His mind had just been illuminated by this flash of light:—
“How bully that cart would look on our barricade!”
The Auvergnat was snoring.
Gavroche gently tugged at the cart from behind, and at the Auvergnat from the front, that is to say, by the feet, and at the expiration of another minute the imperturbable Auvergnat was reposing flat on the pavement.
The cart was free.
Gavroche, habituated to facing the unexpected in all quarters, had everything about him.
He fumbled in one of his pockets, and pulled from it 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 Auvergnat’s velvet vest, seized the cart 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.
This post was occupied by the National Guards of the suburbs.
The squad began to wake up, and heads were raised from camp beds.
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, and which put the extinguisher on their candles at such an early hour.
For the last hour, that boy had been creating an uproar in that peaceable arrondissement, the uproar of a fly in a bottle.
The sergeant of the banlieue lent an ear.
He waited.
He was a prudent man.
The mad rattle of the cart, filled to overflowing the possible measure of waiting, and decided the sergeant to make a reconnaisance.
“There’s a whole band of them there!” said he, “let us proceed gently.”
It was clear that the hydra of anarchy had emerged from its box and that it was stalking abroad through the quarter.
And the sergeant ventured out of the post with cautious tread.
All at once, Gavroche, pushing his cart in front of him, and at the very moment when he was about to turn into the Rue des Vieilles-Haudriettes, found himself face to face with a uniform, a shako, a plume, and a gun.
For the second time, he stopped short.
“Hullo,” said he, “it’s him.
Good day, public order.”
Gavroche’s amazement was always brief and speedily thawed.
“Where are you going, you rascal?” shouted the sergeant.
“Citizen,” retorted Gavroche, “I haven’t called you ‘bourgeois’ yet.
Why do you insult me?”
“Where are you going, you rogue?”
“Monsieur,” retorted Gavroche, “perhaps you were a man of wit yesterday, but you have degenerated this morning.”
“I ask you where are you going, you villain?”
Gavroche replied:— “You speak prettily.
Really, no one would suppose you as old as you are.
You ought to sell all your hair at a hundred francs apiece.
That would yield you five hundred francs.”
“Where are you going?
Where are you going?
Where are you going, bandit?”
Gavroche retorted again:— “What villainous words! You must wipe your mouth better the first time that they give you suck.”
The sergeant lowered his bayonet.
“Will you tell me where you are going, you wretch?”
“General,” said Gavroche “I’m on my way to look for a doctor for my wife who is in labor.”
“To arms!” shouted the sergeant.
The master-stroke of strong men consists in saving themselves by the very means that have ruined them; Gavroche took in the whole situation at a glance.