GAVROCHE OUTSIDE.
Courfeyrac all at once perceived somebody in the street, at the foot
of the barricade, amid the shower of bullets. Gavroche had fetched a
hamper from the pot-house, passed through the gap, and was quickly
engaged in emptying into it the full cartouche-boxes of the National
Guards 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 mind
that Fannicot's company, in retiring, left behind it a number of
corpses; some twenty dead lay here and there all along the pavement
of the street. That made twenty cartouche-boxes for Gavroche, and a
stock of cartridges for the barricade. The smoke lay in the street
like 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 lines
of tall houses. It rose slowly, and was incessantly renewed; whence
came a gradual obscurity, which dulled even the bright daylight. The
combatants could scarce see one another from either end of the street,
which was, however, very short. This darkness, probably desired and
calculated on by the chiefs who were about to direct the assault on
the barricade, was useful for Gavroche. Under the cloak of this smoke,
and thanks to his shortness, he was enabled to advance a considerable
distance along the street unnoticed, and he plundered the first seven
or eight cartouche-boxes without any great danger. He crawled on his
stomach, galloped on all fours, took his hamper in his teeth, writhed,
glided, undulated, wound from one corpse to another, and emptied the
cartouche-box as a monkey opens a nut. They did not cry to him from the
barricade, to which he was still rather close, to return, for fear of
attracting attention to him. On one corpse, which was a corporal's, he
found 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 of
the fire became transparent, so that the sharp-shooters of the line,
drawn up behind their parapet of paving-stones, and the National Guard
at the corner of the street, all at once pointed out to one another
something stirring in the street. At the moment when Gavroche was
taking the cartridges from a sergeant lying near a post, a bullet
struck 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, while
a third upset his hamper. Gavroche looked and saw that it came from
the National Guards. He stood upright, with his hair floating in the
breeze, his hands on his hips, and his eyes fixed on 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."
Then he picked up his hamper, put into it the cartridges scattered
around without missing one, and walked toward the firing party, to
despoil 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 from
him,--
"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 terrific
and charming; Gavroche, while fired at, ridiculed the firing, and
appeared to be greatly amused. He was like a sparrow deriding the
sportsmen, and answered each discharge by a verse. The troops aimed at
him incessantly, and constantly missed him, and the National Guards
and the soldiers laughed while covering him. He lay down, then rose
again, hid himself in a doorway, then bounded, disappeared, reappeared,
ran off, came back, replied to the grape-shot by putting his fingers
to his nose, and all the while plundered cartridges, emptied boxes,
and filled his hamper. The insurgents watched him, as they panted with
anxiety, 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 the
invulnerable dwarf of the combat. The bullets ran after him, but he was
more active than they; he played a frightful game of hide-and-seek with
death: and each time that the snub-nosed face of the spectre approached
the gamin gave it a fillip. One bullet, however, better aimed or more
treacherous than the rest, at length struck the will-o'-the-wisp lad;
Gavroche was seen to totter and then sink. The whole barricade uttered
a cry, but there was an Antæus in this pygmy: for a gamin to touch the
pavement is like the giant touching the earth; and Gavroche had only
fallen to rise again. He remained in a sitting posture, a long jet of
blood ran down his face, he raised both arms in the air, looked in the
direction 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 him
short. This time he lay with his face on the pavement, and did not stir
again. This little great soul had flown away.
[Illustration: THE DEATH OF GAVROCHE.]