in the street, amid the bullets.

Gavroche had taken a bottle basket from the wine-shop, had made his
way out through the cut, and was quietly engaged in emptying the full
cartridge-boxes of the National Guardsmen who had been killed on the
slope of the redoubt, into his basket.

"What are you doing there?" asked Courfeyrac.

Gavroche raised his face:--

"I'm filling my basket, citizen."

"Don't you see the grape-shot?"

Gavroche replied:

"Well, it is raining. What then?"

Courfeyrac shouted:--"Come in!"

"Instanter," said Gavroche.

And with a single bound he plunged into the street.

It will be remembered that Fannicot's company had left behind it a trail
of bodies. Twenty corpses lay scattered here and there on the pavement,
through the whole length of the street. Twenty cartouches for Gavroche
meant a provision of cartridges for the barricade.

The smoke in the street was like a fog. Whoever has beheld a cloud which
has fallen into a mountain gorge between two peaked escarpments can
imagine this smoke rendered denser and thicker by two gloomy rows of
lofty houses. It rose gradually and was incessantly renewed; hence a
twilight which made even the broad daylight turn pale. The combatants
could hardly see each other from one end of the street to the other,
short as it was.

This obscurity, which had probably been desired and calculated on by the
commanders who were to direct the assault on the barricade, was useful
to Gavroche.

Beneath the folds of this veil of smoke, and thanks to his small size,
he could advance tolerably far into the street without being seen. He
rifled the first seven or eight cartridge-boxes without much danger.

He crawled flat on his belly, galloped on all fours, took his basket
in his teeth, twisted, glided, undulated, wound from one dead body to
another, and emptied the cartridge-box or cartouche as a monkey opens a
nut.

They did not dare to shout to him to return from the barricade, which
was quite near, for fear of attracting attention to him.

On one body, that of a corporal, he found a powder-flask.

"For thirst," said he, putting it in his pocket.

By dint of advancing, he reached a point where the fog of the fusillade
became transparent. So that the sharpshooters of the line ranged on
the outlook behind their paving-stone dike and the sharpshooters of the
banlieue massed at the corner of the street suddenly pointed out to each
other something moving through t