Ob 25sep13 bz

Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, September 25, 2013 - Page 13

Observer Classic Books

r

e rv S se U N Ob N IO BO CT SE

www.MelbourneObserver.com.au

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo BOOK FIFTEENTH.— THE RUE DE L’HOMME ARME CHAPTER II THE STREET URCHIN AN ENEMY OF LIGHT Continued From Last Week

“Give it to me,” said Jean Valjean.

Gavroche held the paper elevated above his head.

“Don’t go and fancy it’s a love letter. It is for a woman, but it’s for the people. We men fight and we respect the fair sex. We are not as they are in fine society, where there are lions who send chickens55 to camels.”

55 Love letters.

“Give it to me.”

“After all,” continued Gavroche, “you have the air of an honest man.”

“Give it to me quick.”

“Catch hold of it.”

And he handed the paper to Jean Valjean.

“And make haste, Monsieur What’s-your-name, for Mamselle Cosette is waiting.”

Gavroche was satisfied with himself for having produced this remark.

Jean Valjean began again:— “Is it to Saint–Merry that the answer is to be sent?”

“There you are making some of those bits of pastry vulgarly called brioches [blunders]. This letter comes from the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and I’m going back there. Good evening, citizen.”

That said, Gavroche took himself off, or, to describe it more exactly, fluttered away in the direction whence he had come with a flight like that of an escaped bird. He plunged back into the gloom as though he made a hole in it, with the rigid rapidity of a projectile; the alley of l’Homme Arme became silent and solitary once more; in a twinkling, that strange child, who had about him something of the shadow and of the dream, had buried himself in the mists of the rows of black houses, and was lost there, like smoke in the dark; and one might have thought that he had dissipated and vanished, had there not taken place, a few minutes after his disappearance, a startling shiver of glass, and had not the magnificent crash of a lantern rattling down on the pavement once more abruptly awakened the indignant bourgeois. It was Gavroche upon his way through the Rue du Chaume.

CHAPTER iii WHILE COSETTE AND TOUSSAINT ARE ASLEEP

Jean Valjean went into the house with Marius’ letter.

He groped his way up the stairs, as pleased with the darkness as an owl who grips his prey, opened and shut his door softly, listened to see whether he could hear any noise,— made sure that, to all appearances, Cosette and Toussaint were asleep, and plunged three or four matches into the bottle of the Fumade lighter before he could evoke a spark, so greatly did his hand tremble. What he had just done smacked of theft. At last the candle was lighted; he leaned his elbows on the table, unfolded the paper, and read.

In violent emotions, one does not read, one flings to the earth, so to speak, the paper which one holds, one clutches it like a victim, one crushes it, one digs into it the nails of one’s wrath, or of one’s joy; one hastens to the end, one leaps to the beginning; attention is at fever heat; it takes up in the gross, as it were, the essential points; it seizes on one point, and the rest disappears. In Marius’ note to Cosette, Jean Valjean saw only these words:— “I die. When thou readest this, my soul will be near thee.”

In the presence of these two lines, he was horribly dazzled; he remained for a moment, crushed, as it were, by the change of emotion which was taking place within him, he stared at Marius’ note with a sort of intoxicated amazement, he had before his eyes that splendor, the death of a hated individual.

He uttered a frightful cry of inward joy. So it was all over. The catastrophe had arrived sooner than he had dared to hope. The being who obstructed his destiny was disappearing. That man had taken himself off of his own accord, freely, willingly.

This man was going to his death, and he, Jean

● Victor Hugo Valjean, had had no hand in the matter, and it was through no fault of his. Perhaps, even, he is already dead. Here his fever entered into calculations. No, he is not dead yet. The letter had evidently been intended for Cosette to read on the following morning; after the two discharges that were heard between eleven o’clock and midnight, nothing more has taken place; the barricade will not be attacked seriously until daybreak; but that makes no difference, from the moment when “that man” is concerned in this war, he is lost; he is caught in the gearing. Jean Valjean felt himself delivered. So he was about to find himself alone with Cosette once more. The rivalry would cease; the future was beginning again. He had but to keep this note in his pocket. Cosette would never know what had become of that man.

All that there requires to be done is to let things take their own course. This man cannot escape.

If he is not already dead, it is certain that he is about to die. What good fortune!

Having said all this to himself, he became gloomy.

Then he went down stairs and woke up the porter.

About an hour later, Jean Valjean went out in the complete costume of a National Guard, and with his arms. The porter had easily found in the neighborhood the wherewithal to complete his equipment. He had a loaded gun and a cartridge-box filled with cartridges.

He strode off in the direction of the markets.

CHAPTER iV GAVROCHE’S EXCESS OF ZEAL In the meantime, Gavroche had had an adventure.

Gavroche, after having conscientiously stoned the lantern in the Rue du Chaume, entered the Rue des Vielles–Haudriettes, and not seeing “even a cat” there, he thought the opportunity a good one to strike up all the song of which he was capable.

His march, far from being retarded by his singing, was accelerated by it. He began to sow along the sleeping or terrified houses these incendiary couplets:— “L’oiseau medit dans les charmilles, Et pretend qu’hier Atala Avec un Russe s’en alla.

Ou vont les belles filles, Lon la.

“Mon ami Pierrot, tu babilles, Parce que l’autre jour Mila Cogna sa vitre et m’appela, Ou vont les belles filles, Lon la.

“Les drolesses sont fort gentilles, Leur poison qui m’ensorcela Griserait Monsieur Orfila.

Ou vont les belles filles, Lon la.

“J’aime l’amour et les bisbilles, J’aime Agnes, j’aime Pamela, Lisa en m’allumant se brula.

Ou vont les belles filles, Lon la.

“Jadis, quand je vis les mantilles De Suzette et de Zeila, Mon ame aleurs plis se mela, Ou vont les belles filles, Lon la.

“Amour, quand dans l’ombre ou tu brilles, Tu coiffes de roses Lola, Je me damnerais pour cela.

Ou vont les belles filles, Lon la.

“Jeanne a ton miroir tu t’habilles!

Mon coeur un beau jour s’envola.

Je crois que c’est Jeanne qui l’a.

Ou vont les belles filles, Lon la.

“Le soir, en sortant des quadrilles, Je montre aux etoiles Stella, Et je leur dis: ‘Regardez-la.’

Ou vont les belles filles, Lon la.”56 56“The bird slanders in the elms, And pretends that yesterday, Atala Went off with a Russian, Where fair maids go.

Lon la.

My friend Pierrot, thou pratest, because Mila knocked at her pane the other day and called me.

The jades are very charming, their poison which bewitched me would intoxicate Monsieur Orfila.

I’m fond of love and its bickerings, I love Agnes, I love Pamela, Lise burned herself in setting me aflame. In former days when I saw the mantillas of Suzette and of Zeila, my soul mingled with

their folds. Love, when thou gleamest in the dark thou crownest Lola with roses, I would lose my soul for that. Jeanne, at thy mirror thou deckest thyself! One fine day, my heart flew forth. I think that it is Jeanne who has it. At night, when I come from the quadrilles, I show Stella to the stars, and I say to them: “Behold her.” Where fair maids go, lon la.

Gavroche, as he sang, was lavish of his pantomime. Gesture is the strong point of the refrain.

His face, an inexhaustible repertory of masks, produced grimaces more convulsing and more fantastic than the rents of a cloth torn in a high gale. Unfortunately, as he was alone, and as it was night, this was neither seen nor even visible.

Such wastes of riches do occur.

All at once, he stopped short.

“Let us interrupt the romance,” said he.

His feline eye had just descried, in the recess of a carriage door, what is called in painting, an ensemble, that is to say, a person and a thing; the thing was a hand-cart, the person was a man from Auvergene who was sleeping therein.

The shafts of the cart rested on the pavement, and the Auvergnat’s head was supported against the front of the cart. His body was coiled up on this inclined plane and his feet touched the ground.

Gavroche, with his experience of the things of this world, recognized a drunken man. He was some corner errand-man who had drunk too much and was sleeping too much.

“There now,” thought Gavroche, “that’s what the summer nights are good for. We’ll take the cart for the Republic, and leave the Auvergnat for the Monarchy.”

His mind had just been illuminated by this flash of light:— “How bully that cart would look on our barricade!”

The Auvergnat was snoring.

Gavroche gently tugged at the cart from behind, and at the Auvergnat from the front, that is to say, by the feet, and at the expiration of another minute the imperturbable Auvergnat was reposing flat on the pavement.

The cart was free.

Gavroche, habituated to facing the unexpected in all quarters, had everything about him. He fumbled in one of his pockets, and pulled from it a scrap of paper and a bit of red pencil filched from some carpenter.

He wrote:— “French Republic.”

“Received thy cart.”

And he signed it: “GAVROCHE.” That done, he put the paper in the pocket of the still snoring Auvergnat’s velvet vest, seized the cart shafts in both hands, and set off in the direction of the Halles, pushing the cart before him at a hard gallop with a glorious and triumphant uproar.

This was perilous. There was a post at the Royal Printing Establishment. Gavroche did not think of this. This post was occupied by the National Guards of the suburbs. The squad began to wake up, and heads were raised from camp beds. Two street lanterns broken in succession, that ditty sung at the top of the lungs. This was a great deal for those cowardly streets, which desire to go to sleep at sunset, and which put the extinguisher on their candles at such an early hour. For the last hour, that boy had been creating an uproar in that peaceable arrondissement, the uproar of a fly in a bottle.

The sergeant of the banlieue lent an ear. He waited. He was a prudent man.

The mad rattle of the cart, filled to overflowing the possible measure of waiting, and decided the sergeant to make a reconnaisance.

“There’s a whole band of them there!” said he, “let us proceed gently.”

It was clear that the hydra of anarchy had emerged from its box and that it was stalking abroad through the quarter.

And the sergeant ventured out of the post with cautious tread.

All at once, Gavroche, pushing his cart in front of him, and at the very moment when he was about to turn into the Rue des Vielles–Haudriettes, found himself face to face with a uniform, a shako, a plume, and a gun.

For the second time, he stopped short.

“Hullo,” said he, “it’s him. Good day, public order.”

Continued on Page 14

Page 14 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, September 25, 2013

From Page 13 Gavroche’s amazement was always brief and speedily thawed.

“Where are you going, you rascal?” shouted the sergeant.

“Citizen,” retorted Gavroche, “I haven’t called you ‘bourgeois’ yet. Why do you insult me?”

“Where are you going, you rogue?”

“Monsieur,” retorted Gavroche, “perhaps you were a man of wit yesterday, but you have degenerated this morning.”

“I ask you where are you going, you villain?”

Gavroche replied:— “You speak prettily. Really, no one would suppose you as old as you are. You ought to sell all your hair at a hundred francs apiece. That would yield you five hundred francs.”

“Where are you going? Where are you going?

Where are you going, bandit?”

Gavroche retorted again:— “What villainous words! You must wipe your mouth better the first time that they give you suck.”

The sergeant lowered his bayonet.

“Will you tell me where you are going, you wretch?”

“General,” said Gavroche “I’m on my way to look for a doctor for my wife who is in labor.”

