THE ATOM FRATERNIZES WITH HURRICANE.
[CHAPTER I.]
THE ORIGIN OF THE POETRY OF GAVROCHE
AND THE INFLUENCE OF AN ACADEMICIAN UPON IT.
At the moment when the insurrection, breaking out through the collision between the people and the troops in front of the Arsenal, produced a retrograde movement in the multitude that followed the hearse, and which pressed with the whole length of the boulevards upon the head of the procession, there was a frightful reflux. The ranks were broken, and all ran or escaped, some with cries of attack, others with the pallor of flight. The great stream which covered the boulevards divided in a second, overflowed on the right and left, and spread in torrents over two hundred streets at once, as if a dyke had burst. At this moment a ragged lad who was coming down the Rue Ménilmontant, holding in his hand a branch of flowering laburnum which he had picked on the heights of Belleville, noticed in the shop of a dealer in bric-à-brac an old hostler pistol. He threw his branch on the pavement, and cried,—
"Mother What's-your-name, I'll borrow your machine."
And he ran off with the pistol. Two minutes after, a crowd of frightened cits, flying through the Rue Amelot and the Rue Basse, met the lad, who was brandishing his pistol and singing,—
"La nuit on ne voit rien,
Le jour on voit très bien,
D'un écrit apocryphe
Le bourgeois s'ébouriffe,
Pratiquez la vertu,
Tutu, chapeau pointu!"
It was little Gavroche going to the wars; on the boulevard he noticed that his pistol had no hammer. Who was the composer of this couplet which served to punctuate his march, and all the other songs which he was fond of singing when he had a chance? Who knows? Himself, perhaps. Besides, Gavroche was acquainted with all the popular tunes in circulation, and mingled with them his own chirping, and, as a young vagabond, he made a pot-pourri of the voices of nature and the voices of Paris. He combined, the repertoire of the birds with that of the studios, and he was acquainted with artists' students, a tribe contiguous to his own. He had been for three months, it appears, apprenticed to a painter, and had one day delivered a message for M. Baour Lormian, one of the Forty; Gavroche was a gamin of letters.
Gavroche did not suspect, by the way, that on that wretched rainy night, when he offered the hospitality of his elephant to the two boys, he was performing the offices of Providence to his two brothers. His brothers in the evening, his father in the morning,—such had been his night. On leaving the Rue des Ballets at dawn, he hurried back to the elephant, artistically extracted the two boys, shared with them the sort of breakfast which he had invented, and then went away, confiding them to that good mother, the street, who had almost brought himself up. On leaving them he appointed to meet them on the same spot at night, and left them this speech as farewell,—"I am going to cut my stick, otherwise to say, I intend to bolt, or as they say at court, I shall make myself scarce. My brats, if you do not find papa and mamma, come here again to-night. I will give you your supper and put you to bed." The two lads, picked up by some policeman and placed at the station, or stolen by some mountebank, or simply lost in that Chinese puzzle, Paris, did not return. The substrata of the existing social world are full of such lost traces. Gavroche had not seen them again, and ten or twelve weeks had elapsed since that night. More than once he had scratched his head and asked himself, "Where the deuce are my two children?"
He reached the Rue du Pont aux Choux, and noticed that there was only one shop still open in that street, and it was worthy of reflection that it was a confectioner's. It was a providential opportunity to eat one more apple-puff before entering the unknown. Gavroche stopped, felt in his pockets, turned them inside out, found nothing, not even a sou, and began shouting, "Help!" It is hard to go without the last cake, but for all that Gavroche went on his way. Two minutes after he was in the Rue St. Louis, and on crossing the Rue du Parc Royal he felt the necessity of compensating himself for the impossible apple-puff, and gave himself the immense treat of tearing down in open daylight the play-bills. A little farther on, seeing a party of stout gentry who appeared to him to be retired from business, he shrugged his shoulders and spat out this mouthful of philosophic bile,—
"How fat annuitants are! they wallow in good dinners. Ask them what they do with their money, and they don't know. They eat it, eat their bellyful."
[CHAPTER II.]
