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."
