And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,
And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace...
That conversation came to mind a few months later, when the scenes of 1830 were repeating themselves. The efforts of the past year had not been in vain. The people were once again in a frame of mind to take back what was theirs by right of birth, the true and inalienable freedom which they have been so long denied. This time, who knew, perhaps the nail would be driven fully into its place, the chessboard rid of its crowned participants. Enjolras had high hopes for this uprising, small as its origins were, because everyone knew that from quiet springs came great rivers. The death of Lamarque, a man Enjolras admired despite his too conciliatory views, acted on the popular conscience like a swift removal of a bandage from a swollen wound. The streets were filled with angry voices and bare heads, a shot from a Guardsman provoked them into frenzy and all of a sudden, yet as planned, the streets of Paris on this rainy morning of the 5th of June were filled with barricades.
Yet the day grew darker, darker than Enjolras could have imagined it.
It was five o'clock in the afternoon. The barricade was strong, Enjolras was supervising some last additions to it when, from the sides of the street, by the houses that looked less like houses and more like the faces of cliffs, he heard voices.
"Messieurs, what do you want?"
"Open!"
"Messieurs, that is impossible."
"Open, I tell you!"
And there was a click of a rifle being cocked.
"No, my dear sir, I -"
And before Enjolras could speak a word, a shot rang out.
The exultant man cast aside his rifle with a shout of triumph.
The grimy walls of the street first paled, then came sharply into focus. A few short steps, and Enjolras was behind the murderer.
"On your knees."
Turning the man roughly by the shoulder, Enjolras looked coldly down at his surprised, uncomprehending face.
"On your knees!"
His pistol in one hand, he reached with his other for his watch.
"You have a minute. Think or pray."
The man trembled on the ground by his feet, unable to meet Enjolras's gaze.
"Mercy," he mumbled, his voice breaking contemptibly, the syllables barely finding their way out of his quivering lips.
And at this plea, the words of his captain came back, from so many years ago. You will find that humans are slaves to a certain emotion called fear.
Enjolras turned his eyes away from the trembling wreck; and as the seconds were ticked off one by one he saw only the eyes of his comrades, solemn and sad, and the quiet lanes of his home city, where at each turn was peace…
As he pressed the pistol to his ear, the man's eyes filled with brutish terror.
A second shot sounded. Straightening up, Enjolras cast his steady gaze across the faces of the crowd around him. Pale, shocked, terrified, they looked cautiously back, yet in their eyes there was still that light which authors called humanity.
"Throw that outside."
Three of the men moved in response.
Among the questioning faces he saw the compassionate and sorrowfully admiring figures of Combeferre and Prouvaire.
"Citizens," Enjolras said, moved to a response, "what this man has done was atrocious, and my retribution no less so. He has killed, and I have killed him in response, because we must have our discipline, even to such a level. We are no longer men, we are the priests of the revolution, and our hands must be clean. He had sullied our cause in the eyes of observers and I have judged him as he deserved. In the same manner, I have judged myself, and you will soon see what my sentence will be."
"We will share your fate."
Focusing once more on the faces of the crowd, Enjolras saw Combeferre's lips move in valiant determination.
"Citizens," Enjolras repeated, feeling his heart ache more and more as the dark reality spread before him, "necessity has pushed me to this horrible act, necessity which we shall purge from this world with our blood. There will come a time, citizens, when the human race too will see a world where death and judgement has no place, where all is love and faith and peace. It will come, and it is so that it comes that we die here."
And as he silently gazed upon the pool of blood still on the cobbled pavement, he felt Combeferre's arm come around his shoulders and Prouvaire's soft fingers take his hand.
Night was falling. There was nothing more to be done except to light a fire in the middle of the enclosed courtyard and wait for the assault to begin. The flag was gently fluttering on
the crest of the barricade, the torch beside casting strange red shadows onto the ground below, still wet and mirroring from the earlier rain.
Talking among themselves, the insurgents split into smaller groups, warming their hands in the fire, with an occasional swig from a bottle. Enjolras had ordered to lay the reserves of alcohol aside. There was little need for it now.
"I wonder at you, Bahorel," Courfeyrac was saying. "You make snide remarks about my insistence on keeping my hat firmly in its place, yet was it not you who had declared, only the other day, that a waistcoat was the best indicator of a man's political opinions?"
"Certainly I did," Bahorel replied, "yet in this present conflict, before the altar of the revolution, so to speak, I prefer to take off that symbol of the bourgeoisie and adopt the simple worker's cap that Feuilly so fittingly sports."
"You may see it as a symbol of the bourgeoisie," Courfeyrac retorted, "and I see it as a symbol of a man who knows what he is about. To take it off now, why, it would be akin to throwing up one's hands and saying, Well, lads, that's me finished! No, my dear Bahorel, I will keep my hat on as long as there is breath in my body, or let it be taken off on the point of a bayonet."
Joly, in the corner, was examining his neck in a pocket mirror.
"Why the neck?" Bossuet inquired with a pleasant pat on his shoulder. "Did you not gain conclusive results from observation of your tongue?"
"You see," Joly muttered, straining his neck to see properly, "I have a distinct feeling that my glands are swollen. I would rather not fight the National Guards while suffering from cancer of the lymphs or tonsillitis."
