ubtable pile where they could make out the broken barrel of powder, and giving vent to that startling cry:--
"Be off with you, or I''ll blow up the barricade!"
Marius on that barricade after the octogenarian was the vision of the young revolution after the apparition of the old.
"Blow up the barricade!" said a sergeant, "and yourself with it!"
Marius retorted:
"And myself also."
And he dropped the torch towards the barrel of powder.
But there was no longer any one on the barrier.
The assailants, abandoning their dead and wounded, flowed back pell-mell and in disorder towards the extremity of the street, and there were again lost in the night.
It was a headlong flight.
The barricade was free.
BOOK FOURTEENTH.--THE GRANDEURS OF DESPAIR
CHAPTER V
END OF THE VERSES OF JEAN PROUVAIRE
All flocked around Marius.
Courfeyrac flung himself on his neck.
"Here you are!"
"What luck!" said Combeferre.
"You came in opportunely!" ejaculated Bossuet.
"If it had not been for you, I should have been dead!" began Courfeyrac again.
"If it had not been for you, I should have been gobbled up!" added Gavroche.
Marius asked:--
"Where is the chief?"
"You are he!" said Enjolras.
Marius had had a furnace in his brain all day long; now it was a whirlwind.