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of the line ranged on the outlook behind their paving-stone
dike and the sharpshooters of the banlieue massed at the
corner of the street suddenly pointed out to each other
something moving through the smoke.
At the moment when Gavroche was relieving a sergeant,
who was lying near a stone door-post, of his cartridges, a
bullet struck the body.
‘Fichtre!’ ejaculated Gavroche. ‘They are killing my dead
men for me.’
A second bullet struck a spark from the pavement beside
him.— A third overturned his basket.
Gavroche looked and saw that this came from the men
of the banlieue.
He sprang to his feet, stood erect, with his hair flying in
the wind, his hands on his hips, his eyes fixed on the Na-
tional Guardsmen who were firing, and sang:
“On est laid a Nanterre, “Men are ugly at Nanterre,
C’est la faute a Voltaire; ’Tis the fault of Voltaire;
Et bete a Palaiseau, And dull at Palaiseau,
C’est la faute a Rousseau.’ ’Tis the fault of Rousseau.’Then he picked up his basket, replaced the cartridg-
es which had fallen from it, without missing a single one,
and, advancing towards the fusillade, set about plundering
another cartridge-box. There a fourth bullet missed him,
again. Gavroche sang:
‘Je ne suis pas notaire, “I am not a notary,