at the instant when the insurrection, arising from the shock of the populace and the military in front of the arsenal, started a movement in advance and towards the rear in the multitude which was following the hearse and which, through the whole length of the boulevards, weighed, so to speak, on the head of the procession, there arose a frightful ebb. the rout was shaken, their ranks were broken, all ran, fled, made their escape, some with shouts of attack, others with the pallor of flight. the great river which covered the boulevards divided in a twinkling, overflowed to right and left, and spread in torrents over two hundred streets at once with the roar of a sewer that has broken loose.
at that moment, a ragged child who was coming down through the rue menilmontant, holding in his hand a branch of blossoming laburnum which he had just plucked on the heights of belleville, caught sight of an old holster-pistol in the show-window of a bric-a-brac merchant's shop.
"mother what's-your-name, i'm going to borrow your machine."
and off he ran with the pistol.
two minutes later, a flood of frightened bourgeois who were fleeing through the rue amelot and the rue basse, encountered the lad brandishing his pistol and singing:--
la nuit on ne voit rien, le jour on voit tres bien, d'un ecrit apocrypha le bourgeois s'ebouriffe, pratiquez la vertu, tutu, chapeau pointu![44]
[44] at night one sees nothing, by day one sees very well; the bourgeois gets flurried over an apocryphal scrawl, practice virtue, tutu, pointed hat!
it was little gavroche on his way to the wars.
on the boulevard he noticed that the pistol had no trigger.
who was the author of that couplet which served to punctuate his march, and of all the other songs which he was fond of singing on occasion? we know not. who does know? himself, perhaps. however, gavroche was well up in all the popular tunes in circulation, and he mingled with them his own chirpings. an observing urchin and a rogue, he made a potpourri of the voices of nature and the voices of paris. he combined the repertory of the birds with the repertory of the workshops. he was acquainted with thieves, a tribe contiguous to his own. he had, it appears, been for three months apprenticed to a printer. he had one day executed a commission for m. baour-lormian, one of the forty. gavroche was a gamin of letters.
moreover, gavroche had no suspicion of the fact that when hehad offered the hospitality of his elephant to two brats on that villainously rainy night, it was to his own brothers that he had played the part of providence. his brothers in the evening, his father in the morning; that is what his night had been like. on quitting the rue des ballets at daybreak, he had returned in haste to the elephant, had artistically extracted from it the two brats,had shared with them some sort of breakfast which he had invented, and had then gone away, confiding them to that good mother, the street, who had brought him up, almost entirely. on leaving them, he had appointed to meet them at the same spot in the evening, and had left them this discourse by way of a farewell: "i break a cane, otherwise expressed, i cut my stick, or, as they say at the court, i file off. if you don't find papa and mamma, young 'uns, come back here this evening. i'll scramble you up some supper, and i'll give you a shakedown." the two children, picked up by some policeman and placed in the refuge, or stolen by some mountebank, or having simply strayed off in that immense chinese puzzle of a paris, did not return. the lowest depths of the actual social world are full of these lost traces. gavroche did not see them again. ten or twelve weeks had elapsed since that night. more than once he had scratched the back of his head and said: "where the devil are my two children?"
in the meantime, he had arrived, pistol in hand, in the rue du pont-aux-choux. he noticed that there was but one shop open in that street, and, a matter worthy of reflection, that was a pastry-cook's shop. this presented a providential occasion to eat another apple-turnover before entering the unknown. gavroche halted, fumbled in his fob, turned his pocket inside out, found nothing, not even a sou, and began to shout: "help!"
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."
