Les Misérables, v. 5/5: Jean Valjean

  CHAPTER XV.

  GAVROCHE OUTSIDE.

  Courfeyrac all at once perceived somebody in the street, at the footof the barricade, amid the shower of bullets. Gavroche had fetched ahamper from the pot-house, passed through the gap, and was quicklyengaged in emptying into it the full cartouche-boxes of the NationalGuards killed on the slope of the barricade.

  "What are you doing there?" Courfeyrac said.

  Gavroche looked up.

  "Citizen, I am filling my hamper."

  "Do you not see the grape-shot?"

  Gavroche replied,--

  "Well, it is raining; what then?"

  Courfeyrac cried, "Come in."

  "Directly," said Gavroche.

  And with one bound he reached the street. It will be borne in mindthat Fannicot's company, in retiring, left behind it a number ofcorpses; some twenty dead lay here and there all along the pavementof the street. That made twenty cartouche-boxes for Gavroche, and astock of cartridges for the barricade. The smoke lay in the streetlike a fog; any one who has seen a cloud in a mountain gorge,between two precipitous escarpments, can form an idea of this smoke,contracted, and as it were rendered denser, by the two dark linesof tall houses. It rose slowly, and was incessantly renewed; whencecame a gradual obscurity, which dulled even the bright daylight. Thecombatants could scarce see one another from either end of the street,which was, however, very short. This darkness, probably desired andcalculated on by the chiefs who were about to direct the assault onthe barricade, was useful for Gavroche. Under the cloak of this smoke,and thanks to his shortness, he was enabled to advance a considerabledistance along the street unnoticed, and he plundered the first sevenor eight cartouche-boxes without any great danger. He crawled on hisstomach, galloped on all fours, took his hamper in his teeth, writhed,glided, undulated, wound from one corpse to another, and emptied thecartouche-box as a monkey opens a nut. They did not cry to him from thebarricade, to which he was still rather close, to return, for fear ofattracting attention to him. On one corpse, which was a corporal's, hefound a powder-flask.

  "For thirst," he said, as he put it in his pocket.

  While moving forward, he at length reached the point where the fog ofthe fire became transparent, so that the sharp-shooters of the line,drawn up behind their parapet of paving-stones, and the National Guardat the corner of the street, all at once pointed out to one anothersomething stirring in the street. At the moment when Gavroche wastaking the cartridges from a sergeant lying near a post, a bulletstruck the corpse.

  "Oh, for shame!" said Gavroche; "they are killing my dead for me."

  A second bullet caused the stones to strike fire close to him, whilea third upset his hamper. Gavroche looked and saw that it came fromthe National Guards. He stood upright, with his hair floating in thebreeze, his hands on his hips, and his eyes fixed on the NationalGuards 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."

  Then he picked up his hamper, put into it the cartridges scatteredaround without missing one, and walked toward the firing party, todespoil another cartouche-box. Then a fourth bullet missed him.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 bullet only succeeded so far as to draw a third couplet fromhim,--

  "Joie est mon caractère, C'est la faute à Voltaire; Misère est mon trousseau, C'est la faute à Rousseau."

  They went on for some time longer, and the sight was at once terrificand charming; Gavroche, while fired at, ridiculed the firing, andappeared to be greatly amused. He was like a sparrow deriding thesportsmen, and answered each discharge by a verse. The troops aimed athim incessantly, and constantly missed him, and the National Guardsand the soldiers laughed while covering him. He lay down, then roseagain, hid himself in a doorway, then bounded, disappeared, reappeared,ran off, came back, replied to the grape-shot by putting his fingersto his nose, and all the while plundered cartridges, emptied boxes,and filled his hamper. The insurgents watched him, as they panted withanxiety, but while the barricade trembled he sang. He was not a child,he was not a man, he was a strange goblin gamin, and he resembled theinvulnerable dwarf of the combat. The bullets ran after him, but he wasmore active than they; he played a frightful game of hide-and-seek withdeath: and each time that the snub-nosed face of the spectre approachedthe gamin gave it a fillip. One bullet, however, better aimed or moretreacherous than the rest, at length struck the will-o'-the-wisp lad;Gavroche was seen to totter and then sink. The whole barricade uttereda cry, but there was an Antæus in this pygmy: for a gamin to touch thepavement is like the giant touching the earth; and Gavroche had onlyfallen to rise again. He remained in a sitting posture, a long jet ofblood ran down his face, he raised both arms in the air, looked in thedirection whence the shot had come, and began singing,--

  "Je suis tombé par terre, C'est la faute à Voltaire; Le nez dans le ruisseau, C'est la faute à--"

  He did not finish, for a second shot from the same marksman stopped himshort. This time he lay with his face on the pavement, and did not stiragain. This little great soul had flown away.

  THE DEATH OF GAVROCHE.]