BOOK FIFTEETH
THE RUE DE L'HOMME ARME



I. BLOTTER, BLABBER



WHAT ARE THE CONVULSIONS of a city compared with the emeutes of
the soul? Man is a still deeper depth than the people. Jean Valjean,
at that very moment, was a prey to a frightful uprising. All the gulfs
were reopened within him. He also, like Paris, was shuddering on the
threshold of a formidable and obscure revolution. A few hours had suf-
ficed. His destiny and his conscience were suddenly covered with shadow.
Of him also, as of Paris, we might say: the two principles are face to
face. The angel of light and the angel of darkness are to wrestle on
the bridge of the abyss. Which of the two shall hurl down the other?
which shall sweep him away?

On the eve of that same day, June 5th, Jean Valjean, accompanied by
Cosette and Toussaint, had installed himself in the Rue de l'Homme Arme.
A sudden turn of fortune awaited him there.

Cosette had not left the Rue Plumet without an attempt at resistance. For
the first time since they had lived together, Cosette's will and Jean Val-
jean's will had shown themselves distinct, and had been, if not conflicting,
at least contradictory. There was objection on one side and inflexibility
on the other. The abrupt advice: remove, thrown to Jean Valjean by an un-
known hand, had so far alarmed him as to render him absolute. He believed
himself tracked out and pursued. Cosette had to yield.

They both arrived in the Rue de l'Homme Arme without opening their mouths
or saying a word, absorbed in their personal meditations; Jean Valjean so
anxious that he did not perceive Cosette's sadness, Cosette so sad that
she did not perceive Jean Valjean's anxiety.

Jean Valjean had brought Toussaint, which he had never done in his pre-
ceding absences. He saw that possibly he should not return to the Rue
Plumet, and he could neither leave Toussaint behind, nor tell her his
secret. Besides he felt that she was devoted and safe. Between domestic
and master, treason begins with curiosity. But Toussaint, as if she had
been predestined to be the servant of Jean Valjean, was not curious. She
said through her stuttering, in her Barneville peasant's speech: "I am
from same to same; I think my act; the remainder is not my labour." (I
am so; I do my work! the rest is not my affair.)

In this departure from the Rue Plumet, which was almost a flight, Jean
Valjean carried nothing but the little embalmed valise christened by

Cosette the inseparable. Full trunks would have required porters, and
porters are witnesses. They had a coach come to the door on the Rue de
Babylone, and they went away.

It was with great difficulty that Toussaint obtained permission to pack
up a little linen and clothing and a few toilet articles. Cosette herself
carried only her writing-desk and her blotter.

Jean Valjean, to increase the solitude and mystery of this disappearance,
had arranged so as not to leave the cottage on the Rue Plumet till the
close of the day, which left Cosette time to write her note to Marius.
They arrived in the Rue de l'Homme Arme after nightfall.

They went silently to bed.

The lodging in the Rue de l'Homme Arme was situated in a rear court,
on the second story, and consisted of two bedrooms, a dining-room, and a
kitchen adjoining the dining-room, with a loft where there was a cot-bed
which fell to Toussaint. The dining-room was at the same time the ante-
chamber, and separated the two bedrooms. The apartments contained all
necessary furniture.

We are reassured almost as foolishly as we are alarmed; human nature
is so constituted. Hardly was Jean Valjean in the Rue de l'Homme Arme,
before his anxiety grew less, and by degrees was dissipated. There are
quieting spots which act in some sort mechanically upon the mind. Obscure
street, peaceful inhabitants. Jean Valjean felt some strange contagion of
tranquillity in that lane of the ancient Paris, so narrow that it was barred
to carriages by a tranverse joist laid upon two posts, dumb and deaf in the
midst of the noisy city, twilight in broad day, and so to speak, incapable of
emotions between its two rows of lofty, century-old houses which are silent
like the patriarchs that they are. There is stagnant oblivion in this street.
Jean Valjean breathed there. By what means could anybody find him there?

His first care was to place the inseparable by his side.

He slept well. Night counsels; we may add: night calms. Next morning
he awoke almost cheerful. He thought the dining-room charming,
although it was hideous, furnished with an old round table, a low sideboard
surmounted by a hanging mirror, a worm-eaten armchair, and a few other
chairs loaded down with Toussaint's bundles. Through an opening in one
of these bundles, Jean Valjean's National Guard uniform could be seen.