人民和军队在兵工厂前发生冲突以后，跟在柩车后紧压着（不妨这样说）送葬行列的头部的人群，这时已不得不折回往后退，前面挤后面，这样一来，连续几条林荫大道上的队伍顿时一片混乱，有如退潮时的骇人情景。人流激荡，行列瓦解，人人奔跑，溃散，躲藏，有的高声叫喊向前冲击，有的面色苍白各自逃窜。林荫大道上的人群有如江河的水，一转瞬间，向左右两岸冲决泛滥，象开了闸门似的，同时注入那二百条大街小巷。这时，有个衣服破烂的男孩，从梅尼孟丹街走下来，手里捏着一枝刚从贝尔维尔坡上采来的盛开的金链花，走到一个卖破烂妇人的店门前，一眼瞧见了柜台上的长管手枪，便把手里的花枝扔在街上，叫道：
“我说，大娘，您这玩意儿，我借去用用。”
他抓起那手枪便逃。
两分钟过后，一大群涌向阿麦洛街和巴斯街的吓破了胆往前奔窜的资产阶级，碰到这孩子一面挥动着手枪，一面唱着：
晚上一点看不见，
白天处处阳光照。
先生收到匿名信，
乱抓头发心烦躁。
你们应当修修德，
芙蓉裙子尖尖帽。
这男孩便是小伽弗洛什。他正要去投入战斗。
走到林荫大道上，他发现那手枪没有撞针。
他用来调节步伐的这首歌和他信口唱出的其他一切曲子，是谁编的？我们答不上。谁知道？也许就是他编的。伽弗洛什原就熟悉民间流行的种种歌谣，他又常配上自己的腔调。他是小精灵和小淘气，他常把天籁之音和巴黎的声调和成一锅大杂烩。他把鸣禽的节目和车间的节目组合起来。他认识几个学画的小伙子，这是和他意气相投的一伙。据说他当过三个月的印刷业学徒。有一天他还替法兰西学院的院士巴乌尔－洛尔米安办过一件事。伽弗洛什是个有文学修养的野孩子。
在那凄风苦雨的夜晚，伽弗洛什把两个小把戏留宿在大象里，却没料到他所接待的正是他的亲兄弟，他替老天爷行了一件善事。他在晚上救了他的两个兄弟，早上又救了他的父亲，他便是这样过了那一夜的。天刚亮时他离开了芭蕾舞街，赶忙回到他那大象里，轻轻巧巧地把两个孩子从象肚子里取出来，和他们一同分享了一顿不三不四由他自己创造出来的早餐，随即和他们分了手，把他们交给了那位叫做街道的好妈妈，也就是从前多少教养过他自己的那位好妈妈。和他们分手时，他和他们约好晚上在原处相会，并向他们作了这样一段临别的讲演：“我要折断手杖了，换句话说，我要开小差了，或者，按照王宫里的说法，我要溜之大吉了。小乖乖们，要是你们找不着爹妈，今晚便回到这里来。我请你们吃夜宵，还留你们过夜。”那两个孩子，也许是被什么警察收留关进拘留所了，或是被什么江湖艺人拐走了，或者压根儿就是迷失在这个无边无际的巴黎迷宫里了，他们没有回来。今日社会的底层是充满了这种失踪事件的。伽弗洛什不曾和他们再见过面。从那一夜起，过了十个或十二个星期，他还不时搔着头说：“我那两个孩子究竟到哪儿去了？”
这时，他手里捏着那支手枪，走到了白菜桥街。他注意到这条街上只剩下一间商店是开着门的，并且，值得令人深思的是，那是一间糕饼店。真是上苍安排的一个好机会，要他在进入茫茫宇宙之前再吃一个苹果饺。伽弗洛什停下来，摸摸自己的裤口袋，搜遍了背心口袋，翻过了褂子口袋，什么也没有找出来，一个钱也没有，他只得大声喊道：“救命啊！”
人生最后的一个饼，却吃不到嘴，这确是难受的。
伽弗洛什却不因此而中止前进。
两分钟过后，他到了圣路易街。在穿过御花园街时，他感到需要补偿一下那个无法得到的苹果饺，便怀着无比欢畅的心情，趁着天色还亮，把那些剧场的海报一张张撕了个痛快。
再远一点，他望见一群红光满面财主模样的人打他眼前走过，他耸了耸肩，随口吐出了这样一嘴富有哲理的苦水：“这些吃利息的，养得好肥啊！这些家伙，有吃有喝，天天埋在酒肉堆里。你去问问他们，他们的钱是怎么花去的。他们准答不上。他们把钱吞了，这还不简单！全在他们的肚子里。”