Answering that question would require me to understand how to play dominoes, and I’m afraid I don’t. To be honest, I struggle to even tell who’s doing and saying what in the dialogue at the end of this chapter.
I did sort of wonder, though, if that might not be deliberate. We have been told the reason why someone needs to go and speak to the people at the Barrière du Maine in the first place:
‘Ils s’éteignent. Ils passent leur temps à jouer aux dominos.’ - ‘They are going out. [More light metaphors, by the by! Not helped by my clumsy translation.] They spend their time playing dominoes.’ So they need someone to shake them out of that and show them something different. Grantaire’s failure is underlined by the way that he won’t do this - he chooses not to stand out, but to blend in. His unwillingness to rock the boat in this way is very much in keeping with all his speeches about the futility of revolution, how it’s best to keep your head down and out of trouble than to make a stand, draw attention to yourself and risk your neck.
And all of this is added to by the image of the 'brume’ - 'haze, fog’ in the room. It shows how Grantaire is here blended in and obscured; we can barely tell who’s talking because all we get are voices through the fog. The light at the Barrière du Maine is going out and Grantaire is not trying to rekindle it and drive away the fog, but is instead choosing to lose himself in it.
But this also ties into the wider-reaching clarity imagery going on with Grantaire in the novel. We are told right back in his introduction that he is drawn to Enjolras 'sans qu'il s’en rendît clairement compte’ - 'without him being clearly aware of it’. He embraces this obscurity: ’Sa joie était de voir aller et venir ces silhouettes dans les fumées du vin.’ - 'His joy was to see these silhouettes coming and going in the fumes of the wine.’ He’s not seeing the Amis properly because they are only silhouettes, because he is always keeping that fog of alcohol and not-caring between him and their beliefs.
(And we have just been told a little earlier in the same chapter - in no uncertain terms - that this losing oneself in the fumes is dangerous. The sense is different, but I’m sure there’s a link to this description of Combeferre: 'Une clarté troublée par de la fumée, un progrès acheté par de la violence, ne satisfaisaient qu’à demi ce tendre et sérieux esprit.’ - 'A clarity troubled by fumes, progress bought with violence, only half-satisfied this tender and serious spirit.’ Here the fumes are evidently supposed to recall some kind of smoke of destruction, but that only serves as a reminder that Grantaire’s not caring isn’t just a lack of action, because even simply failing to act is an implicit acceptance of what people like Combeferre are fighting against.)
It’s only at his death that he breaks through this: 'l'effacement de l'ivresse, sorte de buée qui aveuglait le cerveau, se dissipe, et fait place à la claire et nette obsession des réalités’ - 'the erasure of drunkenness, a sort of vapour that blinded the brain, dissipates and gives way to the clear and defined obsession of realities’.
Oops sorry I pulled a Grantaire again.
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