"You have lost."
"I know."
Enjolras had known it from the early hours of the morning. His meticulous plans from that point onwards were to ensure that they held out as long as possible. We shall sell ourselves dearly, he had said to the men, and dearly the purchase of their lives was made. Inch by inch they retreated, first to the door of the Corinth, then inside, then up the stairs, leaving a trail of bodies behind them. Enjolras wanted Paris to remember.
On his swift but measured way back inside the tavern Enjolras had stumbled on a body, Courfeyrac's. A smirk was still visible on his bloodstained face, the rest was crushed by barricade debris. There was no time to mourn, to adjust that curl which he'd have judged out of place, or even to thank him, nor any of the lieutenants which, Enjolras assumed, had all taken the diligence to another planet by now.
His lieutenants and his friends, but there was no time to think of that, not when the battle was still fought and there was yet ground to retreat on. So Enjolras went on, reaching out mechanically for more weapons, pushing back the thoughts of the little group he had sent on their first revolutionary meeting years ago and of the anger that rose as a lump in his chest at the men who dared deprive him of them…
But there was no time, no time at all, the clock was ticking fast and there was much yet to be done. There were soldiers to be pushed out of the Corinth door, stairs to be hacked, bottles of eau-de-vie to be lit and thrown, and was that Feuilly's body stretched out by the window on the second floor? It may have been, yet he could not think of that, not while there were still men standing around him, swiftly mown down by the bullets from below, because there was no quarter and no mercy to expect or desire, not from them.
And all of a sudden he was alone in the tavern room which no longer resembled anything earthly at all, alone without even a last missile to throw down or any weapon apart from an empty carbine. The soldiers below were about to break into the second floor, clinging onto the broken skeleton of the staircase.
"You have lost," someone repeated once more as he looked round the room for anything else to use as a weapon.
Had he lost? On the surface of things, yes. (Those bottles scattered around that table by the window could still be thrown at the men below.) The barricade had fallen and one of its last combattants was nearing his end. (The renewed cries of pain below told him that he had succeeded.) Yet there was a world beyond the barricade, a world that would wipe the blood of the cobbles and think of them in years to come. (A head appeared through the opening, Enjolras sent a blow with his carbine that hid it again.) There was a future, though he will not live to see it, and that future will remember the young men of the Rue de la Chanvrerie. (Two more almost came through, and now his carbine was broken.) They will remember, years later, that they sold their lives dearly, and what for? For freedom which it was now their task to achieve.
"No," Enjolras whispered with a contemptuous smile, "we haven't lost. We won."
And though he had not seen them for almost a year, as the sun rose to its summit outside, the angels of his childhood reappeared. The encouraging whispers filled his ears as he stood by the wall behind the billiard table, waiting for the soldiers to pile into the room, and this time, he could swear that he could hear Courfeyrac and Feuilly and Prouvaire and above all the calm voice of Combeferre.
The soldiers finally appeared, huddling around the former staircase. Enjolras looked at them and in their faces he could see nothing but terror, pain, distress… Now that the shard of the carbine was uselessly clenched in his fist, he pitied them.
"That's the chief," someone cried out. "He was the one that shot the artillery officer."
"He's put himself there, let him remain there. Shoot him!"
Enjolras smiled.
"Shoot me."