GAVROCHE ON THE MARCH.
Holding a pistol without a cock in the streets is such a public function, that Gavroche felt his humor increase at every step. He cried between the scraps of the Marseillaise which he sang,—
"All goes well. I suffer considerably in my left paw. I have broken my rheumatism, but I am happy, citizens. The bourgeois have only to hold firm, and I am going to sing them some subversive couplets. What are the police? Dogs. Holy Moses! we must not lack respect for the dogs. Besides, I should be quite willing to have one[1] for my pistol. I have just come from the boulevard, my friends, where it's getting warm, and the soup is simmering; it is time to skim the pot. Forward, my men, and let an impure blood inundate the furrows! I give my days for my country. I shall not see my concubine again; it's all over. Well, no matter! Long live joy! Let us fight, crebleu! I have had enough of despotism!"
At this moment the horse of a lancer in the National Guard, who was passing, fell. Gavroche laid his pistol on the pavement, helped the man up, and then helped to raise the horse, after which he picked up his pistol and went his way again. In the Rue de Thorigny all was peace and silence; and this apathy, peculiar to the Marais, contrasted with the vast surrounding turmoil. Four gossips were conversing on the step of a door; Scotland has trios of witches, but Paris has quartettes of gossips, and the "Thou shalt be king" would be as lugubriously cast at Bonaparte at the Baudoyer crossway, as to Macbeth on the Highland heath,—it would be much the same croak. The gossips in the Rue Thorigny only troubled themselves about their own affairs; they were three portresses, and a rag-picker with her dorser and her hook. They seemed to be standing all four at the four corners of old age, which are decay, decrepitude, ruin, and sorrow. The rag-picker was humble, for in this open-air world the rag-picker bows, and the portress protects. The things thrown into the street are fat and lean, according to the fancy of the person who makes the pile, and there may be kindness in the broom. This rag-picker was grateful, and she smiled,—what a smile!—at the three portresses. They were making remarks like the following,—
"So your cat is as ill-tempered as ever?"
"Well, good gracious! you know that cats are naturally the enemy of dogs. It's the dogs that complain."
"And people too."
"And yet cats' fleas do not run after people."
"Dogs are really dangerous. I remember one year when there were so many dogs that they were obliged to put it in the papers. It was at that time when there were large sheep at the Tuileries to drag the little carriage of the King of Rome. Do you remember the King of Rome?"
"I preferred the Duc de Bordeaux."
"Well, I know Louis XVII., and I prefer him."
"How dear meat is, Mame Patagon!"
"Oh, dont talk about it! Butcher's meat is a horror,—a horrible horror. It is only possible to buy bones now."
Here the rag-picker interposed,—
"Ladies, trade does not go on well at all, and the rubbish is abominable. People do not throw away anything now, but eat it all."
"There are poorer folk than you, Vargoulême."
"Ah, that's true," the rag-picker replied deferentially, "for I have a profession."
There was a pause, and the rag-picker, yielding to that need of display which is at the bottom of the human heart, added,—
"When I go home in the morning I empty out my basket and sort the articles; that makes piles in my room. I put the rags in a box, the cabbage-stalks in a tub, the pieces of linen in my cupboard, the woollen rags in my chest of drawers, old papers on the corner of the window, things good to eat in my porringer, pieces of glass in the fire-place, old shoes behind the door, and bones under my bed."
Gavroche had stopped, and was listening.
"Aged dames," he said, "what right have you to talk politics?"
A broadside, composed of a quadruple yell, assailed him.
"There's another of the villains."
"What's that he has in his hand,—a pistol?"
"Just think, that rogue of a boy!"
"They are never quiet unless when they are overthrowing the authorities."
Gavroche disdainfully limited his reprisals to lifting the tip of his nose with his thumb, and opening his hand to the full extent. The rag-picker exclaimed,—
"The barefooted scamp!"
The one who answered to the name of Mame Patagon struck her hands together with scandal.
