 Chapter 2 of Book 6 of Les Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by May Lowe. Les Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood. Book 6 Little Gavrash. Chapter 2 In which little Gavrash extracts Prophet from Napoleon the Great. Spring in Paris is often traversed by harsh and piercing breezes, which do not precisely chill, but freeze one. These north winds, which sadden the most beautiful days, produce exactly the effect of those puffs of cold air which enter a warm room through the cracks of a badly fitting door or window. It seems as though the gloomy door of winter had remained ajar, and as though the wind were pouring through it. In the spring of 1832, the epoch when the first great epidemic of this century broke out in Europe. These north gales were more harsh and piercing than ever. It was a door even more glacial than that of winter which was ajar. It was the door of the sepulcher. 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 Gavrosh, who was always shivering gaily under his rags, was standing as though an ecstasy before a wigmaker's shop in the vicinity of the Orme Saint-Gervais. He was adorned with a woman's woolen shawl, picked up no one knows where, and which he had converted into a neck comforter. Little Gavrosh appeared to be engaged in an 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 argon lamps. But in reality he was taking an observation of the shop in order to discover whether he could not preg from the shop front a cake of soap, which he would then proceed to sell for a soup to a hairdresser 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. Yet, 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 Gavrush was scrutinising the shop window and the cakes of Windsor soap, two children of unequal stature, very neatly dressed and still smaller than himself, one apparently seven years of age, the other five, timidly turned the handle and entered the shop, with a request for something or other, arms 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 Gavrush ran after them and accosted them. What's the matter with you, brat? We don't know where we are to sleep, replied the elder. Is that all, said Gavrush, 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, youngens. Yes, sir, said the elder, and the two children followed him as they would have followed an archbishop. They had stopped crying. Gavrush led them up the rue Saint Antoine, in the direction of the Bastille. As Gavrush walked along, he cast an indignant backward glance at the barber's shop. That fellow has no heart, the whiting, he muttered. He's an Englishman. A woman who caught sight of these three marching in a file, with Gavrush at their head, burst into noisy laughter. This laugh was wanting in respect towards the group. Good day, Mamzelle Omnibus, said Gavrush to her. An instant later, the wigmaker 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. Barbara, I'll go and fetch his locksmith, and I'll have a bell hung to your tail. This wigmaker had rendered him aggressive. As he strode over a gutter, he apostrophised, a bearded porteress who was worthy to meet forced on the brocken, and who had a broom in her hand. Madam, said he, so you were going out with your horse? And thereupon he spattered the polished boots of a pedestrian. You scab! shouted the furious pedestrian. Gavrush elevated his nose above his shore. Is Monsieur complaining? Of you! ejaculated the man. The office is closed, said Gavrush. 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 port cauchère. 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 Gavrush, 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 had been reached in his misery, the poor man no longer groans over evil, no longer returns thanks for good. That done, brrrr, said Gavrush, who was shivering more than Saint Marathon, for the latter retained one half of his cloak. At this brrrr, the downpour of rain, redoubled in its spite, became furious. The wicked skies punish good deeds. Ah, come now, exclaimed Gavrush. 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 the clouds, he exclaimed, Court. The two children followed close on his heels. As they were passing one of these heavy-graded lattices, which indicate a baker's shop, for bread is put behind bars like gold, Gavrush 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 Gavrush majestically. Excuse us, sir. We have a papa and a mama, but we don't know where they are. Sometimes that's better than knowing where they are, said Gavrush, who was a thinker. We have been wondering about these two hours, continued the elder. We have hunted for things at the corners of the street, but we have found nothing. I know, ejaculated Gavrush. 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 gammons. 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. Mama told us that she would take us to get a blessed spray on Palm Sunday. Bosh! said Gavrush. Mama, resumed the elder, is a lady who lives with Mamzel Miss. Tan flute! retorted Gavrush. 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, youngens. Here is supper for three. And from one of his pockets he drew forth a soot. Without allowing the two urchins time for amazement, he pushed both of them before him into the baker's shop and flung his soot on the counter, crying, Boy, five cent deems 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 Gavrush, and he added with dignity, there are three of us. And seeing that the baker, after scrutinising 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 Snuff on the tip of his thumb, and hurled this indignant apostrophe full in the baker's face. Those of our readers who might be tempted to aspire in this interpolation of Gavrush's to the baker a Russian or Polish word, are one of those savage cries which the yo-ways and the botacudos hurl at each other from bank to bank of a river, a thwart 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 l'arton brutal, black bread, retorted Gavrush, calmly and coldly disdainful. White bread, boy, white bread, l'arton savant, 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 Gavrush. 