"Bonsoir, good master relic."
General Reille blinked repeatedly at the sorry spectacle before him. Even after the creature had straightened from its ridiculously foppish bow, matters had not improved. The monstrosity came barely up to Honoré's chest, though it was broad enough to swallow perhaps three of him whole, were he properly folded. Its face, misshapen and hinting at demonic ancestry, peered up at him with an expression bred illegitimately between a leer and a grimace. This could not possibly be the one. It spoke to him again, in a human voice.
"I humbly bid you and your cortège welcome to the Corinth wineshop. No doubt you are familiar with her of happier days. I am afraid, however, that you may find the decor somewhat altered, and the ambiance... ah, not what it used to be."
Honoré nodded absently. If he and his friends had ever visited this place, particularly in their youth... well, the current state of the furnishings would little distress him, and might even seem familiar. Nevertheless, overcoming his initial shock at the toadish appearance of the ill-named 'Grandeur', Honoré; favored the creature with a condescending smile.
"Well well, mon fils." He surveyed from his superior height the people of the barricade, who stood gaping at him and his formal band of guardsmen. "I have come."
"So you have!" The little ogre chirped cheerily, "This way, old man."
And Honoré followed, motioning to his rather alarmed looking companions to remain behind.
"After you, my good General." The monstrosity bowed with surprising elegance. Honoré stooped through the door of the tavern with enough grace to make it look something like a bow in return.
"Merci."
There was, in fact, very little furniture left in the Corinth-- a small table and a couple of stools with broken backs. This Grandeur found a half bottle of port wine and two acceptable bottles of vin du pays, kissed them reverently and placed them on the table.
"Headquarters of the revolution." He grinned. "So, what do you want to talk about, my dear old coot?"
"My name is General-Count Honoré Charles Reille, mon enfant." He stopped himself just short of adding 'terrible' to that, and sat, stiffly, upon one of the stools. The ugly boy laughed loudly and straddled the other, opposite.
"That's a mouthful. Do you have it thus embroidered on your luggage? Mine is General Menace, Marion Grantaire, or any of my apparently more popular sobriquets, which you may or may not know."
Honoré repressed a snort, being far too diplomatic for that sort of thing in this situation, and otherwise not inclined to banter with dangerous animals. Instead, he searched for the best way to begin at the bottom of the bottle of port. It was not there. He improvised.
"You know, don't you, that you're all going to get yourselves killed?"
"Oh yes." This Marion Grantaire nodded like a Punch doll, "I realise also, that you and your men, dear Uncle, shall do us the honor-- eh, no pun intended-- of being our executioners. But Our Lord fed his betrayer; I feel no dis-ease in supplying the refreshments." At this point, the baking Brie whose delicious odor had been tickling Honoré's nose ever since he'd entered the barricade made its appearance, borne by a trembling old woman who probably, really belonged here. She cast a desperately hopeful look at Honoré, but he did not encourage her.
"As you wish." He said to Grantaire, realising to his dismay that not only was he now not hungry, his stomach felt decidedly ill at ease. To settle it, he took another swig of the good-- nay, excellent-- liquor. "But never mind that. I'd rather not have to shoot you, you know."
"Then don't, mon ami."
Honoré frowned, startled. "Well! It's just not so simple as that."
"Why not?"
"Goddammit boy, will you shut up and sit still a moment so I can explain?"
Grantaire leaned back in his chair with a conciliatory gesture and a slice of Brie.
"As you wish, mon cher General." Honoré nodded authoritatively, "That's better," Then paused to consider just what it was he wanted to say now. The expression of the boy across from him seemed to dissolve into still deeper depths of unnerving, so Honoré found in the port bottle the double benefit of something to fill his mouth and occupy his gaze. He discovered between swallows, if not inspiration, at least a place to begin.
"You're outnumbered," He stated the obvious, "outnumbered and outgunned. For every man you shoot, I can have ten. Now, you are French and I am French. Surely, to surrender would be more sensible, given those unfortunate odds."
Grantaire looked at him a moment, then laughed.
"This will be a slaughter." He said, "Answer me something. You have seen the men I have gathered here about me. Did you expect so many? And this is only one barricade of-- how many, do you think, can have sprung up already? This will not be the game of corner-and-swat that you have anticipated, no, not at all."
"Still! You can't possibly win!" Honoré drank swiftly, trusting in his substantial length to dilute the effects of his alcohol, ambivalently desired.
"No. you are the ones who cannot win. We can only die-- but it will be with honor. And you will kill without even that.
"Let me say a little about you, friend Relic. You're an Imperial as I guessed, n'cest pas? I am certain you slaughtered your share of little boys, in Spain or in Russia, under your command or under your saber. So I will not appeal to you on that front. But tell me if it is better to march into battle for nothing but a man; in faith, to be a conqueror," He spat the word with great vehemence, "Or for something, an Idea? Do you think it ignoble to believe in a thing, which you yourself cannot deny is right, and to fight for it? This is the siren call that has drawn my sanguine command to dash themselves upon the jagged points of your bayonets. Can you say that it is any less reasonable than the way you allowed to the songs of your youth to carry you to Marengo, to Moscow?"
