Les Misérables
horror—one can’t afford anything but the poor cuts nowadays.”
Here the rag-picker interposed:—
“Ladies, business is dull. The refuse heaps are miserable. No one
throws anything away any more. They eat everything.”
“There are poorer people than you, la Vargoulême.”
“Ah, that’s true,” replied the rag-picker, with deference, “I have a
profession.”
A pause succeeded, and the rag-picker, yielding to that necessity for
boasting which lies at the bottom of man, added:—
“In the morning, on my return home, I pick over my basket, I sort my
things. This makes heaps in my room. I put the rags in a basket, the
cores and stalks in a bucket, the linen in my cupboard, the woollen
stuff in my commode, the old papers in the corner of the window, the
things that are good to eat in my bowl, the bits of glass in my
fireplace, the old shoes behind my door, and the bones under my bed.”
Gavroche had stopped behind her and was listening.
“Old ladies,” said he, “what do you mean by talking politics?”
He was assailed by a broadside, composed of a quadruple howl.
“Here’s another rascal.”
“What’s that he’s got in his paddle? A pistol?”
“Well, I’d like to know what sort of a beggar’s brat this is?”
“That sort of animal is never easy unless he’s overturning the
authorities.”
Gavroche disdainfully contented himself, by way of reprisal, with
elevating the tip of his nose with his thumb and opening his hand wide.
The rag-picker cried:—
“You malicious, bare-pawed little wretch!”
The one who answered to the name of Patagon clapped her hands together
in horror.
“There’s going to be evil doings, that’s certain. The errand-boy next
door has a little pointed beard, I have seen him pass every day with a
young person in a pink bonnet on his arm; to-day I saw him pass, and he
had a gun on his arm. Mame Bacheux says, that last week there was a
revolution at—at—at—where’s the calf!—at Pontoise. And then, there you
see him, that horrid scamp, with his pistol! It seems that the
Célestins are full of pistols. What do you suppose the Government can
do with good-for-nothings who don’t know how to do anything but
contrive ways of upsetting the world, when we had just begun to get a
little quiet after all the misfortunes that have happened, good Lord!
to that poor queen whom I saw pass in the tumbril! And all this is
going to make tobacco dearer. It’s infamous! And I shall certainly go
to see him beheaded on the guillotine, the wretch!”
“You’ve got the sniffles, old lady,” said Gavroche. “Blow your
promontory.”
And he passed on. When he was in the Rue Pavée, the rag-picker occurred
to his mind, and he indulged in this soliloquy:—
“You’re in the wrong to insult the revolutionists, Mother
Dust-Heap-Corner. This pistol is in your interests. It’s so that you
may have more good things to eat in your basket.”
All at once, he heard a shout behind him; it was the portress Patagon
who had followed him, and who was shaking her fist at him in the
distance and crying:—
“You’re nothing but a bastard.”
“Oh! Come now,” said Gavroche, “I don’t care a brass farthing for
that!”
Shortly afterwards, he passed the Hotel Lamoignon. There he uttered
this appeal:—
“Forward march to the battle!”
And he was seized with a fit of melancholy. He gazed at his pistol with
an air of reproach which seemed an attempt to appease it:—
“I’m going off,” said he, “but you won’t go off!”
One dog may distract the attention from another dog.45 A very gaunt
poodle came along at the moment. Gavroche felt compassion for him.
“My poor doggy,” said he, “you must have gone and swallowed a cask, for
all the hoops are visible.”
Then he directed his course towards l’Orme-Saint-Gervais.
CHAPTER III—JUST INDIGNATION OF A HAIR-DRESSER
The worthy hair-dresser who had chased from his shop the two little
fellows to whom Gavroche had opened the paternal interior of the
elephant was at that moment in his shop engaged in shaving an old
soldier of the legion who had served under the Empire. They were
talking. The hair-dresser had, naturally, spoken to the veteran of the
riot, then of General Lamarque, and from Lamarque they had passed to
the Emperor. Thence sprang up a conversation between barber and soldier
which Prudhomme, had he been present, would have enriched with
arabesques, and which he would have entitled: “Dialogue between the
razor and the sword.”
“How did the Emperor ride, sir?” said the barber.
“Badly. He did not know how to fall—so he never fell.”
“Did he have fine horses? He must have had fine horses!”
“On the day when he gave me my cross, I noticed his beast. It was a
racing mare, perfectly white. Her ears were very wide apart, her saddle
deep, a fine head marked with a black star, a very long neck, strongly
articulated knees, prominent ribs, oblique shoulders and a powerful
crupper. A little more than fifteen hands in height.”
“A pretty horse,” remarked the hair-dresser.
“It was His Majesty’s beast.”
The hair-dresser felt, that after this observation, a short silence
would be fitting, so he conformed himself to it, and then went on:—
“The Emperor was never wounded but once, was he, sir?”
The old soldier replied with the calm and sovereign tone of a man who
had been there:—
“In the heel. At Ratisbon. I never saw him so well dressed as on that
day. He was as neat as a new sou.”
“And you, Mr. Veteran, you must have been often wounded?”
“I?” said the soldier, “ah! not to amount to anything. At Marengo, I
received two sabre-blows on the back of my neck, a bullet in the right
arm at Austerlitz, another in the left hip at Jena. At Friedland, a
thrust from a bayonet, there,—at the Moskowa seven or eight
lance-thrusts, no matter where, at Lutzen a splinter of a shell crushed
one of my fingers. Ah! and then at Waterloo, a ball from a biscaïen in
the thigh, that’s all.”
