Les Misérables
was ajar. It was the door of the sepulchre. In these winds one felt the
breath of the cholera.
From a meteorological point of view, these cold winds possessed this
peculiarity, that they did not preclude a strong electric tension.
Frequent storms, accompanied by thunder and lightning, burst forth at
this epoch.
One evening, when these gales were blowing rudely, to such a degree
that January seemed to have returned and that the bourgeois had resumed
their cloaks, Little Gavroche, who was always shivering gayly under his
rags, was standing as though in ecstasy before a wig-maker’s shop in
the vicinity of the Orme-Saint-Gervais. He was adorned with a woman’s
woollen shawl, picked up no one knows where, and which he had converted
into a neck comforter. Little Gavroche appeared to be engaged in intent
admiration of a wax bride, in a low-necked dress, and crowned with
orange-flowers, who was revolving in the window, and displaying her
smile to passers-by, between two argand lamps; but in reality, he was
taking an observation of the shop, in order to discover whether he
could not “prig” from the shop-front a cake of soap, which he would
then proceed to sell for a sou to a “hair-dresser” in the suburbs. He
had often managed to breakfast off of such a roll. He called his
species of work, for which he possessed special aptitude, “shaving
barbers.”
While contemplating the bride, and eyeing the cake of soap, he muttered
between his teeth: “Tuesday. It was not Tuesday. Was it Tuesday?
Perhaps it was Tuesday. Yes, it was Tuesday.”
No one has ever discovered to what this monologue referred.
Yes, perchance, this monologue had some connection with the last
occasion on which he had dined, three days before, for it was now
Friday.
The barber in his shop, which was warmed by a good stove, was shaving a
customer and casting a glance from time to time at the enemy, that
freezing and impudent street urchin both of whose hands were in his
pockets, but whose mind was evidently unsheathed.
While Gavroche was scrutinizing the shop-window and the cakes of
windsor soap, two children of unequal stature, very neatly dressed, and
still smaller than himself, one apparently about seven years of age,
the other five, timidly turned the handle and entered the shop, with a
request for something or other, alms possibly, in a plaintive murmur
which resembled a groan rather than a prayer. They both spoke at once,
and their words were unintelligible because sobs broke the voice of the
younger, and the teeth of the elder were chattering with cold. The
barber wheeled round with a furious look, and without abandoning his
razor, thrust back the elder with his left hand and the younger with
his knee, and slammed his door, saying: “The idea of coming in and
freezing everybody for nothing!”
The two children resumed their march in tears. In the meantime, a cloud
had risen; it had begun to rain.
Little Gavroche ran after them and accosted them:—
“What’s the matter with you, brats?”
“We don’t know where we are to sleep,” replied the elder.
“Is that all?” said Gavroche. “A great matter, truly. The idea of
bawling about that. They must be greenies!”
And adopting, in addition to his superiority, which was rather
bantering, an accent of tender authority and gentle patronage:—
“Come along with me, young ’uns!”
“Yes, sir,” said the elder.
And the two children followed him as they would have followed an
archbishop. They had stopped crying.
Gavroche led them up the Rue Saint-Antoine in the direction of the
Bastille.
As Gavroche walked along, he cast an indignant backward glance at the
barber’s shop.
“That fellow has no heart, the whiting,”35 he muttered. “He’s an
Englishman.”
A woman who caught sight of these three marching in a file, with
Gavroche at their head, burst into noisy laughter. This laugh was
wanting in respect towards the group.
“Good day, Mamselle Omnibus,” said Gavroche to her.
An instant later, the wig-maker occurred to his mind once more, and he
added:—
“I am making a mistake in the beast; he’s not a whiting, he’s a
serpent. Barber, I’ll go and fetch a locksmith, and I’ll have a bell
hung to your tail.”
This wig-maker had rendered him aggressive. As he strode over a gutter,
he apostrophized a bearded portress who was worthy to meet Faust on the
Brocken, and who had a broom in her hand.
“Madam,” said he, “so you are going out with your horse?”
And thereupon, he spattered the polished boots of a pedestrian.
“You scamp!” shouted the furious pedestrian.
Gavroche elevated his nose above his shawl.
“Is Monsieur complaining?”
“Of you!” ejaculated the man.
“The office is closed,” said Gavroche, “I do not receive any more
complaints.”
In the meanwhile, as he went on up the street, he perceived a
beggar-girl, thirteen or fourteen years old, and clad in so short a
gown that her knees were visible, lying thoroughly chilled under a
porte-cochère. The little girl was getting to be too old for such a
thing. Growth does play these tricks. The petticoat becomes short at
the moment when nudity becomes indecent.
“Poor girl!” said Gavroche. “She hasn’t even trousers. Hold on, take
this.”
And unwinding all the comfortable woollen which he had around his neck,
he flung it on the thin and purple shoulders of the beggar-girl, where
the scarf became a shawl once more.
The child stared at him in astonishment, and received the shawl in
silence. When a certain stage of distress has been reached in his
misery, the poor man no longer groans over evil, no longer returns
thanks for good.
That done: “Brrr!” said Gavroche, who was shivering more than Saint
Martin, for the latter retained one-half of his cloak.
At this _brrr!_ the downpour of rain, redoubled in its spite, became
furious. The wicked skies punish good deeds.
