with his eyes,
admiring his gun; then, all at once, when the man was seated, the street
urchin sprang to his feet. Any one who had spied upon that man up to
that moment, would have seen that he was observing everything in the
barricade and in the band of insurgents, with singular attention; but,
from the moment when he had entered this room, he had fallen into a sort
of brown study, and no longer seemed to see anything that was going on.
The gamin approached this pensive personage, and began to step around
him on tiptoe, as one walks in the vicinity of a person whom one is
afraid of waking. At the same time, over his childish countenance which
was, at once so impudent and so serious, so giddy and so profound, so
gay and so heart-breaking, passed all those grimaces of an old man which
signify: Ah bah! impossible! My sight is bad! I am dreaming! can this
be? no, it is not! but yes! why, no! etc. Gavroche balanced on his
heels, clenched both fists in his pockets, moved his neck around like a
bird, expended in a gigantic pout all the sagacity of his lower lip. He
was astounded, uncertain, incredulous, convinced, dazzled. He had the
mien of the chief of the eunuchs in the slave mart, discovering a
Venus among the blowsy females, and the air of an amateur recognizing
a Raphael in a heap of daubs. His whole being was at work, the instinct
which scents out, and the intelligence which combines. It was evident
that a great event had happened in Gavroche's life.

It was at the most intense point of this preoccupation that Enjolras
accosted him.

"You are small," said Enjolras, "you will not be seen. Go out of the
barricade, slip along close to the houses, skirmish about a bit in the
streets, and come back and tell me what is going on."

Gavroche raised himself on his haunches.

"So the little chaps are good for something! that's very lucky! I'll
go! In the meanwhile, trust to the little fellows, and distrust the big
ones." And Gavroche, raising his head and lowering his voice, added,
as he indicated the man of the Rue des Billettes: "Do you see that big
fellow there?"

"Well?"

"He's a police spy."

"Are you sure of it?"

"It isn't two weeks since he pulled me off the cornice of the Port
Royal, where I was taking the air, by my ear."

Enjolras hastily quitted the urchin and murmured a few words in a very
low tone to a longshoreman from the winedocks who chanced to be at hand.
The man left the room, and returned almost