pro_patria_mortuus | (no subject)

Bahorel has thought about it. The issue of embarrassment isn't one he's weighed too heavily in Enjolras' case-- yes, the narrative gets intrusive, but Enjolras wouldn't want to miss anything useful to spare himself a little awkwardness. But...

"There's a passage on Waterloo, some veritable essays on the nature of Revolution, a debate or two I think you might find interesting; I'll have them copied out, if you like. The events at the barricade, if you want to see how others might be remembering it. But on the whole--?" He laughs. "No,I suspect you'd be bored by most of it, as you would much of my reading. Love affairs, family dramas, a great deal of description of appearances, the nature of young womanhood and spring... I know we're not as occupied as we might wish, here, but I don't expect you've become quite that desperate for entertainment yet."

"Mind, I won't see it slandered; it's a fine work and an honor to the art. Whatever my arguments with Hugo's politics, and they are many, he knows his art. Not a word out of place, given what he meant to do. A feast of a book; but not, I think, one to your taste." He grins. "There are chapters about Marius' courtship."

Art is, by and large, something of a mystery to Enjolras. It's a deep concern of many of his friends, many dear and brilliant men, and he doesn't disdain it; still, he's never been able to muster much passion or understanding for it.

Bahorel, on the other hand, is a man who can muster a great deal of passion for art. Enjolras is happy to accept his word on the book's craft.

Chapters about Marius's courtship. Marvelous. Indeed, not remotely to Enjolras's taste: he looks very wry, around a bite of pizza.

"I'll take your word for it."

"Though I wouldn't mind reading those sections you'd recommend, at some point."

He's not in any great hurry.

Bahorel nods; it's what he expected. "It's not just us, though. The spy, too, has his chapters apart from our meeting with him-- you may wish to see those too, though I cannot vouch for their accuracy." The spy is hardly worth worrying about,. " And Marius is there, as I said-- and hence Mlle. Fauchelevent. And, to a great degree, her father. You've said he would like his privacy; I suspect he has none, here."

Enjolras has mixed feelings about reading about Javert. But the man is still alive, still able to act in Paris; Enjolras probably should read Hugo's account of him in case it contains useful information to act on now or later.

He has no desire to read Victor Hugo's speculation of the man's private life. If Javert were dead too, he wouldn't. But as it is, he has no right to allow delicacy to stand in the way of potentially learning something of use to the patriots who survived the barricade, and their brothers who fight on. He nods, just a fraction, and the underlying motivation is doubtless clear.

At Bahorel's last sentences, though, his brows draw together. This is troubling, and more than a little.

"He's in it? How so?"

Bahorel didn't expect that to meet with celebration, no. "He's in it at length. I would say from the start, but the start is about a few of the men of the Revolution's days; a Bishop, in particular, in 1815. And then Fauchelevent shows up, under his other name of Valjean. Though he's not named right away. I was halfway through his first chapter before I knew who it was meant to be, and then-- I would guess much of what he fears people knowing had already been revealed. And he is in and out of the novel for its entire length."

Enjolras's lips thin as he considers this. He sets down his pizza, and breathes out.

Quietly, "What does it reveal? Broadly."

He swore to Valjean that he would not speak of any of what he knew about the man's past to anyone, even Valjean, without his word to do so. He doesn't want to say anything of it until he knows that what Bahorel has learned from this book is, indeed, accurate.

The fighters of the barricade died as a public statement, martyrs whose deaths were given to posterity. Their lives too.

M. Valjean gave nothing of the sort. However Hugo learned of his past, if indeed he did, Enjolras finds it difficult to believe that Valjean gave his permission for it to be spread about in a novel; accurate or fictionalized, it's under his own name.

"His childhood, his family. A criminal record, such as it is; mostly prison escapes. Some petty theft, out of various desperation.-- All this before the first hundred pages are gone. Shall I go on?" Bahorel's not being flippant. The old man had acted as a friend to them. "He says he has no fear of the spy Javert; I believe him. But then there may be others he wishes to keep his past from, and for good reason." There are many reasons, after all, for a man in Fauchelevent's position to want privacy.

Enjolras shakes his head: no need to go on, at least right this moment.

Damn.

This is the first thing that's made him want to ask hard questions of Victor Hugo -- but Hugo isn't here, and the book is published. An influential classic.

"A thief once, he told me, but no longer." All he's said to any of the others, until now, is his reasons are his own. He doesn't need to say that he believed and respected Fauchelevent, and still does. "I've rarely seen a man so ready to apologize for the slightest offense, and brush away his own good deeds like a shameful secret. But he has the TF on his shoulder."

And thus every day he walks in freedom, he's committing a crime. The law is unjust, cruel, awful; and it hangs over Fauchelevent like Damocles' sword, the horsehair ready to snap at any policeman's notice.

"Why would Hugo have used his real name in this?" A rhetorical question. Enjolras doesn't expect Bahorel to have any answer. "It's different for us. For Marius too, if he spoke with him later. But a good man treated unjustly by the law, very well; he didn't need to make the man identifiable."