“To arms!” shouted the sergeant.

The master-stroke of strong men consists in saving themselves by the very means that have ruined them; Gavroche took in the whole situation at a glance. It was the cart which had told against him, it was the cart’s place to protect him.

At the moment when the sergeant was on the point of making his descent on Gavroche, the cart, converted into a projectile and launched with all the latter’s might, rolled down upon him furiously, and the sergeant, struck full in the stomach, tumbled over backwards into the gutter while his gun went off in the air.

The men of the post had rushed out pell-mell at the sergeant’s shout; the shot brought on a general random discharge, after which they reloaded their weapons and began again.

This blind-man’s-buff musketry lasted for a quarter of an hour and killed several panes of glass.

In the meanwhile, Gavroche, who had retraced his steps at full speed, halted five or six streets distant and seated himself, panting, on the stone post which forms the corner of the Enfants– Rouges.

He listened.

After panting for a few minutes, he turned in the direction where the fusillade was raging, lifted his left hand to a level with his nose and thrust it forward three times, as he slapped the back of his head with his right hand; an imperious gesture in which Parisian street-urchindom has condensed French irony, and which is evidently efficacious, since it has already lasted half a century.

This gayety was troubled by one bitter reflection.

“Yes,” said he, “I’m splitting with laughter, I’m twisting with delight, I abound in joy, but I’m losing my way, I shall have to take a roundabout way.

If I only reach the barricade in season!”

Thereupon he set out again on a run.

And as he ran:— “Ah, by the way, where was I?” said he.

And he resumed his ditty, as he plunged rapidly through the streets, and this is what died away in the gloom:— “Mais il reste encore des bastilles, Et je vais mettre le hola Dans l’orde public que voila.

Ou vont les belles filles, Lon la.

“Quelqu’un veut-il jouer aux quilles?

Tout l’ancien monde s’ecroula Quand la grosse boule roula.

Ou vont les belles filles, Lon la.

“Vieux bon peuple, a coups de bequilles, Cassons ce Louvre ou s’etala La monarchie en falbala.

Ou vont les belles filles, Lon la.

“Nous en avons force les grilles, Le roi Charles–Dix ce jour la, Tenait mal et se decolla.

Ou vont les belles filles, Lon la.”57 57 But some prisons still remain, and I am going to put a stop to this sort of public order. Does any one wish to play at skittles? The whole ancient world fell in ruin, when the big ball rolled. Good old folks, let us smash with our crutches that Louvre where the monarchy displayed itself in furbelows. We have forced its gates. On that day, King Charles X. did not stick well and came unglued.

www.MelbourneObserver.com.au

Observer Classic Books The post’s recourse to arms was not without result. The cart was conquered, the drunken man was taken prisoner. The first was put in the pound, the second was later on somewhat harassed before the councils of war as an accomplice. The public ministry of the day proved its indefatigable zeal in the defence of society, in this instance.

Gavroche’s adventure, which has lingered as a tradition in the quarters of the Temple, is one of the most terrible souvenirs of the elderly bourgeois of the Marais, and is entitled in their memories: “The nocturnal attack by the post of the Royal Printing Establishment.”

VOLUME V - JEAN VALJEAN BOOK FIRST. THE WALL BETWEEN FOUR WALLS. CHAPTER I THE CHARYBDIS OF THE FAUBOURG SAINT ANTOINE AND THE SCYLLA OF THE FAUBOURG DU TEMPLE The two most memorable barricades which the observer of social maladies can name do not belong to the period in which the action of this work is laid. These two barricades, both of them symbols, under two different aspects, of a redoubtable situation, sprang from the earth at the time of the fatal insurrection of June, 1848, the greatest war of the streets that history has ever beheld.

It sometimes happens that, even contrary to principles, even contrary to liberty, equality, and fraternity, even contrary to the universal vote, even contrary to the government, by all for all, from the depths of its anguish, of its discouragements and its destitutions, of its fevers, of its distresses, of its miasmas, of its ignorances, of its darkness, that great and despairing body, the rabble, protests against, and that the populace wages battle against, the people.

Beggars attack the common right; the ochlocracy rises against demos.

These are melancholy days; for there is always a certain amount of night even in this madness, there is suicide in this duel, and those words which are intended to be insults — beggars, canaille, ochlocracy, populace — exhibit, alas! rather the fault of those who reign than the fault of those who suffer; rather the fault of the privileged than the fault of the disinherited.

For our own part, we never pronounce those words without pain and without respect, for when philosophy fathoms the facts to which they correspond, it often finds many a grandeur beside these miseries. Athens was an ochlocracy; the beggars were the making of Holland; the populace saved Rome more than once; and the rabble followed Jesus Christ.

There is no thinker who has not at times contemplated the magnificences of the lower classes.

It was of this rabble that Saint Jerome was thinking, no doubt, and of all these poor people and all these vagabonds and all these miserable people whence sprang the apostles and the martyrs, when he uttered this mysterious saying: “Fex urbis, lex orbis,”— the dregs of the city, the law of the earth.

The exasperations of this crowd which suffers and bleeds, its violences contrary to all sense, directed against the principles which are its life, its masterful deeds against the right, are its popular coups d’etat and should be repressed. The man of probity sacrifices himself, and out of his very love for this crowd, he combats it. But how excusable he feels it even while holding out against it! How he venerates it even while resisting it! This is one of those rare moments when, while doing that which it is one’s duty to do, one feels something which disconcerts one, and which would dissuade one from proceeding further; one persists, it is necessary, but conscience, though satisfied, is sad, and the accomplishment of duty is complicated with a pain at the heart.

June, 1848, let us hasten to say, was an exceptional fact, and almost impossible of classification, in the philosophy of history. All the words which we have just uttered, must be discarded, when it becomes a question of this extraordinary revolt, in which one feels the holy anxiety of toil claiming its rights. It was necessary to combat it, and this was a duty, for it attacked the republic.

But what was June, 1848, at bottom? A revolt of the people against itself.

Where the subject is not lost sight of, there is no digression; may we, then, be permitted to arrest the reader’s attention for a moment on the two absolutely unique barricades of which we have just spoken and which characterized this insurrection.

One blocked the entrance to the Faubourg Saint Antoine; the other defended the approach to the

Faubourg du Temple; those before whom these two fearful masterpieces of civil war reared themselves beneath the brilliant blue sky of June, will never forget them.

The Saint–Antoine barricade was tremendous; it was three stories high, and seven hundred feet wide. It barred the vast opening of the faubourg, that is to say, three streets, from angle to angle; ravined, jagged, cut up, divided, crenelated, with an immense rent, buttressed with piles that were bastions in themselves throwing out capes here and there, powerfully backed up by two great promontories of houses of the faubourg, it reared itself like a cyclopean dike at the end of the formidable place which had seen the 14th of July. Nineteen barricades were ranged, one behind the other, in the depths of the streets behind this principal barricade. At the very sight of it, one felt the agonizing suffering in the immense faubourg, which had reached that point of extremity when a distress may become a catastrophe. Of what was that barricade made? Of the ruins of three six-story houses demolished expressly, said some. Of the prodigy of all wraths, said others. It wore the lamentable aspect of all constructions of hatred, ruin. It might be asked: Who built this? It might also be said: Who destroyed this? It was the improvisation of the ebullition. Hold! take this door! this grating! this penthouse! this chimney-piece! this broken brazier! this cracked pot! Give all! cast away all! Push this roll, dig, dismantle, overturn, ruin everything! It was the collaboration of the pavement, the block of stone, the beam, the bar of iron, the rag, the scrap, the broken pane, the unseated chair, the cabbage-stalk, the tatter, the rag, and the malediction. It was grand and it was petty. It was the abyss parodied on the public place by hubbub. The mass beside the atom; the strip of ruined wall and the broken bowl,— threatening fraternization of every sort of rubbish.

Sisyphus had thrown his rock there and Job his potsherd. Terrible, in short. It was the acropolis of the barefooted. Overturned carts broke the uniformity of the slope; an immense dray was spread out there crossways, its axle pointing heavenward, and seemed a scar on that tumultuous facade; an omnibus hoisted gayly, by main force, to the very summit of the heap, as though the architects of this bit of savagery had wished to add a touch of the street urchin humor to their terror, presented its horseless, unharnessed pole to no one knows what horses of the air. This gigantic heap, the alluvium of the revolt, figured to the mind an Ossa on Pelion of all revolutions; ‘93 on ‘89, the 9th of Thermidor on the 10th of August, the 18th of Brumaire on the 11th of January, Vendemiaire on Prairial, 1848 on 1830. The situation deserved the trouble and this barricade was worthy to figure on the very spot whence the Bastille had disappeared.

If the ocean made dikes, it is thus that it would build. The fury of the flood was stamped upon this shapeless mass. What flood? The crowd. One thought one beheld hubbub petrified. One thought one heard humming above this barricade as though there had been over their hive, enormous, dark bees of violent progress. Was it a thicket? Was it a bacchanalia? Was it a fortress? Vertigo seemed to have constructed it with blows of its wings.

There was something of the cess-pool in that redoubt and something Olympian in that confusion.

One there beheld in a pell-mell full of despair, the rafters of roofs, bits of garret windows with their figured paper, window sashes with their glass planted there in the ruins awaiting the cannon, wrecks of chimneys, cupboards, tables, benches, howling topsyturveydom, and those thousand poverty-stricken things, the very refuse of the mendicant, which contain at the same time fury and nothingness. One would have said that it was the tatters of a people, rags of wood, of iron, of bronze, of stone, and that the Faubourg Saint Antoine had thrust it there at its door, with a colossal flourish of the broom making of its misery its barricade.

Blocks resembling headsman’s blocks, dislocated chains, pieces of woodwork with brackets having the form of gibbets, horizontal wheels projecting from the rubbish, amalgamated with this edifice of anarchy the sombre figure of the old tortures endured by the people. The barricade Saint Antoine converted everything into a weapon; everything that civil war could throw at the head of society proceeded thence; it was not combat, it was a paroxysm; the carbines which defended this redoubt, among which there were some blunderbusses, sent bits of earthenware bones, coat-buttons, even the casters from night-stands, dangerous projectiles on account of the brass. This barricade was furious; it hurled to the clouds an inexpressible clamor; at certain moments, when provoking the army, it was covered with throngs

and tempest; a tumultuous crowd of flaming heads crowned it; a swarm filled it; it had a thorny crest of guns, of sabres, of cudgels, of axes, of pikes and of bayonets; a vast red flag flapped in the wind; shouts of command, songs of attack, the roll of drums, the sobs of women and bursts of gloomy laughter from the starving were to be heard there. It was huge and living, and, like the back of an electric beast, there proceeded from it little flashes of lightning. The spirit of revolution covered with its cloud this summit where rumbled that voice of the people which resembles the voice of God; a strange majesty was emitted by this titanic basket of rubbish. It was a heap of filth and it was Sinai.

As we have said previously, it attacked in the name of the revolution — what? The revolution.

