accents, "to
die on the field of battle! On my word of honor, rather than die in bed,
of an illness, slowly, a bit by bit each day, with drugs, cataplasms,
syringes, medicines, I should prefer to receive a cannon-ball in my
belly!"

"You're not over fastidious," said the soldier.

He had hardly spoken when a fearful crash shook the shop. The
show-window had suddenly been fractured.

The wig-maker turned pale.

"Ah, good God!" he exclaimed, "it's one of them!"

"What?"

"A cannon-ball."

"Here it is," said the soldier.

And he picked up something that was rolling about the floor. It was a
pebble.

The hair-dresser ran to the broken window and beheld Gavroche fleeing
at the full speed, towards the Marche Saint-Jean. As he passed the
hair-dresser's shop Gavroche, who had the two brats still in his mind,
had not been able to resist the impulse to say good day to him, and had
flung a stone through his panes.

"You see!" shrieked the hair-dresser, who from white had turned blue,
"that fellow returns and does mischief for the pure pleasure of it. What
has any one done to that gamin?"

CHAPTER IV--THE CHILD IS AMAZED AT THE OLD MAN

In the meantime, in the Marche Saint-Jean, where the post had already
been disarmed, Gavroche had just "effected a junction" with a band led
by Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Combeferre, and Feuilly. They were armed after
a fashion. Bahorel and Jean Prouvaire had found them and swelled the
group. Enjolras had a double-barrelled hunting-gun, Combeferre the gun
of a National Guard bearing the number of his legion, and in his belt,
two pistols which his unbuttoned coat allowed to be seen, Jean Prouvaire
an old cavalry musket, Bahorel a rifle; Courfeyrac was brandishing an
unsheathed sword-cane. Feuilly, with a naked sword in his hand, marched
at their head shouting: "Long live Poland!"

They reached the Quai Morland. Cravatless, hatless, breathless, soaked
by the rain, with lightning in their eyes. Gavroche accosted them
calmly:--

"Where are we going?"

"Come along," said Courfeyrac.

Behind Feuilly marched, or rather bounded, Bahorel, who was like a fish
in water in a riot. He wore a scarlet waistcoat, and indulged in
the sort of words which break everything. His waistcoat astounded a
passer-by, who cried in bewilderment:--

"Here are the reds!"

"The reds, the reds!" retorted Bahorel. "A queer kind of fear,
bourgeois. For my part I don't tremble before a poppy, the little red