Gavroche’s Excess of Zeal — Les Misérables

In the meantime, Gavroche had had an adventure. After conscientiously stoning the lantern in the Rue du Chaume, he entered the Rue des Vieilles-Haudriettes, and not seeing even a cat there, he thought the opportunity a good one to strike up all the song of which he was capable. His march, far from being retarded by his singing, was accelerated by it. He began to sow along the sleeping or terrified houses his incendiary couplets: where do the pretty girls go. As he sang he was lavish of his pantomime. Gesture is the strong point of the refrain. His face, an inexhaustible repertory of masks, produced grimaces more fantastic than the rents of a cloth torn in a high gale. Unfortunately, as he was alone, and as it was night, this was neither seen nor even visible. Such wastes of riches do occur.

All at once he stopped short. Let us interrupt the romance. His feline eye had just descried, in the recess of a carriage door, a person and a thing: the thing was a hand-cart, the person was a man from Auvergne who was sleeping therein. The shafts rested on the pavement. The Auvergnat's head was supported against the front of the cart. Gavroche recognized a drunken man. That is what the summer nights are good for. We will take the cart for the Republic, and leave the Auvergnat for the Monarchy. How bully that cart would look on our barricade. The man was snoring. Gavroche gently tugged at the cart from behind and at the sleeper from the front, by the feet, and in another minute the imperturbable Auvergnat was reposing flat on the pavement. The cart was free. Gavroche pulled from his pocket a scrap of paper and a bit of red pencil filched from some carpenter. He wrote: French Republic. Received thy cart. And he signed it Gavroche. That done, he put the paper in the pocket of the still snoring velvet vest, seized the shafts in both hands, and set off in the direction of the Halles, pushing the cart before him at a hard gallop with a glorious and triumphant uproar.

This was perilous. There was a post at the Royal Printing Establishment. Gavroche did not think of this. The National Guards of the suburbs began to wake. Two street lanterns broken in succession, that ditty sung at the top of the lungs: this was a great deal for those cowardly streets which desire to go to sleep at sunset. The sergeant of the banlieue lent an ear. He was a prudent man. The mad rattle of the cart decided him. There is a whole band of them there. Let us proceed gently. He ventured out of the post with cautious tread. All at once Gavroche, at the very moment when he was about to turn, found himself face to face with a uniform, a shako, a plume, and a gun. Hullo, it is him. Good day, public order. Where are you going, you rascal? The sergeant asked it four times, climbing from rascal to bandit to wretch. Gavroche answered as a citizen, as monsieur, and as a general on his way to look for a doctor for his wife who is in labour. To arms. The master-stroke of strong men consists in saving themselves by the very means that have ruined them. The cart, converted into a projectile and launched with all the child's might, rolled down upon the sergeant furiously. The sergeant, struck full in the stomach, tumbled over backwards into the gutter while his gun went off in the air. The men of the post rushed out. The shot brought on a general random discharge. This blind-man's-buff musketry lasted for a quarter of an hour and killed several panes of glass. Gavroche halted five or six streets distant and seated himself, panting, on the stone post at the corner of the Enfants-Rouges. If I only reach the barricade in season. Thereupon he set out again on a run and resumed his ditty as he plunged rapidly through the streets. The cart was conquered and put in the pound. The drunken man was taken prisoner and later on somewhat harassed before the councils of war as an accomplice. Gavroche's adventure lingered as a tradition in the quarters of the Temple. In the memories of the elderly bourgeois of the Marais it is entitled: The nocturnal attack by the post of the Royal Printing Establishment.