"Spain," Said Honoré, between teeth clenched on a molten lump of flaky brie. "I, ah, missed out on Moscow. Wounded."
"Quelle dommage," Murmured the hood-eyed goblin, "General-Count, did you say? So what were you? An aristo, like Grouchy, a hot-blooded peasant, like Lannes, or the son of a Jewish wine-merchant, like Massena?"
"I am the first count Reille." said Honoré, neither wanting to get into discussions of his childhood, nor that of his father-in-law, Massena, with this presumptuous brat.
"I see." It smirked horribly. "Count Reille, the First Count Reille-- the Created Count. How very like Bonaparte-- put a rifle in the hands of a stripling young man. If he survives, call him a Baron; if he is wounded in the process, create him a Count."
So as not to snap overmuch at this fresh audacity off of this ruffian's unbridled tongue, Honoré stuffed a slice of brie into his mouth and chomped down on it furiously. If nothing else, his repeated outrage was at least getting him full-- and just the slightest bit tiddled, to be honest. But being a very tall man, He was far less susceptible than he suspected Grantaire realised, at least yet. He smirked back at him.
"All very well for you to say, mon enfant, but it is better than being some pampered son of wealthy bourgeoisie, who has gained his little notoriety through being a loudmouth, rather than honorably. You go to the university, learn a little law, and now you think you know how to govern a country and marshal an army! For starters, yes, I do see that you have many more men than first suspected by my commanders. And now you've closed them up in a corner, rounded them up, already, ready for the peacekeepers to come in and clean up!"
"Touché," Grantaire placed his hand over his heart, "But no shot has yet been fired, my tutor of the Ancien Regime. Instruct me then. How would you marshal us?"
Honoré opened his mouth to do just that, then shut it again, realising how he'd very nearly fallen for it.
"You..." He shook his head at the table, voice warmed a bit by wine and expression astounded, "you are a remarkable chimera! Though god knows you haven't seduced all these fiery imbeciles with your charming looks."
The grotesque opposite laughed, softly on Honoré's ears.
"Hardly that, mon general. But if you mean that this situation was my doing, you are also mistaken. Sibilant shadows dancing to well crafted soap bubbles and jar-serpents of a talented illusionist-- is that what you think of my men? It has a pretty sound to it, if I say so myself, but it is just noise. I know about noise. I can make it until I am blue in the face--"
"And be much improved by that!" Honoré snorted over the bottle, though ignored by Grantaire.
"--but it would not matter if what's out there were not something monstrous of it's own. You think my face is horrible to look upon-- I can't deny it. But imagine, if you will, my prettier Count Reille, the enormity of a horror which compels men to look towards just such a face for hope!"
"I am aware," Confessed Honoré carefully, "Of the rather splendid blunders committed by the current regime. Forgive me if I'm not an advocate of bloodshed."
"Out from under your old mad eagle's wings, nay not."
"I didn't have to fight Frenchmen!"
"You are fighting Frenchmen now."
"Rebels!"
"Against a regime that you, unless I have read you wrong, do not care for."
"But one that I am not willing to commit the crime of murder against."
"Only for."
"The Devil take you!"
All seven feet of General-Count Reille sprang vertical, but Grantaire did not rise, save for an amused eyebrow.
"You wish to argue, I see, but cannot refute."
"You are wrong!" Honoré roared, his mind whirling far too fast and futilely to articulate more than that.
"But we are here," Grantaire said, and moved not, "And the both of us wish, I am certain, very badly to be not here. Will you agree with me on that point, at least?"
"On that? The Devil, I must." Honoré collapsed once more into his chair, and Grantaire leaned forward.
"And might I point out, mon cher General, that no one of you, nor of us, has yet been murdered by either side, and that you and I are having a perfectly friendly conversation. Would you agree with me on that point also?"
Although neither perfect nor friendly were terms that sprang immediately to Reille's mind, out loud he supposed that this, also, was true.
"In that case, mon ami, perhaps we can swiftly come to some arrangement that will see the both of us warm in our respective beds soon enough. I am coming to see a plan..."
Honoré leaned forward, very interested in what his hobgoblin had to say now, but at that moment the flaxen-haired, effeminate youth in the Robespierre waistcoat came panting into the tavern.
"Grandeur! They're calling for their..." His pretty face took on a very un-cute expression as he took in the spectacle of the barmy captain, the tipsy general, and the decimated platter of brie between them. Grantaire smiled at him with infinite tenderness.
"Cher Adrien. You may tell the restless party that my good friend General-Count Reille will be with them momentarily."
"They want to hear it from him." Enjolras jerked his head towards the General, who grunted irritably.
"Oh hell." He heaved himself upward, discreetly tested his feet for balance, found them firm, and properly stood. "I'll go talk to them."
"Of course!" Grantaire hopped up and slipped his arm in Honoré's. Honoré blinked the considerable distance down to the hideous grin aimed up at him, and frowned, though there was no malice in it.
"You know, boy, I certainly hope you know what we're doing."
"Do you." Grantaire's face seemed neither troubled nor dizzy, though Reille himself experienced a distinct vertigo.
"Hell!" He repeated, and the pair of them lurched towards the door, scowling adherent trailing behind.