Enjolras

[close] He is the leader of The Barricade.
26 years old.

"Enjolras, named first-later we will see why-was an only son and was rich. He was a charming young man, capable of being intimidating. He was angelically beautiful. He was Antinous, wild. You would have said, seeing the thoughtful reflection of his eye, that he had already, in some preceding existence, been through the revolutionary apocalypse. He knew its tradition like an eyewitness. He knew every little detail of that great thing. A pontifical and warrior nature, strange in a youth. He was officiating and militant; from the immediate point of view, a soldier of democracy; above the movement of the time, a priest of the ideal. He had a deep eye, slightly red lids, thick underlip, readily disdainful, and a high forehead. Much forehead in a face is like much sky in a horizon. Like certain young men early in this century and late in the last, who became illustrious in early life, he had an exceedingly youthful look, as fresh as a young girl's, though he had moments of pallor. Already a man, he still seemed a child. His twenty-two years appeared as seventeen; he was serious, he did not seem to know that there was a being on earth called woman. He had one passion only, justice; one thought only, to remove all obstacles. On Mount Aventine, he would have been Gracchus ; in the Convention, he would have been Saint Just. He hardly saw a rose, he ignored the spring, he did not hear the birds sing; Evadne's bare bosom would have moved him no more than Aristogeiton; to him, as to Harmodius, flowers were good only for hiding the sword. He was severe in his pleasures. Before anything but the Republic, he chastely dropped his eyes. He was the marble lover of liberty. His speech was roughly inspired and had the tremor of a hymn. He would spread his wings unexpectedly and astonish you by his soaring. Woe to the love affair that should venture to intrude on him! Had any grisette of the Place Cambrai or the Rue Saint-Jean-de Beauvais, seeing this college boy's face, the body of a page, long fair lashes, blue eyes, that hair flying in the wind, rosy cheeks, pure lips, exquisite teeth, felt a desire to taste all this dawn, and tried her beauty on Enjolras, a surprising and terrible look would have suddenly shown her the great gulf, and taught her not to confuse Beaumarchais's dashing cherubino with this fearsome cherubim of Ezekiel."