This is so full of dark, gothic brilliance that I am utterly in awe of you! In my minds eye I can see Jehan (poor, poor Jehan) toasting the skull and thinking of the toast and Bahorel's wonderful impatience! This story is full of musty velvet and candles and wine and blood and it's fantastic! I also love 'that is to say, you have Provaired'- brilliant line for a brilliant poet: he's better than Byron and he dies young and... oh I could go on and on but I won't... and there's so much to say that I've ended up telling you things you probably already know and am now rambling... Great, awesome work!

This chapter was brilliant. It was chilling reading Enjolras' discussion of what else they could offer aside from the protest of corpses, especially knowing historically how trials after the June Rebellion went. It felt very like Hugo's Enjolras, especially in the end, when he reads the crowd and says that the Republic asks for no more than they can give. They vote with their eyes, and they vote for death over attempting to face down their entire society while separated from each other. This piece somehow makes the fall of the barricade even more poignant, as it paints dying as easier than trying to live in a world that would deny everything you stand for. Les Amis would have attempted it, having each other always in spirit, but for most people standing strong when alone and stripped of power is asking too much. Thank you for writing such a thought-provoking piece!

I am super impressed at how good your Hugo pastiche voice is!

This reminded me greatly of your fic Crimes of the Light. I feel like this should have been part of the brick. That is how good this chapter is. It breaks my heart to know that they are all going to their deaths, and I think Enjolras makes a really good point here. Is it wrong for me to be a little disappointed in these revolutionaries here? Enjolras knows that it would be harder to live with the consequences of a failed revolution, then to die as martyrs within it, but it would also be the more rewarding situation. He tells everyone else, yet they still choose to go the easier route. It just seems wrong to me, although very right for the characters. Am I making any sense? Anyways, I really did love this. You are incredibly talented at creating an atmosphere. Well done!

Oh wow. I was a little jarred at first by Enjolras proposing surrender...till he explained what that would lead up to. It seems to fit his character too, in a weird sort of way. You can tell that he'll fight for his convictions in the most public ways possible.

An interesting take on this, mon amie. I like it.

This just tore me to pieces it did. I can see Joly working himself up into this worried state, but I find it interesting that he turned to Feuilly for a little bit of comfort and not L'aigle. Perhaps he was hoping that Feuilly would do more than comfort him, that he might instead help him snap out of it. Either way, this seemed incredibly fitting. Watching Feuilly rip up his chance at a proper burial made my heart sink though. I can never seem to really bear thinking about any of the Amis being put in mere mass grave to rot for the rest of their lives. It seems so unfair. As for the song, Dog Eat Dog is truly horrifying, and you're right in saying that it's implication shouldn't provoke such a strong reaction, and yet they always seem to. Either way, this was a very good chapter. I always look forward to your updates because I know they will be top notch.

I will never hear "Dog Eat Dog" in the same way again. I had actually wondered about this possibility before, but never to this shiver-worthy extent. And how right for it to be Joly, too. Your writing itself is so real, too...the touch at the end, Feuilly choosing to be equal with the people in his death, is gorgeous and poignant.

I've actually just read all of these-I'd heard about the drinking-from-skulls one before, but never came across it. Creepy Prouvaire you have there! And I shall just echo all the love for the out-Byroning Byron line. The nerdiness of the Combeferre installment was superb, and Enjolras trying to dig up Robespierre...shaking my head at him, but it suits. Anyway, excellent work overall.

This is so terribly affecting, because it shows them in such an utterly human moment. And it's no slight at all to their courage that they should have these feelings...poor Joly, poor Feuilly. That macarbe scene does have its resonances. As always, I love all the subtle layering of the story - such as Courfeyrac's warmth and generousity being in evidence, even if he never appears in the scene.

Love this!

Geez, the fandom has sent me on so many desperate trips to wikipedia in the past few months.

I like your Jehan a lot! He's a little... off... in the way you meant it, I assume, and I love it. He's kind of creepy. I also like that he never actually composed any poetry for some reason. And I love the way Jehan tried to step all over Bahorel's storytime. Of course he did.

Did you hear the hand clap of delight all the way over your side of the world? I was so chuffed to see another chapter of this uploaded, and when it played with the Bousingos idea, well...

Here we have two characters as they have so very rarely been written, and it's so right for them! Jehan is deliciously unsettling, but there's still something playful there. And I love the effort he's put into this! And so thoughtful to involve Byron-loving Bahorel in the idea. And the choice of bordeaux instead of alcohol laced cream as the drink of choice...lovely, lovely!

Jehan truly does seem to have some of the medieval danse macarbe spirit here - it might be something of a game to him, but in the end we know he's still able to lift his head in the face of death and look it in the eye, even if the mockery turns into something else in a blaze of light, looking to the future.

I have to agree that with many stand-out lines, "you have Prouvaired" is possibly the best.

This story is so charming! Bahorel and Jehan play off of each other so well and I just adore all your wordplay. Kudos!

I loved this whole chapter, but particularly this line:

“You have out-Byroned Byron, which is to say, you have Prouvaired.”

OMG I love you. "No eye sockets? No teeth? Then what's the point?" *dies laughing*

This is so awesome, about all I can do is laugh and squee and tell you how much I love you :)

I was so happy to see there was another of these, and E! Combeferre on Cuvier! Oh, this is fantastic. Not just the science, but the scope, the internationalism - that certain debates can be felt around the world, even in the most remote, primitive (backward? what word do I want for how China and India must have seemed to the early 19th c. European?) places. The whole universe replaced in a second, not through actual change but only through a new theory. What it must have been like to combine Protestantism and Galileo.

I think I just proved myself as geeky as Combeferre *g*.

Up to your usual exceptionally high standards, Pie! I've associated pre-Darwinian evolutionary thought with Prouvaire (via one of Emily Bronte's Belgian devoirs), but it is a very good fit indeed with Combeferre as well. It situates him nicely in the era, and also illuminates the rationale by which a man like Combeferre would find himself on the barricades (something that seems to puzzle a lot of people who are reading elements of his character and philosophy in isolation). It must have been a bad first half of 1832 for Combeferre in terms of scientific/archaeological idols - Champollion died in March. The thrwarted biologist in me (the one scientific field I really did have an affinity for, although I'm fascinated with others) loves it as well...I was just given a copy of "Remarkable Creatures", the novel about Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot, and the author's note has a reminder that Mary Anning's name was first published in a scientific context in France, 1825, when Cuvier added it to a caption for an illustration of a plesiosaur specimen in "Discours sur les revolutions de la surface du globe."

Somehow appropriate, considering the many meanings of revolution, and Combeferre's proto-feminism.