"I'll tell you, if the book's right, then he's even less of a scoundrel than it seems he's presenting himself to be. As for the book, I can think of a few reasons behind it. As for why--" Enjolras may not expect answers; but Bahorel has considered them.

"Perhaps this is not truly Monsieur Fauchelevent's story at all, or at least not entirely. Hugo may merely have heard his name, and combined it with other similar tales to create a sort of composite. Unkind to the man, perhaps worse still to the daughter, especially given other aspects of the story. But Hugo may have acted in partial ignorance there." Bahorel doesn't really believe it, and doesn't try to hide the fact. But it's a possibility.

"Then again, this won't be published until 1862. In that time, there will have been several governments; and then of course people have their own changes of heart. Perhaps somewhere in those decades, Monsieur Fauchelevent feels safe enough, or outraged enough, to share his story. With Pontmercy, if not with Hugo. Perhaps Fauchelevent even dies in the decades between our time and the book; indeed, it is likely, he is not a young man. Then it would be to his heirs to share the story, and there are many reasons they might want to do so."

"Or." He holds up a hand for a moment. "I do not expect you to accept this entirely, I would not suggest it at all except for where we find ourselves. But the Hugo who wrote this may not have been precisely the Hugo of our world. Perhaps the Hugo who wrote this novel knew M. Fauchelevent by a different name, or even not at all; there might have been many differences between that world and ours." Bahorel doesn't chase that idea further, much as it fascinates him. It's not Enjolras' sort of theory, and anyway it's not to the point at hand.

"Whatever the reasons it happens, Fauchelevent's story will be told. -- But it shouldn't happen for decades, and yet here he is to have it affect him now."

Enjolras listens thoughtfully to all of this speculation. The first two suggestions are reasonable enough, the third fantastic -- not necessarily incorrect, but something whose likelihood Enjolras will leave to others to hash out -- but as Bahorel says, in many ways it's not entirely relevant.

Enjolras's opinion of Victor Hugo may shift somewhat depending on what the man thought he was doing. But no matter what, Fauchelevent in 1833 is at Milliways, with people who can read this book of 1862 that uses the name Jean Valjean for a virtuous convict's story.

"Yes."

There's nothing to be done to change the facts.

"I'll tell him. He won't take it well."

He hasn't forgotten the way the dignified old man flinched like a whipped dog at the suggestion that Enjolras knew he was a convict; the way that even at the end of that conversation, even knowing he spoke to a republican and a murderer and a man who valued equality to the point of death, Valjean apologized for any offense in saying he respected Enjolras. As if there could ever be offense in such a thing! Humility is a virtue, up to a point, but self-abasement is something different.

[OOC: Kindly pretend that Enjolras said the letters on Valjean's shoulder were TP a moment ago, since the mun forgot to check that. Oops.]

Bahorel nods. "He should know, maybe even more than us. As I say, for us, maybe it's nothing terribly serious-- but while there are others who can reach our world and time, it's worth knowing what stories they might be carrying back."

He frowns. "Especially because there are notes on some other barricades-- of ours, and in the future. Trials and collaborators named, from the year 1848. All settled and gone by the time the book published, but in our year-- no. And-- that spy is here."

Enjolras frowns sharply, sitting up a little straighter (though he's a man with straight-backed posture in any case).

"I hadn't realized. That could be trouble."

"He may remain ignorant of the book forever, or of any advantage to gain from reading it, but we can't count on that."

The difficulty is in what they can possibly do about it.

Well, there's the extreme solution. (If it would even work, under the circumstances of Milliways.) Enjolras is not exactly in favor of it, but it's inescapably an option; Bahorel's likely thought of it too.

Bahorel nods. "He seems to be avoiding anything to do with us-- but then he is a spy, it could be a front." He laughs. "I suppose I could try to provoke him into fights when he's here, and keep us both in the cells-- but no, never mind, we're supposed to be allowed books, now."

He sobers again. "And,here's something I at least didn't know: it seems we had two spies at our barricade. You remember the fellow who killed the porter."

It's not a question.

"Was he."

Enjolras had wondered, of course. But he could equally have been a hothead; there was no way to be sure.

It doesn't change anything, of course. Murderer and spy or not, Le Cabuc was still their brother. And the necessity of executing him was never in question; the fundamental betrayal of ideals in the action remains true as well.

Still. It's worth knowing.

"So it seems. A long-time agent, a member of one of the stronger gangs-- and it seems it was amazing how little they were ever prosecuted for their various crimes." Bahorel watches the movement of the wine in his own glass. "Which would explain his skill in certain matters." A gun, a knife. "And why he was so set on murdering an unarmed old man who'd come out to chat to some fellows he knew."

