In this section, the revolt claims its first lives. The deaths of M. Mabeuf and Eponine, however, have their splendor as well as their tragedy. M. Mabeuf has deliberately committed suicide rather than endure the shameful humiliation of starving to death, and his gesture has its reward. After a lifetime in which he has vainly sought the respect and admiration of his fellow citizens by study and science, his last moments in the incongruous role of freedom fighter win him a lasting glory. As for Eponine, she too has in a sense committed suicide by turning on herself the bullet meant for Marius. For her as for M. Mabeuf, the future held nothing but shame and suffering, and her brief instants in Marius' arms are probably the only moments of real happiness she has experienced since childhood.
The deaths of Le Cabuc and the porter, however, cast a more somber light on this scene of violence. War brings out the baser as well as the nobler instincts in man, and the innocent suffer. Enjolras' prompt punishment of the criminal and his touching vision of a more perfect world temper somewhat the horror of this motiveless assassination, and the fact that he is willing to execute one of his own men also serves to underline the absolute purity and rectitude of his ideals, but Hugo never lets us forget the lolling head of the innocent corpse in the background.
In fact, the scene at the barricades by night is another of the masterly tableaux in black and white that gives Les Misérables much of its power over our imaginations. This time, however, the light comes not from the moon but from a flaring torch that illuminates a splash of scarlet in the background. When Marius arrives, he sees dimly beyond the gathered insurgents "a sort of spectator or witness who seemed to him unusually attentive. It was the porter killed by Le Cabuc. . . . A long trail of blood which had flowed from that head ran down in a scarlet network from the window to the level of the second floor, where it stopped."
Once again Jean Valjean makes one of his extraordinary decisions, expressed in actions rather than words or thoughts. But the meaning of that decision is, like his decision in Part Two to go to Arras, ambiguous until the last moment, and ambiguous perhaps even to Valjean himself.
His hatred for Marius is real, and so is his delight at the thought that the revolution may eliminate him from Cosette's life. Jean Valjean is not a milksop, and his conversion by the bishop did not, as we have seen, guarantee him the exercise of perfect and effortless goodness for the rest of his life. There is, and always has been, evil in him, and if he falls prey to it, the unusual strength and cunning that have made him a remarkably good man will make him an appallingly evil one. Marius was not wrong to mistrust him after the scene in Thénardier's garret; his unusual potentialities will always make him a frightening as well as an impressive personality.
Valjean puts on his National Guard uniform and leaves the house. Why? To join the Guard and make sure Marius dies or simply to make his way safely through the streets? Hugo does not tell us, and perhaps Valjean himself does not know. But, as at M.-sur-M., if his conception of what he is about to do is not clear, his instinctive knowledge of what he is not about to do does not fail him.