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 sous into his drawer and Gavrush said to the two children, Grub away. The little boys stared at him in surprise. Gavrush began to laugh, Ah, hello, 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 more worthy of his conversation, deserves 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 Gavrush, 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 Gavrush. 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 laden watch, which was suspended from his neck by a cord. Well, he is a very greener, said Gavrush. Then, becoming thoughtful, he muttered between his teeth. All the same, if I had charged of the babes I'd lock him up better than that. Just as they were finishing their morsel of bread, and had reached the angle of that gloomy rude ballet at the other end of which the low and threatening wicket of La Force was visible. Hello, is that you, Gavrush? said someone. Hello, is that you, Montparnasse? said Gavrush. A man had just accosted the street urchin, and the man was no other than Montparnasse in disguise, with blue spectacles, but recognisable to Gavrush. The bow-wows went on Gavrush. You've got to hide the colour of a linseed plaster, and blue specks like a doctor. You're putting on style, upon my word. Hush! ejaculated Montparnasse. Not so loud. And he drew Gavrush hastily out of range of the lighted shops. The two little ones followed mechanically, holding each other by the hand. When they were ensconced under the arch of a porte-cauchère, sheltered from the rain and from all eyes. Do you know where I'm going? demanded Montparnasse. To the abbey of Ascend with regret, replied Gavrush. Joker. And Montparnasse went on, I'm going to find Barbée. Ah! exclaimed Gavrush, so her name is Barbée. Montparnasse lowered his voice. Not she, he. Ah! Barbée. Yes, Barbée. I thought he was buckled. He has undone the buckle, replied Montparnasse. And he rapidly related to the gammon howl, on the morning of that very day, Barbée, having been transferred to La Concertière, had made his escape by turning to the left instead of the right in the police office. Gavrush expressed his admiration for this skill. What a dentist, he cried. Montparnasse added a few details as to Barbée's flight and ended with, Oh! that is not all. Gavrush, as he listened, had seized a cane that Montparnasse held in his hand and mechanically pulled at the upper part, and the blade of a dagger made its appearance. Ah! he exclaimed, pushing the dagger back in haste. You have brought along your gendarm disguised as a bourgeois. Montparnasse winked. The deuce resumed Gavrush, so you're going to have a bout with the bobbies. You can't tell, replied Montparnasse with an indifferent air. It's always a good thing to have a pin about one. Gavrush persisted. What are you up to tonight? Again Montparnasse took a grave tone and said, mouthing every syllable, Things. And abruptly changing the conversation, by the way, What? Something happened the other day, fancy. I met a bourgeois, he makes me a present of a sermon and his purse. I put it in my pocket. A minute later, I feel in my pocket, there's nothing there. Except the sermon, said Gavrush. But you went on Montparnasse. Where are you bound for now? Gavrush pointed to his two protégés and said, I'm going to put these infants to bed. Whereabouts is the bed? At my house. Where is your house? So you have a lodging? Yes, I have. And where is your lodging? In the elephant, said Gavrush. Montparnasse, though not naturally inclined to astonishment, could not restrain an exclamation. In the elephant? Well, yes, in the elephant retorted Gavrush. Keksa? Another word of the language which no one writes and which everyone speaks. Keksa signifies, Kkeske se Kese la ah? What's the matter with that? The urchin's profound remark called Montparnasse to calmness and good sense. He appeared to return to better sentiments with regard to Gavrush's lodging. Of course, said he, yes, the elephant, is it comfortable there? Very, said Gavrush. It's really bully there. There ain't any draughts as there are under the bridges. How do you get in? Oh, I get in. So there is a hole? Demanded Montparnasse? Parable, I should say so. But you mustn't tell. It's between the forelegs. The bobbies haven't seen it. And you climb up? Yes, I understand. A turn of the hand, quick crack, and it's all over, no one there. After a pause, Gavrush added, I shall have a ladder for these children. Montparnasse burst out laughing. Where the devil did you pick up those youngins? Gavrush replied with great simplicity. They are some brats that a wigmaker made me a present of. Meanwhile, Montparnasse had fallen to thinking. You recognized me very readily, he muttered. He took from his pocket two small objects, which were nothing more than two quills wrapped in cotton, and thrust one up each of his nostrils. This gave him a different nose. That changes you, remarked Gavrush. You are less homely so, you ought to keep them on all the time. Montparnasse was a handsome fellow, but Gavrush was a tease. Seriously, demanded Montparnasse, how do you like me so? The sound of his voice was different also. In a twinkling, Montparnasse had become unrecognizable. Oh, do play polychinelle for us, exclaimed Gavrush. The two children, who had not been listening up to this point, being occupied themselves in thrusting their fingers up their noses, drew near at this time, and stared at Montparnasse with dawning joy and admiration. Unfortunately, Montparnasse