BOOK ELEVENTH
THE ATOM FRATERNISES WITH THE HURRICANE



I. SOME INSIGHT INTO THE ORIGIN OF GAVROCHE'S POETRY?
INFLUENCE OF AN ACADEMICIAN UPON THAT POETRY



AT THE MOMENT the insurrection, springing up at the shock of the people
with the troops in front of the Arsenal, determined a backward movement
in the multitude which was following the hearse and which, for the whole
length of the boulevards, weighed, so to say, upon the head of the procession,
there was a frightful reflux. The mass wavered, the ranks broke, all
ran, darted, slipped away, some with cries of attack, others with the pallor
of flight. The great river which covered the boulevards divided in a twinkling,
overflowed on the right and on the left, and poured in torrents into
two hundred streets at once with the rushing of an opened mill-sluice. At
this moment a ragged child who was coming down the Rue Menilmontant,
holding in his hand a branch of laburnum in bloom, which he had just gathered
on the heights of Belleville, caught sight, before a second-hand
dealer's shop, of an old horse pistol. He threw his flowering branch upon
the pavement, and cried:

"Mother What's-your-name, I'll borrow your machine."

And he ran off with the pistol.

Two minutes later, a flood of terrified bourgeois who were fleeing through
the Rue Amelot and the Rue Basse, met the child who was brandishing his
pistol and singing:

La nuit on ne voit rien,
Le jour on voit tres-bien,
D'un ecrit apocryphe
Le bourgeois s'ebouriffe,
Pratiquez la vertu,
Tutu chapeau pointu!

It was little Gavroche going to war.

On the boulevard he perceived that the pistol had no hammer.

Whose was this refrain which served him to time his march, and all the
other songs which, on occasion, he was fond of singing? we do not know.
Who knows? his own perhaps. Gavroche besides kept up with all the popular
airs in circulation, and mingled with them his own warbling. A sprite
and a devil, he made a medley of the voices of nature and the voices of Paris.
He combined the repertory of the birds with the repertory of the workshops.
He knew some painters' boys, a tribe contiguous to his own. He had
been, as it appears, three months a printer's apprentice. He had done an
errand one day for Monsieur Baour-Lormian, one of the Forty. Gavroche
was a gamin of letters.

Gavroche moreover had no suspicion that on that wretched rainy night
when he had offered the hospitality of his elephant to two brats, it was for
his own brothers that he had acted the part of Providence. His brothers in
the evening, his father in the morning; such had been his night. On leaving
the Rue des Ballets at early dawn, he had returned in haste to the elephant,
artistically extracted the two momes, shared with them such breakfast as he
could invent, then went away, confiding them to that good mother, the street,
who had almost brought him up himself. On leaving them, he had given them
rendezvous for the evening at the same place, and left them this discourse
as a farewell: "I cut stick, otherwise spoken, I esbigne, or, as they say at the
court, I haul off; Brats, if you don't find papa and mamma, come back here
tonight. I will strike you up some supper and put you to bed." The two children,
picked up by some sergent de ville and put in the retreat, or stolen by some
mountebank, or simply lost in the immense Chinese Parisian turmoil, had
not returned. The lower strata of the existing social world are full of these
lost traces. Gavroche had not seen them since. Ten or twelve weeks had
elapsed since that night. More than once he had scratched the top of his
head and said: "Where the devil are my two children?"

Meanwhile he had reached, pistol in hand, the Rue du Pont aux Choux.
He noticed that there was now, in that street, but one shop open, and, a
matter worthy of reflection, a pastry-cook's shop. This was a providential
opportunity to eat one more apple-puff before entering the unknown.
Gavroche stopped, fumbled in his trousers, felt in his fob, turned out his
pockets, found nothing in them, not a sou, and began to cry: "Help!"

It is hard to lack the final cake.

Gavroche none the less continued on his way.

Two minutes later, he was in the Rue Saint Louis. While passing
through the Rue du Parc Royal he felt the need of some compensation for
the impossible apple-puff, and he gave himself the immense pleasure of
tearing down the theatre posters in broad day.

A little further along, seeing a group of well-to-do persons pass by,
who appeared to him to be men of property, he shrugged his shoulders, and
spit out at random this mouthful of philosophic bile:

"These rich men, how fat they are! they stuff themselves. They wallow
in good dinners. Ask them what they do with their money. They don't know
anything about it. They eat it, they do! How much of it the belly carries
away."



