There was a long house with three floors, a walk of twenty minutes from the usual site of Grantaire's drunken sermones, and here Enjolras climbed down the short wooden stair to the front door, splashing heedlessly through the short pool that had collected there. Grantaire's arm was thrown around his neck, hand clasped clumsily to his chest. The middle-spring rain had soaked through his shirt, and Enjolras could feel the fabric of his sleeve sticking hotly to his neck. He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply through his nose, feeling suffocated by the humidity, and waiting for Grantaire to fumble through his pockets with shaking hands, waiting for the key that would open the door to somewhere more clean and dry.
Grantaire finally fit and turned it in the lock, and returned it awkwardly to his waistcoat. Enjolras stumbled into the black hall, nearly tripping under his burden, unable to surpress a gasp - within the silent tenement it was only more damp than in the streets, and still there were stairs to climb. He began to feel weak in the knees. But he delivered Grantaire to the second story, his breath seeming to come short and wet in his chest, and unlatched the appropriate door and finally stood still as Grantaire shifted his weight first to the hard chair by the window, then to the pallet that lay flat on the floor beside it.
Enjolras strode to the window, which was open, and and shut it. Stifling, clammy closeness seemed to him preferable to allowing the rain to collect, and it had already ruined the blanket that occupied the near corner, probably kicked off one night in the heat.
Grantaire had stretched out on his mat, and was closing his eyes. "Forgive my inhospitality; I can't spare a slave to walk you home. For myself, though, I wish I had a garden to fall asleep in. This kind of night makes me want to stay out of doors. Probably it was just too warm for the apostles - so beware of soldiers, when you go. I can't keep Judas from you, but tonight I myself am far too tired to deny you -"
"You misjudge yourself," Enjolras interrupted, the only proven way to hold a conversation with Grantaire, "With such comparisons. You are Thomas, if you must be an apostle." He straightened his jacket, and turned to the door. "Good-night, Grantaire."
"Another man wrongly maligned! But you may be right, plumbe. Peter was apparently too stupid to ask the obvious question of Mary Magdalene. But Thomas had a healthy head on his shoulders. Thomas the Twin, he knew something of the world, and they scolded him for it. A sad state of affairs, when a hearty skepticism is a fault."
There was something faintly horrified behind Enjolras' sneer. "You would call faith stupidity - and skepticism healthy? Then you know nothing of the world." He shut the door, seeming to think a moment, and crouched at the side of the bed, looking down upon Grantaire with conviction. "There is nothing hearty in skepticism. By its very nature it eats itself continually to nothing: it doubles back upon itself and creates only blackness, it cuts itself off at the knee. A skeptic is crippled. Faith - faith makes a man strong, and right, it is a light in - in the darkest of places," he lifted his eyes to the horrible peeling walls about him, "Stronger than any darkness. Faith makes men strong, Grantaire, belief is wholesome. Skepticism is but weakness. A sickness, rather. A sickness can be cured."
"No," Grantaire countered, defiant but unable to pull his weary eyes from Enjolras' gaze, which made the room's wet heat seem a cold sweat across his arms and his breast. "Faith may generate strength, but it requires it first. Some men don't have the strength for faith. Exposure weakens us. A man sleeping on a bench gets a cough and a chill in his lungs from being too much exposed - that's what the world does to men. If skepticism is a sickness, it's exposure, and only the sheltered avoid it. Thomas was just sick like the rest of us, and Jesus, who could love a woman of the world, faulted him for it. It was human, and realistic, which is unsheltered - you can't hate the jaded for being what they are. They never chose to sleep out of doors."
For a moment, silence hovered as thickly as the night. Almost certainly Enjolras found something to pity in these words, not least of which may have been Grantaire's ignorance and worldly illness, for his face softened, the line of his mouth grew more gentle; but something burned intent within him. It seemed to Grantaire that he saw into a furnace.
But the voice was only warm. "Thomas shared your sickness, perhaps," he continued, "But Thomas - I was too harsh, I think. Thomas may have been worse off than even you, for he looked on for years as his Teacher performed miracle upon miracle, and yet he still would not believe. Thomas declared he would not believe until he saw, but he had seen ..." Enjolras let his voice dip away into the darkness, his eyes once more remote, studying something within his mind. His thoughts were rudely interrupted.
"Any soft-spoken mountebank could be a prophet. To heal the blind, you need two actors and an audience, to walk on water, a frightened and confused crew, and to kill a fig tree, a bag of lime. Miracles are worthless. No, I'll still say Thomas was right in the head, if not in the heart. He knew that what he had seen - he didn't know, but when Jesus died he suspected, I believe - that what he had seen was too good to be true. It couldn't last. He felt a fool for believing, on the Crucifixion, and so he said 'no more!' and would never suffer so again for being a blind idiot. And when God's harlot came to tell him otherwise - well! It was too much. I know Thomas wanted to believe his teacher had risen. I of all men ..." Grantaire, in his turn, stopped himself before his words fell too far. Probably he had not meant to make himself so directly a topic of conversation.
His effort was wasted, however, and his fear almost unfounded. Enjolras had grown still; perhaps he feared his question had been answered, and surely he knew, despite his humoring of Grantaire's clumsy metaphors, that his business had never lay in salvation. Grantaire had never, to his knowledge, seen this angel laugh, but neither had he thought him capable of disappointment. It was his opinion that Enjolras, brilliant light though he was, had not the sense to be disappointed. But it seemed to him now that he had achieved the impossible. The drunkard grew serious, and listened.
"Then you are utterly useless," Enjolras muttered, casting his eyes away to the door. "And if I should show you a miracle - if I were to rise from the dead, smiling or not - you would remain as you are. You are the leaden one, Grantaire, too heavy with your doubts now to pull yourself or indeed to be pulled from your skepticism. If I were to show you a miracle -"
"Then I would call you 'My lord and my God!' just as Thomas did," Grantaire took Enjolras' fingers in his own, pulling him closer to his fevered whispers, "When he took his Master's hand in his, and placed his hand into his side to feel the wound! Show me the least of your miracles, and I'll stand by you as a real apostle, not these stupid boys who talk all the time of guns and numbers. You'll find no better."
"The devil tempted Christ," Enjolras replied, the words falling heavy. "The devil asked for miracles. He received nothing." He cast away the hand that Grantaire had slipped about his side, and stood. "Christ would have no faithless apostle; a conditional friend is none at all. I would not be called 'Master' by one who seeks to test me. Your brand of faith is insufficient."
"They say it only takes a mustard seed." Grantaire watched him, appearing not quite resigned. He made a futile attempt to push his sodden hair clear of his face.
"Then come to me when you've acquired that much. It seems to me you are incapable."
He left, and Grantaire was far too drunk to rise up and follow.