was troubled. He laid his hand on Gavrush's shoulder and said to him, emphasizing his words, Listen to what I tell you, boy. If I were on the square with my dog, my knife, and my wife, and if you were to squander ten sews on me, I wouldn't refuse to work. But this isn't Shrove Tuesday. This odd phrase produced a singular effect on the gammon. He wheeled round hastily, darted his little sparkling eyes and shot him with profound attention, and perceived a police sergeant standing with his back to them a few paces off. Gavrush allowed an ah-good to escape him, but immediately suppressed it, and, shaking Montparnasse's hand, Well, good evening, said he, I'm off to my elephant with my brats. Supposing that you should need me some night, you can come and hunt me up there. I lodge on the entre sol. There is no porter. You will inquire for M. Gavrush. Very good, said Montparnasse. And they parted, Montparnasse but taking himself in the direction of the grave, and Gavrush towards the Bastille. The little one of five, dragged along by his brother, who was dragged by Gavrush, turned his head back several times to watch Potti Chanel as he went. The ambiguous phrase, by means of which Montparnasse had warned Gavrush of the presence of the policeman, contained no other talisman than the assonance, dig, repeated five or six times in different forms. This syllable, dig, uttered alone or artistically mingled with the words of a phrase, means, take care, we can no longer talk freely. There was besides, in Montparnasse's sentence, a literary beauty which was lost upon Gavrush, that is, Montdog, Madag, Émadig. A slang expression of the temple, which signifies, my dog, my knife, and my wife, greatly invoke among clowns and the red-tails, in the great century when Molière wrote, and Callot, drew. Twenty years ago, there was still to be seen in the southwest corner of the Place de la Bastille, near the basin of the canal, excavated in the ancient ditch of the fortress prison, a singular monument which has already been effaced from the memories of Parisians, and which deserved to leave some trace, for it was the idea of a member of the institute, the general-in-chief of the army of Egypt. We say monument, although it was only a rough model, but this model itself, a marvellous sketch, the grandiose skeleton of an idea of Napoleons, which successive gusts of wind by and thrown on each occasion, still further from us, had become historical, and had acquired a certain definiteness which contrasted with its provisional aspect. It was an elephant, forty feet high, constructed of timber and masonry, bearing on its back a tower which resembled a house, formerly painted green by some dauber, and now painted black by heaven, the wind and time. In this deserted and unprotected corner of the place, the broad brow of the Colossus, his trunk, his tusks, his tower, his enormous cropper, his four feet, like columns produced at night, under the starry heavens, a surprising and terrible form. It was a sort of symbol of popular force. It was somber, mysterious, and immense. It was some mighty, visible phantom, one new, not white, standing erect beside the invisible spectre of the Bastille. Few strangers visited this edifice. No passer-by looked at it. It was falling into ruins. Every season the plaster which detached itself from its sides formed hideous wounds upon it. The ideals, as the expression ran in elegant dialect, had forgotten it ever since 1814. There it stood in its corner, melancholy, sick, crumbling, surrounded by a rotten palisade, soiled continually by drunken coachmen. Cracks meandered a thwart its belly, a lath projected from its tail. Tall grass flourished between its legs, and, as the level of the place had been rising all around it for a space of thirty years, by that slow and continuous movement which insensibly elevates the soil of large towns, it stood in a hollow, and it looked as though the ground were giving way beneath it. It was unclean, despised, repulsive, and superb, ugly in the eyes of the bourgeois, melancholy in the eyes of the thinker. There was something about it of the dirt which is on the point of being swept out, and had something of the majesty which is on the point of being decapitated. As we have said, at night its aspect changed. Night is the real element of everything that is dark. As soon as twilight descended the old elephant became transfigured, he assumed a tranquil and redoubtable appearance in the formidable serenity of the shadows. Being of the past he belonged to the night, and obscurity was in keeping with his grandeur. This rough, squat, heavy, hard, austere, almost misshapen, but assuredly majestic monument, stamped with a sort of magnificent and savage gravity has disappeared, and left to reign in peace a sort of gigantic stove ornamented with its pipe which has replaced the somber fortress with its nine towers, very much as the bourgeoisie replaces the feudal classes. It is quite natural that a stove should be the symbol of an epoch that contains power. This epoch will pass away. People have already begun to understand that if there can be a force in a boiler there can be no force except in the brain. In other words, that which leads and drags on the world is not locomotives, but ideas. Harness locomotives to ideas, that is well done, but do not mistake the horse for the rider. At all events to return to the Place de la Bastille the architect of this elephant succeeded in making a grand thing out of plaster. The architect of the stove has succeeded in making a pretty thing out of bronze. This stove pipe which has been baptized by a sonorous name and called the Column of July this monument of a revolution that miscarried was still enveloped in 1832 in an immense shirt of woodwork which we regret for our part and