As for Cosette, she had Toussaint bring a bowl of soup to her room,
and did not make her appearance till evening.

About five o'clock, Toussaint, who was coming and going, very busy
with this little removal, set a cold fowl on the dining-room table, which
Cosette, out of deference to her father, consented to look at.

This done, Cosette, upon pretext of a severe headache, said good-night
to Jean Valjean, and shut herself in her bedroom. Jean Valjean ate a
chicken's wing with a good appetite, and, leaning on the tables, clearing
his brow little by little, was regaining his sense of security.

While he was making this frugal dinner, he became confusedly aware, on
two or three occasions, of the stammering of Toussaint, who said to him:
"Monsieur, there is a row; they are fighting in Paris." But, absorbed in
a multitude of interior combinations, he paid no attention to it. To tell
the truth, he had not heard.

He arose and began to walk from the window to the door, and from
the door to the window, growing calmer and calmer.

With calmness, Cosette, his single engrossing care, returned to his
thoughts. Not that he was troubled about this headache, a petty derang-
ement of the nerves, a young girl's pouting, the cloud of a moment, in a
day or two it would be gone; but he thought of the future, and, as usual,
he thought of it pleasantly. After all, he saw no obstacle to their happy life
resuming its course. At certain hours, everything seems impossible; at other
hours, everything appears easy; Jean Valjean was in one of those happy
hours. They come ordinarily after the evil ones, like day after night, by that
law of succession and contrast which lies at the very foundation of nature,
and which superficial minds call antithesis. In this peaceful street, in which
he had taken refuge, Jean Valjean was relieved from all that had troubled
him for some time past. From the very fact that he had seen a good deal of
darkness, he began to perceive a little blue sky. To have left the Rue Plumet
without complication and without accident, was already a piece of good for-
tune. Perhaps it would be prudent to leave the country, were it only for
a few months, and go to London. Well, they would go. To be in France, to
be in England, what did that matter, if he had Cosette with him? Cosette
was his nation. Cosette sufficed for his happiness; the idea that perhaps he
did not suffice for Cosette's happiness, this idea, once his fever and his
bane, did not even present itself to his mind. All his past griefs had dis-
appeared, and he was in full tide of optimism. Cosette, being near him,
seemed to belong to him; an optical effect which everybody has experienced.
He arranged in his own mind and with every possible facility, the departure
for England with Cosette, and he saw his happiness reconstructed, no matter
where, in the perspective of his reverie.

While yet walking up and down, with slow steps, his eye suddenly met
something strange.

He perceived facing him, in the inclined mirror which hung above the
sideboard, and he distinctly read the lines which follow:

"My beloved, alas! my father wishes to start immediately. We shall be
to-night in the Rue de l'Homme Arme, No. 7. In a week we shall be in
London. COSETTE. June 4th."

Jean Valjean stood aghast.

Cosette, on arriving, had laid her blotter on the sideboard before the
mirror, and, wholly absorbed in her sorrowful anguish, had forgotten it
there, without even noticing that she left it wide open, and open exactly at
the page upon which she had dried the five lines written by her, and which
she had given in charge to the young workman passing through the Rue
Plumet. The writing was imprinted upon the blotter.

The mirror reflected the writing.

There resulted what is called in geometry the symmetrical image; so that
the writing reversed on the blotter was corrected by the mirror, and
presented its original form; and Jean Valjean had beneath his eyes the
letter written in the evening by Cosette to Marius.

It was simple and withering.

Jean Valjean went to the mirror. He read the five lines again, but he
did not believe it. They produced upon him the effect of an apparition in a
flash of lightning. It was a hallucination. It was impossible. It was not.

Little by little his perception became more precise; he looked at Cosette's
blotter, and the consciousness of the real fact returned to him. He took
the blotter and said: "It comes from that." He feverishly examined the
five lines imprinted on the blotter, the reversal of the letters made a
fantastic scrawl of them, and he saw no sense in them. Then he said to him-
self: "But that does not mean anything, there is nothing written there." And
he drew a long breath, with an inexpressible sense of relief. Who has not felt
these silly joys in moments of horror? The soul does not give itself up to
despair until it has exhausted all illusions.

He held the blotter in his hand and gazed at it, stupidly happy, almost
laughing at the hallucination of which he had been the dupe. All at once
his eyes fell upon the mirror, and he saw the vision again. This time it was
not a mirage. The second sight of a vision is a reality, it was palpable, it
was the writing restored by the mirror. He understood.

