Almost more than his flat, Grantaire felt at home in the Café Musain's shadowy back room. He had, he felt, a most connubial family there: brother Bottle and sister Glass, brought forth by Louison, the dearest and most lovingly attendant mother one could wish for. The charming domesticity of the scene was completed by the arrival of Combeferre, wife or brother, or perhaps father, Grantaire mused, observing the distinguished manner in which his friend doffed his cap, and the papers under his arm. The self-styled prodigal son did not decide, but raised his glass in salute all the same.
"Well, René. I imagine that I owe you thanks."
"For?"
Grantaire smirked and waved Combeferre over to sit with him. "Of course, he stole away quite before I woke. I think he tripped over a pair of your boots on the way out. "
Combeferre smiled thinly and sat. "So."
"So what? Would you like a report, lieutenant? You'll not get one. If you want to know how the good ship Enjolras sails, board him yourself. You'd make an admirable Admiral."
"Shut up, Marion," said Combeferre good-naturedly as the first of the disciples trickled into the Café Musain's back room and meeting hall.
These were the true devotees: the Lieutenants. Courfeyrac, a youth as faithful and ardent in his republicanism as he was frivolous and irreverent everywhere else. With him, Bahorel, a red-faced lout of the most excellent sort; a loafer and a cad; of good temper and violent humor. He had been a great favorite of Grantaire's, until, yea, they were accompanied by Adrien, of course. His expression was flushed and seemingly cheerful, but his eyes were tired. Bahorel and Courfeyrac gave their salutes. Enjolras nodded to Grantaire and then to Combeferre. The latter raised an eyebrow, the former shrugged incomprehensibly.
Following these and some others Grantaire did not recognize came Joly, sagacious hypochondriac; Prouvaire, or Jehan, as it were, the delicate Homer, all the more tragic for that he possessed sight. And, Grantaire smiled, Bossuet, the prototypical buffoon of Moliere; despised of fortune and thus in favor with Grandeur. Following them, with a band of unknown laborer types; Feuilly, self-reliant proletarian; bereft of family, he clung to Grandeur. His wide-eyed enthusiasm and stunning extrapolations proved the appalling seriousness with which he took himself, Grantaire, and almost disturbingly, Enjolras. The subtle shade of difference was that Enjolras could direct himself, but Feuilly needed steerage. A sheep with a brilliant voice.
And after him, more sheep flocked in. More. And More. And so many more that Grantaire gave up counting the sweating, bright-eyed disciples cramming themselves into the tiny room and reached for the nearest bottle. His hand paused halfway, sensing eyes nervous, wavering, and hot upon him. His soft, weak instinct called for his hand to withdraw, amend, correct the action and play the puritan; to cause that heat to flare once more, draw up in relief eyes now seemingly dilated with doubt.
"Caniche." Growling thus, he pushed past cowardly righteousness and drank deeply. The gaze on him did not desist until he had set the bottle down; by then, the sweet haze in his head bred tenderness at the half-uncertain way in which it ceased. Grantaire imagined he heard behind him a troubled sigh. He hid a smile, but did not investigate. Instead he rose, surveying the raging sea of faith that swelled about him, straining the room's four frail walls. The turbulent roar of anticipatory excitement sucked in on itself as he stood, terrible silence making him its own as he found himself standing, stranded alone on the dizzying precipice of his great lie. But, as frightening as it was, the purity of passion thinly veiled in every face and beneath every breast was food to him, he fed on it instinctively and it transformed him. Almost against his will he felt his heart turn to stone, his eye to ice; the latter met its twin in the gaze of Adrien Enjolras and was half-grudgingly approved. What then was lacking? Reflex fixed the silence unto and beneath Grantaire; expectation possessed the air about him, but he did not speak. He seemed to have frozen, curious as a kitten surveying the blithe hope-light in the assembled faces about him -- even, he realized with a start, in that of Combeferre, who knew.
And who Knew. Pushed by that and a gulp of absinthe, Grantaire fell off of his own cliff and into the role of Capitaine Grandeur.
"Citizens," he began, his a voice a quiet breaking and altering the previous quiet, "a day, a week. Each night have you come unto this room with your bottles and your big minds; your university speech and your contract of the year two. You have pronounced 'Vive!' followed by the names of those who pronounced 'Morte!' and followed the pronunciation with the louisette; you have shouted down those whose dearest wish is to prolong the tender apathy of the bourgeois life. So have you shouted and stood upon the tables. You have opened your ears to me and I have spilled beautiful dreams like ambrosia unto your slumbering heads. Do you drink, citizens? Do your souls feed upon this divine liquor and do you yourselves feel it, the subtle stirring within yourselves that is the irresistible call of divine purpose? Can you feel the breath of Ares lifting up the tremendous wings of the coming era? Do you see, there, gathering thunderheads, rumbling their ominous overture upon the distant and imminent horizon? Do you see where the old, embarrassed sky is growing pale and thin, a warping roof of frosted glass, in anticipation of the great and glorious breaking? Do you see the hammers, preparing for the fall and do you see, can you see what promised future lies beyond the glass? Tell me, citizens, friends, men -- do you see it? Tell me, tell me what you see."
