he 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."

CHAPTER II--GAVROCHE ON THE MARCH

The brandishing of a triggerless pistol, grasped in one's hand in the
open street, is so much of a public function that Gavroche felt his
fervor increasing with every moment. Amid the scraps of the Marseillaise
which he was singing, he shouted:--

"All goes well. I suffer a great deal in my left paw, I'm all broken
up with rheumatism, but I'm satisfied, citizens. All that the bourgeois
have to do is to bear themselves well, I'll sneeze them out subversive
couplets. What are the police spies? Dogs. And I'd just like to have
one of them at the end of my pistol. I'm just from the boulevard, my
friends. It's getting hot there, it's getting into a little boil, it's
simmering. It's time to skim the pot. Forward march, men! Let an impure
blood inundate the furrows! I give my days to my country, I shall never
see my concubine more, Nini, finished, yes, Nini? But never mind! Long
live joy! Let's fight, crebleu! I've had enough of despotism."

At that moment, the horse of a lancer of the National Guard having
fallen, Gavroche laid his pistol on the pavement, and picked up the
man, then he assisted in raising the horse. After which he picked up his
pistol and resumed his way. In the Rue de Thorigny, all was peace and
silence. This apathy, peculiar to the Marais, presented a contrast with
the vast surrounding uproar. Four gossips were chatting in a doorway.

Scotland has trios of witches, Paris has quartettes of old gossiping
hags; and the "Thou shalt be King" could be quite as mournfully hurled
at Bonaparte in the Carrefour Baudoyer as at Macbeth on the heath of
Armuyr. The croak would be almost identical.

The gossips of the Rue de Thorigny busied th