Jean Valjean tottered, let the blotter fall, and sank down into the old
armchair by the sideboard, his head drooping, his eyes glassy, bewildered.
He said to himself that it was clear, and that the light of the world was for
ever eclipsed, and that Cosette had written that to somebody. Then he
heard his soul, again become terrible, give a sullen roar in the darkness. Go,
then, and take from the lion the dog which he has in his cage.

A circumstance strange and sad, Marius at that moment had not yet Cos-
ette's letter; chance had brought it, like a traitor, to Jean Valjean before
delivering it to Marius.

Jean Valjean till this day had never been vanquished when put to the proof.
He had been subjected to fearful trials; no violence of ill fortune had
been spared him; the ferocity of fate, armed with every vengeance and with
every scorn of society, had taken him for a subject and had greedily pursued
him. He had neither recoiled nor flinched before anything. He had accepted,
when he must, every extremity; he had sacrificed his reconquered inviolabi-
lity of manhood, given up his liberty, risked his head, lost all, suffered
all, and he had remained so disinterested and stoical that at times one
might have believed him translated, like a martyr. His conscience, inured to
all possible assaults of adversity, might seem for ever impregnable. Well,
he who could have seen his inward monitor would have been compelled to
admit that at this hour it was growing feeble.

For, of all the tortures which he had undergone in that inquisition of
destiny, this was the most fearful. Never had such pincers seized him. He
felt the mysterious quiver of every latent sensibility. He felt the laceration
of the unknown fibre. Alas, the supreme ordeal, let us say rather, the only
ordeal, is the loss of the beloved being.

Poor old Jean Valjean did not, certainly, love Cosette otherwise than as
a father; but, as we have already mentioned, into this paternity the very
bereavement of his life had introduced every love; he loved Cosette as his
daughter, and he loved her as his mother, and he loved her as his sister; and,
as he had never had either sweetheart or wife, as nature is a creditor who
accepts no protest, that sentiment, also, the most indestructible of all, was
mingled with the others, vague, ignorant, pure with the purity of blindness,
unconscious, celestial, angelic, divine; less like a sentiment than like an
instinct, less like an instinct than like an attraction, imperceptible and
invisible, but real; and love, properly speaking, existed in his enormous
tenderness for Cosette as does the vein of gold in the mountain, dark and
virgin.

Remember that condition of heart which we have already pointed out.
No marriage was possible between them, not even that of souls; and still it
was certain that their destinies were espoused. except Cosette, that is to
say, except a childhood, Jean Valjean, in all his long life, had known nothing
of those objects which man can love. The passions and the loves which
succeed one another, had not left on him those successive greens, a light
green over a dark green, which we notice upon leaves that pass the winter,
and upon men who pass their fifty years. In short, and we have more than
once insisted upon it, all that interior fusion, all that whole, the resultant
of which was a lofty virtue, ended in making of Jean Valjean a father for
Cosette. A strange father forged out of the grandfather, the son, the
brother, and the husband, which there was in Jean Valjean; a father in
whom there was even a mother; a father who loved Cosette, and who
adored her, and to whom that child was light, was home, was family, was
country, was paradise.

So, when he saw that it was positively ended, that she escaped him, that
she glided from his hands, that she eluded him, that it was cloud, that
it was water, when he had before his eyes this crushing evidence; another
is the aim of her heart, another is the desire of her life, there is a be-
loved; I am only the father; I no longer exist; when he could no more doubt
when he said to himself: "She is going away out of me!" the grief which he
felt surpassed the possible. To have done all that he had done to come to
this! and, what! to be nothing! Then, as we have just said, he felt from head
to foot a shudder of revolt. He felt even to the roots of his hair the immense
awakening of selfishness, and the Me howled in the abyss of his soul.

There are interior subsoilings. The penetration of a torturing certainty
into man does not occur without breaking up and pulverising certain deep
elements which are sometimes the man himself. Grief, when it reaches this
stage, is a panic of all the forces of the soul. These are fatal crises. Few
among us come through them without change, and firm in duty. When the
limit of suffering is overpassed, the most imperturbable virtue is discon-
certed. Jean Valjean took up the blotter, and convinced himself anew; he
bent as if petrified over the five undeniable lines, with eye fixed; and
such a cloud formed within him that one might have believed the whole
interior of that soul was crumbling.

