Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [378]
“Bravo for the gunners!” cried Bossuet.
And the whole barricade clapped hands.
A moment afterwards, placed squarely in the very middle of the street, astride of the gutter, the gun was in battery. A formidable mouth was opened upon the barricade.
“Come, be lively!” said Courfeyrac. “There is the brute. After the fillip, the knock-down. The army stretches out its big paw to us. The barricade is going to be seriously shaken. The musketry feels, the artillery takes.”
“Reload arms,” said Enjolras.
How was the facing of the barricade going to behave under fire? would the shot make a breach? That was the question. While the insurgents were reloading their muskets, the gunners loaded the cannon.
There was intense anxiety in the redoubt.
The gun went off; the detonation burst upon them.
“Present!” cried a cheerful voice.
And at the same time with the ball, Gavroche tumbled into the barricade.
He came by way of the Rue du Cygne, and he had nimbly clambered over the minor barricade, which fronted upon the labyrinth of the Petite Truanderie.
Gavroche produced more effect in the barricade than the ball.
The ball lost itself in the jumble of the rubbish. At the very utmost it broke a wheel of the omnibus, and finished the old Anceau cart. Seeing which, the barricade began to laugh.
“Proceed,” cried Bossuet to the gunners.
7 (8)
THE GUNNERS PRODUCE A SERIOUS IMPRESSION
THEY surrounded Gavroche.
But he had no time to tell anything. Marius, shuddering, took him aside.
“What have you come here for?”
“Hold on!” said the boy. “What have you come for?”
And he looked straight at Marius with his epic effrontery. His eyes grew large with the proud light which was in them.
Marius continued, in a stern tone:
“Who told you to come back? At least you carried my letter to its address?”
Gavroche had some little remorse in relation to that letter. In his haste to return to the barricade, he had got rid of it rather than delivered it. He was compelled to acknowledge to himself that he had intrusted it rather rashly to that stranger, whose face even he could not distinguish. True, this man was bareheaded, but that was not enough. On the whole, he had some little interior remonstrances on this subject, and he feared Marius’ reproaches. He took, to get out of the trouble, the simplest course; he lied abominably.
“Citizen, I carried the letter to the porter. The lady was asleep. She will get the letter when she wakes up.”
Marius, in sending this letter, had two objects: to say farewell to Cosette, and to save Gavroche. He was obliged to be content with the half of what he intended.
The sending of his letter, and the presence of M. Fauchelevent in the barricade, this coincidence occurred to his mind. He pointed out M. Fauchelevent to Gavroche.
“Do you know that man?”
“No,” said Gavroche.
Gavroche, in fact, as we have just mentioned, had only seen Jean Valjean in the night.
The troubled and sickly conjectures which had arisen in Marius’ mind were dissipated. Did he know M. Fauchelevent’s opinions? M. Fauchelevent was a republican, perhaps. Hence his very natural presence in this conflict.
Meanwhile Gavroche was already at the other end of the barricade, crying: “My musket!”
Courfeyrac ordered it to be given him.
Gavroche warned his “comrades,” as he called them, that the barricade was surrounded. He had had great difficulty in getting through. A battalion of the line whose muskets were stacked in la Petite Truanderie, were observing the side on the Rue du Cygne; on the opposite side the municipal guard occupied the Rue des Precheurs. In front, they had the bulk of the army.
Meanwhile Enjolras, on his battlement, was watching, listening with intense attention.
The assailants, dissatisfied doubtless