I want to jump into all this meta’ing about Grantaire and redemption! There’s a whole lotta things I noticed in the novel but never got round to actually making a note of here, and one of them is-

-when we first meet Grantaire his introduction goes like this (bolding mine):

His soft, yielding, dislocated, sickly, shapeless ideas attached themselves to Enjolras as to a spinal column. His moral backbone leaned on that firmness. Grantaire in the presence of Enjolras became some one once more.

But when he opts to die with Enjolras:

…the sergeant was preparing to repeat his order: “Take aim!” when all at once, they heard a strong voice shout beside them:

“Long live the Republic! I’m one of them.”

Grantaire had risen. The immense gleam of the whole combat which he had missed, and in which he had had no part, appeared in the brilliant glance of the transfigured drunken man.

He repeated: “Long live the Republic!” crossed the room with a firm stride and placed himself in front of the guns beside Enjolras.

Soft becomes strong, yielding becomes firm, he finally gets a bit of that brilliance he sought. His mindset’s totally different in his last few seconds of life than it was at the beginning of his story…

Then there’s the ‘do you permit it’ line, and Grantaire’s general reaction to seeing Enjolras about to die. Because I always wondered a bit why he didn’t try and stop the soldiers, he probably could have done, they weren’t particularly enthusiastic about having to shoot Enjolras in the first place. But he doesn’t, he doesn’t fight, he doesn’t plead, he certainly doesn’t try and argue with Enjolras- he may have never been able to believe in his ideals, but he respects them enough to know that Enjolras would rather die with them. So he goes and stands with him- partly because he wouldn’t want to live in a world without him, and partly because he wants to live in the light of belief for just a few seconds before he dies. And he asks permission because (as others have mentioned) Enjolras always comes first, and he handed his whole existence over to him a while back.

(Also! I think Enjolras probably wouldn’t have refused Grantaire even if he had risen with nothing but cynical words and anger- he wouldn’t have taken his hand, but I don’t think he’d have let him die alone. Even with Le Cabuc, who was a cold-blooded murderer, Enjolras let him have a minute to make peace with God.)