A being who could have hovered over Paris that night with the wing of the bat or the owl would have had beneath his eyes a gloomy spectacle.
All that old quarter of the Hales, which is like a city within a city, through which run the Rues Saint-Denis and Saint-Martin, where a thousand lanes cross, and of which the insurgents had made their redoubt and their stronghold, would have appeared to him like a dark and enormous cavity hollowed out in the centre of Paris. There the glance fell into an abyss. Thanks to the broken lanterns, thanks to the closed windows, their all radiance, all life, all sound, all movement ceased. The invisible police of the insurrection were on the watch everywhere, and maintained order, that is to say, night. The necessary tactics of insurrection are to drown small numbers in a vast obscurity, to multiply every combatant by the possibilities, which that obscurity contains. At dusk, every window where a candle was burning received a shot. The light was extinguished; sometimes the inhabitant was killed. Hence nothing was stirring. There was nothing but fright, mourning, and stupor in the houses; and in the streets, a sort of sacred horror. Not even the long rows of windows and stores, the indentations of the chimneys, and the roofs, and the vague reflections, which are cast back by the wet and muddy pavements, were visible. An eye cast upward at that mass of shadows might, perhaps, have caught a glimpse here and there, at intervals, of indistinct gleams which brought out broken and eccentric lines, and profiles of singular buildings, something like the lights which go and come in ruins; it was at such points that the barricades were situated. The rest was a lake of obscurity, foggy, heavy, and funereal, above which, in motionless and melancholy outlines, rose the tower of Saint-Jacques, the church of Saint-Merry, and two or three more of those grand edifices of which man makes giants and the night makes phantoms.
All around this deserted and disquieting labyrinth, in the quarters where the Parisian circulation had not been annihilated, and where a few street lanterns still burned, the aerial observer might have distinguished the metallic gleam of swords and bayonets, the dull rumble of artillery, and the swarming of silent battalions whose ranks were swelling from minute to minute; a formidable girdle which was slowly drawing in and around the insurrection.
The invested quarter was no longer anything more than a monstrous cavern; everything there appeared to be asleep or motionless, and, as we have just seen, any street which one might come to offered nothing but darkness.
A wild darkness, full of traps, full of unseen and formidable shocks, into which it was alarming to penetrate, and in which it was terrible to remain, where those who entered shivered before those whom they awaited, where those who waited shuddered before those who were coming. Invisible combatants were entrenched at every corner of the street; snares of the sepulchre concealed in the density of night. All was over. No more light was to be hoped for, henceforth, except the lightning of guns, no further encounter except the abrupt and rapid apparition of death. Where? How? When? No one knew, but it was certain and inevitable. In this place which had been marked out for the struggle, the Government and the insurrection, the National Guard, and popular societies, the bourgeois and the uprising, groping their way, were about to come into contact. The necessity was the same for both. The only possible issue thenceforth was to emerge thence killed or conquerors. A situation so extreme, an obscurity so powerful, that the most timid felt themselves seized with resolution, and the most daring with terror.
Moreover, on both sides, the fury, the rage, and the determination were equal. For the one party, to advance meant death, and no one dreamed of retreating; for the other, to remain meant death, and no one dreamed of flight.
It was indispensable that all should be ended on the following day, that triumph should rest either here or there, that the insurrection should prove itself a revolution or a skirmish. The Government understood this as well as the parties; the most insignificant bourgeois felt it. Hence a thought of anguish which mingled with the impenetrable gloom of this quarter where all was at the point of being decided; hence a redoubled anxiety around that silence whence a catastrophe was on the point of emerging. Here only one sound was audible, a sound as heart-rending as the death rattle, as menacing as a malediction, the tocsin of Saint-Merry. Nothing could be more blood-curdling than the clamor of that wild and desperate bell, wailing amid the shadows.
As it often happens, nature seemed to have fallen into accord with what men were about to do. Nothing disturbed the harmony of the whole effect. The stars had disappeared, heavy clouds filled the horizon with their melancholy folds. A black sky rested on these dead streets, as though an immense winding-sheet were being outspread over this immense tomb.
While a battle that was still wholly political was in preparation in the same locality which had already witnessed so many revolutionary events, while youth, the secret associations, the schools, in the name of principles, and the middle classes, in the name of interests, were approaching preparatory to dashing themselves together, clasping and throwing each other, while each one hastened and invited the last and decisive hour of the crisis, far away and quite outside of tld Paris which disappears under the splendorhis fatal quarter, in the most profound depths of the unfathomable cavities of that wretched o of happy and opulent Paris, the sombre voice of the people could be heard giving utterance to a dull roar.
A fearful and sacred voice which is composed of the roar of the brute and of the word of God, which terrifies the weak and which warns the wise, which comes both from below like the voice of the lion, and from on high like the voice of the thunder.