II. GAVROCHE ON THE MARCH



THE BRANDISHING OF A PISTOL without a hammer, holding it in one's hand
in the open street, is such a public function that Gavroche felt his spirits
rise higher with every step. He cried, between the snatches of the Marseillaise
which he was singing:

"It's all going well. I suffer a good deal in my left paw, I am broken
with my rheumatism, but I am content, citizens. The bourgeois have nothing
to do but to behave themselves, I am going to sneeze subversive
couplets at them. What are the detectives? they are dogs. By jinks! don't let
us fail in respect for dogs. Now I wish I had one to my pistol. I come from
the boulevard, my friends, it is getting hot, it is boiling over a little, it is
simmering. It is time to skim the pot. Forward, men! let their impure blood
water the furrows! I give my days for my country. I shall never see my con-
cubine again, n-e-ver, over, yes. Never! but it's all the same, let us be joyful!
let us fight, egad! I have had enough of despotism."

At that moment, the horse of a lancer of the National Guard, who was
passing, having fallen down, Gavroche laid his pistol on the pavement, and
raised up the man, then he helped to raise the horse. After which he picked
up his pistol, and resumed his way.

In the Rue de Thorigny, all was peace and silence. This apathy, suited
to the Marais, contrasted with the vast surrounding uproar. Four gossips
were chatting upon a doorstep. Scotland has her trios of witches, but Paris
has her quartettes of gossips; and the "thou shalt be king," would be quite
as ominously cast at Bonaparte in the Baudoyer Square as at Macbeth in
the heath of Armuyr. It would be almost the same croaking.

The gossips of the Rue de Thorigny were busy only with their own
affairs. They were three portresses and a rag-picker with her basket and
hook.

The four seemed standing at the four corners of old age, which are
decay, decrepitude, ruin, and sorrow.

The rag-picker was humble. In this out-door society, the rag-picker
bows, the portress patronises. That is a result of the sweepings which are, as
the portresses will, fat or lean, according to the fancy of her who makes the
head. There may be kindness in the broom.

This rag-picker was a grateful basket, and she smiled, what a smile! to
the three portresses. Such things as this were said:

"Ah, now, your cat is always spiteful, is she?"

"Luddy! cats, you know, are nat'rally the enemies of dogs. It is the dogs
that complain."

"And folks, too."

"Still, cats' fleas don't get on folks."

"That's not the trouble, dogs are dangerous. I remember one year there
was so many dogs they had to put it in the papers. It was the time they
had the big sheep at the Tuileries to draw the King of Rome's little waggon.
Do you remember the King of Rome?"

"Me, I liked the Duke of Bourdeaux better."

"For my part, I knew Louis XVII. I like Louis XVII. better."

"How dear meat is, Ma'am Patagon!"

"Oh! don't speak of it, the butchering is horrid. Horridly horrid. They
have nothing but tough meat nowadays."

Here the rag-picker intervened!

"Ladies, business is very dull. The garbage heaps are shabby. Folks
don't throw anything away in these days. They eat everything."

"There are poorer people than you, Vargouleme."

"Oh, that is true!" replied the rag-picker, with deference, "for my part
I have an occupation."

There was a pause, and the rag-picker, yielding to that necessity for
display which lies deepest in the human heart, added:

"In the morning when I get home, I pick over the basketful, I make
my sorties (probably sortings). That makes heaps in my room. I put the
rags in a basket, the cores in a tub, the linens in my closet, the woollens in
my bureau, the old papers in the corner of the window, the things good to
eat into my plate, the bits of glass in the fireplace, the old shoes behind the
door, and the bones under my bed."

Gavroche, who had stopped behind, was listening.

"Old women," said he, "what business have you now talking politics?"

A volley assailed him, composed of a quadruple hoot.

"There is another scoundrel!"

"What has he got in his stump? A pistol."

"I want to know, that beggar of a mome!"

"They are never quiet if they are not upsetting the government."

Gavroche, in disdain, made no other reply than merely to lift the end
of his nose with his thumb while he opened his hand to its full extent.

The rag-picker cried:

"Spiteful go-bare-paws!"

She who answered to the name of Ma'am Patagon clapped her hands in horror.

"There is going to be troubles, that's sure. That rascal over there with
a beard, I used to see him go by every morning with a young thing in a pink
cap under his arm; to-day I see him go by, he was giving his arm to a musket.
Ma'am Bacheux says that there was a revolution last week at--at--at--where
is the place?--at Pontoise. And then see him there with his pistol, that
horrid blackguard? It seems the Celestins are all full of cannon. What
would you have the government do with the scapegraces who do nothing but
invent ways to disturb people, when we are beginning to be a little quiet,
after all the troubles we have had, good Lord God, that poor queen that I
see go by in the cart! And all this is going to make snuff dearer still.
It is infamous! and surely I will go to see you guillotined, you scoundrel."

