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Three blows from a bayonet had transfixed Combeferre’s breast, followed by a fall from the barricade as he rapidly lost first blood and then consciousness. But neither of these, it seemed, was enough to kill him, as much as later he might perhaps wish that they were.
He remembered none of this, of course, but was told as such by the nun who helped nurse him back to health. She didn’t know who had found him, who had removed him from the barricade, only that he had brought to the nunnery under the cover of night and left there, under the apparent assumption that they might be able to take care of him.
“You’re lucky to be alive,” she told Combeferre as she mopped his forehead with a wet cloth. “Three blows like that would have killed a lesser man.”
Combeferre always just closed his eyes when she said something like that, for he had known many men far greater than he, and it had taken less to end their existence. Lucky was the last thing he felt; Combeferre felt damned by the very fact that he still lived.
They were all dead, all those whom he had once called his friends, who he called his friends still in his fevered dreams: Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Jean Prouvaire, Feuilly, Bahorel, Joly, Bossuet, even Grantaire had found his death on that barricade. Only Combeferre, it seemed, had been robbed of the right to die for his Cause.
Recovery was a slow and arduous affair, and it was almost springtime before Combeferre took his first unsteady steps outside of the abbey, leaning heavily on a crutch as he limped down the street. “Get some fresh air,” his nurse had insisted. “You cannot stay in here forever.”
If only he could.
But instead, he made his way slowly down the street. He had no real destination in mind, only a time he felt necessary to stay away from the abbey and forestall her nagging for at least a week. But as he trudged along, as he stared vacantly at the sights of Paris, at once familiar and alien, he was suddenly shaken from his stupor by a familiar-looking man making his way toward him, a pretty woman at his side. “Marius,” Combeferre murmured, stopping in his tracks. “Marius Pontmercy.”
“Combeferre!” Marius cried, catching sight of Combeferre at the same time. “Combeferre, it cannot be you!”
He practically ran toward him with only a slight limp, and hugged him in a way that suggested a closeness much more keen than Combeferre had remembered. “Yes, it is I,” Combeferre said heavily, patting Marius on the back. “I see you too survived.”
Marius pulled back, his face suddenly drawn, clearly plagued by memories of their friends. “Yes, I did,” he said softly. “And I had no idea you did as well. I assumed...well, no matter. I was no condition in the days following the loss of the barricade to search for anyone else. Did…” He hesitated, clearly not trusting to hope. “Did anyone else…”
He could not finish the question, but Combeferre knew what answer he sought, and he slowly shook his head. “If any of our friends also lives, I know not of it. You are the first and only I have seen, and I imagine if any others had also survived, they would have found us by now.”
The pretty woman with Marius had finally caught up to him, and she took Marius’s arm and smiled at Combeferre before scolding, “Marius, are you going to introduce me to your friend?”
“Of course,” Marius said instantly, smiling at her. “Cosette, this is Combeferre. He was with me in June. Combeferre, may I introduce my wife, Madame Cosette Pontmercy.”
Combeferre blinked in surprise and inclined his head and murmured the usual pleasantries. Something in Cosette’s expression tightened, but she nonetheless curtsied graciously before looking back at Marius. “I seem to have dropped my handkerchief,” she told her husband. “Will you see if you can find it? I’m sure Combeferre would be willing to keep me company until you return.”
Marius shot Combeferre an uneasy glance but Combeferre waved him off. “I shall look after your wife until you return.” He offered Cosette his arm. “Madame.”
Cosette took his arm and they slowly walked together as Marius scurried back the way he and Cosette had come. “Madame, it is very nice to meet the one of whom Marius spoke all those months ago,” Combeferre said politely, though truthfully he had not cared then and did not care much now for Marius’s lovesick prattling. Always there were more important matter to attend to, and time had not made a difference there.
Though Cosette smiled at that, her smile quickly faded, replaced by an almost anxious look. “Monsieur, I hope you do not find what I am about to say too rude, but I fear what your reappearance in Marius’s life will mean. For too long has he grieved for what you both lost on that barricade, and to have his hopes that any more of his friends might still live…”
She trailed off, but Combeferre understood, and he stopped and looked at her, not bothering to hide his own grief. “Madame, if I hold no hope that anyone else still lives. I saw their wounds -- there is no medicine that now exists that would have saved them. It is a miracle that Marius lives.”
“And a miracle that you live as well,” Cosette said quietly, and Combeferre shook his head, looking away from her.