It — that barricade, chance, hazard, disorder, terror, misunderstanding, the unknown — had facing it the Constituent Assembly, the sovereignty of the people, universal suffrage, the nation, the republic; and it was the Carmagnole bidding defiance to the Marseillaise.

Immense but heroic defiance, for the old faubourg is a hero.

The faubourg and its redoubt lent each other assistance. The faubourg shouldered the redoubt, the redoubt took its stand under cover of the faubourg.

The vast barricade spread out like a cliff against which the strategy of the African generals dashed itself. Its caverns, its excrescences, its warts, its gibbosities, grimaced, so to speak, and grinned beneath the smoke. The mitraille vanished in shapelessness; the bombs plunged into it; bullets only succeeded in making holes in it; what was the use of cannonading chaos? and the regiments, accustomed to the fiercest visions of war, gazed with uneasy eyes on that species of redoubt, a wild beast in its boar-like bristling and a mountain by its enormous size.

A quarter of a league away, from the corner of the Rue du Temple which debouches on the boulevard near the Chateaud’Eau, if one thrust one’s head bodily beyond the point formed by the front of the Dallemagne shop, one perceived in the distance, beyond the canal, in the street which mounts the slopes of Belleville at the culminating point of the rise, a strange wall reaching to the second story of the house fronts, a sort of hyphen between the houses on the right and the houses on the left, as though the street had folded back on itself its loftiest wall in order to close itself abruptly. This wall was built of paving-stones. It was straight, correct, cold, perpendicular, levelled with the square, laid out by rule and line. Cement was lacking, of course, but, as in the case of certain Roman walls, without interfering with its rigid architecture. The entablature was mathematically parallel with the base. From distance to distance, one could distinguish on the gray surface, almost invisible loopholes which resembled black threads.

These loopholes were separated from each other by equal spaces. The street was deserted as far as the eye could reach. All windows and doors were closed. In the background rose this barrier, which made a blind thoroughfare of the street, a motionless and tranquil wall; no one was visible, nothing was audible; not a cry, not a sound, not a breath. A sepulchre.

The dazzling sun of June inundated this terrible thing with light.

It was the barricade of the Faubourg of the Temple.

As soon as one arrived on the spot, and caught sight of it, it was impossible, even for the boldest, not to become thoughtful before this mysterious apparition. It was adjusted, jointed, imbricated, rectilinear, symmetrical and funereal. Science and gloom met there. One felt that the chief of this barricade was a geometrician or a spectre.

One looked at it and spoke low.

From time to time, if some soldier, an officer or representative of the people, chanced to traverse the deserted highway, a faint, sharp whistle was heard, and the passer-by fell dead or wounded, or, if he escaped the bullet, sometimes a biscaien was seen to ensconce itself in some closed shutter, in the interstice between two blocks of stone, or in the plaster of a wall. For the men in the barricade had made themselves two small cannons out of two cast-iron lengths of gas-pipe, plugged up at one end with tow and fire-clay.

There was no waste of useless powder. Nearly every shot told. There were corpses here and there, and pools of blood on the pavement. I remember a white butterfly which went and came in the street. Summer does not abdicate.

In the neighborhood, the spaces beneath the portes cocheres were encumbered with wounded.

Continued on Page 103

www.MelbourneObserver.com.au

Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, September 25, 2013 - Page 15

er N rv se IO Ob CT SE 2

Melbourne

Observer Magazine

BAZ LUHRMANN Interview with JAMES SHERLOCK ■ Australian director, screenwriter and producer Mark Anthony ‘Baz’ Luhrmann has come a long way since he appeared in small roles in such early 1980's films as Winter Of Our Dreams and The Dark Room, and on our TV screens in A Country Practice.

The young boy from the small country town of Herons Creek in NSW would sit mesmerised by the flickering images of such films like Lawrence Of Arabia and Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid on his local cinema screen projected by his father in the early 1960s, and it was here that would prove to be the beacon in what would become an extraordinary filmmaking career.

He is best known for the flamboyant Red Curtain Trilogy, which includes his films Strictly Ballroom, William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge for which he received and Academy Award nomination.

In 2008, he released his film Australia, starring Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman, and now his new creation, The Great Gatsby has defied many critics with the most successful opening for an Australian film in Australian cinema history and proving a box office hit around the world.

With The Great Gatsby he has achieved the ultimate realisation of an almost unfilmable novel. I t is what going to the cinema is all about, a pulse-pounding feast of sight and sound in every way, a breathtaking spectacle unlike anything that has been made before and in a class all by itself.

It is an eloquent, a moving and haunting experience that is destined to become a classic in the true sense of the word! An extraordinary cinematic achievement!

Married to set and costume designer Catherine Martin and with two children, his favourite films include Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot and Sunset Boulevard, Bob Fosse's Star 80, Sergey Bondarchuk's Russian epic War And Peace, Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool and Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, to name a few.

The Great Gatsby is a layer cake, clearly driven by his passion for storytelling and the cinema he so fondly grew up on.

Baz Luhrmann is still very much that young boy from a tiny country town in New South Wales mesmerised by the images of his screen idols flickering across the old cinema screen, and not unlike F. Scott Fitzgerald's creation Jay Gatsby, he had the passion and determination to become what he once dreamed.

I caught up with Baz to talk about The Great Gatsby and here's what he had to say: You must be very proud of the end results and success of The Great Gatsby?

The director of The Great Gatsby chats with James Sherlock of the Melbourne Observer Absolutely! Of all of the Australian crew of all of the Australian cast, the whole city of Sydney, actually the whole country, and all of that great support.

When you think, for so long, that Hollywood, the American filmmaking centre, taking Russian and foreign classics and making films out of them, now we've taken an American classic and made a film right here in Australia, then I'm really proud of all of those people that gave so much and over came so many obsticles to make the film, I'm really happy for them.

How difficult was it putting together the balance between the film and the iconic music of the Jazz Age for audiences today?

In the time of Jazz, it was this new African-American street music. It was dangerous, it was considered really edgy. They lived in the Jazz Age and we live in the Hip Hop Age, and I had a very intimate collaboration with Jay Z for two years and we worked very closely together. I was able to blend it with traditional Jazz and that traditional Jazz is by Bryan Ferry and the Bryan Ferry Jazz Orchestra, and that is a new album coming out in the next couple of weeks. So there are two albums, there's the Jazz one and there's the kind of Hip Hop one.

Your passion for cinema and that vision as a young boy is very prominent throughout: I grew up in a very small country town in the middle of nowhere with 11 houses. And at one stage my father helped project the movies.

And sitting in that bio box and seeing tins of Lawrence Of Arabia or Hello Dolly arrive, and in those days James, you probably remember, the curtains used to open and God Save The Queen

● Baz Luhrmann came on.

We had to stand up wait for God Save The Queen, and then the curtain opened and I entered into the magic of the movies. That was the beacon for me.

You can imagine being in the middle of nowhere and being in this old cinema, and my father actually projecting them and seeing the machines project the footage, and there's films like Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid and Robert Redford, the coolest man in the world, who consequently went on to play The Great Gatsby in the earlier production.

Have you ever seen the 1926 silent version of The Great Gatsby?

You know that that film is completely lost and I've looked for it everywhere. You know what James? I think I'm right. I just saw photographs, I'm pretty sure of The Regent cinema in Melbourne with 1920s cars lined up outside, people arriving to see The Great Gatsby dressed up in the costumes of the period, and arriving in 1920's cars. And it blew my mind!

Why do you think The Great Gatsby still resonates with people today?

I think the story in the book resonates with audiences at all times, but particularly today because is about a decadent world that comes to a terrible crash. And it's also, with the main character Nick Carraway, gives up his desire to be a writer, goes it pursuit of making money on Wall Street and ends up realizing he should have a life of purpose.

There' nothing wrong with a little bit of partying, and there's nothing wrong with a great suit, and there's nothing wrong with a bit of materialism, but you've got to have a purpose and a cause to your life.

And I think the bad idea, we've gone through that crash in 2008, and I finally said no I've got to do it. Even though it's lush and entertaining and we get all wrapped up with the parties, I hope it leaves a feeling that you've got to have a point and a purpose to your life.

Was Jay Gatsby sitting in the shadows waiting for you to come along and make this?

The thing is this. I was on a train after Moulin Rouge, travelling through Siberia and I was about to meet my wife and child, and I had a recorded book of The Great Gatsby and a bottle of Australian red wine.

And I thought I'm just going to sit here and listen to this book in my private cabin, which was not very comfortable, and I listened to it straight through for five hours and I couldn't wait to finish it off and I just realised if I could crack the inner voice of Nick Carraway there's a movie that hadn't yet been made in a particular way.

I just couldn't let it go. It's what you said James, it couldn't let me go, I just couldn't get away from it. And now it is done.

Your skill and vision of The Great Gatsby now compares you with the likes of Billy Wilder: I think Billy Wilder is one of the great storytellers. You know, any film is a very tough undertaking and no one sets out to make a bad film. So when you think of someone like Billy Wilder whose range, I mean the thing with Wilder is that he could do anything really. So I'm tremendously honoured. It fact I only happened to be looking at Some Like It Hot about three days ago.

Was the underlying theme that carried his passion for cinema intentional?

It is an underlying theme. When you speak about Billy Wilder, it's my passion for cinema of a certain kind.

That kind of cinema, which is participatory cinema, I have a passion for that older cinema where you kind of know the journey you're going on, but it's how you're taken on the journey that counts. And Billy Wilder was a master of that.

My films are designed to see more than once, they're like layer cakes. So yes, you're right.

You would have seen certain winks and nods of famous classic cinematic moments in the movie. I'm always celebrating the films that made up my DNA that I saw in that little movie house, all those classics.

Was filming The Great Gatsby in 3D inspired by Alfred Hitchcock and Dial M For Murder?

Total inspiration! Jim Cameron showed me everything he was doing with 3D before he did Avatar. I was think about doing Australia in it but it wasn't financially viable.

Then I saw at Warner Bros. the old reels of Dial M For Murder in 3D and I saw actors acting in 3D. When you see Grace Kelly in that beautiful frock just walking around a room and acting, it wasn't about things coming out at you, it was just acting in the space, you recognize that it's an active medium. Hitchcock's film was the total inspiration for this film in 3D. By filming in 3D were you inviting the audience into the the world of Jay Gatsby's story?

You're so right to use that language.

Because what Hitchcock does, and you've seen it, and when you see it in 3D it's a bit like the theatre.

He says come and be absorbed in this, it's almost like he gestures you in, whereas 3D is being used mostly with things coming out and flashing you.

When Leonardo through Nick's perspective is revealed, you'll literally be invited by Gatsby into his world, into his mind and into his story.

Did any surprises occur for you throughout all this?

But the most beautiful thing that happened to me, I was at the opening in New York and this very regal woman just came out of the shadows and said "I've come all the way from Connecticut to see what you did with my Grandfather's book." And of course I went very cold, because it was the Granddaughter of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

And she said: "you know, I think he would have been proud of this film.

Because people have said for so long that you can't make his first person narrative work as a piece of the movies, and he loved the movies."

So one can't ever tell if he would like it or not. And she said: "by the way" and she was quite regal, "I loved the music."

