t.

"Let us interrupt the romance," said he.

His feline eye had just descried, in the recess of a carriage door,
what is called in painting, an ensemble, that is to say, a person and
a thing; the thing was a hand-cart, the person was a man from Auvergene
who was sleeping therein.

The shafts of the cart rested on the pavement, and the Auvergnat's head
was supported against the front of the cart. His body was coiled up on
this inclined plane and his feet touched the ground.

Gavroche, with his experience of the things of this world, recognized
a drunken man. He was some corner errand-man who had drunk too much and
was sleeping too much.

"There now," thought Gavroche, "that's what the summer nights are good
for. We'll take the cart for the Republic, and leave the Auvergnat for
the Monarchy."

His mind had just been illuminated by this flash of light:--

"How bully that cart would look on our barricade!"

The Auvergnat was snoring.

Gavroche gently tugged at the cart from behind, and at the Auvergnat
from the front, that is to say, by the feet, and at the expiration of
another minute the imperturbable Auvergnat was reposing flat on the
pavement.

The cart was free.

Gavroche, habituated to facing the unexpected in all quarters, had
everything about him. He fumbled in one of his pockets, and pulled from
it a scrap of paper and a bit of red pencil filched from some carpenter.

He wrote:--

"French Republic."

"Received thy cart."

And he signed it: "GAVROCHE."

That done, he put the paper in the pocket of the still snoring
Auvergnat's velvet vest, seized the cart shafts in both hands, and set
off in the direction of the Halles, pushing the cart before him at a
hard gallop with a glorious and triumphant uproar.

This was perilous. There was a post at the Royal Printing Establishment.
Gavroche did not think of this. This post was occupied by the National
Guards of the suburbs. The squad began to wake up, and heads were raised
from camp beds. Two street lanterns broken in succession, that ditty
sung at the top of the lungs. This was a great deal for those cowardly
streets, which desire to go to sleep at sunset, and which put the
extinguisher on their candles at such an early hour. For the last hour,
that boy had been creating an uproar in that peaceable arrondissement,
the uproar of a fly in a bottle. The sergeant of the banlieue lent an
ear. He waited. He was a prudent