“Perhaps,” he said. “That is yet to be seen.” He sighed heavily before looking back at her. “If you fear that my presence would bring back ghosts that Marius would rather keep at bay, you need not explain yourself to me. I wish no ill on the happiness you two have wrought.”
Cosette’s expression softened. “Then again,” she said, “perhaps visiting Marius would do both of you some good. A divided grief might be more easily overcome.”
Combeferre attempted a smile at that, though he feared it looked more like a grimace, and thankfully, was saved from having to respond by Marius’s return, wayward handkerchief in hand. “I found it!” he said triumphantly, presenting it to Cosette, who greeted its arrival with amusement.
“Oh, dear, I seem to have found my handkerchief,” Cosette said, retrieving her own handkerchief from her sleeve, and looking as though she was trying not to laugh. “I’m not sure whose you found…” Marius dropped the handkerchief, looking disgusted, and Cosette did laugh then, a light, tinkling sound that warmed even Combeferre for a brief moment, and she turned back to him, smiling widely. “Marius, I was just telling Monsieur Combeferre that we must have him to the house sometime soon.”
“Absolutely,” Marius said, nodding. “When you are feeling up to it, please. Whenever you wish. You are always welcome.”
Combeferre bowed his head. “Of course,” he said, not meaning a word of it. “I promise. Once I am feeling up to it. But now I fear I must return. Madame Pontmercy, it was a pleasure to meet you. Marius, I’m sure we will talk soon.”
As fast as he could, he hobbled back towards the abbey, feeling more drained than he had since waking those many months ago. Of all those to have survived, why it had to Pontmercy, he would never understand.
Nonetheless, something he had said to Cosette stuck with him, an errant thought that seemed to worm its way into the very depths of his heart, if not his soul: there was no medicine that now existed that could have saved their friends. And yet…
“How was your walk?” his nursemaid asked brightly when he returned.
“Fine, fine,” he said distractedly. “I wanted to ask, does your abbey have a library?”
“Of course,” she said, surprised. “A fine library, with quite a few volumes. Are you looking for something in particular?”
Combeferre nodded, his expression far away. “I was hoping I might read any books you have on medicine, and on chemistry.”
If the nun found this request odd, she did not say anything. Instead, she took Combeferre’s arm. “I will have the books sent for. In the meantime, we must return you to your chamber before you tire yourself overmuch.”
Again Combeferre nodded, even though for the first time in months, he was not feeling the least bit tired.
The polite way to put it was dedication, a fervor towards discovering a medical advancement that might have saved his friends. The more accurate way to call it was obsession, obsession over what could have been had Combeferre had the tools and knowledge at his disposal.
When his strength had finally returned, as much as it ever would, Combeferre moved from the abbey to a small apartment across the city. He brought with him what books the nuns were willing to part with, a small but serviceable stack covering the basics of medical and chemical knowledge up until that point. Within a few months, that stack had doubled; within a year, it would more accurately be called a pile, and by the time the year again changed, it would be more than poetic to describe it as a mountain of texts.
Combeferre worked at odd hours, poring over what books and medical journals he could get his hands on. “Combeferre,” Marius said hesitantly upon one of his infrequent visits, when he realized that no amount of convincing would get Combeferre to come to his house, “I do not wish speak ill of what I am sure is a noble pursuit, but this cannot be healthy.”
But Combeferre cared not if it was healthy. The thought of what he might have done to save his friends from the fate they befell that June day consumed him. It burned in his breast the way that his old wounds sometimes did, and if he was to be truthful, it drove him a bit mad, as the obsession over what could have been yet never would be often tends to.
Weeks turned into months slipped into years, yet Combeferre felt as if no time had passed, as if he might at any moment adjourn to the Musain to triumphantly tell Enjolras and Courfeyrac all he had discovered.
His obsession was broken solely by periods of deep melancholy from which nothing could rouse him. During those periods he was plagued by ghosts of his friends and wracked by guilt so deep he thought he might never recover.
Inevitably, his melancholy would break, and Combeferre would return to his books. He sent letter after letter to universities through Europe, seeking to know what studies were being done, what advancements were being made. When universities in Europe proved slow in providing him with the answers he sought, he widened his search, contacting doctors in Asia and in the United States.
So it was with great enthusiasm that he greeted Marius at his door one day, a newspaper clipping in hand. “Have you heard?” he asked, waving the clipping. “A doctor in America has performed a surgery using ether as an anesthetic. The patient was unconscious for the entire procedure! Do you know what effect this will have upon surgery?”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” Marius said cautiously, glancing around Combeferre’s apartment. “Have you slept recently? Or been outdoors.”