She was pretty happy. Of everything that's happened James, that has moved me the most. I didn't know her at all, she just came out of the shadows.

- James Sherlock

Page 16 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, September 25, 2013

www.MelbourneObserver.com.au

WATCH THIS SPACE Quotes from Barry's ancestor, Niccolo Machiavelli: “Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great. ” "It is best to be both feared and loved; however, if one cannot be both it is better to be feared than loved.”

BARRY MCVILLY IS AWAY ...

HUNTING! A quote from Barry's ancestor, Niccolo Machiavelli: "It is much safer to be feared than loved because ... love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.”

BARRY MCVILLY PTY LTD

www.MelbourneObserver.com.au

Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, September 25, 2013 - Page 17

Spring is here and the flowers are blooming...

Do you know the language of flowers? viscaria dance with me rosebud an innocent heart orchid female power and pride white chrysanthemum honesty red chrysanthemum a proposition violet chrysanthemum I wish you well

Celebrate the

iris your friendship means so much to me

Spring Racing season with gorgeous flowers from Torb & Reiner.

Make your own gorgeous headpiece for the races!

red camellia you're a flame in my heart pink camellia I long for you white camellia I adore you purple rose enchantment yellow lily I'm walking on air tigerlily wealth and pride white lily purity calla lily beauty red tulip true love

purple tulip royalty x Leading Melbourne millinery supplier striped tulip beautiful eyes x Get help from our friendly staff white tulip please forgive me x Flower-making workshops yellow tulip there's sunshine in your smile orange tulip wamth, happiness and fascination x Huge range of silk flowers daffodil the sun is always shining when I'm with you

101 Poath Road Murrumbeena 3163 T: (03) 9504 4476 or (03) 9568 1166 E: info@torbandreiner.com

www.torbandreiner.com

Page 18 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, September 25, 2013

www.MelbourneObserver.com.au

The Hitch-Hikers guide to Freemasonry A 10-part series. The Final Chapter

By Justin White, Manager, Member Operations

Don Reynolds announced as Deputy Grand Master-Elect 2014 ■ It was announced at the September 2013 Quarterly Communication that Don Reynolds will be the next Deputy Grand Master in 2014.

Don was initiated at Colac Lodge of St John in 1978, passed and raised in 1979 and was Worshipful Master by 1984.

In 1987 he became Junior Grand Deacon within the Grand Lodge Ceremonial Team then Senior Grand Deacon in 1990.

He went on to become Deputy Grand Director of Ceremonies then Grand Director of Ceremonies in 1997, and in 2012 was Senior Grand Warden.

Now with Lodge Amicus, Don has, so far, committed 35 years to Freemasonry, with four special years to come.

● Don Reynolds

Help for Lyla

FREEMASONRY - JUST WHO ARE THE FREEMASONS? That's not a surprising question. Even though Freemasons are members of the largest and oldest fraternity in the world, and even though almost everyone has a father or grandfather or uncle who was a Freemason, many people aren't quite certain just who the Freemasons are or what Freemasonry is about.

The answer is simple. Freemasons are members of a fraternity known as Freemasonry or Masonry. A fraternity is a group of men (just as a sorority is a group of women) who join together because there are things they want to do in the world.

FREEMASONRY EXPLAINED WHAT IS IT? No one knows just how old Freemasonry is because the actual origins have been lost in time.

Probably, it arose from the guilds of stone masons who built the castles and cathedrals of the Middle Ages.

Possibly, they were influenced by the Knights Templar, a group of Christian warrior monks formed in 1118 to help protect pilgrims making trips to the Holy Land.

In 1717, Freemasonry members created a formal organisation in England when the first Grand Lodge was formed. A Grand Lodge is the administrative body in charge of Freemasonry in some geographical area.

Here in Victoria, there is a United Grand Lodge of Freemasonry, which works to administer and co-ordinate local and regional Freemasonry. Freemasonry practised in communities is done so by a group of Freemasons who meet in Lodges. There are Lodges in most towns, and By metropolitan GabrielleMelbourne Forman has many.

WHAT IS A LODGE? The word ‘lodge’ means both a group of Freemasonry members meeting in some place and the roo’ or building in which they meet.

The term ‘lodge’ comes from the structures which the stonemasons built against the sides of the cathedrals during construction. In winter, when building had to stop, they lived in these lodges and worked at carving stone.

If you've ever watched CNN's coverage of the House of Commons in London, you'll notice that the layout is very similar to that of a lodge.

Since Freemasonry came to Australia from England, we still use the English floor plan and English titles for the offices. The Worshipful Master of the Lodge sits in the East. 'Worshipful' is an English term of respect which means the same thing as 'Honourable'.

He is called the Master of the Lodge for the same reason that the leader of an orchestra is called the 'Concert Master'. It's simply an older term for 'Leader'. In other organisations, he would be called 'President'. The Senior and Junior Wardens are the First and Second Vice-Presidents. The Deacons are messengers, and the Stewards have charge of refreshments.

Every lodge has an altar holding a 'Volume of the Sacred Law'. You can find a lodge by going to our website and using our fantastic lodge finder page: http://www.freemasonsvic. net.au/lodge-directory/ There are more than 280 lodges in Victoria for you to choose from.

IS FREEMASONRY A RELIGION? Freemasonry is not a religion. It is nondenominational, and accepts men of any faith.

Its emphasis on a belief of the 'Grand Architect' or a 'Supreme Being', ensures that the Brotherhood of Man follows naturally.

This coupled with the obligation to abide by the Golden Rule, particularly with a fellow Mason, makes for one of the strongest bonds of society that exists. When you meet other Masons, the odds are very high indeed, that they will treat you as you would like to be treated.

We hope you have enjoyed the journey into Freemasonry over these last 10 weeks.

There has never been a better time to become a Freemason here in Victoria. As a result, there is much good information to be found on www.freemasonsvic.net.au For more information about becoming a Freemason or to fill out an application, contact the Freemasons Victoria membership team at membership@freemasonsvic. net.au or call 1800Freemason today!

First Leaders of Freemasonry in Victoria

Rev Dr Albert Thomas Holden, CBE ■ Albert Thomas Holden was born on August 21, 1866 at Geelong, Victoria.

He was educated in Geelong College and matriculated in 1882. He began his professional

● From left: Ian Arrell (IOOB), Cara holding Lyla, David Seymour, Kris holding Blair, Alastair Wright (IOOB) and Danni Centorame of the Royal Freemasons Hospital.

■ On July 17 an appeal was received for as- and the family needed financial support to prosistance from Danni Centorame, an Occu- vide this. pational Therapist at the Royal Childrens’ The Lodges of the Western District were Hospital on behalf of Lyla and her family liv- contacted and an immediate response raised ing in the Western District. more than $5000.

Lyla is 9 months old and has been diagnosed In addition, a Freemason who is also a with Dystonic Quadriplegic Spastic Cere- member of the IOOB, sought the support of bral Palsy. She lives with her mother Cara, that fund raising organisation to the appeal. father Kris and older brother Blair.

On September 4 both organisations presented Lyla requires maximum postural support for the family with cheques to the value of $7034 sitting during feeding, interaction and play. to purchase the Bingo seating system.

The family currently feeds her in their laps Lyla is a delightful child, happy and smilas this is the only way they can provide the head ing and enjoyed our company. support Lyla needs when sitting.

The new chair will serve her for at least five Lyla needs a Bingo seating system with years, so the donation will be of value for a postural supports and an indoor/outdoor base, long time to come.

● Rev. Dr Albert Thomas Holden

career in 1883 at Prospect House Academy, Kyneton, where he came under the influence of Rev. Charles Lancaster, and became a Methodist lay preacher. In 1885 he entered Ormond College, University of Melbourne, to study law, graduating with a B.A. in 1888.

Dr Holden entered the Methodist ministry in 1887. From 1898 Holden was an army chaplain and in 1900 he accompanied the Victorian Fourth Contingent (Imperial Bushmen) to the South African War. He became Methodist Chaplain General in 1913, serving with the Australian Imperial Force between 1916 and 1919, when he was appointed C.B.E. He was generally known as Major, and later Colonel Holden.

Dr Holden had become a Freemason at the Grange Lodge in Hamilton in 1898. His ministry involved many moves so he joined many Lodges during his Masonic career.

He held many offices both in Australia and England but of important note was that he was Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Freemasons of Victoria from 1912 till 1914. He also served as Grand Chaplain from 1908 till 1919.

The Holden Lodge was named in honour of him.

His two years as Grand Master were described by his contemparies as 'an inspiration'. He was renowned as a brilliant orator, and man of immense charm and compassion.

In 1911 he was awarded the certificate of the Royal Humane Society of Australasia for saving a person from drowning at Sorrento. He was a member of the Naval and Military and the Masonic Clubs, Melbourne.

■ Excerpts taken from The Masonic Grand Masters of Australia by Kent Henderson & Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 9, (MUP), 1983.

● To find out more about Freemasonry, how to become a member, or attend upcoming public events, please visit www.freemasonsvic.net.au or ’Like’ our Facebook page, www.facebook.com/freemasonsvic for the most up to date information. ● ‘Freemasons: The Inside Story’ airs every Monday night at 8.30pm on Channel 31, with replays throughout the week on Thursdays at 12.30am, 3pm and Saturdays at 12.30pm. Or catch up online at www.c31.org.au and follow the links.

Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, September 25, 2013 - Page 19

www.MelbourneObserver.com.au Melbourne

Observer

West Hollywood

GIPPSLAND IN HOLLYWOOD SPOTLIGHT

From my suite at the Ramada Plaza Hotel and Suites comes this week's news.

World champ Will arrives

■ World boxing champion Will Tomlinson from Bairnsdale, along with his partner Jess Dorward from Maffra, met up with another Maffra boy, Alan Johnson, Managing Director of the Ramada Plaza Hotel and Suites.

Will is setting up his training camp in Los Angeles in preparation for his fight in November.

This will be the unification of his I.B.O. title with one of his other world title belts.

Will and Jess have rented an apartment at the exclusive Ramada Apartments during Will's training schedule.

Boxing titles won by Will Tomlinson so far include: ■ New South Wales State Lightweight Title.

■ Australian Super Featherweight Title.

■ IBO Intercontinental Super Featherweight Title.

■ WBO Oriental Super Featherweight Title.

■ WBO Asia Pacific Super Featherweight Title.

■ IBO World Super Featherweight Title.

Recommended H’wood tours

■ LA City Tours wins the award for best Hollywood tour company.

Celebrating 32 years of service to tourists all over the world. The best way to see the star's homes, the Hollywood sign, the beaches of California, Downtown LA and even pick up and drop off to LAX is with LA Tours.

You can choose four popular tours and book on line. www.LACityTours.com

First go at music theatre ■ Rumer Willis makes her musical theatre debut in a show re-enacting memorable works of our own Baz Luhrmann.

We have all seen at least one of his movies and Director Baz Luhrmann is known for his glittery film adaptations of classic love stories from Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet to F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby as well as his original romance Moulin Rouge.

