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All bowed their heads with a gloomy air.

Strange contradictions of the human heart in its most sublime moments! Combeferre, who spoke thus, was not an orphan. He remembered the mothers of others, and he forgot his own. He was going to be killed. He was “selfish.”

Marius, fasting, feverish, successively driven from every hope, stranded upon grief, most dismal of shipwrecks, saturated with violent emotions and feeling the end approach, was sinking deeper and deeper into that visionary stupor which always precedes the fatal hour when voluntarily accepted.

Still this moved him. There was one point in this scene which pierced through to him, and which woke him. He had now but one idea, to die, and he would not be diverted from it; but he thought, in his funereal somnambulism, that while destroying oneself it is not forbidden to save another.

He raised his voice:

“Enjolras and Combeferre are right,” said he; “no useless sacrifice. I add my voice to theirs, and we must hasten. Combeferre has given the criteria. There are among you some who have families, mothers, sisters, wives, children. Let those leave the ranks.”

Nobody stirred.

“Married men and supporters of families, out of the ranks!” repeated Marius.

His authority was great. Enjolras was indeed the chief of the barricade, but Marius was its saviour.

“I order it,” cried Enjolras.

“I beseech you,” said Marius.

Then, roused by the words of Combeferre, shaken by the order of Enjolras, moved by the prayer of Marius, those heroic men began to inform against each other. “That is true,” said a young man to a middle-aged man. “You are the father of a family. Go away.” “It is you rather,” answered the man, “you have two sisters whom you support.” And an unparalleled conflict broke out. It was as to which should not allow himself to be laid at the door of the tomb.

“Make haste,” said Courfeyrac, “in a quarter of an hour it will be too late.”

“Citizens,” continued Enjolras, “this is the republic, and universal suffrage reigns. Designate yourselves those who ought to go.”

They obeyed. In a few minutes five were unanimously designated and left the ranks.

“There are five!” exclaimed Marius.

There were only four uniforms.

“Well,” resumed the five, “one must stay.”

And it was who should stay, and who should find reasons why the others should not stay. The generous quarrel recommenced.

“You, you have a wife who loves you.” “As for you, you have your old mother.” “You have neither father nor mother, what will become of your three little brothers?” “You are the father of five children.” “You have a right to live, you are seventeen, it is too soon.”

These grand revolutionary barricades were rendezvous of heroisms. The improbable there was natural. These men were not astonished at each other.

“Be quick,” repeated Courfeyrac.

Somebody cried out from the group, to Marius:

“Designate yourself, which must stay.”

“Yes,” said the five, “choose. We will obey you.”

Marius now believed no emotion possible. Still at this idea: to select a man for death, all his blood flowed back towards his heart. He would have turned pale if he could have been paler.

He advanced towards the five, who smiled upon him, and each, his eye full of that grand flame which we see in the depth of history over the Ther mopylæs, cried to him:

“Me! me! me!”

And Marius, in a stupor, counted them; there were still five! Then his eyes fell upon the four uniforms.

At this moment a fifth uniform dropped, as if from heaven, upon the four others.

The fifth man was saved.

Marius raised his eyes and saw M. Fauchelevent.

Jean Valjean had just entered the barricade.

Whether by information obtained, or by instinct, or by chance, he came by the little Rue Mondétour. Thanks to his National Guard dress, he had passed easily.

The sentry placed by the insurgents in the Rue Mondétour, had not given the signal of alarm for a single National Guard. He permitted him to get into the street, saying to himself: “he is