ly,
Combeferre, and the men scattered over the two barricades came running
up.

Javert, with his back to the post, and so surrounded with ropes that he
could not make a movement, raised his head with the intrepid serenity of
the man who has never lied.

"He is a police spy," said Enjolras.

And turning to Javert: "You will be shot ten minutes before the
barricade is taken."

Javert replied in his most imperious tone:--

"Why not at once?"

"We are saving our powder."

"Then finish the business with a blow from a knife."

"Spy," said the handsome Enjolras, "we are judges and not assassins."

Then he called Gavroche:--

"Here you! go about your business! Do what I told you!"

"I'm going!" cried Gavroche.

And halting as he was on the point of setting out:--

"By the way, you will give me his gun!" and he added: "I leave you the
musician, but I want the clarionet."

The gamin made the military salute and passed gayly through the opening
in the large barricade.

CHAPTER VIII--MANY INTERROGATION POINTS WITH REGARD TO A CERTAIN LE
CABUC WHOSE NAME MAY NOT HAVE BEEN LE CABUC

The tragic picture which we have undertaken would not be complete, the
reader would not see those grand moments of social birth-pangs in a
revolutionary birth, which contain convulsion mingled with effort,
in their exact and real relief, were we to omit, in the sketch here
outlined, an incident full of epic and savage horror which occurred
almost immediately after Gavroche's departure.

Mobs, as the reader knows, are like a snowball, and collect as they
roll along, a throng of tumultuous men. These men do not ask each other
whence they come. Among the passers-by who had joined the rabble led by
Enjolras, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac, there had been a person wearing
the jacket of a street porter, which was very threadbare on the
shoulders, who gesticulated and vociferated, and who had the look of a
drunken savage. This man, whose name or nickname was Le Cabuc, and who
was, moreover, an utter stranger to those who pretended to know him,
was very drunk, or assumed the appearance of being so, and had seated
himself with several others at a table which they had dragged outside
of the wine-shop. This Cabuc, while making those who vied with him drunk
seemed to be examining with a thoughtful air the large house at the
extremity of the barricade, whose five stories commanded the whole
street and faced the Rue Saint-Denis. All at once he