For the Record: Baz Luhrmann, runs through till October 19 at Rockwell: Table and Stage in Los Angeles, re-enacts memorable moments and music from the director's catalogue and features Bruce Willis's daughter Rumer, in her music theatre debut.

● 3TT/TTFM Radio Reunion: Gavin Wood, David Brown and Rob Elliott ● Bairnsdale’s Will Tomlinson is setting up base at the Ramada Apartments

Special Holiday offer from the Ramada Plaza Hotel and Suites

Quick trip to Australia

■ I made a fleeting visit to Melbourne last week on board the magnificent Qantas A380: the smooth and very quiet way to fly over the Pacific.

I attended the 3TT/TT FM 25 year radio reunion at Crown and then I was so pleased to celebrate my son Jordan's 21st birthday.

The trip was way too short and I am sorry I didn't get the chance to catch up with everyone. I didn't even get to catch up with my Observer editor, Ash Long.

I would like to thank Paul Wheelton and his staff at Budget. I was whisked around in style in a Budget rent-a-car.

Listening to the radio, I was very impressed with our Lord Mayor, Robert Doyle, filling in at 3AW. There will be a future for him on radio when he decides to step down as the Lord Mayor of the world's most liveable city judged for the third time.

Coming from sunny California, I was pleased with the rain and to see how truly beautiful my hometown is.

I also had talks with potential investors for Countdown Motion Pictures. If you are looking for a solid Hollywood investment email me so you can get on board: gavin@countdownmotionpictures.com

■ I have managed to secure a terrific holiday deal for all readers of the Melbourne Observer.

When you are planning your trip to California, come and stay at the Ramada Plaza Hotel and Suites, 8585 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood.

Please mention ‘Melbourne Observer’ when you book and you will receive the SPECIAL RATE of the day. Please contact: Joanna at info@ramadaweho.com

GavinWood

From my Suite at the Ramada Plaza Complex on Santa Monica Blvd

● Alan Johnson with Will Tomlinson and Jess Dorward in West Hollywood

www.gavinwood.us

● Melbourne Lord Mayor Cr Robert Doyle

Universal Studios: the ultimate Hollywood experience

■ You can find a full day of action packed entertainment all in one place: thrilling theme park rides and shows, a real working movie studio and Los Angeles' best shops, restaurants and cinemas at City Walk.

Universal Studios Hollywood is a unique experience that's fun for the whole family.

The world's largest movie studio and theme park features unique and ground breaking attractions such as The Simpsons, featuring the show's classic humour and many of its instantly recognisable characters - all voiced by the original actors.

There are hair-raising thrills and heart pounding surprises on rides like the Revenge Of The Mummy and Jurassic Park's 80foot raft plunge.

You will also take adventure to the next dimension in Shrek 4D, Terminator 2: 3-D all the effects are so real just like the movies. The Movie tour takes you to the Bates Motel and Jaws, also watch out for King Kong. The new attraction coming late next year will be the Harry Potter ride.

Page 98 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, September 25, 2013

www.MelbourneObserver.com.au

Victoria Pictorial

Hawthorn Nostalgic Photos

● Hawthorn. Circa 1870

● Governor Hotham Hotel, Hawthorn. 1861.

● Christ Church, cnr Denham and Church Streets, Hawthorn. 1872.

● Red Lion Hotel, Church Street, Hawthorn. 1933.

● Elevated view of Hawthorn, looking north along Glenferrie Road. 1945.

● The disaster of the Hawthorn railway line. 1882.

● Auburn Hotel, Hawthorn

● Hawthorn Municipal Cricket Club. 1928-29.

Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, September 25, 2013 - Page 99

www.MelbourneObserver.com.au

Melbourne

Observer Victorian Sport Racing Briefs

Honours at Shepparton ■ Avenel trainer David Aiken and son Joshua took the honours at the Shepparton meeting held on Wednesday, David preparing a treble of four-yearold winners, with Josh driving two of them.

First to salute was P Forty Seven/Our Lifes A Ball gelding Luke Hobbs in the Grinfromeartoear Pace for C0 class over 2190 metres.

Driven by David, Luke Hobbs settled four back in the moving line from gate three on the second line, before setting off three wide uncovered in the last lap to join the pacemakerr Goldiedomic which had led from the bell on the home turn.

Continuing the move, Luke Hobbs did best to score by 1.4 metres from The Hen House from near last, with Bayjah Star third after spending most of the race at the rear. The mile rate 2-00.

Art Major/New Years Babe gelding Wolfpack coming off an eye catching second at the same track a week earlier, landed the Auckland Reactor Pace for C0 class over 1690 metres, leading throughout from the pole to safely defy all challengers in accounting for Sly Christian which trailed and Lynmarg Lady (four back the markers) in a rate of 2-00.5. The margins being 4.1 by 10.4 metres.

Last week's all the way winner Chevals Racer repeated the performance in the Great Success Trotters Mobile for T1 & T2 class over 2190 metres.

Beginning swiftly from gate two, Chevals Racer coasted throughout, treating his rivals with contempt to score by 21.6 metres from Kyvalley Castle (three back the markers), with Apache Speed which followed the winner a neck away in third place.

A fully American bred entire by Yankee Boy from Racy Remarque, Chevals Racer returned a mile rate of 2-03.6.

Led throughout ■ Another Avenel winner on the program was Wayne Potter's Washington Vc/Falcons Goddess 4-Y-O gelding Colby Reilly in the Smiling Shard Pace for C1 class over 1690 metres in a rate of 1-57.3..

Raced by former Kilmore identity Jack Knight, Colbt Reilly with Daniel Jack in the sulky, led throughout from the pole in defeating Mister Bellisimo (gate three) which trailed by 1.6 metres.

Splendid Choice (one/one) finished third.

Excellent for locals ■ The Shepparton meeting was a good one for the Goulburn Valley and surrounding areas with Elmore father and son Keith and Jake Cotchin taking the Shadow Play Pace for C1 class over 2190 metres with Chiquita Bromac, Nathalia's Noel Tyndall the Big Jim Pace for C1 class over 2190 metres with Earls Reign and Nagambie's Chris Lang the Great Success Trotters Handicap for T0 class only over 2190 metres with Did I Imagine That.

Five-year-old McArdle/Classic Blue Jeans mare Chiquita Bromac was given the run of the race from the pole trailing the well supported Yellow Diamond which crossed her shortly after the start and despite being inconvenienced when the leader weakened approaching the home turn, made the home turn three wide before finishing her race off well to score from Bella Hotshot (three back the markers) and 12-Y-0 gelding Albert Austin in a rate of 2-04.1.

Snared Vicbred Pace ■ Parwan's Jodi Quinlan fresh from a short break snared the Empire Stallions Vicbred Pace for M0 class over 1720 metres at Tabcorp Park Melton on Friday with 7-Y-0 Village Jasper/Kano Home mare Illawong Kath.

Raced by Dr Martin Hartnett, Illawong Kath was given every opportunity by Jodi from gate two after trailing the pacemaker Road To Rock which exploded away from gate five. Using the sprint lane, Illawong Kath made a last stride lunge at Goodtime Jasper out wide in the shadows of the post to gain the decision by a nose in a tricky finish. Road To Rock battled on gamely to finish third 2.2 metres away.

FAVOURITE HAD TO CHASE HARD ■ Five-year-old Armbro Operative/Sexy Lexy Whitby entire Black Caprice chalked up his eighth success in 35 outings, when victorious in the Laser Electrical Pace for C2 class over 1710 metres at Bray Raceway Ballarat on Tuesday September 17, returning a mile rate of 156.2.

Trained at Bacchus Marsh by Alan Tubbs and driven by daughter Amy, Black Caprice from gate two was able to cross the red-hot favourite Goodtime Veejay inside him at the start who immediately moved away from the markers to race outside him.

With Amy making the favourite chase hard a long way from home, Black Caprice held a handy margin on the final bend, maintaining a 6.3 metre buffer on reaching the wire. Future Operator (one/one) finished third.

Triumphs ■ Former Ballarat Trotting Club Secretary/Manager Colin Holloway returned to the scene of his greatest triumphs when 4Y-O Live Or Die/Inclination gelding Excuse To Live greeted the judge in the Seniors Starquest 10/10 Pace for C0 class over 1710 metres at Ballarat, returning a slick mile rate of 1-57.

Raced by Colin, wife Heather and son Brett, Excuse To Live trained by Colin and driven by Brett, settled three back in the moving line from gate two, before being pushed back a spot when Daryl Douglas urged Desiring Kate forward three wide at the bell after being trapped wide from the outset after starting from outside the front line.

Latching to the back of Crazy Dave ahead of him three wide in the final circuit, Excuse To Live received a lovely trail home and when taken wide in the straight, finished strongly to defeat Crazy Dave by 3.6 metres, with the roughie Chesney (death-one/one at bell) third.

Excuse To Live was bred by former HRV Board member Peter Bourke.

Ash’s wins ■ Those betting on the Horsham meeting on Monday September 16 got their fingers burnt, when Bungaree (Ballarat) based trainer ‘Ash’ Herbertson snared the first two races on the program at juicy odds.

Four year old Blissful Hall/Princess Yum Yum mare Gelese brought

Baker’s Delight

Harness Racing

This Week’s Meetings ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ Melbourne

Observer

len-baker@ bigpond.com

It’s ironic ■ Nine-year-old Ultimate Falcon/Left Tycoon mare Ultimate Tycoon returned to the winners list after an absence of 25 months when greeting the judge in the Westvic Race Pix - Matt Craven Pace for C1 class over 2200 metres, with ironicly Matt Craven in the sulky.

A winner of six races in 122 stars prior to the race, Ultimate Tycoon produced a career-best performance after being driven forward from gate five to park outside the heavily supported pacemaker Mister Seelster (gate six) which had little difficulty in assuming control shortly after the start.

Refusing to give in on straightening, Ultimate Tycoon ($5.10) showed previously unseen strength in proving too strong for Mister Seelster ($2.90), winning by a margin of 4.2 metres in a rate of 2-03.6.

Vee Jay Jazz (four back the markers finished third).

Horses To Follow ■ Girls Go First, Bayjah Star, Juke Kartel, Saint Flash, Ballan Road

Record kept intact

with Len Baker

up two wins in succession by taking the Get Well Gary Scott Pace for C0 class over 2200 metres paying Supertab odds of $11.90.

Driven by Terang ‘young gun’ Jason Lee, Gelese was given the run of the race from the pole following the pacemaker Confusion Reigns (gate three), one of two runners from the Kerryn Manning barn, with stablemate Willow Robyn going for a hat-trick as a short priced $1.60 favourite.

When Willow Robyn rushed up three wide from last in the final circuit, he appeared to have the race well in his keeping after dashing clear on straightening, with Gelese being extricated into the clear.

Finishing full of running, Gelese bloused Willow Robyn in the last bound to score by a nose in 2-00.7, with Armbro Speedster third after racing in the open.