"There are going to be misfortunes, that's sure. The young fellow with the beard round the corner, I used to see him pass every morning with a girl in a pink bonnet on his arm; but this morning I saw him pass, and he was giving his arm to a gun. Mame Bacheux says there was a revolution last week at, at, at, at,—where do the calves come from?—at Pontoise. And then, just look at this atrocious young villain's pistol. It seems that the Célestins are full of cannon. What would you have the Government do with these vagabonds who can only invent ways to upset the world, after we were beginning to get over all the misfortunes which fell—good gracious!—on that poor Queen whom I saw pass in a cart! And all this will raise the price of snuff. It is infamous, and I will certainly go and see you guillotined, malefactor."
"You snuffle, my aged friend," said Gavroche; "blow your promontory."
And he passed on. When he was in the Rue Pavée his thoughts reverted to the rag-picker, and he had this soliloquy,—
"You are wrong to insult the revolutionists, Mother Cornerpost. This pistol is on your behalf, and it is for you to have in your baskets more things good to eat."
All at once he heard a noise behind; it was the portress Patagon, who had followed him, and now shook her fist at him, crying,—
"You are nothing but a bastard."
"At that I scoff with all my heart," said Gavroche.
A little later he passed the Hôtel Lamoignon, where he burst into this appeal,—
"Go on to the battle."
And he was attacked by a fit of melancholy; he regarded his pistol reproachfully, and said to it,—
"I am going off, but you will not go off."
One dog may distract another;[2] a very thin whelp passed, and Gavroche felt pity for it.
"My poor little creature," he said to it, "you must have swallowed a barrel, as you show all the hoops."
Then he proceeded toward the Orme St. Gervais.
[1] The hammer of a pistol is called a dog in France.
[2] Another allusion to the hammer (chien) of the pistol.
[CHAPTER III.]
JUST INDIGNATION OF A BARBER.
The worthy barber who had turned out the two children for whom Gavroche had opened the elephant's paternal intestines, was at this moment in his shop, engaged in shaving an old legionary who had served under the Empire. The barber had naturally spoken to the veteran about the riot, then about General Lamarque, and from Lamarque they had come to the Emperor. Hence arose a conversation between the barber and the soldier which Prudhomme, had he been present, would have enriched with arabesques, and entitled, "A dialogue between a razor and a sabre."
"How did the Emperor ride, sir?" the barber asked.
"Badly. He did not know how to fall off, and so he never fell off."
"Had he fine horses? He must have had fine horses!"
"On the day when he gave me the cross I noticed his beast. It was a white mare. It had its ears very far apart, a deep saddle, a fine head marked with a black star, a very long neck, prominent knees, projecting flanks, oblique shoulders, and a strong crupper. It was a little above fifteen hands high."
"A fine horse," said the barber.
"It was His Majesty's beast."
The barber felt that after this remark a little silence was befitting; then he went on,—
"The Emperor was wounded only once, I believe, sir?"
The old soldier replied, with the calm and sovereign accent of the man who has felt wounds,—
"In the heel, at Ratisbon. I never saw him so well dressed as on that day. He was as clean as a halfpenny."
"And you, sir, I suppose, have received sword-wounds?"
"I," said the soldier; "oh, a mere flea-bite. I received two sabre-cuts on my neck at Marengo; I got a bullet in my right arm at Jena, another in the left hip at Jena; at Friedland a bayonet-thrust,—there; at the Muskowa seven or eight lance-prods, never mind where; at Lützen, a piece of shell carried off a finger, and—oh, yes! at Waterloo a bullet from a case-shot in my thigh. That's all."
"How glorious it is," the barber exclaimed, with a Pindaric accent, "to die on the battle-field! On my word of honor, sooner than die on a bed of disease, slowly, a bit every day, with drugs, cataplasms, clysters, and medicine, I would sooner have a cannon-ball in my stomach!"
"And you're right," said the soldier. He had scarce ended ere a frightful noise shook the shop; a great pane of glass was suddenly smashed, and the barber turned livid.
"Good Lord!" he cried, "it is one."
"What?"
"A cannon-ball."
"Here it is."