He examined this revelation, through the magnifying powers of reverie,
with an apparent and frightful calmness, for it is a terrible thing when
the calmness of man reaches the rigidity of the statue.

He measured the appalling step which his destiny had taken without a sus-
picion on his part; he recalled his fears of the previous summer, so foolish-
ly dissipated: he recognised the precipice; it was still the same; only Jean
Valjean was no longer on the brink, he was at the bottom.

A bitter and monstrous thing, he had fallen without perceiving it. All
the light of his life had gone out, he believing that he constantly saw
the sun.

His instinct did not hesitate. He put together certain circumstances, cer-
tain dates, certain blushes, and certain pallors of Cosette, and he said to
himself: "It is he." The divination of despair is a sort of mysterious bow
which never misses its aim. With his first conjecture, he hit Marius. He
did not know the name, but he found the man at once. He perceived dis-
tinctly, at the bottom of the implacable evocation of memory, the unknown
prowler of the Luxembourg, that wretched seeker of amours, that romantic
idler, that imbecile, that coward, for it is cowardice to come and make
sweet eyes at girls who are beside their father who loves them. After he
had fully determined that that young man was at the bottom of this state
of affairs, and that it all came from him, he, Jean Valjean, the regen-
erated man, the man who had laboured so much upon his soul, the man who
had made so many efforts to resolve all life, all misery, and all mis-
fortune into love; he looked within himself, and there he saw a spectre,
Hatred.

Great griefs contain dejection. They discourage existence. The man into
whom they enter feels something go out of him. In youth, their visit is
dismal; in later years it is ominous. Alas! when the blood is hot, when the
hair is black, when the head is erect upon the body like the flame upon the
torch, when the sheaf of destiny is still full, when the heart, filled with
a fortunate love, still has pulsations which can be responded to, when we
have before us the time to retrieve, when all women are before us, and all
smiles, and all the future, and all the horizon, when the strength of life is
complete, if despair is a fearful thing, what is it then in old age, when the
years rush along, growing bleaker and bleaker, at the twilight hour, when
we begin to see the stars of the tomb!

While he was thinking, Toussaint entered. Jean Valjean arose, and asked
her:

"In what direction is it? Do you know?"

Toussaint, astonished, could only answer:

"If you please ?"

Jean Valjean resumed:

"Didn't you tell me just now that they were fighting?"

"Oh! yes, monsieur," answered Toussaint. "It is over by Saint Merry."

There are some mechanical impulses which come to us, without our
knowledge even, from our deepest thoughts. It was doubtless under the
influence of an impulse of this kind, and of which he was hardly conscious,
that Jean Valjean five minutes afterwards found himself in the street.
He was bare-headed, seated upon the stone block by the door of his
house. He seemed to be listening.

The night had come.



II. THE GAMIN AN ENEMY OF LIGHT



HOW MUCH TIME did he pass thus? What were the ebbs and the flows of
that tragic meditation? did he straighten up? did he remain bowed? had he
been bent so far as to break? could he yet straighten himself, and regain
a foothold in his conscience upon something solid? He himself probably
could not have told.

The street was empty. A few anxious bourgeois, who were rapidly re-
turning home, hardly perceived him. Every man for himself in times of
peril. The lamplighter came as usual to light the lamp which hung exactly
opposite the door of No. 7, and went away. Jean Valjean, to one who had
examined him in that shadow, would not have seemed a living man. There
he was, seated upon the block by his door, immovable as a goblin of ice.
There is congelation in despair. The tocsin was heard, and vague stormy
sounds were heard. In the midst of all this convulsive clamour of the bell
mingled with the emeute, the clock of St. Paul's struck eleven, gravely and
without haste, for the tocsin is man; the hour is God. The passing of the
hour had no effect upon Jean Valjean; Jean Valjean did not stir. However,
almost at that very moment, there was a sharp explosion in the direction
of the markets, a second followed, more violent still; it was probably that
attack on the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie which we have just seen
repulsed by Marius. At this double discharge, the fury of which seemed
increased by the stupor of the night, Jean Valjean was startled; he looked
up in the direction whence the sound came; then he sank down upon the
block, folded his arms, and his head dropped slowly upon his breast.

He resumed his dark dialogue with himself.

Suddenly he raised his eyes, somebody was walking in the street, he heard
steps near him, he looked, and, by the light of the lamp, in the direction
of the Archives, he perceived a livid face, young and radiant.

Gavroche had just arrived in the Rue de l'Homme Arme.

