Grantaire arose at dusk. When he looked back, that occurrence seemed to him a premonition of the entire calamity. The sun his Calpurnia, the Musain his Capitol, knives wielded by ungrateful children: his rhetoric will flow along this course if he ever becomes so besotted by drink as to reveal it at all.
Several games of billiards eased him into the day, and it was dark before he ventured to the Musain for dinner. That still made him earlier than any of the other 'Amis de l'ABC' save Enjolras, who bent over a notebook to avoid speaking to him. Grantaire already felt himself half invisible, having missed the day entirely, and took it upon himself to reassure both himself and Enjolras of his presence.
He pulled out a chair opposite Enjolras and proceeded to cheerfully call down the wrath of Apollo upon himself. It was something to do, and Enjolras was quite a vision, furious. But a heretic voice intruded on the charming tirade, thinking it 'merely thunder in a summer sky: stunning, but without effect.' Grantaire was all astonishment: the voice was his own. Enjolras too stood amazed, and sat back as though a viper had lunged at him from under a grape-vine. That sudden alarm struck Grantaire with more force than any bolt of lightning. He stammered an apology, but Enjolras had already gone.
That expression! Two hours and as many bottles left him in a foul mood indeed, as the conversations swirled around and over him. His contrition soured into a restless discontent, and he let his chair scrape noisily as he stood, abandoning the Amis long before Enjolras could finish describing the evening's castle in the air.
_ _ _
A man ran.
He moved in violation of the oldest law on walking away from a crime, which is to walk. Someone had seen him with the corpse, someone in blue who had grabbed at his coat and ripped the seam he hadn't had time to have mended properly. Heedless of the advice of centuries of urban parasites, Montparnasse - nineteen and successful after his inclination - rounded a fifth corner at a dead run, the law too close behind him for discretion.
A knot of students fluttering between cheap restaurants and wine-shops offered anonymity at last, though the thief did not quite dare to enter any of the establishments. Tinderboxes all of them, and had one door apiece. He still had some luck: he had not dropped the purse. That slipped into one pocket, and another produced a pair of blue-tinted spectacles. His coat looked more respectable folded over his arm, hiding his knife-hand in case he had not shaken the pursuit after all.
Amongst their own kind, students spoke a language that was neither common French, nor argot as Montparnasse understood it. Their nonsense recalled that of the fool who not a month ago had greeted him as a comrade before he'd washed away the blood, and led him as far as the doorstep before passing out drunk. Such a madman might afford him asylum for the day, or a glass of cheap wine; he felt himself very much in need of both.
He surfaced some time later and some distance away, spectacles askew. His step faltered slightly and listed first towards the street, then back. His jacket, like the glasses, was only tenuously attached to his person, draped over one arm and hand. One sleeve escaped him and trailed along in the dust. Once he tripped over it, stumbling into a lamp-post. No-one noted, or cared, that he did not smell of liquor. In this manner, he proceeded to the drunkard's flat.
_ _ _
The door opened at Grantaire's touch but he thought nothing of it before seeing the intruder on his bed. The youth sat cross-legged, in his shirt-sleeves, and was carving a stick of wood to splinters with a long knife. The wood had come from Grantaire's door-frame, and the man was Montparnasse.
Engaged in the destruction of the wood, Montparnasse scarcely acknowledged the door. The wood was unvarnished, its grain rough and pronounced and his knife too unwieldy for delicate work. He had meant to make a rose, as a love-token to some girl, but that seemed unlikely now and he swept the wood-shavings to the floor impatiently.
Grantaire had only just fled the Musain, but even here he could not escape Enjolras's manners and his look. And this boy already had blood on his hands. He should have been horrified; he was pleased, and laughed grimly. "You must have followed me, after all. What do you want here, boy?"
"My girl's left me for a baron," the youth replied without raising his eyes. Eponine had not yet caught her baron or gone anywhere, but he thought it a fine thing to say. He grinned to himself, turning the wood over to see what might be salvaged of it. "I'll stay here for tonight."
"Pardieu! What do I want with a thing like you?" Grantaire hung his coat on one of the pegs that served for his wardrobe. His cravat and waistcoat followed it.
"Nothing, if you've any sense." There was a warning note in the youth's voice, that Grantaire ignored as he swung around.
"You look just like him," he accused. "He's not dead, and already he haunts me." The room was small, and in two steps Grantaire reached the bed and caught the thief by surprise, gripping his knife-arm - his left - roughly. Montparnasse found his collar similarly seized and himself unpleasantly compelled to meet the man's glare. "And I am tired of it," Grantaire enunciated, in that moment more mad than drunk. "You know what I want."
In a second Montparnasse wrenched his arm from the madman's grip. His blue eyes iced over and the knife flashed; the fop submerged in an instant under the cutthroat. "Nothing doing," he snapped. "I can find another girl."
"But I don't want one. I want him." Grantaire sized up Montparnasse's admittedly frilly blouse, his well-cut trousers, and - just perhaps - the thin soles of his boots. "You'll do," he said dismissively.
And the boy should be at his throat now, but was only regarding him coolly. He slid to the edge of the bed, then stood with a manner almost elegant, were it not so common. "If you want it, you will." Montparnasse unbuttoned his trousers with practiced skill. His face was remote, and held a look of vague interest in the act - and contempt for whoever might be performing it.
Grantaire met his eyes, laughed again. He moved closer, but instead of kneeling, shoved the thief back. The youth staggered, and the drunkard knocked him off his feet with a move not practiced in gymnasium. Montparnasse was left sprawled on the bed again, trousers caught not far above his knees. "D'you think I'll kneel to the likes of you, boy? I don't like your knife so well," Grantaire sneered, looming. The height felt wrong to him, too used to people in cafes shaking him awake and telling him to go home. Still, he leaned over the prone figure, pinning him inexpertly. Montparnasse had by this time recovered his knife.
The assassin threw an arm around his attacker's neck, lips parting, teeth bared. From there it went to blows, more pointed violence, and acts best not spoken of.
_ _ _
Grantaire, when once again steeped in the seditious talk in the Musain, was inclined to forget the assassin altogether. Prodigious amounts of alcohol no doubt helped to obscure the memory. When he thought of it, he felt a rueful astonishment, and a vague gratitude towards the boy. He seemed to have drawn out some venom Grantaire was scarcely aware of, and left him once more appreciative of the Amis' company, and Enjolras's fine voice and ridiculous fervor. Cynicism attributed this lassitude to blood-loss, and doubted that the cure was worth the expense of new linens. But in the warmth of his friends' companionship, and their leader's fire, and not least a quantity of wine, Grantaire's abused bedsheets and person seemed a minor consideration.
The thief Montparnasse spent still less time pondering the affair. He had not come out the worse, or not so much that he felt any need for revenge. But any further peace eluded him: within a week he killed two men to settle his tailor's bill.