Combeferre shrugged impatiently. “What use do I have for outside?” he asked. “Real work is being done. Think of the effect this could have had, had we known this in June.”
“Combeferre,” Marius said, his tone turning firm, “that was ten years ago.” Combeferre just shook his head, drifting back over to his desk, his mind far from what Marius was saying. “What effect would this have had, had this been discovered ten years ago?”
Again Combeferre shrugged, clearly irritated by the questions he could not quite answer. “That is just the point -- we do not know. But certainly there may have been some wounds that could have been fixed had those afflicted been unable to feel the pain of doing so.”
Marius sat lightly on the very edge of Combeferre’s bed. “Do truly you believe that?” he asked carefully.
“Of course,” Combeferre snapped. “Why do you think I have dedicated all this time to my research?”
“Because I think what you believe is that if you somehow could find a way you could have saved them, you will then find a way to justify the guilt you still feel.”
Combeferre froze. “You do not know of what you speak,” he said coldly.
“Don’t I?” Marius asked mildly. “Do you think I do not feel the same guilt? But I have not let it consume me. I have built a new life, a life that looks to the future, a life that looks to right the wrongs we could not that day in June.” His tone turned urgent. “Have you paid even an ounce of attention to what hardships still face the people, to what political unrest still shakes the very foundations of the monarchy? The people itch again for revolution, perhaps not immediately, but soon enough. We need you, Combeferre, here in the present.”
“I will not stand here and listen to this hypocrisy from a Bonapartist in my own home,” Combeferre said, his voice shaking with something close to barely suppressed rage.
Marius stood. “A Bonapartist no longer,” he said flatly. “A republican, dedicated still to the cause for which our friends sacrificed their lives. And if you would seek to assuage your guilt, perhaps you should be inclined to join us.”
With that, he left, leaving in his wake a very shaken Combeferre, who found no matter how he tried that afternoon, his mind was far from his work.
It was not the first time Marius had tried to convince Combeferre to focus on something other than the past, nor was it bound to be the last, but something changed that day in Combeferre, and he found himself falling into existential despair such that even prospects of new discoveries in medicine could not bring him any joy -- or at least, whatever one might call the closest he had felt to joy since 1832.
Marius’s visits became more frequent, as he tried in vain to convince Combeferre to join the cause, to resume his place at the front of the fight against tyranny.
But Combeferre’s dreams were plagued again by bloody barricades, by the dying gasps of his friends, by his own failures.
“Just come with me to a meeting,” Marius urged, and Combeferre noticed for the first time that Marius looked older, dignified even -- clearly baronhood and married life suited him. “Or if not a meeting, come to the house. Cosette would love to have you, and I would be equally honored to introduce you to my children. I have tried to raise them with republican ideology, so that even Enjolras might be proud.”
Combeferre’s dreams that night were filled with images of Gavroche, dead in the street, only his face was that of Pontmercy’s.
Even Marius, for all his patience, found his patience wearing thin as the rumbles of revolution grew ever louder, and it was on one such occasion that he snapped. “It seems as though you are not even the same man who fought with two pistols on the barricade! Have you truly forgotten for what we even fought?”
“Forgotten?” Combeferre asked, fifteen years of pent-up and misdirected grief and pain etched in every line of his face. “I have forgotten nothing. I have not forgotten that my friends died, needlessly, because I could not save them!” His shoulders slumped and all the fire seemed to leave him, suddenly, as if extinguished by the weight of his grief. “You think I have forgotten, that I have abandoned the fight. But my fight has been here, with my books, with science. So that I could have saved them.”
“No.” Marius said the word calmly, and when Combeferre turned to face him, he spread his hands as if to hint at the world outside of the four walls that had become Combeferre’s barricade as much as the Rue de la Chanvrerie ever had been. “What you fight for -- what you pledged to fight for, so many years past -- is a future where they never need have fought at all. Where death would not be found in their prime, at the end of a gun barrel or a cannon shot, but instead in their beds, old and grey and having lived all their days.”
Combeferre sank slowly into into his chair, raising a shaking hand to his lips as Marius’s words washed over him. “You could not have saved them, Combeferre, not on that barricade. Not even with all the miracles of the angels and the physicians on your side. Their wounds were too many and too grave. And I tell you now what I should have told you that day in 1833 -- it was not your fault they died.” He paused before adding, “But there are others who need never face that same fate -- if only you would fight for them, would fight with them. With us.”