Gavroche was looking in the air, and appeared to be searching for
something. He saw Jean Valjean perfectly, but he took no notice of him.
Gavroche, after looking into the air, looked on the ground; he raised
himself on tiptoe and felt of the doors and windows of the ground floors;
they were all closed, bolted, and chained. After having found five or six
houses barricaded in this way, the gamin shrugged his shoulders, and took
counsel with himself in these terms:

"Golly!"

Then he began to look into the air again.

Jean Valjean, who, the instant before, in the state of mind in which he
was, would not have spoken nor even replied to anybody, felt irresistibly
impelled to address a word to this child.

"Small boy," said he, "what is the matter with you?"

"The matter is that I am hungry," answered Gavroche tartly. And he
added: "Small yourself."

Jean Valjean felt in his pocket and took out a five-franc piece.

But Gavroche, who was of the wagtail species, and who passed quickly
from one action to another, had picked up a stone. He had noticed a lamp.

"Hold on," said he, "you have your lamps here still. You are not regular,
my friends. It is disorderly. Break me that."

And he threw the stone into the lamp, the glass from which fell with such
a clatter that some bourgeois, hid behind their curtains in the opposite
house, cried: "There is 'Ninety-three!"

The lamp swung violently and went out. The street became suddenly
dark.

"That's it, old street," said Gavroche, "put on your nightcap."

And turning towards Jean Valjean:

"What do you call that gigantic monument that you have got there at the
end of the street? That's the Archives, isn't it? They ought to chip off
these big fools of columns slightly, and make a genteel barricade of them."
Jean Valjean approached Gavroche.

"Poor creature," said he, in an undertone, and speaking to himself, "he
is hungry."

And he put the hundred-sous piece into his hand.

Gavroche cocked up his nose, astonished at the size of this big sou; he
looked at it in the dark, and the whiteness of the big sou dazzled him.
He knew five-franc pieces by hearsay; their reputation was agreeable to
him; he was delighted to see one so near. He said: "let us contemplate the
tiger."

He gazed at it for a few moments in ecstasy; then, turning towards Jean
Valjean, he handed him the piece, and said majestically:

"Bourgeois, I prefer to break lamps. Take back your wild beast. You
don't corrupt me. It has five claws; but it don't scratch me."

"Have you a mother?" inquired Jean Valjean.

Gavroche answered:

"Perhaps more than you have."

"Well," replied Jean Valjean, "keep this money for your mother."

Gavroche felt softened. Besides he had just noticed that the man who
was talking to him, had no hat, and that inspired him with confidence.

"Really," said he, "it isn't to prevent my breaking the lamps?"

"Break all you like."

"You are a fine fellow," said Gavroche.

And he put the five-franc piece into one of his pockets.

His confidence increasing, he added:

"Do you belong in the street?"

"Yes; why?"

"Could you show me number seven?"

"What do you want with number seven?"

Here the boy stopped; he feared that he had said too much; he plunged
his nails vigorously into his hair, and merely answered:

"Ah! that's it."

An idea flashed across Jean Valjean's mind. Anguish has such lucidities.
He said to the child:

"Have you brought the letter I am waiting for?"

"You?" said Gavroche. "You are not a woman."

"The letter is for Mademoiselle Cosette; isn't it?"

"Cosette?" muttered Gavroche, "yes, I believe it is that funny name."

"Well," resumed Jean Valjean, "I am to deliver the letter to her. Give
it to me."

"In that case you must know that I am sent from the barricade?"

"Of course," said Jean Valjean.

Gavroche thrust his hand into another of his pockets, and drew out a
folded paper.

Then he gave a military salute.

"Respect for the despatch," said he. "It comes from the provisional
government."

"Give it to me," said Jean Valjean.

Gavroche held the paper raised above his head.

"Don't imagine that this is a love-letter. It is for a woman; but it is for
the people. We men, we are fighting and we respect the sex. We don't do as
they do in high life, where there are lions who send love-letters to camels."

"Give it to me."

"The fact is," continued Gavroche, "you look to me like a fine fellow."

"Give it to me quick."

"Take it."

And he handed the paper to Jean Valjean.

"And hurry yourself, Monsieur What's-your-name, for Mamselle
What's-her-name is waiting."

Gavroche was proud of having produced this word.

Jean Valjean asked:

"Is it to Saint Merry that the answer is to be sent?"

