(no subject)

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

What drink do you match with bizarre and disturbing news? Absinthe says Here, you'll need this a little too obviously; wine isn't strong enough. Gin can make a man mean. Rum? Rum's cheerful. Brandy is always a welcome present...hmm. And yet...

So Lesgle arrives at Grantaire's door with a bottle in his hand, and lump of approximately the dimensions of a brick tucked into his coat. He'd thought about not bringing the book. If he didn't bring the book there was a fair chance Grantaire would forget the entire conversation.

It had seemed cowardly.

On the other hand, he's not going to volunteer the book unless Grantaire asks.

He reaches Grantaire's room and begins to knock. It could take a while.

Comments

[the_obverse]

A series of bumps, rustles and clatters from within eventually resolves with a resounding thump on the door. "Who's waltzing on the walls? Show some respect for a man's eternal slumber!"

(A fraction of the way awake at best, Grantaire has apparently forgotten that walls also involve doors.)

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Eternal slumber nothing, you're just passed out drunk," he shouts back amiably. "Open the door, Grantaire. It's the rectangular thing on the wall with the little handle on it. Or else I'll start singing."

[the_obverse]

It takes another minute or two for Grantaire to parse and execute these instructions; from the sound of it, the doorknob seems to be resisting arrest.

At last, the door swings open, revealing a bleary face crowned by curls projecting at all three hundred and sixty five angles. "Don't think I can't withstand your threats, L'aigle de Meux," says Grantaire. "It's just, if this place is to become hell, I'd rather be the devil than the damned. -- Well? What shall we sing?"

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

Lesgle is struck with an intense fondness, verging alarmingly close to melancholy surrounding the upcoming conversation, which he deals with by clasping his hands over his heart (the bottle wedged precariously under one arm) and warbling: Au clair de la lune, mon ami Pierrot, prête-moi ta plume pour écrire un mot--

He gives it all the eyebrow-waggling that the later verses call for; he'll increase his volume unless and until Grantaire lets him properly into the room. Ma chandelle est morte; je n'ai plus de feu. Ouvre-moi ta porte, pour l'amour de Dieu!

[the_obverse]

Grantaire holds his tongue, leaning stalwartly against the doorframe, until the appropriate moment arrives at which to burst in with rather more gusto than melody: Je n'ai pas de plume, je suis dans mon lit!

"Or so I was," he adds, paranthetically, before launching into the next two lines: "Va chez la voisine, je crois qu'elle y est, car dans sa cuisine on bat le briquet. Though I can't vouch for it whether any of the neighbors are pretty brunettes, as I've not had the pleasure of their acquaintance." (Though standing and caterwauling in the hallway seems a charming place to start.)

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"I have met some pretty brunettes, as it happens, but I've not been so bold as to ask for their room numbers." He herds Grantaire gently into the room and shuts the door behind them both, and so the neighbors remain mysterious. "--Actually, there's nothing wrong with my candle or my pen or anything else; I've come bearing a gift."

Laigle finds a more or less clear spot on the floor to sit on, and offers the bottle. "American. It's called bourbon, which is a wretched name, but once you finish it you can call yourself a proud regicide."

[the_obverse]

Grantaire eyes the bottle with interest. Look, his eyes are capable of focus! "A regicide! I never had ambition for that. Make the bawdier jest, Bossuet; it's in theme."

He leans back against the nearest handy wall (which is not actually so handy as all that, making the lean more of a controlled descent) and gestures around the room, which is currently more or less a pile of indistinguishable garments and bedding. "Very well, I retract my earlier objections. You are welcome to any candles or pens you can find."

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

He leers exaggeratedly at Grantaire for the "candles or pens," and hands over the bottle. "If I knew this was all it took, I'd have been here sooner. --If you have a glass I'll take it; otherwise I expect you to pass the bottle over here once you've pronounced your judgment on it. I haven't tried it myself."

Bossuet isn't fussy about a little laundry here and there, but he does, after some thought, shift his weight and remove the hard lumpy thing from under his backside. Ah, a boot!

"But before we fall all the way into that bottle, I should say--I've had an interesting talk with Bahorel."

[the_obverse]

"And you came all the way here --" There's certainly a glass somewhere. "Aha!" says Grantaire, triumphantly, after some fishing; Bossuet, it seems, has had the great good fortune not to sit on it. He offers it, with a flourish, and continues, "-- and roused me from my slumber to tell me that? Cruel implications, eagle! It may be true one occasionally notices a certain repetition in the conversation of some of our more passionate acquaintances, but surely the bonds of friendship present it being so rudely pointed out --"

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

After accepting his glass, he kicks in the general direction of Grantaire's shin. It's a friendly gesture, really. "I'll tell him you said so, that it was your first thought. I'm sure he'll appreciate your chivalrous defense. --He had news about you. About all of our little set, in fact. In some one of these many worlds we keep hearing about here, a Victor Hugo exists who writes--has written, will write--a novel in which we appear. A supporting role, you know. I would call it a minor part except for the metaphor and symbolism he splashes around."