Marius did not wait for Combeferre to reply, instead placing his hat back on his head and striding towards the door, pausing to turn and tell Combeferre, “You are worth more as a fighter than what you have become. And if you would change your mind, if you would fight for the future we sought all those years ago, meet me this evening at my house and I will bring you to a banquet where we still raise our glasses to Liberté, Egalité, and Fraternité.”
“And if I do not?”
Marius hesitated for only a moment. “Then you are no longer the man who once told me that better than all the glorious empires in the world is simply this: to be free.”
The butler hurried to answer the knock at the Pontmercy’s door, but Baron Pontmercy reached the door first. “A thousand apologies, sir,” the butler said, a little irritated, but Marius waved him off.
“A personal matter,” he said with an apologetic smile. “No need to apologize, just someone I will attend to myself.”
He opened the door to reveal Combeferre, who met his smile with a wary look. “I came,” Combeferre said unnecessarily.
Marius beamed at him. “And how very glad I am that you did.”
When the barricades did again rise, Combeferre, despite his misgivings, despite his guilt, still fought on the side of the people. It was, in a way, the only means he could see of honoring the eight men who should also have been fighting at his side, who should have lived to see the Republic become a reality once more.
As soon as elections for a Constituent Assembly were scheduled, Combeferre knew this fight, or at least his part in it, was over. He sought Marius, whom he had briefly seen on a barricade, waving his swordcane in a way that reminded Combeferre of Courfeyrac. Once the memory would have been painful, but it was an old wound now, and hurt him no more than the three scars on his chest.
In true Pontmercy style, even though he was older now, Marius, who had been walking with Cosette, abandoned her as soon as he saw Combeferre down the street, running to meet him. “We won!” Marius told him, grinning and a little out of breath.
Combeferre fought the urge to roll his eyes and settled for nodding. “We did.”
“What will you do now? Will you return to your books?” Marius did not ask the question unkindly, and Combeferre shook his head, watching over Marius’s shoulder as Cosette, no less lovely despite the years, approached, a look of resigned exasperation on her face.
“No, I think not,” Combeferre said, looking away from Cosette and focusing again on Marius, feeling drained even if at last he knew what his future held, and where it would take him. “I was looking in my books for a way to change the past, but now is the time to focus on the future. And I have you to thank for that.”
Marius frowned slightly, his brow furrowed as if he wished to protest, but instead, he inclined his head slightly in understanding, though Combeferre knew that Marius would never fully understand: Combeferre sought what Marius had found so long ago in Cosette -- a bridge from his past to his future that would heal him instead of wounding him further. “Then what will you do?”
Combeferre shrugged. “I have heard of a young professor at the University of Strasbourg. They say the work he is doing in chemistry is nothing short of revolutionary.” His lips twitched at the choice of word. “I thought I might head in that direction, see what I could learn, help advance medical practices.” He glanced around. “I do not believe Paris holds what I seek now.”
For a moment, Marius hesitated, then he withdrew from his pocket a folded piece of paper which looked at thought it had been torn from a newspaper. “If you are heading west, I recommend you read this, and possibly seek the author. I imagine you would have much to discuss.”
Combeferre unfolded the paper, scanning it quickly, struck by how pertinent the words seemed in that moment. “Medicine is a social science,” he read aloud, “and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale. Medicine, as a social science, as the science of human beings, has the obligation to point out problems and attempt their theoretical solution: the politician, the practical anthropologist, must find the means for their actual solution… If medicine is to fulfill her great task, then she must enter the political and social life… The physicians are the natural attorneys of the poor, and the social problems should largely be solved by them.” He looked up at Marius. “What is this from?”
“A newspaper called Die medicinische Reform, published by a German,” Marius told him. “I only just obtained a translation.”
Combeferre glanced down at the paper in his hand. “But you speak German, do you not?”
“I do,” Marius said, smiling slightly. “But you do not. And I had a feeling you would need to read this more than I.” With that, he tipped his hat to Combeferre and told him, sincerity clear in his voice, “I wish you all the luck in the world.”
“It is not luck I need,” Combeferre told him, smiling for what felt like the first time in years. “Not for what I seek.”
Marius’s smile widened. “And what is it you seek?” he asked, though judging by his expression, he already knew the answer.
“To be free.”