"In that case," exclaimed Gavroche, "you would make one of those cakes
vulgarly called blunders. That letter comes from the barricade in the
Rue de la Chanvrerie, and I am going back there. Good night, citizen."

This said, Gavroche went away, or rather, resumed his flight like an
escaped bird towards the spot whence he came. He replunged into the
obscurity as if he made a hole in it, with the rapidity and precision
of a projectile; the little Rue de l'Homme Arme again became silent
and solitary; in a twinkling, this strange child, who had within him
shadow and dream, was buried in the dusk of those rows of black houses,
and was lost therein like smoke in the darkness; and one might have
thought him dissipated and vanished, if, a few minutes after his dis-
appearance, a loud crashing of glass and the splendid patatras of a
lamp falling upon the pavement had not abruptly reawakened the indig-
nant bourgeois. It was Gavroche passing along the Rue du Chaume.



III. WHILE COSSETE AND TOUSSAINT SLEEP



JEAN VALJEAN WENT in with Marius' letter.

He groped his way upstairs, pleased with the darkness like an owl which
holds his prey, opened and softly closed the door, listened to see if he
heard any sound, decided that, according to all appearances, Cosette and
Toussaint were asleep, plunged three or four matches into the bottle of
the Fumade tinder-box before he could raise a spark, his hand trembled so
much; there was theft in what he was about to do. At last, his candle was
lighted, he leaned his elbows on the table, unfolded the paper, and read.

In violent emotions, we do not read, we prostrate the paper which we hold,
so to speak, we strangle it like a victim, we crush the paper, we bury
the nails of our wrath or of our delight in it; we run to the end, we leap
to the beginning; the attention has a fever; it comprehends by wholesale,
almost, the essential; it seizes a point, and all the rest disappears. In
Marius' note to Cosette, Jean Valjean saw only these words.

"----I die. When you read this, my soul will be near you."

Before these two lines, he was horribly dazzled; he sat a moment as if
crushed by the change of emotion which was wrought within him, he
looked at Marius' note with a sort of drunken astonishment; he had before
his eyes that splendour, the death of the hated being.

He uttered a hideous cry of inward joy. So, it was finished. The end
came sooner than he had dared to hope. The being who encumbered his
destiny was disappearing. He was going away of himself, freely, of his own
accord. Without any intervention on his, Jean Valjean's part, without any
fault of his, "that man" was about to die. Perhaps even he was already
dead.--Here his fever began to calculate.--No. He is not dead yet. The
letter was evidently written to be read by Cosette in the morning; since
those two discharges which were heard between eleven o'clock and mid-
night, there had been nothing; the barricade will not be seriously attacked
till daybreak; but it is all the same, for the moment "that man" meddled
with this war, he was lost; he is caught in the net. Jean Valjean felt that
he was delivered. He would then find himself once more alone with Cosette.
Rivalry ceased; the future recommenced. He had only to keep the note in
his pocket. Cosette would never know what had become of "that man." "I
have only to let things take their course. That man cannot escape. If he is
not dead yet, it is certain that he will die. What happiness!"

All this said within himself, he became gloomy.

Then he went down and waked the porter.

About an hour afterwards, Jean Valjean went out in the full dress of a
National Guard, and armed. The porter had easily found in the neighbour-
hood what was necessary to complete his equipment. He had a loaded
musket and a cartridge-box full of cartridges. He went in the direction
of the markets.



IV. THE EXCESS OF GAVROCHE'S ZEAL



MEANWHILE an adventure had just befallen Gavroche.

Gavroche, after having conscientiously stoned the lamp in the Rue du
Chaume, came to the Rue des Vieilles Haudriettes, and not seeing "a cat"
there, thought it a good opportunity to strike up all the song of which he
was capable. His march, far from being slackened by the singing, was accel-
erated. He began to scatter along the sleeping or terrified houses these
incendiary couplets:

L'oiseau medit dans les charmilles,
Et pretend qu'hier Atala
Avec un russe s'en alla.
Ou vont les belles filles,
Lon la.
Mon ami pierrot, tu babilles,
Parce que l'autre jour Mila
Cogna sa vitre, et m'appela.
Les drolesses sont fort gentilles;
Leur poison qu m'ensorcela
Griserait monsieur Orfila.
Ou vont, etc.
Ou vont, etc.
J'aime l'amour et ses bisbilles,
J'aime Agnes, j'aime Pamela,
Lise en m'allumant se brula. Ou vont, etc.
Jadis, quand je vis les mantilles
De Suzette et de Zeila,
Mon ame a leurs plis se mela. Ou vont, etc.
Amour; quand, dans l'ombre ou tu brilles,
Tu coiffes de roses Lola,
Je me damnerais pour cela. Ou vont, etc.
Jeanne, a ton miroir tu t'habilles!
Mon coeur un beau jour s'envola;
Je crois que c'est Jeanne qui l'a. Ou vont, etc.
Le soir, en sortant des quadrilles,
Je morte aux etoiles Stella
Et je leur dis; regardez-la. Ou vont, etc.

