Chapter 315 Fifteen Gavroche goes out

Courfeyrac suddenly noticed a man under the barricade, outside, in the street, under the line of fire. Gavroche took a basket of glass bottles from the tavern, and went out through the gap, emptying himself into the basket full of cartridges from the National Guardsmen who had fallen dead on the ramps of the barricades. "What are you doing?" said Courfeyrac. Gavroche raised his nose: "Citizen, I'm loading a basket." "Don't you see the shot?" replied Gavroche. "Yes, it's raining. So what?" Courfeyrac roared: "Come in!"

"Come right back," said Gavroche. So he jumped to the middle of the street. We remember that Fanigol's company left behind a trail of dead bodies when it retreated. On the pavement of the whole street, here and there, there were nearly twenty dead bodies.For Gavroche it was twenty or so ammunition-packs, for the barricade it was a mass of bullets. The smoke in the street is like a fog.Anyone who has ever seen a cloud fall between two cliffs in a canyon can imagine the smoke compressed—and seemed to thicken—between the eerie rows of tall houses.It rises slowly and is replenished, so that the light grows more and more dim, and even the day is darkened.The street was not very long from one end to the other, but the combatants could hardly see each other.

This twilight state, perhaps, was needed and planned by the officers directing the attack on the barricades, but it also brought convenience to Gavroche. Under this veil of smoke, Gavroche, because of his small stature, was able to walk a considerable distance along this street without being noticed.He emptied the first seven or eight ammunition pouches, at no great risk. He crawled forward close to the ground, moving quickly on all fours, clenching the basket with his teeth, twisting, slipping, moving like a wave, crawling like a snake, moving from dead body to dead body, throwing the ammunition one by one. Bags or cartridges are emptied like a monkey peeling a walnut.

He was still quite close to the barricade, and the people inside dared not call him back for fear of attracting their attention. On one of the corpses—a platoon leader—he found a hunting powder bottle. "Just in case," he said as he stuffed it into his pocket. He kept moving forward, and finally reached a place where the smoke was thinner. Then a row of front-line snipers ambushing behind the stone pile and suburban snipers gathered on the street corner suddenly pointed to each other that there was something moving in the smoke. While Gavroche was unpacking the ammunition-pouch of a sergeant who had fallen near the boundary stone, a bullet hit the corpse.

"My fellow!" said Gavroche, "they have come to kill my dead." A second bullet hit him beside him, sending sparks from the stones in the pavement.The third knocked over his basket. Gavroche looked it over and saw that it was coming from the suburbs. Standing erect, with his hair blowing in the wind, his hands on his hips, his eyes on the National Guardsmen who were shooting, he sang: Then he picked up his basket, picked up all the bullets that had turned upside down, and went on to the place where the gun was fired, to untie another bag of ammunition; there, the fourth bullet still missed he.Gavroche sang:

The fifth bullet hits his third verse: This continued for some time. The spectacle was appalling and moving.Gavroche was shot, and he amused the shooter.He looked as if he thought it was amused.This is the little sparrow chasing the hunter.He answers a shot with a libretto.People kept aiming at him, but they couldn't hit him.The National Guardsmen and soldiers smiled as they took aim at him.He crouches, gets up, hides in a corner of a door, jumps out again, hides out of sight, reappears, runs and returns, grimaces at the bullets, fishes for the bullets, takes out the ammo-pouches, Fill his basket.The insurgents were so anxious that they couldn't breathe, and their eyes were fixed on him.The barricades are trembling, and he is singing.He is not a child, nor a grown-up, but an elf-like urchin.Arguably, he was an unassailable midget in a melee.The bullet followed him, but he was more nimble than the bullet.He played a hideous game of hide-and-seek with death.Every time when a life-threatening ghost came to him, the naughty boy always snapped his fingers.

But one bullet, more accurate than the others, or more treacherous than the others, finally hit the phosphorescent child.Everyone saw Gavroche staggering a few steps, then went limp, and the people in the barricade uttered a cry, but within the child was the power of Antaeus; as soon as the child touched the road, it was like the giant touching the earth. .Gavroche fell, and soon got up again.He sat up, with a long streak of blood running down his face, raised his arms, looked in the direction of the shot, and began to sing again: He didn't finish singing.The second bullet, fired by the original shooter, brought him to a halt.This time, he fell on his face and did not move.This great little soul flies away.