I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this many times all across tumblr and discord, but my heart aches at how in the two lines afforded to describing the rest of the Amis’s deaths, Combeferre is the one to get a line all to himself:
Combeferre transfixed by three blows from a bayonet in the breast at the moment when he was lifting up a wounded soldier, had only time to cast a glance to heaven when he expired. (5.1.21)
Not only does he go out doing what he always wanted to do (helping, rather than directly harming others), he dies with a final glance up towards the sky, which reminds me of:
[H]e said: "Revolution, but civilization"; and around the mountain peak he opened out a vast view of the blue sky. (3.4.1)
Much of his 3.4.1 description talks about how much he dislikes bloodshed, that he prefers the peace of the future, and the purity that it will bring once their fight is over; moreover, he believed that:
A conflagration can create an aurora, no doubt, but why not await the dawn? A volcano illuminates, but daybreak furnishes a still better illumination. Possibly, Combeferre preferred the whiteness of the beautiful to the blaze of the sublime. (3.4.1)
And so here in his final moments, Hugo gives Combeferre one last comfort: to have the brightness of heaven be his final sight, even in the midst of a bloody, painful death.
