Les Misérables
of the street? It’s the Archives, isn’t it? I must crumble up those big
stupids of pillars a bit and make a nice barricade out of them.”
Jean Valjean stepped up to Gavroche.
“Poor creature,” he said in a low tone, and speaking to himself, “he is
hungry.”
And he laid the hundred-sou piece in his hand.
Gavroche raised his face, astonished at the size of this sou; he stared
at it in the darkness, and the whiteness of the big sou dazzled him. He
knew five-franc pieces by hearsay; their reputation was agreeable to
him; he was delighted to see one close to. He said:—
“Let us contemplate the tiger.”
He gazed at it for several minutes in ecstasy; then, turning to Jean
Valjean, he held out the coin to him, and said majestically to him:—
“Bourgeois, I prefer to smash lanterns. Take back your ferocious beast.
You can’t bribe me. That has got five claws; but it doesn’t scratch
me.”
“Have you a mother?” asked Jean Valjean.
Gavroche replied:—
“More than you have, perhaps.”
“Well,” returned Jean Valjean, “keep the money for your mother!”
Gavroche was touched. Moreover, he had just noticed that the man who
was addressing him had no hat, and this inspired him with confidence.
“Truly,” said he, “so it wasn’t to keep me from breaking the lanterns?”
“Break whatever you please.”
“You’re a fine man,” said Gavroche.
And he put the five-franc piece into one of his pockets.
His confidence having increased, he added:—
“Do you belong in this street?”
“Yes, why?”
“Can you tell me where No. 7 is?”
“What do you want with No. 7?”
Here the child paused, he feared that he had said too much; he thrust
his nails energetically into his hair and contented himself with
replying:—
“Ah! Here it is.”
An idea flashed through Jean Valjean’s mind. Anguish does have these
gleams. He said to the lad:—
“Are you the person who is bringing a letter that I am expecting?”
“You?” said Gavroche. “You are not a woman.”
“The letter is for Mademoiselle Cosette, is it not?”
“Cosette,” muttered Gavroche. “Yes, I believe that is the queer name.”
“Well,” resumed Jean Valjean, “I am the person to whom you are to
deliver the letter. Give it here.”
“In that case, you must know that I was sent from the barricade.”
“Of course,” said Jean Valjean.
Gavroche engulfed his hand in another of his pockets and drew out a
paper folded in four.
Then he made the military salute.
“Respect for despatches,” said he. “It comes from the Provisional
Government.”
“Give it to me,” said Jean Valjean.
Gavroche held the paper elevated above his head.
“Don’t go and fancy it’s a love letter. It is for a woman, but it’s for
the people. We men fight and we respect the fair sex. We are not as
they are in fine society, where there are lions who send chickens55 to
camels.”
“Give it to me.”
“After all,” continued Gavroche, “you have the air of an honest man.”
“Give it to me quick.”
“Catch hold of it.”
And he handed the paper to Jean Valjean.
“And make haste, Monsieur What’s-your-name, for Mamselle Cosette is
waiting.”
Gavroche was satisfied with himself for having produced this remark.
Jean Valjean began again:—
“Is it to Saint-Merry that the answer is to be sent?”
“There you are making some of those bits of pastry vulgarly called
_brioches_ [blunders]. This letter comes from the barricade of the Rue
de la Chanvrerie, and I’m going back there. Good evening, citizen.”
That said, Gavroche took himself off, or, to describe it more exactly,
fluttered away in the direction whence he had come with a flight like
that of an escaped bird. He plunged back into the gloom as though he
made a hole in it, with the rigid rapidity of a projectile; the alley
of l’Homme Armé became silent and solitary once more; in a twinkling,
that strange child, who had about him something of the shadow and of
the dream, had buried himself in the mists of the rows of black houses,
and was lost there, like smoke in the dark; and one might have thought
that he had dissipated and vanished, had there not taken place, a few
minutes after his disappearance, a startling shiver of glass, and had
not the magnificent crash of a lantern rattling down on the pavement
once more abruptly awakened the indignant bourgeois. It was Gavroche
upon his way through the Rue du Chaume.
CHAPTER III—WHILE COSETTE AND TOUSSAINT ARE ASLEEP
Jean Valjean went into the house with Marius’ letter.
He groped his way up the stairs, as pleased with the darkness as an owl
who grips his prey, opened and shut his door softly, listened to see
whether he could hear any noise,—made sure that, to all appearances,
Cosette and Toussaint were asleep, and plunged three or four matches
into the bottle of the Fumade lighter before he could evoke a spark, so
greatly did his hand tremble. What he had just done smacked of theft.
At last the candle was lighted; he leaned his elbows on the table,
unfolded the paper, and read.
In violent emotions, one does not read, one flings to the earth, so to
speak, the paper which one holds, one clutches it like a victim, one
crushes it, one digs into it the nails of one’s wrath, or of one’s joy;
one hastens to the end, one leaps to the beginning; attention is at
fever heat; it takes up in the gross, as it were, the essential points;
it seizes on one point, and the rest disappears. In Marius’ note to
Cosette, Jean Valjean saw only these words:—
“I die. When thou readest this, my soul will be near thee.”