[the_obverse]

Grantaire's eyebrows elevate until they almost disappear under the mat of his unkempt hair.

"Indeed an honor to have one's name taken in vain by the pen that scrawled the immortal Han d'Islande!"

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"And never forget the Battle of Hernani! I gather he improved with age. The book won't be published until 1862. --What a mangle of tenses! Conversation here, I mean, not the works that have sprung from the vast forehead of Victor Hugo."

Bossuet snickers suddenly into his glass. "He has a bit to say about foreheads. --But think, though, of an infinity of universes, with an infinity of Hugos, one of them feverishly clutching his infinite brow as he dreams of our own little world."

He's not sure he believes it himself, mind, but it's a more comforting thought than some he's had. He hopes, rather desperately, that Grantaire will not catch on to the other train of thought: that Victor Hugo is their sole creator, his words the incontestable words of God.

[the_obverse]

"This conversation," remarks Grantaire, with a sudden shrewd glance at Bossuet, "has taken a surprising turn for the philosophical. Soar a little lower, eagle. One Victor Hugo produces enough melodrama to drown every enfant terrible in Paris; will you be responsible for conjuring up an infinity's worth?"

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"It would be only fair, don't you think? If he has the gratification of thinking he invented us, why should we not invent a few of him? We can be as inaccurate in our conjectures as he! Bahorel, for one, objects to Hugo's chronology. He places Lallemand's death in the wrong year. A grave offense. He also describes Marius Pontmercy's nostrils as 'passionate,' which may or may not be accurate. I can't speak to the state of the Pontmercy nose."

[the_obverse]

"Passionate!" exclaims Grantaire, "Marius! To say any member of his corpus expresses passion, why, it's sheer slander. The passion of Marius is that of Eulalia or Margaret -- no, I'm mixing them up, she was a reformed prostitute -- one of those pale virgin saints, anyway, who had the decorum to keep their scandalous imaginings of divine embraces in their dreams. If Marius were to hear that his nostrils had caught a case of passion, he would doubtless renounce them in a fit of scandalized righteousness. The nostrils," he declares, swinging around to fix a solemn gaze on Bossuet, "the nostrils, we can therefore safely declare as an invention; though why any man should be gratified to have concocted them, I can't say."

He takes a swig and adds, in a more normal tone, "Anyway, it's nice of Bahorel to complain; it would most likely have been one of his set, wouldn't it, to blacken our names to the Romantic bear-baiter to begin with?"

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Oh, I think I detected a bit of a nostril-flare when he made his speech to us all about Bonaparte." And that was as hilarious and as cringingly embarrassing to read again as it had been to live through. Bossuet clears his throat. "Hm? Oh--yes, I dare say, or someone Prouvaire knew. Terrible people, these Romantics. Shocking."

[the_obverse]

Grantaire's eyebrows shoot skyward again at this. He sets down his bottle, with a thump, and then, thinking better of it, snatches it back up and takes a healthy long swig before letting it dangle again by his knees.

"Some of us -- well, some of us are confirmed melancholics. Let it pass. Some of us, contrariwise, are afflicted with a terrible case of sobriety, well-known side effects, if I may catalog them, being a certain degree of earnestness and a quickness to take offense at trifling matters; let that pass as well. But you, Bossuet, I never knew to suffer under any such diseases. Surely the passion of Mr. Pontmercy's nostrils cannot be the only decent jest to be mined from the rubble of M. Hugo's literary endeavors. You're generally the first man with a pickaxe when it comes to such matters, and yet here you sit -- dare I say it -- glum?"

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Glum? I'm not glum; I have it on good authority that glumness is not in my nature. I am gay but unlucky. And no, no, the nostril of Marius is hardly the most amusing thing. Victor Hugo shows a surprising talent for puns and drolleries. How clever his characters are: They mock at everything, at Rousseau, at the theater, at one another, at the artillery advancing upon them. Surprisingly quiet about Louis-Philippe, though."

His glass is empty; he extends it in Grantaire's direction. "Not bad, this. Effective."

[the_obverse]

Grantaire regards his friend for a moment, and then, abruptly, bursts into laughter.

"How ungrateful you are!" he exclaims, and splashes a healthy dose of bourbon liberally into Bossuet's glass as a reward for his ingratitude. "You go out of your way to have beliefs, and then further out of your way to die for them, and then you complain when sentimental writers go on to pen silly fairy tales about it. The Maid of Orleans sits in her grave and complains that Voltaire dares to take her name in vain, but that libel suit hasn't got legs. What's a martyrdom for, if not to be talked of?"