The bird gossips in the arbor
And pretends that yesterday Atala
Went off with a Russki.
Where the pretty girls are going,
Lon la.
Friend Pierrot, you're babbling,
Because the other day Mila
Broke her window and called me.
Where the pretty girls are going,
Lon la.
The hussies are really nice;
Their poison that bewitched me
Would sozzle Monseiur Orfila.
Where the pretty girls are going,
Lon la.
I love love and its petty tiffs.
I love Agnes, I love Pamela,
In kindling me, Lisa got burnt.
Where the pretty girls are going,
Lon la.
Of old, when I saw the mantillas
Of Suzette and of Zeila,
My soul got mixed up in their folds.
Where the pretty girls are going,
Lon la.
Love, when, in the shadows where you gleam,
You coif Lola with roses,
I would damn myself for that.
Where the pretty girls are going,
Lon la.
Jeanne, at your mirror you're getting dressed!
One fine day my heart took off;
I think it's Jeanne who has it.
Where the pretty girls are going,
Lon la.
In the evening, coming out of the dance,
I show Stella to the stars
And I say to them: just look at her.
Where the pretty girls are going,
Lon la.
But there are still some bastilles,
And I'm going to put a halt
To public order there.
Where the pretty girls are going,
Lon la.
Anybody want a game of skittles?
All the old world crumbled
When the fat ball rolled.
Where the pretty girls are going,
Lon la.
Good old people, with a stroke of the crutch,
Let's break up the Louvre where they showed
The monarchy in furbelows.
Where the pretty girls are going,
Lon la.
We have forced the gates,
King Charles Ten that day
Held on poorly and came unstuck
Where the pretty girls are going,
Lon la.

Gavroche, while yet singing, was lavish of pantomime. Action is the
foundation of the refrain. His face, an inexhaustible repertory of masks,
made more convulsive and more fantastic grimaces than the mouths of a
torn cloth in a heavy wind. Unfortunately, as he was alone and in the
night, it was neither seen nor visible. There are such lost riches.

Suddenly he stopped short. "Let us interrupt the romance," said he.

His cat-like eye had just distinguished in the recess of a porte-cochere
what is called in painting a harmony: that is to say, a being and a thing;
the thing was a hand-cart, the being was an Auvergnat who was sleeping in
it.

The arms of the cart rested on the pavement and the Auvergnat's head
rested on the tail-board of the cart. His body was curled up on the
inclined plane and his feet touched the ground.

Gavroche, with his experience of the things of this world, recognised
a drunken man. It was some corner-porter who had drunk too much and
who was sleeping too much.

"This," thought Gavroche, "is what summer nights are good for. The Au-
verguat is asleep in his cart. We take the cart for the republic and we
leave the Auvergnat to the monarchy."

His mind had just received this illumination:

"That cart would go jolly well on our barricade."

The Auvergnat was snoring.

Gavroche drew the cart softly by the back end and the Auvergnat by the
forward end, that is to say, by the feet, and, in a minute, the Auvergnat,
imperturbable, was lying flat on the pavement. The cart was delivered.
Gavroche, accustomed to face the unforeseen on all sides, always had
everything about him. He felt in one of his pockets, and took out a
scrap of paper and an end of a red pencil pilfered from some carpenter.

He wrote:

"French Republic
"Received your cart."
And he signed; "GAVROCHE."

This done, he put the paper into the pocket of the still snoring Auvergnat's
velvet waistcoat, seized the cross-piece with both hands, and started off
in the direction of the markets, pushing the cart before him at a full gal-
lop with a glorious triumphal uproar.

This was perilous. There was a post at the Imprimerie Royale.

