feuilly entered the back room.
"How was your errand on the east bank?" Combeferre asked amiably.
"We can count on having more in our numbers next week," Enjolras replied with a sort of contained happiness in his tone. "Feuilly has managed to convince some of his more trustworthy friends that we are not just another student society playing at the bohemian life."
Courfeyrac snorted at this. "Finally adding some gravity here?" he asked amid the ebbing of conversation which was a result of Prouvaire, Grantaire, Bahorel and the rest turning their attention towards the newcomers.
"You could say that," Feuilly said as he took a seat. "They are as diverse as we are, but a good number are agitating for an uprising no later than the end of this year."
Despite all of Courfeyrac's efforts to pay careful attention to the rest of the proceedings of the meeting, his mind drifted off inevitably to Paulette, to what he would have to discuss with Enjolras, and to other questions that were materializing before him now that the first shock had worn off. Still, he threw in an idea here and there when the meeting turned to the finalizing of the newsletter's layout, gave his opinion on the news that Potier brought from school, and succeeded in holding his own on a lively discussion on how to reach the masses using other means than surreptitious teach-ins near the workingmen's cafes. He was vaguely aware of Combeferre and Joly, with their expertise in observation, giving him concerned looks every now and then.
After the meeting closed at about ten-thirty, Courfeyrac waited until Enjolras, Combeferre, and Prouvaire were the only other people left in the back room. Just when Prouvaire went to ask Combeferre about some translation they were working on of Cicero's works, Courfeyrac took the opportunity to approach Enjolras, who was surveying a list that Bahorel had given him.
Apparently Enjolras had been anticipating this, since he motioned for Courfeyrac to sit down. "Have you made any progress in your search for a job, Courfeyrac?" the older law student asked.
"I haven't begun," Courfeyrac admitted as he set down his glass of wine on the nearest table. "I was just biding my time."
Enjolras laced his fingers together. "You do not have to immediately take up this offer if it does not suit you," he said. "That place in Rue des Macons is the office of Citoyen Drouet. I do not know anything of the man other than what I was told: he has a lot of work, he goes to the Palais de Justice and he is in the same fold as we are."
Courfeyrac nodded tersely. "I appreciate this, but I will make inquiries of my own as well," he informed Enjolras. Now he understood more fully why Enjolras had been willing to hint on the matter even in Paulette's presence. "How did you find it anyway?" he asked curiously.
"Potier. I did not tell him that it was you asking for a job," Enjolras said. "All I said that you were a law student with some present difficulties, and that you are involved in a secret republican society. There is little incriminating you there."
Courfeyrac ran his hands through his hair, remembering only then that he had been a little hasty in getting it to its proper appearance that morning. "I suppose I should go and ask tomorrow before someone fills the position for me," he said more brightly. "It should be fairly easy to make my professor in my last class dismiss us all earlier, so I can visit the Rue des Macons before I have to meet Paulette."
"Don't your classes start after lunch?" Enjolras asked critically, raising one blond eyebrow. "You can have the business over with in the morning."
"Instead of sleeping?" Courfeyrac thought with dismay. He contemplated voicing out this sentiment, but he decided against it on seeing Enjolras' serious expression. "I suppose you're right," he conceded.
"Besides, if you decide not to work for Citoyen Drouet, you can use the afternoon to look into other possible avenues," Enjolras pointed out.
"Damn, he just has to be terribly practical," Courfeyrac thought. He stretched back in his chair before looking at Enjolras again. "At least you did not think of asking Pontmercy which of his older colleagues needs help getting an office in order," he said half-jokingly.
"I did consider that," Enjolras said. "Now that you mention him though, there is a particular matter that I must ask him about."
Courfeyrac groaned. "Enjolras, you aren't going to try to entreat him to join us again, I hope?"
"I was merely going to ask him for a translation of a work of Paine," Enjolras replied in a matter-of-fact way. "It is merely for quotation's sake."
"Yes, quoting a man who met Danton in prison?" Courfeyrac joked.
"You know that "Agrarian Justice" is more than just a grave matter," Enjolras said.
"Since when did you diverge from reading on ideals and philosophies?"
"Since I've been contemplating the practice of them."
"You've been listening to Combeferre a bit much," Courfeyrac remarked before draining his glass of wine.