And he picked up something which was rolling on the ground; it was a pebble. The barber ran to his broken pane, and saw Gavroche flying at full speed towards the Marché St. Jean. On passing the barber's shop Gavroche, who had the two lads at his heart, could not resist the desire of wishing him good-evening, and threw a stone through his window.
"Just look," the barber yelled, who had become blue instead of livid, "he does harm for harm's sake. What had I done to that villain?"
[CHAPTER IV.]
THE CHILD ASTONISHES THE OLD MAN.
On reaching St. Jean market, the post at which had been disarmed already, Gavroche proceeded "to effect his junction" with a band led by Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Combeferre, and Feuilly. They were all more or less armed, and Bahorel and Prouvaire had joined them, and swelled the group. Enjolras had a double-barrelled fowling-piece, Combeferre a National Guard's musket bearing the number of a legion, and in his waist-belt two pistols, which his unbuttoned coat allowed to be seen; Jean Prouvaire an old cavalry carbine, and Bahorel a rifle; Courfeyrac brandished a sword drawn from a cane, while Feuilly with a naked sabre in his hand walked along shouting. "Long live Poland! They reached the Quai Morland without neck-cloths or hats, panting for breath, drenched with rain, but with lightning in their eyes. Gavroche calmly approached them,—
"Where are we going?"
"Come," said Courfeyrac.
Behind Feuilly marched or rather bounded Bahorel, a fish in the water of revolt. He had a crimson waistcoat, and uttered words which smash everything. His waistcoat upset a passer-by, who cried wildly, "Here are the reds!"
"The reds, the reds!" Bahorel answered; "that's a funny fear, citizen. For my part, I do not tremble at a poppy, and the little red cap does not inspire me with any terror. Citizen, believe me, we had better leave a fear of the red to horned cattle."
He noticed a corner wall, on which was placarded the most peaceful piece of paper in the world, a permission to eat eggs, a Lent mandamus addressed by the Archbishop of Paris to his "flock." Bahorel exclaimed,—
"A flock! a polite way of saying geese." And he tore the paper down. This conquered Gavroche, and from this moment he began studying Bahorel.
"Bahorel," Enjolras observed, "you are wrong; you should have left that order alone, for we have nothing to do with it, and you uselessly expended your anger. Keep your stock by you; a man does not fire out of the ranks any more with his mind than with his gun."
"Every man has his own way, Enjolras," Bahorel replied; "the bishop's prose offends me, and I insist on eating eggs without receiving permission to do so. Yours is the cold burning style, while I amuse myself; moreover, I am not expending myself, but getting the steam up, and if I tore that order down, Hercle! it is to give me an appetite."
This word hercle struck Gavroche, for he sought every opportunity of instructing himself, and this tearing down of posters possessed his esteem. Hence he asked,—
"What's the meaning of hercle?"
Bahorel answered,—
"It means cursed name of a dog in latin."
Here Bahorel noticed at a window a pale young man, with a black beard, who was watching them pass, probably a Friend of the A. B. C He shouted to him,—
"Quick with the cartridges, para bellum!"
"A handsome man [bel homme], that's true," said Gavroche, who now comprehended Latin.
A tumultuous crowd accompanied them,—students, artists, young men affiliated to the Cougourde of Aix, artisans, and lightermen, armed with sticks and bayonets, and some, like Combeferre, with pistols passed through their trouser-belt. An old man, who appeared very aged, marched in this band; he had no weapon, and hurried on, that he might not be left behind, though he looked thoughtful. Gavroche perceived him.
"Keksekça?" said he to Courfeyrac.
"That is an antique."
It was M. Mabœuf.
[CHAPTER V.]
THE OLD MAN.