“How fine that is!” exclaimed the hair-dresser, in Pindaric accents,
“to die on the field of battle! On my word of honor, rather than die in
bed, of an illness, slowly, a bit by bit each day, with drugs,
cataplasms, syringes, medicines, I should prefer to receive a
cannon-ball in my belly!”
“You’re not over fastidious,” said the soldier.
He had hardly spoken when a fearful crash shook the shop. The
show-window had suddenly been fractured.
The wig-maker turned pale.
“Ah, good God!” he exclaimed, “it’s one of them!”
“What?”
“A cannon-ball.”
“Here it is,” said the soldier.
And he picked up something that was rolling about the floor. It was a
pebble.
The hair-dresser ran to the broken window and beheld Gavroche fleeing
at the full speed, towards the Marché Saint-Jean. As he passed the
hair-dresser’s shop Gavroche, who had the two brats still in his mind,
had not been able to resist the impulse to say good day to him, and had
flung a stone through his panes.
“You see!” shrieked the hair-dresser, who from white had turned blue,
“that fellow returns and does mischief for the pure pleasure of it.
What has any one done to that gamin?”
CHAPTER IV—THE CHILD IS AMAZED AT THE OLD MAN
In the meantime, in the Marché Saint-Jean, where the post had already
been disarmed, Gavroche had just “effected a junction” with a band led
by Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Combeferre, and Feuilly. They were armed after
a fashion. Bahorel and Jean Prouvaire had found them and swelled the
group. Enjolras had a double-barrelled hunting-gun, Combeferre the gun
of a National Guard bearing the number of his legion, and in his belt,
two pistols which his unbuttoned coat allowed to be seen, Jean
Prouvaire an old cavalry musket, Bahorel a rifle; Courfeyrac was
brandishing an unsheathed sword-cane. Feuilly, with a naked sword in
his hand, marched at their head shouting: “Long live Poland!”
They reached the Quai Morland. Cravatless, hatless, breathless, soaked
by the rain, with lightning in their eyes. Gavroche accosted them
calmly:—
“Where are we going?”
“Come along,” said Courfeyrac.
Behind Feuilly marched, or rather bounded, Bahorel, who was like a fish
in water in a riot. He wore a scarlet waistcoat, and indulged in the
sort of words which break everything. His waistcoat astounded a
passer-by, who cried in bewilderment:—
“Here are the reds!”
“The reds, the reds!” retorted Bahorel. “A queer kind of fear,
bourgeois. For my part I don’t tremble before a poppy, the little red
hat inspires me with no alarm. Take my advice, bourgeois, let’s leave
fear of the red to horned cattle.”
He caught sight of a corner of the wall on which was placarded the most
peaceable sheet of paper in the world, a permission to eat eggs, a
Lenten admonition addressed by the Archbishop of Paris to his “flock.”
Bahorel exclaimed:—
“‘Flock’; a polite way of saying geese.”
And he tore the charge from the nail. This conquered Gavroche. From
that instant Gavroche set himself to study Bahorel.
“Bahorel,” observed Enjolras, “you are wrong. You should have let that
charge alone, he is not the person with whom we have to deal, you are
wasting your wrath to no purpose. Take care of your supply. One does
not fire out of the ranks with the soul any more than with a gun.”
“Each one in his own fashion, Enjolras,” retorted Bahorel. “This
bishop’s prose shocks me; I want to eat eggs without being permitted.
Your style is the hot and cold; I am amusing myself. Besides, I’m not
wasting myself, I’m getting a start; and if I tore down that charge,
Hercle! ’twas only to whet my appetite.”
This word, _Hercle_, struck Gavroche. He sought all occasions for
learning, and that tearer-down of posters possessed his esteem. He
inquired of him:—
“What does _Hercle_ mean?”
Bahorel answered:—
“It means cursed name of a dog, in Latin.”
Here Bahorel recognized at a window a pale young man with a black beard
who was watching them as they passed, probably a Friend of the A B C.
He shouted to him:—
“Quick, cartridges, _para bellum_.”
“A fine man! that’s true,” said Gavroche, who now understood Latin.
A tumultuous retinue accompanied them,—students, artists, young men
affiliated to the Cougourde of Aix, artisans, longshoremen, armed with
clubs and bayonets; some, like Combeferre, with pistols thrust into
their trousers.
An old man, who appeared to be extremely aged, was walking in the band.
He had no arms, and he made great haste, so that he might not be left
behind, although he had a thoughtful air.
Gavroche caught sight of him:—
“Keksekça?” said he to Courfeyrac.
“He’s an old duffer.”
It was M. Mabeuf.
CHAPTER V—THE OLD MAN
Let us recount what had taken place.
Enjolras and his friends had been on the Boulevard Bourdon, near the
public storehouses, at the moment when the dragoons had made their
charge. Enjolras, Courfeyrac, and Combeferre were among those who had
taken to the Rue Bassompierre, shouting: “To the barricades!” In the
Rue Lesdiguières they had met an old man walking along. What had
attracted their attention was that the goodman was walking in a
zig-zag, as though he were intoxicated. Moreover, he had his hat in his
hand, although it had been raining all the morning, and was raining
pretty briskly at the very time. Courfeyrac had recognized Father
Mabeuf. He knew him through having many times accompanied Marius as far
as his door. As he was acquainted with the peaceful and more than timid
habits of the old beadle-book-collector, and was amazed at the sight of
him in the midst of that uproar, a couple of paces from the cavalry
charges, almost in the midst of a fusillade, hatless in the rain, and
strolling about among the bullets, he had accosted him, and the
following dialogue had been exchanged between the rioter of fire and