Wednesday - Ballarat, Thursday - Terang, Friday - Melton, Saturday - Mildura, Sunday - Warrnambool @ Melton, Monday - Yarra Valley, Tuesday - Echuca

Rare form ■ Terang's Matt Craven who is driving in rare form at present can do nothing wrong of late and brought up a double when 4-Y-O Sealed N Delivered/Lady Bullville gelding Ynobe Coby scored a big win in the Betta Electrical Horsham - Peter Manning Pace for C0 class over 1700 metres in a rate of 1-58.6.

Trained at Elliminyt (Colac) by Courtney Slater, Ynobe Coby bred and raced by Ebony Slater settled in the moving line closer to last than first after starting from gate two on the second line, with the Mildura visitor Kilbirnie North View leading from the pole.

Set alight at the bell to join the leader for the final circuit, Ynobe Coby went into overdrive on turning and raced away to register a 9.5 metre margin over Kilbirnie North View and Artois Stone which trailed the favourite.

Double win ■ Jason Lee (cousin of Matt Craven) was also to chalk up a double after winning the Conway Pies Jayson Finnis Pace for C1 class over 2200 metres aboard the Michelle Manning (Great Western) trained 5-Y-O Elsu/ Whatsonyamind gelding Pacquiao after taking a concession.

Despite sitting in the open from gate five outside Bohemian Lombo (gate two), Pacquiao outstayed his rivals to win well by 3.9 metres in advance of Garabaldi Union which followed him all of the way, with Rising Power a stablemate of the winner third from near last. The mile rate 2-01.1.

On radio ■ Listen to Len Baker on Harness Review, 8pm-10pm Mondays, on 97.9 FM, streamed on 979fm.com.au

■ Astute Narracoorte (SA) part-owner/trainer Greg Scholefield has made many successful raids on Victoria in the past and kept his record intact when smart 4-Y-O gelding Glenferrie Rustler scored in the Grahan Eeles Saddlery - Cheap Tint Pace for C2 & C3 class over 2200 metres at the Horsham meeting.

Taking a concession for Mount Gambier's Jayson Finnis, Glenferrie Rustler (Lis Mara/ Exceptional Lass) led throughout from gate three in defeating a game Valentino Rustler which raced outside him, going down by 1.1 metres in 1-58.9, with Wipethesmile third after trailing the winner.

It was Glenferrie Dreamer's 12th victory in 19 outings, the majority being in restricted company in his home state.

Avoided some gallopers ■ Local trainer Ken Exell would have received a tremendous thrill when his bargain priced 8-Y-O Allawart Ray/Allawart Liz gelding Allawart Ugo scored in the Bunnings Horsham - Ken Exell Trotters Handicap for T0 or better class over 2200 metres in a leisurely rate of 2-06.9.

With Hamilton reinsman Rod Barker in the sulky, Allawart Ugo stepped cleanly from a 20 metre handicap, avoiding a couple of gallopers in the early stages to lob three back in the moving line with Peter Manning's Sunnyandcher leading.

Trailing Ollie Nova ahead of him three wide into the final bend, Allawart Ugo ran home strongly out wide on straightening to gain the day by 2.3 metres from Ollie Nova with the hot favourite Knapdale Girl a disappointing third 2.5 metres away after trailing the pair.

Crowded sprint lane ■ Earls Reign a five year old gelded son of Nuke Of Earl and Crystal Reign bred, raced, trained and driven by Noel Tyndall led throughout from gate three to register a 1.4 metre victory over the favourite Who Broke Our Halo (gate four) which trailed using the sprint lane to no avail, with Lord Lancelot also using the sprint lane from last along the markers to finish third. The mile rate 2-02.7.

Outside on last lap ■ Honest 4-Y-O Bacardi Lindy/Figment gelding Did I Imagine That with Chris Alford in the sulky, moved from the one/one spot approaching the bell to lead for the final circuit in accounting for Ships Shui which raced outside him for the last lap after being crossed in the lead. Framework Salute (three back the markers last lap) finished third. The mile rate a pedestrian 2-11.5.

Fought like bulldog ■ Lightly raced 7-Y-O Artiscape/Diplomatic Lover gelding Jilliby Ablett was a strong victor of the tab.com.au Pacers Handicap for M0 or better class over 2240 metres at Tabcorp Park Melton on Friday. Gaining the upper hand on turning, Jilliby Ablett was expected to give ground in the straight after such a tough passage considering it was his first outing since May, but fought on like a bulldog to the wire to gain the day by a head in 1-59.9 over Astronaut which trailed him for most of the way.

Page 100 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, September 25, 2013

www.MelbourneObserver.com.au

www.MelbourneObserver.com.au

Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, September 25, 2013 - Page 101

Page 102 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Melbourne

Observer

www.MelbourneObserver.com.au

Travellers’Good Buys

with David Ellis

LOSING IT BY THE TRUCKLOAD

■ Back in 1970 an entrepreneurial Doyle Owens borrowed a mate’s utility and $300 and went off to the Trailways Bus Lines depot in Washington DC in America, where they were selling off piles of clothes and books, cameras and backpacks, sportsgoods and jewellery, and even whole suitcases of clothes left unclaimed by passengers from its road coaches and in city terminals.

He bought as much as he could with his $300, advertised a garage sale and sold the lot – for a nice profit. And when another sale came up, he bought-up just about everything they had, resigned from his insurance company job, and started full-time buying and re-selling “lost property” left on trains, planes, coaches and in hotels, across America.

Today his Unclaimed Baggage Centre (UBC) turns-over millions of dollars-worth of unclaimed and lost property every year in its UBC Department Store in the town of Scottsboro in Alabama, and also donates hundreds of thousands of dollars-worth to charities world-wide.

And they’re never short of stuff for replenishing shelves, clothing racks, jewellery and electronics counters: although only a fraction of one-percent of travellers’ luggage, carry-on and other items are never re-united with their owners, that fraction still amounts to hundreds of thousands of items every year.

● Inside the Unclaimed Baggage Centre on an average day: a million bargain-hunters pour through the store annually.

Melbourne

Observer Wines & Liqueurs

with David Ellis

FIANO PROVES FABULOUS FIND ■ Fiano is a very popular white in the Mediterranean, hailing from Italy’s southern Campania region as well as from the island of Sicily, and is now starting to get the attention of grapegrowers and winemakers here – and with consumers, too, discovering it’s enjoyably vibrant and bright fruit flavours and rich palate.

One local maker with a Fiano worth seeking out is McLaren Vale’s Serafino Wines, that was founded by Steve (Serafino) Maglieri in 1968, and who’s now-Chief Winemaker, Charles Whish is a Jimmy Watson Trophy recipient.

Their 2013 Serafino Bellissimo Fiano bursts with citrus and stone fruit aromas, and is crisp and refreshing in the mouth, offering nice hints of honeysuckle and lemon citrus.

Made from fruit handpicked from Serafino’s first Fiano crop, it’s sure to instantly appeal to those who enjoy broadening their wine-tasting experiences.

Particularly enjoyable with seafoods, at $18 match it as we go into our warmer months with whole ovenbaked fish such as snapper, a fresh garden salad and garlic bread – just as they do back in its Mediterranean homeland.

One to note

■ Western Australia’s Ferngrove has launched a new-era Limited Release range from the Frankland River in the State’s famed Great Southern region, including a rewarding 2011 Malbec.

Senior Winemaker, Kim Horton says the range epitomises the best from Frankland River, that’s one of the coolest wine-producing areas in WA. And the 2011 Malbec is one, he says, the whole Ferngrove team is particularly excited about, as while displaying robust tannins and dark plum and spice on the palate, it’s interestingly restrained rather than a smack-in-the-mouth flavour hit.

Pay $20 and match this buy-now, drink-now drop with pork and fennel sausages served with potato mash infused with a good handful of Italian parsley.

Pictured

■ Discover the pleasures of this Fiano, a little-known drop here that’s sure to prove as popular as in its homeland Italy.

■ Nicely flavoursome, yet restrained rather than a smack-in-themouth.

UBC estimates that in the United States 80 to 90 per cent of travellers’ “lost” bags and other items are returned to owners within 24 hours of being reported missing, and 95 to 98 per cent within five days.

After three months the remainder – together with personal items left in seat pockets, overhead racks and bins, under seats or in hotel rooms – and deemed impossible to connect with their owners, are sold to UBC… who guarantee to buy the lot, sight unseen and by the truck-load.

And it’s not just luggage (most of which goes missing through poor or no identification) or thousands of sunglasses, mobile phones, books, laptops, jewellery, DVDs, watches and cameras that forgetful travellers leave behind.

Let UBC start talking and you could wonder if they’re having you on … but the company’s vast Unclaimed Baggage Centre that’s two-thirds the size of a football field, is proof as to just how weird are things that some people travel with.

As well as tens of thousands of “regular” items like those above, others unclaimed have included glass eyes, prosthetic arms and legs, wigs and toupees, false teeth, human medical specimens – and sex toys.

Raunchy female underwear and mens’Y-fronts are regular finds in airline toilets, making one wonder what fellow travellers have either been up to, or have in mind, while single shoes have been found under plenty of seats – and on one flight a single Dutch clog – which again makes one wonder how you could get off a plane wearing one shoe.

Pets too are regularly left unclaimed after being carried either in baggage holds or in pet-carriers in passenger compartments, with caged parrots, an agitated falcon, tortoises, a frog and a live rattlesnake left on baggage carousels… and on one flight, a live monkey dressed-up in a doggy Santa suit was discovered in a pet-carrier left under an aircraft seat.

A hand-written marriage proposal was found in the back of a seat after passengers had left one flight, wedding dresses are regularly left on baggage carousels, and never claimed from one flight was a complete suit of armour… and another a double bass.

Staff found a bag of diamonds in one airline First Class seat, a box of dried fish, a bag of onions and a single boiled egg in other seats… even a portable Missile Guidance System (that was returned to the US Air Force.)

And under a seat in which a star of Charlie’s Angels had flown on yet another flight, a script for an upcoming episode … all clothing found in suitcases and elsewhere is laundered or dry-cleaned before going on sale at UBC’s sprawling Alabama store, technicians erase whatever’s found on unclaimed computers, fine jewellery is professionally cleaned, and slightlydamaged goods are repaired.

Then it all (an amazing 7000 new items a day) goes up for sale at 20 to 80 per cent below retail to UBC’s nearmillion bargain-hunters a year – and what doesn’t sell after a reasonable time is given to charity to make way for more stuff left behind by the forgetful.

Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, September 25, 2013 - Page 103

www.MelbourneObserver.com.au

Observer Classic Books From Page 18 One felt oneself aimed at by some person whom one did not see, and one understood that guns were levelled at the whole length of the street.

Massed behind the sort of sloping ridge which the vaulted canal forms at the entrance to the Faubourg du Temple, the soldiers of the attacking column, gravely and thoughtfully, watched this dismal redoubt, this immobility, this passivity, whence sprang death. Some crawled flat on their faces as far as the crest of the curve of the bridge, taking care that their shakos did not project beyond it.

The valiant Colonel Monteynard admired this barricade with a shudder.—“How that is built!” he said to a Representative. “Not one paving-stone projects beyond its neighbor. It is made of porcelain.”— At that moment, a bullet broke the cross on his breast, and he fell.

