Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [384]
“This goes well,” said Bossuet to Enjolras. “Success.”
Enjolras shook his head and answered:
“A quarter of an hour more of this success, and there will not be ten cartridges in the barricade.”
It would seem that Gavroche heard this remark.
13 (15)
GAVROCHE OUTSIDE
COURFEYRAC suddenly perceived somebody at the foot of the barricade, outside in the street, under the balls.
Gavroche had taken a basket from the tavern, had gone out by the opening, and was quietly occupied in emptying into his basket the full cartridge-boxes of the National Guards who had been killed on the slope of the redoubt.
“What are you doing there?” said Courfeyrac.
Gavroche cocked up his nose.
“Citizen, I am filling my basket.”
“Why, don’t you see the grapeshot?”
Gavroche answered:
“Well, it rains. What then?”
Courfeyrac cried:
“Come back!”
“Directly,” said Gavroche.
And with a bound, he sprang into the street.
It will be remembered that the Fannicot company, on retiring, had left behind them a trail of corpses.
Some twenty dead lay scattered along the whole length of the street on the pavement. Twenty cartridge-boxes for Gavroche, a supply of cartridges for the barricade.
The smoke in the street was like a fog. Whoever has seen a cloud fall into a mountain gorge between two steep slopes can imagine this smoke crowded and as if thickened by two gloomy lines of tall houses. It rose slowly and was constantly renewed; hence a gradual darkening which even rendered broad day pallid. The combatants could hardly perceive each other from end to end of the street, although it was very short.
This darkness, probably desired and calculated upon by the leaders who were to direct the assault upon the barricade, was of use to Gavroche.
Under the folds of this veil of smoke, and thanks to his small size, he could advance far into the street without being seen. He emptied the first seven or eight cartridge-boxes without much danger.
He crawled on his belly, ran on his hands and feet, took his basket in his teeth, twisted, glided, writhed, wormed his way from one body to another, and emptied a cartridge-box as a monkey opens a nut.
From the barricade, of which he was still within hearing, they dared not call to him to return, for fear of attracting attention to him.
On one corpse, that of a corporal, he found a powder-flask.
“In case of thirst,” said he as he put it into his pocket.
By successive advances, he reached a point where the fog from the firing became transparent.
So that the sharp-shooters of the line drawn up and on the alert behind their wall of paving-stones, and the sharp-shooters of the banlieue massed at the corner of the street, suddenly discovered something moving in the smoke.
Just as Gavroche was relieving a sergeant who lay near a stone-block of his cartridges, a ball struck the body.
“The deuce!” said Gavroche. “So they are killing my dead for me.”
A second ball splintered the pavement beside him. A third upset his basket.
Gavroche looked and saw that it came from the banlieue.
He rose up straight, on his feet, his hair in the wind, his hands upon his hips, his eye fixed upon the National Guards who were firing, and he sang:
On est laid à Nanterre
C‘est la faute à Voltaire,
Et bête à Palaiseau,
C’est la faute à Rousseau.1
Then he picked up his basket, put into it the cartridge which had fallen out, without losing a single one, and, advancing towards the fusilade, began to empty another cartridge-box. There a fourth ball just missed him again. Gavroche sang:
Je ne suis pas notaire,
C‘est la faute à Voltaire;
Je suis petit oiseau,
C’est la faute à Rousseau.
A fifth ball succeeded only in drawing a third couplet from him.
Joie est mon caractère,
C‘est la faute à Voltaire;
Misère est mon trousseau,
C’est la faute à Rousseau.
This continued thus for some time.
The sight was appalling and fascinating. Gavroche, fired at, mocked the firing. He appeared to be very much amused. It was the sparrow