gnat 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.