“The cowards!” people said. “Let them show themselves. Let us see them! They dare not! They are hiding!”

The barricade of the Faubourg du Temple, defended by eighty men, attacked by ten thousand, held out for three days. On the fourth, they did as at Zaatcha, as at Constantine, they pierced the houses, they came over the roofs, the barricade was taken. Not one of the eighty cowards thought of flight, all were killed there with the exception of the leader, Barthelemy, of whom we shall speak presently.

The Saint–Antoine barricade was the tumult of thunders; the barricade of the Temple was silence.

The difference between these two redoubts was the difference between the formidable and the sinister. One seemed a maw; the other a mask.

Admitting that the gigantic and gloomy insurrection of June was composed of a wrath and of an enigma, one divined in the first barricade the dragon, and behind the second the sphinx.

These two fortresses had been erected by two men named, the one, Cournet, the other, Barthelemy.

Cournet made the Saint–Antoine barricade; Barthelemy the barricade of the Temple. Each was the image of the man who had built it.

Cournet was a man of lofty stature; he had broad shoulders, a red face, a crushing fist, a bold heart, a loyal soul, a sincere and terrible eye. Intrepid, energetic, irascible, stormy; the most cordial of men, the most formidable of combatants. War, strife, conflict, were the very air he breathed and put him in a good humor. He had been an officer in the navy, and, from his gestures and his voice, one divined that he sprang from the ocean, and that he came from the tempest; he carried the hurricane on into battle. With the exception of the genius, there was in Cournet something of Danton, as, with the exception of the divinity, there was in Danton something of Hercules.

Barthelemy, thin, feeble, pale, taciturn, was a sort of tragic street urchin, who, having had his ears boxed by a policeman, lay in wait for him, and killed him, and at seventeen was sent to the galleys. He came out and made this barricade.

Later on, fatal circumstance, in London, proscribed by all, Barthelemy slew Cournet. It was a funereal duel. Some time afterwards, caught in the gearing of one of those mysterious adventures in which passion plays a part, a catastrophe in which French justice sees extenuating circumstances, and in which English justice sees only death, Barthelemy was hanged. The sombre social construction is so made that, thanks to material destitution, thanks to moral obscurity, that unhappy being who possessed an intelligence, certainly firm, possibly great, began in France with the galleys, and ended in England with the gallows. Barthelemy, on occasion, flew but one fla

CHAPTER II WHAT IS TO BE DONE IN THE ABYSS IF ONE DOES NOT CONVERSE

Sixteen years count in the subterranean education of insurrection, and June, 1848, knew a great deal more about it than June, 1832. So the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie was only an outline, and an embryo compared to the two colossal barricades which we have just sketched; but it was formidable for that epoch.

The insurgents under the eye of Enjolras, for Marius no longer looked after anything, had made good use of the night. The barricade had been not only repaired, but augmented. They had raised it two feet. Bars of iron planted in the pavement resembled lances in rest. All sorts of rubbish brought and added from all directions complicated the external confusion. The redoubt had been cleverly made over, into a wall on the inside and a thicket on the outside.

The staircase of paving-stones which permitted one to mount it like the wall of a citadel had been reconstructed.

The barricade had been put in order, the tap-room disencumbered, the kitchen appropriated for the ambulance, the dressing of the wounded completed, the powder scattered on the ground and on the tables had been gathered up, bullets run, cartridges manufactured, lint scraped, the fallen weapons re-distributed, the interior of the redoubt cleaned, the rubbish swept up, corpses removed.

They laid the dead in a heap in the Mondetour lane, of which they were still the masters. The pavement was red for a long time at that spot.

Among the dead there were four National Guardsmen of the suburbs. Enjolras had their uniforms laid aside.

Enjolras had advised two hours of sleep. Advice from Enjolras was a command. Still, only three or four took advantage of it.

Feuilly employed these two hours in engraving this inscription on the wall which faced the tavern:— LONG LIVE THE PEOPLES! These four words, hollowed out in the rough stone with a nail, could be still read on the wall in 1848.

The three women had profited by the respite of the night to vanish definitely; which allowed the insurgents to breathe more freely.

They had found means of taking refuge in some neighboring house.

The greater part of the wounded were able, and wished, to fight still. On a litter of mattresses and trusses of straw in the kitchen, which had been converted into an ambulance, there were five men gravely wounded, two of whom were municipal guardsmen. The municipal guardsmen were attended to first.

In the tap-room there remained only Mabeuf under his black cloth and Javert bound to his post.

“This is the hall of the dead,” said Enjolras.

In the interior of this hall, barely lighted by a candle at one end, the mortuary table being behind the post like a horizontal bar, a sort of vast, vague cross resulted from Javert erect and Mabeuf lying prone.

The pole of the omnibus, although snapped off by the fusillade, was still sufficiently upright to admit of their fastening the flag to it.

Enjolras, who possessed that quality of a leader, of always doing what he said, attached to this staff the bullet-ridden and bloody coat of the old man’s.

No repast had been possible. There was neither bread nor meat. The fifty men in the barricade had speedily exhausted the scanty provisions of the wine-shop during the sixteen hours which they had passed there. At a given moment, every barricade inevitably becomes the raft of la Meduse.

They were obliged to resign themselves to hunger. They had then reached the first hours of that Spartan day of the 6th of June when, in the barricade Saint–Merry, Jeanne, surrounded by the insurgents who demanded bread, replied to all combatants crying: “Something to eat!” with: “Why? It is three o’clock; at four we shall be dead.”

As they could no longer eat, Enjolras forbade them to drink. He interdicted wine, and portioned out the brandy.

They had found in the cellar fifteen full bottles hermetically sealed. Enjolras and Combeferre examined them. Combeferre when he came up again said:—“It’s the old stock of Father Hucheloup, who began business as a grocer.”— “It must be real wine,” observed Bossuet. “It’s lucky that Grantaire is asleep. If he were on foot, there would be a good deal of difficulty in saving those bottles.”— Enjolras, in spite of all murmurs, placed his veto on the fifteen bottles, and, in order that no one might touch them, he had them placed under the table on which Father Mabeuf was lying.

About two o’clock in the morning, they reckoned up their strength. There were still thirty-seven of them.

The day began to dawn. The torch, which had been replaced in its cavity in the pavement, had just been extinguished. The interior of the barricade, that species of tiny courtyard appropriated from the street, was bathed in shadows, and resembled, athwart the vague, twilight horror, the deck of a disabled ship. The combatants, as they went and came, moved about there like black forms. Above that terrible nesting-place of gloom the stories of the mute houses were lividly outlined; at the very top, the chimneys stood palely out. The sky was of that charming, undecided hue, which may be white and may be blue. Birds flew about in it with cries of joy. The lofty house which formed the back of the barricade, being turned to the East, had upon its roof a rosy reflection. The morning

breeze ruffled the gray hair on the head of the dead man at the third-story window.

“I am delighted that the torch has been extinguished,” said Courfeyrac to Feuilly. “That torch flickering in the wind annoyed me. It had the appearance of being afraid. The light of torches resembles the wisdom of cowards; it gives a bad light because it trembles.”

Dawn awakens minds as it does the birds; all began to talk.

Joly, perceiving a cat prowling on a gutter, extracted philosophy from it.

“What is the cat?” he exclaimed. “It is a corrective. The good God, having made the mouse, said: ‘Hullo! I have committed a blunder.’And so he made the cat. The cat is the erratum of the mouse.

The mouse, plus the cat, is the proof of creation revised and corrected.”

Combeferre, surrounded by students and artisans, was speaking of the dead, of Jean Prouvaire, of Bahorel, of Mabeuf, and even of Cabuc, and of Enjolras’ sad severity. He said:— “Harmodius and Aristogiton, Brutus, Chereas, Stephanus, Cromwell, Charlotte Corday, Sand, have all had their moment of agony when it was too late. Our hearts quiver so, and human life is such a mystery that, even in the case of a civic murder, even in a murder for liberation, if there be such a thing, the remorse for having struck a man surpasses the joy of having served the human race.”

And, such are the windings of the exchange of speech, that, a moment later, by a transition brought about through Jean Prouvaire’s verses, Combeferre was comparing the translators of the Georgics, Raux with Cournand, Cournand with Delille, pointing out the passages translated by Malfilatre, particularly the prodigies of Caesar’s death; and at that word, Caesar, the conversation reverted to Brutus.

“Caesar,” said Combeferre, “fell justly. Cicero was severe towards Caesar, and he was right. That severity is not diatribe. When Zoilus insults Homer, when Maevius insults Virgil, when Vise insults Moliere, when Pope insults Shakspeare, when Frederic insults Voltaire, it is an old law of envy and hatred which is being carried out; genius attracts insult, great men are always more or less barked at. But Zoilus and Cicero are two different persons. Cicero is an arbiter in thought, just as Brutus is an arbiter by the sword. For my own part, I blame that last justice, the blade; but, antiquity admitted it. Caesar, the violator of the Rubicon, conferring, as though they came from him, the dignities which emanated from the people, not rising at the entrance of the senate, committed the acts of a king and almost of a tyrant, regia ac pene tyrannica. He was a great man; so much the worse, or so much the better; the lesson is but the more exalted. His twenty-three wounds touch me less than the spitting in the face of Jesus Christ. Caesar is stabbed by the senators; Christ is cuffed by lackeys. One feels the God through the greater outrage.”

Bossuet, who towered above the interlocutors from the summit of a heap of paving-stones, exclaimed, rifle in hand:— “Oh Cydathenaeum, Oh Myrrhinus, Oh Probalinthus, Oh graces of the AEantides! Oh! Who will grant me to pronounce the verses of Homer like a Greek of Laurium or of Edapteon?”

CHAPTER III LIGHT AND SHADOW Enjolras had been to make a reconnaissance. He had made his way out through Mondetour lane, gliding along close to the houses.

The insurgents, we will remark, were full of hope.

The manner in which they had repulsed the attack of the preceding night had caused them to almost disdain in advance the attack at dawn. They waited for it with a smile. They had no more doubt as to their success than as to their cause. Moreover, succor was, evidently, on the way to them.

They reckoned on it. With that facility of triumphant prophecy which is one of the sources of strength in the French combatant, they divided the day which was at hand into three distinct phases.

At six o’clock in the morning a regiment “which had been labored with,” would turn; at noon, the insurrection of all Paris; at sunset, revolution.

They heard the alarm bell of Saint–Merry, which had not been silent for an instant since the night before; a proof that the other barricade, the great one, Jeanne’s, still held out.

All these hopes were exchanged between the different groups in a sort of gay and formidable whisper which resembled the warlike hum of a hive of bees.

Enjolras reappeared. He returned from his som-

bre eagle flight into outer darkness. He listened for a moment to all this joy with folded arms, and one hand on his mouth. Then, fresh and rosy in the growing whiteness of the dawn, he said: “The whole army of Paris is to strike. A third of the army is bearing down upon the barricades in which you now are. There is the National Guard in addition. I have picked out the shakos of the fifth of the line, and the standard-bearers of the sixth legion. In one hour you will be attacked. As for the populace, it was seething yesterday, today it is not stirring. There is nothing to expect; nothing to hope for. Neither from a faubourg nor from a regiment. You are abandoned.”