Enjolras rose from his seat. "I can see the gathering dusk, Capitaine. I can see the twilight's shroud falling over the noble head of General Lamarque; the rumbling thunder is the discontent boiling in the hearts of the people, weeping silently into their rags as the mighty voice that spoke unto and for them falls forever silent." He sat again.
There was a grim and thoughtful expression on Grantaire's face and a horrified swirl of thoughts brewing, like the storms of his orations, in his head. He stood there for a moment before speaking, a terrible statuary on a solemn chapel. His next words were slow deliberation. "The mouthpiece of the people falls silent. Have the people themselves no mouth?"
"The people wear a muzzle, Capitaine," shouted Courfeyrac, "It is called the National Guard and the Army of France. Buckled by Lafayette, tightened by Fouché, and led about by Gisquet."
"Perhaps," remarked Combeferre, leaning back in his seat, "the people may have no voice in the government. Nor, admittedly, can they hear a shout through the walls of a café's secret room. But deprived of ears and bereft of voice, the people have still eyes to see." He produced the pamphlet of the night before from his waistcoat and placed it on the table, followed by two other papers of a more professional writ. "Voila!" he said, "after the fashion of Desmoulins do I show you how to have words when a voice is wanting. But I protest we want for neither --" At a secret glare from Grantaire; Combeferre fell suddenly silent, but Enjolras had followed closely enough to see this horizon as clearly as all others.
"Tiens!" Enjolras shouted, snatching up a newspaper. "My friends, have you read Le Moniteur and Charivari this week; Le Constitutionel and Le Semaphore the next! Look, you have heard the voice of the people, night after ephemeral night; diaphanous and liberating. But now, today, read of it! Read it to your mothers and your sisters, read it to the poor and uneducated. Take it to your homes and into the streets! Sow it among the alleys and through the city, scatter its seeds into the countryside and see what will grow from mighty origins! These pages, these words are the budding sprouts of revolution. Can you not feel them taking root in your heart and branching out in the heights of your soul? We are the winds that will scatter the words, like the American Johnny Appleseed, and through these efforts shall the sparse weeds that are le abaissé of Paris and France become a mighty forest, full lit by the glory of the radiant sun and the lofty, bright promise of Future: the Promise of Grandeur."
Then, then the thin little walls groaned in agony against the tumult they so inadequately encircled, the tables pounded and feet stomped until Grantaire, head already as tortured and afire, albeit for a different reason, as the air crackling about it, thought that the room first and then the world would shatter into bits. A hand rested hotly on his shoulder and he turned, saw the same thoughts transmitted with a backdrop of breathless joy in the blazing eyes of young Enjolras, behind him. Grantaire returned a warm and reciprocal smile. Words and promises traded in both glances were lost on neither man, nor on Combeferre, grinning nearby, as he gave orders for the distribution of literature, and discussed with Jehan the setting of the evening's speeches to print. In the fervor of the moment, Enjolras found time to press his lips to Grantaire's forehead in salute, before, with the rest of the crowd, thinning into the night.
It was a few minutes and several glasses later before Combeferre and Grantaire found themselves alone once more in the almost deafening quiet of the abandoned back room. "Well." Grantaire tried and failed to inject a twinge of irritation into his voice. Instead, he settled on his graduation to the cylinder and absinthe bottle to belay his unquiet mind. Combeferre did not cease smiling. He sat next to Grantaire and took his hand.
"No fear, Marion. We court greatness this time, not death. You do not have enough faith."
Grantaire snorted, and opened his mouth, but closed it at a look from Combeferre, and smirked. "Enough?" He said finally, through the peridot haze on his vision, "Mon cher René-Vivien, I've no faith at all. I've no belief and less certainty, for I was never made to lead men. Wherefore do you deign to transform me into a guiding light? By virtue of grandiose adjectives and revolutionary vowels, crafted with none of Prouvaire's talent and all the more lacking for not being set to verse? I am a better Byron than a Desmoulins, mon cher. Remember that."
"Mais, Lord Byron will be recited when the last lines of good Camille are forgotten dust." Combeferre's smile was irrepressible. "And you do not guide me, at least, beloved Marion. Remember that."
Grantaire looked up from his glass at Combeferre, eye cocked, half in bewilderment and half in admiration. "Pardieu, I do not, do I? Why thank you, dearest René, for painting me as a figurehead and throwing me out on the cross like that unfortunate Jew. Whether that makes you Judas or the Magdalene in this delightful theatre, I've not the wit to tell. Enjolras, I think, must needs be St. Peter. You will hear him deny me after the gibbet makes a good man out of me, as it must."
"No," said Combeferre, shaking his head. "I protest that he must be John, the disciple whom Jesus loved."
Grantaire's face clouded a little. "Perhaps." he muttered over another gulp.
Combeferre put a comforting hand on his shoulder. "Not so melancholic now, mon cher. What is important? You saw him tonight. You've won his heart again, you have. He is yours."
"Yes, that is true," said Grantaire solemnly, empty bottle pressed between his enormous hands and brow lined in thought. "Well, then." He looked up once more at Combeferre's steady visage and, charmed, kissed the smile that hung there. "But it is time to go home now, eh?"
His friend nodded, and that is what they did; the lieutenant leading the dropped Capitaine back up to the cliff's edge.