Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [387]
He looked at the cloud.
“And perhaps also the rain itself is going to rain; the heavens are joining in; the younger branch is condemned. Come home, quick.”
“I should like to see the swans eat the bun,” said the child.
The father answered:
“That would be an imprudence.”
And he led away his little bourgeois.
The son, regretting the swans, turned his head towards the basin, until a turn in the rows of trees hid it from him.
Meanwhile, at the same time with the swans, the two little wanderers had approached the bun. It was floating on the water. The smaller was looking at the cake, the larger was looking at the bourgeois who was going away.
The father and the son entered the labyrinth of walks which leads to the grand stairway of the cluster of trees on the side towards the Rue Madame.
As soon as they were out of sight, the elder quickly lay down with his face over the rounded edge of the basin, and, holding by it with his left hand, hanging over the water, almost falling in, with his right hand reached his stick towards the cake. The swans, seeing the enemy, made haste, and in making haste produced an effect with their breasts which was useful to the little fisher; the water flowed back before the swans, and one of those smooth concentric waves pushed the bun gently towards the child’s stick. As the swans came up, the stick touched the cake. The child made a quick movement, drew in the bun, frightened the swans, seized the cake, and got up. The cake was soaked; but they were hungry and thirsty. The eldest broke the bun into two pieces, one large and one small, took the small one for himself, gave the large one to his little brother, and said to him:
“Stick that in your gun.”
15 (17)
MORTUUS PATER FILIUM MORITURUM EXPECTAT
MARIUS had sprung out of the barricade. Combeferre had followed him. But it was too late. Gavroche was dead. Combeferre brought back the basket of cartridges; Marius brought back the child.
“Alas!” thought he, “what the father had done for his father he was returning to the son; only Thénardier had brought back his father living, while he brought back the child dead.”
When Marius re-entered the redoubt with Gavroche in his arms, his face, like the child‘s, was covered with blood.
Just as he had stooped down to pick up Gavroche, a ball grazed his skull; he did not perceive it.
Courfeyrac took off his cravat and bound up Marius’ forehead.
Combeferre distributed the cartridges from the basket which he had brought back.
This gave each man fifteen shots.
Jean Valjean was still at the same place, motionless upon his block. When Combeferre presented him his fifteen cartridges, he shook his head.
“There is a rare eccentric,” said Combeferre in a low tone to Enjolras. “He finds means not to fight in this barricade.”
“Which does not prevent him from defending it,” answered Enjolras.
“Heroism has its originals,” replied Combeferre.
Suddenly between two discharges they heard the distant sound of a clock striking.
“It is noon,” said Combeferre.
The twelve strokes had not sounded when Enjolras sprang to his feet, and flung down from the top of the barricade this thundering shout:
“Carry some paving-stones into the house. Fortify the windows with them. Half the men to the muskets, the other half to the stones. Not a minute to lose.”
A platoon of sappers, their axes on their shoulders, had just appeared in order of battle at the end of the street.
This could only be the head of a column; and of what column? The column of attack, evidently. The sappers, whose duty it is to demolish the barricade, must always precede the soldiers whose duty it is to scale it.
Enjolras’ order was executed with the correct haste peculiar to ships and barricades, the only places of combat whence escape is impossible. In less than a minute, two-thirds of the paving-stones which Enjolras had had piled up at the door of Corinth were carried up to the first story and to the garret; and before a second minute had elapsed, these stones, artistically laid one