ned to the documents in the case:--"What matters it whether they come to our assistance or not?
Let us get ourselves killed here, to the very last man."
As the reader sees, the two barricades, though materially isolated, were in communication with each other.
BOOK FIRST.--THE WAR BETWEEN FOUR WALLS
CHAPTER IV
MINUS FIVE, PLUS ONE
After the man who decreed the "protest of corpses" had spoken, and had given this formula of their common soul, there issued from all mouths a strangely satisfied and terrible cry, funereal in sense and triumphant in tone:
"Long live death!
Let us all remain here!"
"Why all?" said Enjolras.
"All!
All!"
Enjolras resumed:
"The position is good; the barricade is fine.
Thirty men are enough. Why sacrifice forty?"
They replied:
"Because not one will go away."
"Citizens," cried Enjolras, and there was an almost irritated vibration in his voice, "this republic is not rich enough in men to indulge in useless expenditure of them.
Vain-glory is waste. If the duty of some is to depart, that duty should be fulfilled like any other."
Enjolras, the man-principle, had over his co-religionists that sort of omnipotent power which emanates from the absolute.
Still, great as was this omnipotence, a murmur arose.
A leader to the very finger-tips, Enjolras, seeing that they murmured, insisted.