“Oh!” she resumed, “it is coming again, I am stifling!”
She caught up her blouse and bit it, and her limbs stiffened on the pavement.
At that moment the young cock’s crow executed by little Gavroche resounded through the barricade.
The child had mounted a table to load his gun, and was singing gayly the song then so popular:—
“En voyant Lafayette,
Le gendarme répète:—
Sauvons nous! sauvons nous!
sauvons nous!”
“On beholding Lafayette,
The gendarme repeats:—
Let us flee! let us flee!
let us flee!
Éponine raised herself and listened; then she murmured:—
“It is he.”
And turning to Marius:—
“My brother is here. He must not see me. He would scold me.”
“Your brother?” inquired Marius, who was meditating in the most bitter and sorrowful depths of his heart on the duties to the Thénardiers which his father had bequeathed to him; “who is your brother?”