These words fell upon the buzzing of the groups, and produced on them the effect caused on a swarm of bees by the first drops of a storm. A moment of indescribable silence ensued, in which death might have been heard flitting by.

This moment was brief.

A voice from the obscurest depths of the groups shouted to Enjolras: “So be it. Let us raise the barricade to a height of twenty feet, and let us all remain in it. Citizens, let us offer the protests of corpses. Let us show that, if the people abandon the republicans, the republicans do not abandon the people.”

These words freed the thought of all from the painful cloud of individual anxieties. It was hailed with an enthusiastic acclamation.

No one ever has known the name of the man who spoke thus; he was some unknown blouse-wearer, a stranger, a man forgotten, a passing hero, that great anonymous, always mingled in human crises and in social geneses who, at a given moment, utters in a supreme fashion the decisive word, and who vanishes into the shadows after having represented for a minute, in a lightning flash, the people and God. This inexorable resolution so thoroughly impregnated the air of the 6th of June, 1832, that, almost at the very same hour, on the barricade Saint– Merry, the insurgents were raising that clamor which has become a matter of history and which has been consigned 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.

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. He resumed haughtily: “Let those who are afraid of not numbering more than thirty say so.”

The murmurs redoubled.

“Besides,” observed a voice in one group, “it is easy enough to talk about leaving. The barricade is hemmed in.”

“Not on the side of the Halles,” said Enjolras.

“The Rue Mondetour is free, and through the Rue des Precheurs one can reach the Marche des Innocents.”

“And there,” went on another voice, “you would be captured. You would fall in with some grand guard of the line or the suburbs; they will spy a man passing in blouse and cap. ‘Whence come you?’ ‘Don’t you belong to the barricade?’And they will look at your hands. You smell of powder. Shot.”

Enjolras, without making any reply, touched Combeferre’s shoulder, and the two entered the tap-room.

To Be Continued Next Week

Page 104 - Melbourne Observer - Wednesday, September 25, 2013

www.MelbourneObserver.com.au

Melbourne TV Memories by Kenneth Mulholland

Meillon and McKenzie at the Tele-theatre ■ From Page 8 Ray Lindsay, Chris Adshead, George Borse and many more will, or would bear witness to our madness.

I think it was Christmas 1963 and then 1964 when Bob and I, in his VW, motored up to Sydney and then on into Queensland.

I met his mother Jill and sat in her living room playing our 'Three B' tape and hoping for approval.

Jill Meillon was, by then, a retired radio script writer, (I think, but not sure, for Grace Gibson Productions) was of course receptive and encouraging. Not sure what she made of me.

Mate or boy friend?

I also met Bob's adopted sister Lyn (my sister too is adopted) and her then husband John Glassen. They all loved a drink.

(Mister Meillon Senior, head of the Meillon family, was deceased by then. Bob talked about his father but most I have forgotten.

I believe he was a banker, the Meillon name has French connections.

(Yes, a good name for a movie.) The only tenuous link to Banker Meillon that I have was his favourite musical work: Cesar Franck's towering Symphony in D minor, 1886-88.

Whenever I hear it now I am thrust back to a time when two young teenage brothers, John and Robert, sported and swam in the surf around Sydney whilst their parents pursued their individual careers; the one in radio of the 40s and 50s, and the other, the more conservative world of finance, business and men's clubs I was also introduced to the well respected actress June Salter, John Meillon's first wife, and their young son, who I recall sitting on my knees as Bob and I drove him back to his parent's home after an outing.

Of the blustering, self-important John Meillon, I recall a long, dark cape, a commanding presence, a voice designed for projection ... and a small dog, imperiously named Mahatma!

Bob had been a swift convert to Aussie Rules in Victoria and brought his enthusiasm to NSW via my old, very heavy, very large, leather football. I gave it to him because... well, because.

● John Meillon, brother of the late Bob Meillon Where that now resides, or if it still exists I Apart from Charades and a merry-go-round of drinking, which at my tender age was perilous, I don't know. I last saw it sometime in the eighties, remember John Meillon leaping for a footy in fact I re-framed it back then, when Bob and 'mark' against John Glassen, in the back gar- Gail were living in Park Orchards in Melden of Jill's home and thumping head-first into bourne. the rockery.

Byron Bay back then was a little hamlet of Unperturbed, he rose and cracked another can sleepy houses, a main street, a pub, a pristine of some alien NSW beer. white beach that stretched into the distance both On the first of our two northern travels we ven- ways and a camping ground in the sand dunes. tured as far as Brisbane where an ancient feWe both loved it. Up in the morning, down to male relative of Robert lived. the water, counter lunch at the pub, he fished and Can't recall much apart from an over-night stop I painted in the afternoon. of dead humidity in a Brisbane pub.

(Oils and sand make for interesting textures.)

Yet we did discover a place of bliss! The sign Pub for dinner and up to the newly built motel said Byron Bay. It was 1963. for later drinks. Shadows Fall Out Boyto sleeping Just earlier Bob celebrated his twenty-first bags in our tent and do it all again on the morrow. birthday. Or rather, other well wishers celebrated The next year we did do it again, but this time we it. I wasn't there, but Bob confided to me later in briefly with Jill Meillon, that work mates like Stu Kinchin thought it was checked (Bob was very agitated about a locked cabihis 21st and sprang a surprise party on him.

He was in fact 20, yet accepted the whole thing net of his mother's, which he was certain conrather than tell the truth. Perhaps I might have tained alcohol.

I found his concern difficult to understand condone the same. In fact, the following year, after he told me about it, he and I had a few beers to- sidering that every one else in the family freely gether in his flat listening to music and talking used it.) then headed straight for Byron.

Byron Bay was our little secret long before about the little we knew of life.

That was his real 21st. There was also one the likes of Paul Hogan and John Cornell.

Two weeks of fishing, painting, listening to other mute witness. It was a portrait I had copied from an early artist's impression of J.S.Bach. Dougie Walters belting big runs in the cricket

Melbourne

ObserverLooking for a

Professional to run the show? ★ Compere/Host ★ Auctioneer ★ Promotions ★ A-Grade Journalist ★ Voice-Over Commercials ★ Race Caller All Sports, Race Nights ★ TV, Radio, Press ★ Respected Member of the Media

Ted Ryan Phone 9876 1652 Mobile: 0412 682 927 E-Mail: tedryan@australiaonline.net.au ted.ryan@optusnet.com.au

and lots of grog.

And, I owe my life to Bob. On the way back South we camped at Nambucca Heads or somewhere on the coast and decided to take a rowboat out on a channel that led seaward. I had no idea about water, (I can't swim. And nearly came to grief in the ocean twice after that. Another story.)

Bob was rowing and when we went past a warning sign about a dangerous rip he suddenly began to row furiously against it. I was simply useless. He did it all; got us back out of the significant danger, pretty-well stuffed at the end.

Then we went and had a few beers.

I never thought another thing about it. Until now.

I am an idiot.

The following year Robert was in a downward plunge. Too much indulgence, borrowing from all and sundry, living beyond his means. His VW was repossessed, he was in Mean Street.

When I heard that his mother had died I rang the Tele-theatre from South Melbourne to be hushed up by another staging member, Graham MacNamara.

“Not true. Said only to save his job.” I was astounded. Bob Meillon had fabricated the story in order to avoid the sack for not turning up to work. And ... he got away with it.

Because Bob and I were so close, (I often felt and said 'Like Brothers.') and because Stu Kinchin was a more sobering and mature influence, Stu and I suggested (no, we didn't suggest, we railroaded) Bob into signing his wages over to us.

We opened a bank account and his earnings went into it. Then we began the process of paying back his debts. We gave him a pittance to live on, knew he would borrow, followed up his likely targets and squared him up. \ In the end, we got him back on track, liberated his car, paid those he owed, sundry bills, dried him out a bit and gave him another go.

He got his act together. Not too long after, Bob was a cameraman working on shows like Brian And The Juniors.'

That was the beginning of our long, slow parting. In the meantime, I plodded on.

To Be Continued

Observer Crossword Solution No 18 S N OW S T N V A U E MA GONDO L P D AM P A P A S S L A Y S Y V MA C L I MA X H L R E E X I S T S D O E S N A R E S D E P L E A MMO N I E B R AMB L O R A B S AME O EMBO MOD E U V N R MA I D P N E V A I I M I L D I A N CO Y N E S P I S T UN M S OV A E N OME N S E B E ME A N E R S D A E R E S U L T I E S A L E E K S D A S H A R A S H P L A N T E R G OM E I I ME D I C A

ORM A R OUC GMA T A N E I N S YO HORN O I T UR E S T SO F I T F N MA OG L E I N F A T A A B BON A Z I F S L E A E I R O T H E B Y E S S Y E P L A R E R V E X D A S N A T T RO T S B Y C I MP A R T I L R E S A S A T R I S YO YO R N A NC E P H P E C A P E D R B D E B T E S L E R ME E EGA T C T H E R T E S

C A C I A O B A DD I E H H I MCCO Y O MA N Y A I CH I T PO L Y P S M L A D A A P E T ON K E D S A ND S H E L E N P A R T N E R S H I P R A S POS E O I A N EW P C M I D T E RM E MA D P H I A E S P E S T E R ROS E T T E W A NN E R M R A B B L E O MY S T I C I SM A L I O B I N O B R A F T NN E DWE L T I RON C E I D L E N A S T ON I S H C O E T A A M S I V E SOU T MA NH A T T A N R K HO I D N O E R M I D I A L A N A NGS OP E N COB L AMB U S M AGR A L A S T S I A I T O L D E R UN T I L N BOA OA R R TW T R A MA D AM A V A I L I L A S S GAO L C E C A L M P E A F L A T S K S S EM I I F F Y S U S A F N RON I F T N U L S I V E S E CR E T I NG A T DD T E M L A P R A Y S A GRUMP I E R I E S MAMBO T E A T O E I U S A U T Y PO R DOGCO L L A R I R S S S E R N UNHO L Y P H A S I NG I K R I S H S N ME AGR E D A R T I S T E B A DD S E E N H O N A I L W A S S I M I L A T E D MA L A S T N AME D R E F E R T U C P O A E ND S OMA T O U PO T E N T P N R ME R I T E COS A E T Y P E E S A DD E R M

A Y E E A R UN P H E I A V A A L Y H C T A R P A U L I N R N V E N D E T T A U A

S T A C K S A O M L S S U A T CH E T D E R L S OA K S TW I S T R A R U UNC L A D S T I I T R I F L E U T S EMB E R A R D MA T A A E S U P T O N N O D A Y T I ME L N V L A L T O E T I N A K O TWE E NG O S E N A P S E T S I N I H ODD S E E S CROS S L Y H P E A N R E A L R E L Y R T O M N A V E L P Z G N MA N AGE E E L P T N E P H EW ND A O O S A N E R A N E C K B BO T H A L B I NOS R E E O A N S D W S S E U S E S