It might make no difference to Enjolras. The porter had perhaps been a stranger to his barricade. But for Bahorel it answers a question. After Bossuet's visit to Milliways, making the porter's acquaintance had been part of their preparations, and not an especially hard job-- a few drinks, a few games of dominoes, a few stories traded about grandchildren and nieces and nephews--

"I knew the porter. He was friendly to us. The murderer had not even a shadow of an explanation on our barricade." He smiles, bitter but not without a certain bleak amusement. "They police might teach their agents to spin a better story."

Edited 2015-01-23 17:23 (UTC)

"A shadow of one on ours, but no more." And how strange, how surreal still, to speak of your barricade and ours. "He must have been counting on the notion that we'd allow rowdy hotheadedness to the extent of shooting a defenseless old man in a window. I suppose it makes sense that he was used to his spying winning him pardon for all crimes."

He didn't have the air of one willing to sacrifice his own life for the sake of besmirching the barricade's reputation. Javert took capture and the sentence of death with proud stoicism; Le Cabuc wept, pleaded, clutched at Enjolras's knees, seemed utterly undone by the idea that he might die for the crime of open murder.

The swallow of water is tasteless, despite the lemon floating in the glass.

Le Cabuc died, whatever he expected -- and he succeeded in barring doors and hearts to the revolutionaries, whether or not he would have considered that worth the price. But they knew that.

And maybe, on Bahorel's barricade, some of those doors opened after all. There's no way to know, so there can be hope.

"Hm. I gather our visitor missed his timing. If he had waited a mere two years, he might have joined the forces of law along the Rue Transnonain, and killed old men in their beds with good company, instead of before our unappreciative audience." His smile vanishes in a curse, and he throws his wine glass into the fireplace.

It shatters; Bahorel watches as the fire briefly flickers another color, and for a while longer. It is really very helpful.

When he speaks again, it's with a touch of real warmth. "Bossuet will be cross with me. He was very insistent that I tell the rest of you about this gently." Ridiculous, to try and be gentle about such things; but Bossuet would think to try, and that thought makes him grin in amusement and fondness.

Enjolras watches Bahorel fling his glass away; watches him watch the fire, and gives him his space for frustration. Enjolras may not express his own feelings in the same terms, but some sentiments they share, in their own ways: Bahorel fuels himself with a fire that flares at any provocation, and Enjolras reserves the fire of his soul to release it rarely and with the greatest heat. Still.

His voice holds a certain degree of both affection and dry amusement when he says, "Did you not?"

He has no objection to anything Bahorel said or did in the breaking of this news.

(He also doesn't yet realize some of what Bahorel was glossing over with that talk of a great deal of description of appearances and the like. But if he did, it wouldn't convince him that Bahorel hadn't approached the matter with rare and perhaps unnecessary discretion.)

Bahorel shakes his head. "I don't know- he took the news very oddly. But then he was concerned for Grantaire, I think. Monsieur Hugo doesn't flatter us all equally." He shrugs. "At any rate-- Bossuet knows, which is to say, Joly knows; and Bossuet is telling Grantaire. I've spoken to Combeferre earlier today. I can tell Courfeyrac and Feuilly, or you can, if you want." It's not even a question that they need to know.

"I don't mind, though you're the one who's read it. Whoever speaks to them first, I suppose."

They'll all have plenty of cause to discuss the book and the concerns it raises with each other, based on this conversation.

The mention of Grantaire gets a curious look, but Enjolras doesn't press the question. If Bossuet is concerned for Grantaire, he may well have good reason; still, that doesn't necessarily mean it's a matter Enjolras needs to know about, or that Grantaire will want him to.

Bahorel waves off the question of Grantaire; it's nothing Enjolras doesn't know already, at least to the extent that it could possibly matter. Nothing anyone who looks at them in the same room wouldn't know, in Bahorel's estimation, but that doesn't have to mean Bossuet's concern is wrong. Just not something he has an answer for.

" I'll get the more immediate passages copied out for us-- the mentions of 48, and so on. For the rest, I think it can wait until the others have a chance to read the book, if they want." He grins. "But I'm telling Jehan if he comes by. I won't forgive anyone who spoils that news." A joke, and not; he would want to see Jehan's immediate reaction, but he also knows he won't care all that much if it becomes a possibility.

"So that's the news of our day, or someone's, at any rate." He stands and stretches and heads for the food on the table. "What about you, any grand discoveries? Has Combeferre taught his dinosaur to breathe flame yet?"

...Probably the answer is no!

"No," Enjolras answers, amused. "He hasn't attempted that yet."

Although if Bahorel suggests it, that state of affairs may not last too much longer. Combeferre is rather susceptible to experimental engineering challenges.

"He's acquired a jarred specimen to accompany it instead. With wings. I'm told it's not technically a dinosaur."

He was also told why it wasn't technically a dinosaur, but he hasn't really retained any of those details.

Despite Enjolras's lack of any great detail about Combeferre's latest pickled acquisitions, though, the discussion of other friends' activities and Milliways's peculiar possibilities for study does occupy them both nicely for a while longer, and for another few slices of pizza.

Edited 2015-03-14 04:16 (UTC)