In the presence of these two lines, he was horribly dazzled; he
remained for a moment, crushed, as it were, by the change of emotion
which was taking place within him, he stared at Marius’ note with a
sort of intoxicated amazement, he had before his eyes that splendor,
the death of a hated individual.
He uttered a frightful cry of inward joy. So it was all over. The
catastrophe had arrived sooner than he had dared to hope. The being who
obstructed his destiny was disappearing. That man had taken himself off
of his own accord, freely, willingly. This man was going to his death,
and he, Jean Valjean, had had no hand in the matter, and it was through
no fault of his. Perhaps, even, he is already dead. Here his fever
entered into calculations. No, he is not dead yet. The letter had
evidently been intended for Cosette to read on the following morning;
after the two discharges that were heard between eleven o’clock and
midnight, nothing more has taken place; the barricade will not be
attacked seriously until daybreak; but that makes no difference, from
the moment when “that man” is concerned in this war, he is lost; he is
caught in the gearing. Jean Valjean felt himself delivered. So he was
about to find himself alone with Cosette once more. The rivalry would
cease; the future was beginning again. He had but to keep this note in
his pocket. Cosette would never know what had become of that man. All
that there requires to be done is to let things take their own course.
This man cannot escape. If he is not already dead, it is certain that
he is about to die. What good fortune!
Having said all this to himself, he became gloomy.
Then he went downstairs and woke up the porter.
About an hour later, Jean Valjean went out in the complete costume of a
National Guard, and with his arms. The porter had easily found in the
neighborhood the wherewithal to complete his equipment. He had a loaded
gun and a cartridge-box filled with cartridges.
He strode off in the direction of the markets.
CHAPTER IV—GAVROCHE’S EXCESS OF ZEAL
In the meantime, Gavroche had had an adventure.
Gavroche, after having conscientiously stoned the lantern in the Rue du
Chaume, entered the Rue des Vieilles-Haudriettes, and not seeing “even
a cat” there, he thought the opportunity a good one to strike up all
the song of which he was capable. His march, far from being retarded by
his singing, was accelerated by it. He began to sow along the sleeping
or terrified houses these incendiary couplets:—
“L’oiseau médit dans les charmilles,
Et prétend qu’hier Atala
Avec un Russe s’en alla.
Où vont les belles filles,
Lon la.
“Mon ami Pierrot, tu babilles,
Parce que l’autre jour Mila
Cogna sa vitre et m’appela,
Où vont les belles filles,
Lon la.
“Les drôlesses sont fort gentilles,
Leur poison qui m’ensorcela
Griserait Monsieur Orfila.
Où vont les belles filles,
Lon la.
“J’aime l’amour et les bisbilles,
J’aime Agnès, j’aime Paméla,
Lise en m’allumant se brûla.
Où vont les belles filles,
Lon la.
“Jadis, quand je vis les mantilles
De Suzette et de Zéila,
Mon âme à leurs plis se mêla,
Où vont les belles filles,
Lon la.
“Amour, quand dans l’ombre où tu brilles,
Tu coiffes de roses Lola,
Je me damnerais pour cela.
Où vont les belles filles,
Lon la.
“Jeanne à ton miroir tu t’habilles!
Mon cœur un beau jour s’envola.
Je crois que c’est Jeanne qui l’a.
Où vont les belles filles,
Lon la.
“Le soir, en sortant des quadrilles,
Je montre aux étoiles Stella,
Et je leur dis: ‘Regardez-la.’
Où vont les belles filles,
Lon la.”56
Gavroche, as he sang, was lavish of his pantomime. Gesture is the
strong point of the refrain. His face, an inexhaustible repertory of
masks, produced grimaces more convulsing and more fantastic than the
rents of a cloth torn in a high gale. Unfortunately, as he was alone,
and as it was night, this was neither seen nor even visible. Such
wastes of riches do occur.
All at once, he stopped short.
“Let us interrupt the romance,” said he.
His feline eye had just descried, in the recess of a carriage door,
what is called in painting, an _ensemble_, that is to say, a person and
a thing; the thing was a hand-cart, the person was a man from Auvergene
who was sleeping therein.
The shafts of the cart rested on the pavement, and the Auvergnat’s head
was supported against the front of the cart. His body was coiled up on
this inclined plane and his feet touched the ground.
Gavroche, with his experience of the things of this world, recognized a
drunken man. He was some corner errand-man who had drunk too much and
was sleeping too much.
“There now,” thought Gavroche, “that’s what the summer nights are good
for. We’ll take the cart for the Republic, and leave the Auvergnat for
the Monarchy.”
His mind had just been illuminated by this flash of light:—
“How bully that cart would look on our barricade!”
The Auvergnat was snoring.
Gavroche gently tugged at the cart from behind, and at the Auvergnat
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.