We will tell what had occurred. Enjolras and his friends were on the Bourdon Boulevard near the granaries at the moment when the dragoons charged, and Enjolras, Courfeyrac, and Combeferre were among those who turned into the Rue Bassompierre shouting, "To the barricades!" In the Rue Lesdiguières they met an old man walking along, and what attracted their attention was, that he was moving very irregularly, as if intoxicated. Moreover, he had his hat in his hand, although it had rained the whole morning, and was raining rather hard at that very moment. Courfeyrac recognized Father Mabœuf, whom he knew through having accompanied Marius sometimes as far as his door. Knowing the peaceful and more than timid habits of the churchwarden and bibliomaniac, and stupefied at seeing him in the midst of the tumult, within two yards of cavalry charges, almost in the midst of the musketry fire, bareheaded in the rain, and walking about among bullets, he accosted him, and the rebel of five-and-twenty and the octogenarian exchanged this dialogue:—
"Monsieur Mabœuf, you had better go home."
"Why so?"
"There is going to be a row."
"Very good."
"Sabre-cuts and shots, Monsieur Mabœuf."
"Very good."
"Cannon-shots."
"Very good. Where are you gentlemen going?"
"To upset the Government."
"Very good."
And he began following them, but since that moment had not said a word. His step had become suddenly firm, and when workmen offered him an arm, he declined it with a shake of the head. He walked almost at the head of the column, having at once the command of a man who is marching and the face of a man who is asleep.
"What a determined old fellow!" the students muttered; and the rumor ran along the party that he was an ex-conventionalist, an old regicide. The band turn into the Rue de la Verrerie, and little Gavroche marched at the head, singing at the top of his voice, which made him resemble a bugler. He sang:—
"Voici la lune qui paraît,
Quand irons-nous dans la forêt?
Demandait Charlot à 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 rosée à même le thym,
Deux moineaux étaient en ribotte.
"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 étaient soûls;
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 forêt?
Demandait Charlot à Charlotte.
"Tin tin tin
Pour Pantin.
Je n'ai qu'un Dieu, qu'un roi, qu'un liard et qu'une botte."
They proceeded towards St. Merry.
RECRUITS.
[CHAPTER VI.]
RECRUITS.
The band swelled every moment, and near the Rue des Billettes, a tall, grayish-haired man, whose rough bold face Courfeyrac, Enjolras, and Combeferre noticed, though not one of them knew him, joined them. Gavroche, busy singing, whistling, and shouting, and rapping the window-shutters with his pistol-butt, paid no attention to this man. As they went through the Rue de la Verrerie they happened to pass Courfeyrac's door.
"That's lucky," said Courfeyrac, "for I have forgotten my purse and lost my hat."
He left the band and bounded up-stairs, where he put on an old hat and put his purse in his pocket. He also took up a large square box of the size of a portmanteau, which was concealed among his dirty linen. As he was running down-stairs again his portress hailed him.
"Monsieur de Courfeyrac!"
"Portress, what is your name?" Courfeyrac retorted.
She stood in stupefaction.
"Why, you know very well, sir, that my name is Mother Veuvain."
"Well, then, if ever you call me M. de Courfeyrac again I shall call you Mother de Veuvain. Now speak; what is it?"
"Some one wishes to speak to you."
"Who is it?"
"I don't know."
"Where is he?"
"In my lodge."
"Oh, the devil!" said Courfeyrac.
"Why! he has been waiting for more than an hour for you to come in."
At the same time a species of young workman, thin, livid, small, marked with freckles, dressed in an old blouse and a pair of patched cotton-velvet trousers, who looked more like a girl attired as a boy than a man, stepped out of the lodge and said to Courfeyrac in a voice which was not the least in the world a feminine voice,—
"Monsieur Marius, if you please?"
"He is not here."
"Will he come in to-night?"
"I do not know."
And Courfeyrac added, "I shall not be in to-night."
The young man looked at him intently and asked,—
"Why not?"
"Because I shall not."
"Where are you going?"
"How does that concern you?"
"Shall I carry your chest for you?"
"I am going to the barricades."
"May I go with you?"
"If you like," Courfeyrac replied; "the street is free, and the pavement belongs to everybody."
And he ran off to join his friends again; when he had done so, he gave one of them the box to carry, and it was not till a quarter of an hour after that he noticed that the young man was really following them. A mob does not go exactly where it wishes, and we have explained that a puff of wind directs it. They passed St. Merry, and found themselves, without knowing exactly why, in the Rue St. Denis.