The assailants of the barricade keep up their fire, hoping to provoke a riposte, exhaust the defenders, and then charge. But Enjolras does not fall into the trap. Impatient and curious, the army dispatches an observer to a roof overlooking the barricade. Valjean hits him squarely in the helmet and does the same to his successor. Bossuet asks why he did not kill him; Valjean does not answer.
Another cannon is brought up, and the attack suddenly becomes destructive. Aimed at the top of the barricade, it shatters the paving stone, and the flying fragments force the insurgents to withdraw. The wall, left undefended, is now ripe for an assault. Enjolras sees the danger and orders the artillery men put out of commission. A well-aimed salvo kills two-thirds of them, but it is a Pyrrhic victory. Too many bullets have been wasted.
Gavroche casually decides to remedy the situation. Like a housewife doing her shopping, he grabs a basket, jumps outside the protective wall, and empties into his basket the cartridge-bags of the dead soldiers lying in the street. He is temporarily protected by a thick curtain of smoke, but his boldness leads him too close to the enemy line; the soldiers notice him and begin to shoot. Undeterred, he continues his harvest; in fact, he stands up straight and sings a little ditty. As the bullets rain around him, he jumps, darts, disappears, reappears, plays a frightening game with death. Finally his magic fails him, and he falls wounded. Gavroche, however, will not die without a swan song. He manages to sit up and sing another stanza of his mocking song. Then another bullet, this time fatal, cuts him down.