"You sniffle, my ancient," said Gavroche. "Blow your promontory."

And he passed on.

When he reached the Rue Pavee, the rag-picker recurred to his mind,
and he soliloquised thus:

"You do wrong to insult the Revolutionists, Mother Heap-in-the-corner.
This pistol is in your interest. It is so that you may have more things
good to eat in your basket."

Suddenly he heard a noise behind him: it was the portress Patagon
who had followed him, and who, from a distance, was shaking her fist at
him, crying:

"You are nothing but a bastard!"

"Yes," said Gavroche, "I amuse myself at that in a profound manner."

Soon after, he passed the Hotel Lamoignon. There he shouted out his
appeal:

"En route for battle!"

And he was seized with a fit of melancholy. He looked at his pistol with
a reproachful air, which seemed an endeavour to soften it:

"I go off," said he to it, "but you do not go off."

One dog may distract attention from another. A very lean cur was passing.
Gavroche was moved to pity.

"My poor bow-wow," said he, "have you swallowed a barrel, then, that
all the hoops show?"

Then he bent his steps towards the Orme Saint Gervais



III. JUST INDIGNATION OF A BARBER



THE WORTHY BARBER, who drove away the two little boys to whom
Gavroche opened the paternal intestines of the elephant, was at this
moment in his shop, busy shaving an old legionary soldier who had served
under the empire. They were chatting. The barber had naturally spoken
to the veteran of the emeute, then of General Lamarque and from La-
marque they had come to the emperor. Hence a conversation between a
barber and a soldier, which Prudhomme, if he had been present, would
have enriched with arabesques, and which he would have entitled: Dialogue
of the razor and the sabre.

"Monsieur," said the wig-maker, "how did the emperor mount on
horseback?"

"Badly. He didn't know how to fall. So he never fell."

"Did he have fine horses? he must have had fine horses!'

"The day he gave me the cross, I noticed his animal. She was a running
mare, perfectly white. Her ears were very wide apart, saddle deep,
head fine, marked with a black star, neck very long, knees strongly jointed,
ribs protruding, shoulders sloping, hind quarters powerful. A little more
than fifteen hands high."

"A pretty horse," said the barber.

"It was the animal of his majesty."

The barber felt that after this word a little silence was proper, he conformed
to it, then resumed:

"The emperor was never wounded but once, was he, monsieur?"

The old soldier answered with the calm and sovereign tone of a man
who was there:

"In the heel. At Ratisbon. I never saw him so well dressed as he was
that day. He was as neat as a penny."

"And you, Monsieur Veteran, you must have been wounded often?"

"I?" said the soldier, "ah! no great thing. I got two sabre slashes in my
neck at Marengo, a ball in my right arm at Austerlitz, another in my left
hip at Jena, at Friedland a bayonet thrust--there--at Moscow seven or
eight lance thrusts, no matter where, at Lutzen a shell burst which crushed
my finger--Ah! and then at Waterloo a bullet in my leg. That is all."

"How beautiful it is," exclaimed the barber with a pindaric accent, "to
die on the field of battle! Upon my word, rather than die in my bed, of sickness,
slowly, a little every day, with drugs, plasters, syringes, and medicine,
I would prefer a cannon ball in my belly."

"You are not fastidious," said the soldier.

He had hardly finished when a frightful crash shook the shop. A pane
of the window had been suddenly shattered.

The barber became pallid.

"O God!" cried he, "there is one!"

"What?"

"A cannon ball."

"Here it is," said the soldier.

And he picked up something which was rolling on the floor. It was a
stone.

The barber ran to the broken window and saw Gavroche, who was running
with all his might towards the Saint Jean market. On passing the bar-
ber's shop, Gavroche, who had the two momes on his mind, could not
resist the desire to bid him good day, and had sent a stone through
his sash.

"See!" screamed the barber, who from white had become blue, "he makes
mischief for the sake of mischief. What has anybody done to that gamin?"