“Ah, come now!” exclaimed Gavroche, “what’s the meaning of this? It’s
re-raining! Good Heavens, if it goes on like this, I shall stop my
subscription.”
And he set out on the march once more.
“It’s all right,” he resumed, casting a glance at the beggar-girl, as
she coiled up under the shawl, “she’s got a famous peel.”
And looking up at the clouds he exclaimed:—
“Caught!”
The two children followed close on his heels.
As they were passing one of these heavy grated lattices, which indicate
a baker’s shop, for bread is put behind bars like gold, Gavroche turned
round:—
“Ah, by the way, brats, have we dined?”
“Monsieur,” replied the elder, “we have had nothing to eat since this
morning.”
“So you have neither father nor mother?” resumed Gavroche majestically.
“Excuse us, sir, we have a papa and a mamma, but we don’t know where
they are.”
“Sometimes that’s better than knowing where they are,” said Gavroche,
who was a thinker.
“We have been wandering about these two hours,” continued the elder,
“we have hunted for things at the corners of the streets, but we have
found nothing.”
“I know,” ejaculated Gavroche, “it’s the dogs who eat everything.”
He went on, after a pause:—
“Ah! we have lost our authors. We don’t know what we have done with
them. This should not be, gamins. It’s stupid to let old people stray
off like that. Come now! we must have a snooze all the same.”
However, he asked them no questions. What was more simple than that
they should have no dwelling place!
The elder of the two children, who had almost entirely recovered the
prompt heedlessness of childhood, uttered this exclamation:—
“It’s queer, all the same. Mamma told us that she would take us to get
a blessed spray on Palm Sunday.”
“Bosh,” said Gavroche.
“Mamma,” resumed the elder, “is a lady who lives with Mamselle Miss.”
“Tanflûte!” retorted Gavroche.
Meanwhile he had halted, and for the last two minutes he had been
feeling and fumbling in all sorts of nooks which his rags contained.
At last he tossed his head with an air intended to be merely satisfied,
but which was triumphant, in reality.
“Let us be calm, young ’uns. Here’s supper for three.”
And from one of his pockets he drew forth a sou.
Without allowing the two urchins time for amazement, he pushed both of
them before him into the baker’s shop, and flung his sou on the
counter, crying:—
“Boy! five centimes’ worth of bread.”
The baker, who was the proprietor in person, took up a loaf and a
knife.
“In three pieces, my boy!” went on Gavroche.
And he added with dignity:—
“There are three of us.”
And seeing that the baker, after scrutinizing the three customers, had
taken down a black loaf, he thrust his finger far up his nose with an
inhalation as imperious as though he had had a pinch of the great
Frederick’s snuff on the tip of his thumb, and hurled this indignant
apostrophe full in the baker’s face:—
“Keksekça?”
Those of our readers who might be tempted to espy in this
interpellation of Gavroche’s to the baker a Russian or a Polish word,
or one of those savage cries which the Yoways and the Botocudos hurl at
each other from bank to bank of a river, athwart the solitudes, are
warned that it is a word which they [our readers] utter every day, and
which takes the place of the phrase: “Qu’est-ce que c’est que cela?”
The baker understood perfectly, and replied:—
“Well! It’s bread, and very good bread of the second quality.”
“You mean _larton brutal_ [black bread]!” retorted Gavroche, calmly and
coldly disdainful. “White bread, boy! white bread [_larton savonné_]!
I’m standing treat.”
The baker could not repress a smile, and as he cut the white bread he
surveyed them in a compassionate way which shocked Gavroche.
“Come, now, baker’s boy!” said he, “what are you taking our measure
like that for?”
All three of them placed end to end would have hardly made a measure.
When the bread was cut, the baker threw the sou into his drawer, and
Gavroche said to the two children:—
“Grub away.”
The little boys stared at him in surprise.
Gavroche began to laugh.
“Ah! hullo, that’s so! they don’t understand yet, they’re too small.”
And he repeated:—
“Eat away.”
At the same time, he held out a piece of bread to each of them.
And thinking that the elder, who seemed to him the more worthy of his
conversation, deserved some special encouragement and ought to be
relieved from all hesitation to satisfy his appetite, he added, as he
handed him the largest share:—
“Ram that into your muzzle.”
One piece was smaller than the others; he kept this for himself.
The poor children, including Gavroche, were famished. As they tore
their bread apart in big mouthfuls, they blocked up the shop of the
baker, who, now that they had paid their money, looked angrily at them.
“Let’s go into the street again,” said Gavroche.
They set off once more in the direction of the Bastille.
From time to time, as they passed the lighted shop-windows, the
smallest halted to look at the time on a leaden watch which was
suspended from his neck by a cord.
“Well, he is a very green ’un,” said Gavroche.
Then, becoming thoughtful, he muttered between his teeth:—
“All the same, if I had charge of the babes I’d lock ’em up better than
that.”
Just as they were finishing their morsel of bread, and had reached the
angle of that gloomy Rue des Ballets, at the other end of which the low
and threatening wicket of La Force was visible:—
“Hullo, is that you, Gavroche?” said some one.
“Hullo, is that you, Montparnasse?” said Gavroche.
A man had just accosted the street urchin, and the man was no other
than Montparnasse in disguise, with blue spectacles, but recognizable
to Gavroche.
“The bow-wows!” went on Gavroche, “you’ve got a hide the color of a