二 巴黎枭瞰图
这时如果有人长着蝙蝠或枭鸟的翅膀在巴黎上空飞翔,他便会看到呈现在他眼底的是一片凄凉景象。
他会看到圣德尼街和马尔丹街经过的、穿插着无数起义的人们赖以建造街垒和防地的小街小巷,这整个城中之城似的菜市场老区,圣德尼街和圣马尔丹街贯穿全区,看起来就好象是挖在巴黎中心的一个其大无比的黑窟窿。在这一带地方是望不到底的。由于路灯已全被破坏,窗子也都闭上,这儿已没有任何光、任何生命、任何人声、任何活动。暴动的无形警察在四处巡逻,这时的秩序便是黑夜。把一小部分淹没在广大的黑暗中,用这黑暗所创造的条件来加强每个战士的战斗力,这是起义必要的战略。在那天天黑时,凡是有烛光的窗子都挨了一枪。光熄了,有时住户也死了。因此动静全无。那些人家只有惶恐、哀伤、困惑,街上也只是一片压倒一切的阴森气象。甚至连一排排一层层的窗户、犬牙交错的烟囱和屋顶、泥泞路面的微弱反光也都看不见。从上往下向这一大堆黑影望去的眼睛,也许能看见这儿那儿,在一些相距不远的地方,有由朦胧的火光映照着的一些特别的曲折线条,一些形状怪异的建筑物的侧影,一些象来往于废墟中微光似的东西,这便是那些街垒的所在地了。在这之外的其他地方全是迷雾沉沉,死气弥漫,象一潭黑水。突出在这些上面的有些屹立不动的阴森黑影,那便是圣雅克塔和圣美里教堂和两三座人要赋以高大形象而黑夜要使之成为鬼物的建筑。
在这荒凉并令人不安的迷宫周围,在巴黎的交通还没有完全消失的地区,在多少还有几盏路灯亮着的地方,这位飞行观察者也许能见到一些军刀和枪刺的金属闪光,炮车的无声滚动,蚁群似的联队在悄悄地、一分钟一分钟地逐步增大,慢慢推向暴动地区的周围,渐渐缩小它的包围圈,终于完成了一道骇人的铁箍。
那被封锁的地区已只是一种怪模怪样的野人窟,那里好象一切都在睡眠中,毫无动静,并且,正如我们刚才见过的,每条平日人人都能到达的街,现在只是一道道黑影。
险恶的黑影,布满了陷阱,处处都可以遇到突如其来的猛烈袭击,那些地方进去已足使人寒心,停留更使人心惊胆战,进去的人在等待着的人面前战栗,等待的人也在进去的人面前发抖。每条街的转角处都埋伏了一些无形的战士,深邃莫测的黑影中隐藏着墓中人布置的套索。完了。从这以后,在那些地方,除了枪口的火光以外没有其他的光可以希望,除了死亡的突然来临以外,不会有其他的遭遇。死亡来自何处?怎样来?什么时候来?没有人知道,但那是必然的,无可避免的。在这不容忽视的阵地上,政府和起义的人们,国民自卫军和群众组织,资产阶级和暴动群,都将面对面地摸索前进。双方都非这样做不可。要么死在这地方,要么成为这地方的胜利者,非死即胜,不可能有其他出路。局势是这样僵,黑暗是这样深,以致最胆怯的人也都觉得自己在这里下定决心,最胆壮的人也都觉得自己在这里害了怕。
此外,双方都同样狂暴,同样刚愎,同样坚强。对一方来说,前进,便是死,但谁也没有想到要后退;对另一方来说,留下,便是死,但谁也没有想到要逃走。
无论起义转为革命也好,一败涂地也好,胜利属于这边也好,属于那边也好,这一切都必须在明天结束。政府和各个党派都懂得这一点,最小的资产阶级也有此同感。因此,在这即将决定一切的地区的无法穿透的黑暗中,搀和着一种惶惶不安的思想;因此,在这即将出现一场灾难的沉寂中,存在着一种有增无已的焦急情绪。在那里,人们只听到一种仅有的声音??一种和临终时的喘息一样使人听了为之心碎,和凶恶的诟骂一样使人听了为之心悸的声音??圣美里的警钟声。那口钟在黑暗中狂敲猛击,传送着绝望的哀号,再没有比这更悲凉的了。
常有这样的情形:天好象要对人将做的事表示赞同。天人之间的这种不幸的和洽是牢不可破的。当时天上全不见星光,惨淡的愁云,层层叠叠,堆在地平线上。黑色的天宇笼罩着这些死气沉沉的街巷,有如一幅巨大的裹尸布覆盖在这巨大的坟墓上。
当一场仍限于政治范畴的斗争在这经受过多次革命风暴的同一场地上酝酿进行时,当高谈主义的年轻一代、各种秘密会社、各种学府院校和热中利润的资产阶级彼此对面走来,准备互相冲击、扼杀、镇压时,当每个人都在为这个被繁华幸福的巴黎的珠光宝气所淹没了的老巴黎,在它的深不可测的密楼暗室里,在这被厄运所困的地区以外和更远的地方奔走呼号,促使危机的最后决定时刻早日到来时,人们听到人民的郁愤声在暗中切齿怒骂。
那种骇人而神圣的声音,同时具有猛兽的吼声和上帝的语言,能使弱者听了发抖,也能发哲人的深思,它既象下界的狮吼,又象上界的雷鸣。