"If it is the latter," Bossuet said cheerfully, "then you can infect them all while you fight them; if it is the former, well, you currently have roughly the same chances of life and death, and as we all know, death is the finest physician."
"Well, if it is cancer then my chances of death are roughly 99 percent right now, if you add the probability of dying from either cause..."
"You know," Prouvaire said, "I could never quite decide how I would rather die. On the one hand, there is something wonderfully romantic about slowly wasting away from consumption or belladonna poisoning. On the other, it is also rather appealing to treat death in a rather cavalier friendly fashion and to meet it with open arms in a battle, is it not?"
"Believe me," Feuilly said quietly, "there is nothing worse than a slow death."
"There is," Courfeyrac declared, "it is a dishonourable, cowardly one, or, for a brave man, a lonely death away from his friends."
"That's what I thought," Prouvaire said, "and I find immense consolation in the fact that if I die here, I will die with you."
Combeferre sitting silently beside him, Enjolras felt once more a reassuring touch. Without a word being spoken, Enjolras knew what he meant. We will share your fate.
After all, he thought, it was worth coming to Earth even should he have failed in his mission, just to find himself a part of this extraordinary little group.
By dawn, they no longer had a poet in their midst to comment on its fresh rays and vibrant colours, neither, when a few hours later the cannon was brought out by the National Guard, was Bahorel there to comment on the disappearance of Courfeyrac's hat. Death had started to break up their group in its characteristically efficient way. Yet fate had decreed that they should not be separated for long.
The smoke from the cannon, the flying barricade debris, the screams of determination and pain, had transformed the quiet street into a battleground. Half blinded by the smoke, Enjolras could not distinguish familiar faces in the mass of combatants, yet he took some comfort in that. As before, they were working together for a common goal, a group of friends scattered through the crowds.
They retreated, losing men with every step, and Enjolras did not peer into the faces of the dead to see who they were. It would give him some comfort to think that Combeferre, his loyalest friend, his brother, was still fighting with him, or that Bossuet's luck had not yet run out…
He had not been wounded once, yet his limbs still hurt with a dull, unending pain. Enjolras paid no attention to it. He would not need his strength for much longer.
A dozen men rammed shut the door of the Corinth, only six remained standing to throw those same bottles he had set aside down at the soldiers, then suddenly silence fell and Enjolras found himself alone.
Trying to regain his breath, he stepped back towards the window, looking around the room for another weapon to replace the stump of the carbine in his hand. There were shards of bottles on the floor which could be thrown if need be… Enjolras wondered when he had become so adept at thinking of ways to kill.
All of a sudden, he experienced a sensation that had left him for eleven whole years. Someone was trying to contact him.
"Agent 1821," a voice spoke to him, "do you hear me?"
And with a jolt Enjolras recognised his captain.
"Yes."
"Our ship is nearing your location. I command you to stand down and await removal."
There were noises downstairs that were getting louder by the minute.
"I don't think I can."
"You must try. We will be taking you home for medical help."
"I doubt you could help me."
"You have been away from home for 132 months. Medicine has advanced. You will be in perfect form to go onto another mission if you so wish. You have done well and the Corps wishes to recognise your achievements."
A head appeared in what was once the stairwell. Enjolras seized a table leg and pushed him back down.
"No."
"What do you mean?"
Enjolras had already made his decision. "I will not come."
"This insurrection has failed. Your men are dead down almost to the last one. There is no way for you to turn this around."
He had known that they must all be dead by now yet the confirmation still made him close his eyes for a moment.
"I am the leader of these men. If they die, I die with them."
There was a momentary silence. "You will be of more use if you come with us."
"Perhaps. Then do you want me to flee the battlefield like a coward and break my promise?"
Another silence, longer this time, broken only by determined cries from below.
"Your motherland is grateful, Agent Enjolras, and will remember you as one of its heroes."
Once the soldiers have made their way into the second floor, they found Enjolras standing calmly by the opposite wall. He watched them huddled by the stairwell, still apprehensive though his only weapon had been discarded onto the floor.
"That is their leader," they shouted, "he is the one who killed the artillery captain. Let him stay where he is in that corner. Shoot him!"
Enjolras took a deep breath, yet no shots rang out. Instead, there was a noise of a chair being thrown aside and a table scraping on the wooden floor.
"Vive la République!" a hoarse but elevated voice cried. "I am one of them."
It was Grantaire.
"Take us both with one shot," he said. Then, turning to Enjolras, his eyes full of entreating tenderness, "Will you permit it?"
For the first time in weeks, Enjolras smiled.
The ship Liberia was approaching its home planet.
The captain had spent the majority of the last week observing the night sky. When one of their people died, their bodies were transformed into tiny stars, visible only to the advanced telescopes of their planet, shining for all eternity as memorials of the people they once were. The captain wished to be the first to discover that which honoured his former agent and friend.
For some reason, he was struggling to find it. Not wishing to give up, he cast the telescope once more around the sky. Then, with a smile of sudden understanding, he leant back in his chair.
There was indeed a new star, a little outside the constellation of Leo, shining roughly nine times brighter than normal and just visible by the naked human eye.
Two hundred human years later, the amount of such stars had radically increased.