It is hard to miss the last cake.
Nevertheless, Gavroche pursued his way.
Two minutes later he was in the Rue Saint-Louis. While traversing the Rue du Parc-Royal, he felt called upon to make good the loss of the apple-turnover which had been impossible, and he indulged himself in the immense delight of tearing down the theatre posters in broad daylight.
A little further on, on catching sight of a group of comfortable-looking persons, who seemed to be landed proprietors, he shrugged his shoulders and spit out at random before him this mouthful of philosophical bile as they passed:
“How fat those moneyed men are! They’re drunk! They just wallow in good dinners. Ask ’em what they do with their money. They don’t know. They eat it, that’s what they do! As much as their bellies will hold.”
CHAPTER II—GAVROCHE ON THE MARCH
The brandishing of a triggerless pistol, grasped in one’s hand in the open street, is so much of a public function that Gavroche felt his fervor increasing with every moment. Amid the scraps of the Marseillaise which he was singing, he shouted:—
“All goes well. I suffer a great deal in my left paw, I’m all broken up with rheumatism, but I’m satisfied, citizens. All that the bourgeois have to do is to bear themselves well, I’ll sneeze them out subversive couplets. What are the police spies? Dogs. And I’d just like to have one of them at the end of my pistol. I’m just from the boulevard, my friends. It’s getting hot there, it’s getting into a little boil, it’s simmering. It’s time to skim the pot. Forward march, men! Let an impure blood inundate the furrows! I give my days to my country, I shall never see my concubine more, Nini, finished, yes, Nini? But never mind! Long live joy! Let’s fight, crebleu! I’ve had enough of despotism.”
At that moment, the horse of a lancer of the National Guard having fallen, Gavroche laid his pistol on the pavement, and picked up the man, then he assisted in raising 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, peculiar to the Marais, presented a contrast with the vast surrounding uproar. Four gossips were chatting in a doorway.
Scotland has trios of witches, Paris has quartettes of old gossiping hags; and the “Thou shalt be King” could be quite as mournfully hurled at Bonaparte in the Carrefour Baudoyer as at Macbeth on the heath of Armuyr. The croak would be almost identical.