IV. THE CHILD WONDERS AT THE OLD MAN



MEANWHILE Gavroche at the Saint Jean market where the guard was
already disarmed, had just--effected his junction--with a band led by
Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Combeferre, and Feuilly. They were almost armed.
Bahorel and Jean Prouvaire had joined them and enlarged the group.
Enjolras had a double-barrelled fowling piece. Combeferre a National
Guard's musket bearing the number of the legion, and at his waist two pistols
which could be seen, his coat being unbuttoned, Jean Prouvaire an old
cavalry musketoon, Bahorel a carbine; Courfeyrac was brandishing an
unsheathed sword-cane. Feuilly, a drawn sabre in his hand, marched in the
van, crying: "Poland for ever!"

They came from the Quai Morland cravatless, hatless, breathless, soaked
by the rain, lightning in their eyes. Gavroche approached them calmly:

"Where are we going?"

"Come on," said Courfeyrac.

Behind Feuilly marched, or rather bounded, Bahorel, a fish in the water
of the emeute. He had a crimson waistcoat, and those words which crush
everything. His waistcoat overcame a passer, who cried out in desperation:

"There are the reds!"

"The reds, the reds!" replied Bahorel. "A comical fear, bourgeois. As
for me, I don't tremble before a red poppy, the little red hood inspires me
with no dismay. Bourgeois, believe me, leave the fear of red to horned cattle."

He caught sight of a piece of wall on which was placarded the most peaceful
sheet of paper in the world, a permission to eat eggs, a charge for Lent,
addressed by the Archbishop of Paris to his "ouailles" [flock].

Bahorel exclaimed:

"Ouailles; polite way of saying oies" [geese].

And he tore the charge from the wall. This conquered Gavroche.
From that moment, Gavroche began to study Bahorel.

"Bahorel," observed Enjolras, "you are wrong. You should have let
that charge alone, it is not with it that we have to do. You are expending
your wrath uselessly. Economise your ammunition. We don't fire out of
rank,--no more with the soul than with the gun."

"Each in his own way, Enjolras," retorted Bahorel. "This bishop's
prosing annoys me, I want to eat eggs without anybody's permission. You
have the cold burning style; I amuse myself. Besides, I am not exhausting
myself, I am gaining new energy; and if I tore down that charge, by Hercules!
it was to give me an appetite."

This word Hercules, struck Gavroche. He sought every opportunity to
instruct himself, and this tearer-down of posters had his esteem. He asked
him:

"What does that mean, Hercules?"

Bahorel answered:

"It means holy name of a dog in Latin."

Here Bahorel recognised at a window a pale young man with a black
beard, who was looking at them as they were passing, probably a Friend of
the A B C. He cried to him:

"Quick, cartridges! para bellum."

"Bel homme! [Handsome man!] that is true," said Gavroche, who now
understood Latin.

A tumultuous cortege accompanied them, students, artists, young men
affiliated to the Cougourde d'Aix, working-men, rivermen, armed with
clubs and bayonets; a few, like Combeferre, with pistols thrust into their
waistbands. An old man, who appeared very old, was marching with this
band. He was not armed, and he was hurrying, that he should not be left
behind, although he had a thoughtful expression. Gavroche perceived him:

"Whossat?" said he to Courfeyrac.

"That is an old man."

It was M. Mabeuf.



V. THE OLD MAN



WE MUST TELL what had happened.

Enjolras and his friends were on the Boulevard Bourdon, near the
warehouses, at the moment the dragoons charged. Enjolras, Courfeyrac,
and Combeferre were among those who took to the Rue Bassomipierre,
crying: "To the barricades!" In the Rue Lesdiguieres they met an old man
trudging along. What attracted their attention was, that this goodman was
walking zigzag, as if he were drunk. Moreover, he had his hat in his hand,
although it had been raining all the morning, and was raining hard at that
very moment. Courfeyrac recognised Father Mabeuf. He knew him from
having seen him many times accompanying Marius to the door. Knowing
the peaceful and more than timid habits of the old church-warden-book-
worm, and astounded at seeing him in the midst of this tumult, within two
steps of the cavalry charges, almost in the midst of a fusilade, barehead-
ed in the rain, and walking among the bullets, he went up to him, and the
emeuter of five-and-twenty and the octogenarian exchanged this dialogue:

"Monsieur Mabeuf, go home."

"What for?"

"There is going to be a row."

"Very well."

"Sabre strokes, musket shots, Monsieur Mabeuf."

"Very well."

"Cannon shots."

"Very well. Where are you going, you boys?"

"We are going to pitch the government over."

"Very well."

And he followed them. From that moment he had not uttered a word.
His step had suddenly become firm; some working-men had offered him an
arm, he refused with a shake of the head. He advanced almost to the front
rank of the column, having at once the motion of a man who is walking,
and the countenance of a man who is asleep.

