He would sometimes stop to look at the girl from across the café and contemplate his next essay, which was to be printed on a pamphlet and distributed for free around the streets of Paris. The theme was to be that old line of Horace's: dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori. (Though he suspected Grantaire would be quick to turn it into 'dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, sed dulcius pro patria vivere, et dulcissimum pro patria bibere.')
Men had to be prepared to die for their revolution, and they must not flinch while doing it. That was valour, that was honour as he knew it.
Better it was in the days of old when men fought battles over physical land, when they defended it against its invaders. People were more willing to die fighting for something tangible, something concrete, more willing to take up arms when there was an immediate reward (he wondered idly if he had the means to offer some monetary compensation).
People didn't tend to get riled up over the spirit of a nation unless there was a horde of Englishmen charging at it, he figured, or unless every last one of them was starving, and even then they couldn't be trusted not the pave the streets red with the blood of the damned.
Enjolras was a good writer; he knew he was. He had a silver tongue that could charm money out of misers and a way with words that could bend iron to his will, but no man was so easily led to certain death. No, he needed something tangible, something real that people could be urged to fight for.
Friends joked that his first love was his country (Enjolras, Enjolras, amat patriam apprime became something of a chant around the schoolyard), but if that were so then his mistress would be knowledge.
And he knew that revolution's best friend was, well, firstly money, and secondly a rallying point. He hadn't learned nothing in school.
And she was perfect for it.
Inking his pen for the fifth time in three minutes, Enjolras had the odd little thought that Éponine was very much like France herself - charming girls wrapped in old rags they treasured like new riches. There was no beauty to be found in either the Jondrette girl or his patria's face, but the shadow of an old grace still lingered, and a few more virtues would dress them up charmingly.
And if her life could be made to parallel France's, if she could be brought to the light, if she could be tidied up and saved, how beautiful and symbolic that would be!
*dulce et decorum est (etc) - it is sweet and fitting to die for the fatherland
*dulce et decorum est (etc) the second time round - it is sweet and fitting to die for the father land, but sweeter to live for the fatherland, and sweetest to drink for it.
*enjolras, enjolras (etc) - enjolras, enjolras, he loves the fatherland above all
three years of latin and i can't be sure if all the latin's correct in the last one. boo. (all i remember is lesbia nautae (nautam?) amat.) and this used to be longer, and he was a meanie about it, because it's not a nice thing to make someone into an ideal and put them onto a pedestal, but then i couldn't figure out how to end it and ended up cutting a lot of stuff instead. :c
also i know a lot of the les mis fandom likes enjolras as the golden-hearted revolutionary, and ngl i have a soft spot for revolutionaries but i don't think it's implausible that he could be so dedicated for the revolution that he loses sight of what his 'cause' is truly about, and that is the humanising of the poor, the notion that they should be treated with respect, and that it is in fact society's responsibility to make sure they have the means to survive, nor do i think it's particularly implausible for him to do douchetastic things (like assigning arbitrary traits to other people regardless of their hopes/dreams/etc, and to turn them into symbols without their consent, and to push onto them the responsibility of representing a large population of people.