Gavroche did not think of it. This post was occupied by the National
Guards of the banlieue. A certain watchfulness began to excite the squad,
and their heads were lifted from their camp-beds. Two lamps broken one
after another, that song sung at the top of the voice, it was a good deal for
streets so cowardly, which long to go to sleep at sunset, and put their ex-
tinguisher upon their candle so early. For an hour the gamin had been making,
in this peaceful district, the uproar of a fly in a bottle. The sergeant of
the banlieue listened. He waited. He was a prudent man.

The furious rolling of the cart filled the measure of possible delay, and
determined the sergeant to attempt a reconnaissance.

"There is a whole band here," said he, "we must go softly."

It was clear that the hydra of anarchy had got out of its box, and was
raging in the quartier.

And the sergeant ventured out of the post with stealthy tread.

All at once, Gavroche, pushing his cart, just as he was going to turn
out of the Rue des Vieilles Haudriettes, found himself face to face with
a uniform, a shako, a plume, and a musket.

For the second time, he stopped short.

"Hold on," said he, "that's him. Good morning, public order."

Gavroche's astonishments were short and quickly thawed.

"Where are you going, vagabond?" cried the sergeant.

"Citizen," said Gavroche, "I haven't called you bourgeois yet. What do
you insult me for?"

"Where are you going, rascal?"

"Monsieur," resumed Gavroche, "may have been a man of wit yesterday,
but you were discharged this morning."

"I want to know where you are going, scoundrel?"

Gavroche answered.

"You talk genteelly. Really, nobody would guess your age. You ought to
sell all your hairs at a hundred francs apiece. That would make you five
hundred francs."

"Where are you going? where are you going? where are you going,
bandit?"

Gavroche replied:

"Those are naughty words. The first time anybody gives you a suck,
they should wipe your mouth better."

The sergeant crossed his bayonet.

"Will you tell me where you are going, at last, wretch?"

"My general," said Gavroche, "I am going after the doctor for my wife,
who is put to bed."

"To arms!" cried the sergeant.

To save yourself by means of that which has ruined you is the masterpiece
of a great man; Gavroche measured the entire situation at a glance.

It was the cart which had compromised him; it was for the cart to protect
him.

At the moment the sergeant was about to rush upon Gavroche the cart became
a projectile, and, hurled with all the gamin's might, ran against him fur-
iously, and the sergeant, struck full in the stomach, fell backward into
the gutter while his musket went off in the air.

At the sergeant's cry, the men of the post had rushed out pell-mell; the
sound of the musket produced a general discharge at random, after which
they reloaded and began again.

This musketry at blindman's buff lasted a full quarter of an hour, and
killed several squares of glass.

Meanwhile Gavroche, who had run back desperately, stopped five or six
streets off, and sat down breathless upon the block at the corner of the
Enfants Rouges.

He listened attentively.

After breathing a few moments, he turned in the direction in which the
firing was raging, raised his left hand to the level of his nose, and threw
it forward three times, striking the back of his head with his right hand at
the same time: a sovereign gesture into which the Parisian gamin has condensed
French irony, and which is evidently effective, since it has lasted already
for a half century.

This cheerfulness was marred by a bitter reflection:

"Yes," said he, "I grin, I twist myself, I run over with joy; but I am losing
my way. I shall have to make a detour. If I only get to the barricade in
time."

Thereupon, he resumed his course.

And, while yet running:

"Ah, yes, where was I?" said he.

He began again to sing his song, as he plunged rapidly through the
streets, and this receded into the darkness:

Mais il reste encor des bastilles,
Et je vais mettre le hola
Dans l'ordre public que voila
Ou vont les belles filles.
Lon la.
Quelqu'un vent-il jouer aux quilles?
Tout l'ancien monde s'ecroula
Quand la grosse boule roula Ou vont, etc.
Vieux bon peuple, a coups de bequilles,
Cassons ce Louvre ou s'etala
La monarchie en falbala. Ou vont, etc.
Nous en avons force les grilles,
Le roi Charles-Dix ce jour-la
Tenait mal et se decolla. Ou vont, etc.

The taking up of arms at the post was not without result. The cart was
conquered, the drunkard was taken prisoner. One was put on the woodpile;
the other afterwards tried before a court-martial, as an accomplice.
The public ministry of the time availed itself of this circumstance to show
its indefatigable zeal for the defence of society.

Gavroche's adventure, preserved among the traditions of the quartier of
the Temple, is one of the most terrible reminiscences of the old bourgeois
of the Marais, and is entitled in their memory: Nocturnal attack on the
post of the Imprimerie Royale.