"What a desperate goodman!" murmured the students. The rumour ran
through the assemblage that he was--an ancient Conventionist--an old
regicide. The company had turned into the Rue de la Verrerie.

Little Gavroche marched on with all his might with this song, which
made him a sort of clarion. He sang:

Voici la lune qui parait,
Quand irons-nous dans la foret?
Demandait Charlot a Charlotte.
Tou tou tou
Pour Chatou.
Je n'ai qu'un Dieu, qu'un roi, qu'un liard et qu'une botte.
Pour avoir bu de grand matin
La rosee a meme le thym,
Deux moineaux etaient en ribote.
Zi zi zi
Pour Passy
Je n'ai qu'un Dieu, qu'un roi, qu'un liard et qu'une botte.
Et ces deux pauvres petits loups
Comme deux grives etaient souls;
Un tigre en riait dans sa grotte.
Don don don
Pour Meudon.
Je n'ai qu'un Dieu, qu'un roi, qu'un liard et qu'une botte.
L'un jurait et l'autre sacrait
Quand irons-nous dans la foret?
Demandait Charlot a Charlotte.
Tin tin tin
Pour Pantin.
Je n'ai qu'un Dieu, qu'un roi, qu'un liard et qu'une botte.

See the moon is shining, when shall we go into the woods? asked Charley of Charlotte.
Too, too, too, for Chatou. I have but one God, one king, one farthing, and one boot.
For having drunk in early morn, dew and thyme, two sparrows were in a fuddle.
Zi, zi, zi, for Passy. I have but one God, one king, one farthing, and one boot.
And these two poor little wolves were as drunk as two thrushes; a tiger laughed at it in
his cave.
Don, don, don, for Meudon. I have but one God, one king, one farthing, and one boot.
One swore and the other cursed. When shall we go into the woods? asked Charley of
Charlotte.
Tin, tin, tin, for Pantin. I have but one God, one king, one farthing, and one boot.

They made their way towards Saint Merry.



VI. RECRUITS



THE BAND INCREASED at every moment. Towards the Rue des Billettes a
man of tall stature, who was turning grey, whose rough and bold mien
Courfeyrac, Enjolras, and Combeferre noticed, but whom none of them
knew, joined them. Gavroche, busy singing, whistling, humming, going forward
and rapping on the shutters of the shops with the butt of his
hammerless pistol, paid no attention to this man.

It happened that, in the Rue de la Verrerie, they passed by Courfeyrac's
door.

"That is lucky," said Courfeyrac, "I have forgotten my purse and I have
lost my hat." He left the company and went up to his room, four stairs at a
time. He took an old hat and his purse. He took also a large square box, of
the size of a big valise, which was hidden among his dirty clothes. As he was
running down again, the portress hailed him:

"Monsieur de Courfeyrac?"

"Portress, what is your name?" responded Courfeyrac.

The portress stood aghast.

"Why, you know it very well; I am the portress, my name is Mother
Veuvain."

"Well, if you call me Monsieur de Courfeyrac again, I shall call you
Mother de Veuvain. Now, speak, what is it? What do you want?"

"There is somebody who wishes to speak to you."

"Who is it?"

"I don't know."

"Where is he?"

"In my lodge."

"The devil!" said Courfeyrac.

"But he has been waiting more than an hour for you to come home!"
replied the portress.

At the same time, a sort of young working-man, thin, pale, small, freck-
led, dressed in a torn blouse and patched pantaloons of ribbed velvet,
and who had rather the appearance of a girl in boy's clothes than of a man,
came out of the lodge and said to Courfeyrac in a voice which, to be sure,
was not the least in the world like a woman's voice.

"Monsieur Marius, if you please?"

"He is not in."

"Will he be in this evening?"

"I don't know anything about it."

And Courfeyrac added: "As for myself, I shall not be in."

The young man looked fixedly at him, and asked him:

"Why so?"

"Because."

"Where are you going then?"

"What is that to you?"

"Do you want me to carry your box?"

"I am going to the barricades."

"Do you want me to go with you?"

"If you like," answered Courfeyrac. "The road is free; the streets
belong to everybody."

And he ran off to rejoin his friends. When he had rejoined them, he
gave the box to one of them to carry. It was not until a quarter of an hour
afterwards that he perceived that the young man had in fact followed them.
A mob does not go precisely where it wishes. We have explained that
a gust of wind carries it along. They went beyond Saint Merry and found
themselves, without really knowing how, in the Rue Saint Denis.