It was at the most intense point of this preoccupation that Enjolras accosted him.
“You are small,” said Enjolras, “you will not be seen. Go out of the barricade, slip along close to the houses, skirmish about a bit in the streets, and come back and tell me what is going on.”
Gavroche raised himself on his haunches.
“So the little chaps are good for something! that’s very lucky! I’ll go! In the meanwhile, trust to the little fellows, and distrust the big ones.” And Gavroche, raising his head and lowering his voice, added, as he indicated the man of the Rue des Billettes: “Do you see that big fellow there?”
“Well?”
“He’s a police spy.”
“Are you sure of it?”
“It isn’t two weeks since he pulled me off the cornice of the Port Royal, where I was taking the air, by my ear.”
Enjolras hastily quitted the urchin and murmured a few words in a very low tone to a longshoreman from the winedocks who chanced to be at hand. The man left the room, and returned almost immediately, accompanied by three others. The four men, four porters with broad shoulders, went and placed themselves without doing anything to attract his attention, behind the table on which the man of the Rue des Billettes was leaning with his elbows. They were evidently ready to hurl themselves upon him.