by vast plank enclosure which completed the task of isolating the elephant. It was towards this corner of the Place dimly lighted by the reflection of a distant street lamp that the gammon guided his two brats. The reader must permit us to interrupt ourselves here and to remind him that we are dealing with simple reality and that twenty years ago the tribunals were called upon to judge under the charge of vagabondage and mutilation of a public monument a child who had been caught asleep in this very elephant of the Bastille. This fact noted, we proceed On arriving in the vicinity of the Colossus Gavrush comprehended the effect which the infinitely great might produce on the infinitely small and said Don't be scared infants Then he entered through a gap in the fence into the elephant's enclosure and helped the young ones to clamber through the breach. The two children somewhat frightened followed Gavrush without uttering a word and confided themselves to this little providence in rags which had given them bread and promised them a shelter. There extended along the fence Leilada which by day served the labourers in the neighbouring timber yard. Gavrush raised it with remarkable vigor and placed it against one of the elephant's four legs. Near the point where the ladder ended a sort of black hole in the belly of the Colossus could be distinguished. Gavrush pointed at the ladder and the hole to his guests and said to them Climb up and go in The two little boys exchanged terrified glances You're afraid brats exclaimed Gavrush and he added You shall see He clasped the rough leg of the elephant and in a twinkling without daining to make use of the ladder he had reached the aperture He entered it as an adder slips through a crevice and disappeared within and an instant later the two children saw his head which looked pale, appear vaguely on the edge of the shadowy hole like a wan and whitish spectre Well he exclaimed Climb up youngens You'll see how snug it is here Come up you, he said to the elder hand The little fellows nudged each other The gammon frightened and inspired them with confidence at one in the same time and then it was raining very hard The elder one undertook the risk the younger on seeing his brother climbing up and himself left alone between the paws of this huge beast felt greatly inclined to cry but he did not dare The elder lad climbed with uncertain steps up the rungs of the ladder Gavrosh in the meanwhile, encouraging him with exclamations like a fencing master to his pupils or a mulleteer to his mules Don't be afraid, that's it Come on, put your feet there Give us your hand here, boldly And when the child was within reach he seized him suddenly and vigorously by the arm and pulled him towards him Nabbed, said he The brat had passed through the crack Now, said Gavrosh, wait for me Be so good as to take a seat, monsieur and making his way out of the hole as he had entered it he slipped down the elephant's leg with the agility of a monkey landed on his feet in the grass grasped the child of five round the body and planted him fairly in the middle of the ladder Then he began to climb up behind him shouting to the elder I'm going to boost him Do you tug? And in another instant the small lad was pushed, dragged pulled, thrust stuffed into the hole before he had time to recover himself and Gavrosh, entering behind him and repulsing the ladder with a kick which sent it flat on the grass began to clap his hands and to cry Here we are Long-lived general Lafayette This explosion over, he added Now youngens you are in my house Gavrosh was at home, in fact Oh, unforeseen utility of the useless charity of great things goodness of giants This huge monument which had embodied an idea of the emperors had become the box of a street urchin The brat had been accepted and sheltered by the Colossus The bourgeois decked out in their Sunday finery who passed the elephant of the Bastille were fond of saying as they scanned it disdainfully with their prominent eyes that it served to save them the cold the frost the hail, the rain to shelter from the winds of winter to preserve from slumber in the mud which produces fever and from slumber in the snow which produces death a little being who had no father no mother no bread, no clothes, no refuge it served to receive the innocent whom society repulsed it served to diminish public crime it was a lair open to one against whom all doors were shut it seemed as though the miserable old mastodon invaded by vermin and oblivion covered with warts with mould and ulcers tottering, worm-eaten abandoned, condemned a sort of medicant Colossus asking alms in vain with a benevolent look in the midst of the crossroads he was taken pity on that other medicant the poor pygmy who roamed without shoes to his feet without a roof over his head blowing on his fingers clad in rags fed on rejected scraps that was what the elephant of the Bastille was good for this idea of Napoleon disdain by men had been taken back by God that which had been merely illustrious had become august in order to realise his thought the emperor should have had porphyry brass, iron gold, marble the old collection of planks, beams and plaster sufficed for God the emperor had had the dream of a genius in that titanic elephant armed, prodigious with trunk uplifted bearing its tower and scattering on all sides its merry and vivifying waters he wished to incarnate the people God had done a grander thing with it he had lodged a child there the hole through which Gavrush had entered was a breach which was hardly visible from the outside being concealed, as we have stated beneath the elephant's belly and so narrow that it was only cats and homeless children who could pass through it let's begin said Gavrush by telling the porter that we are not at home and plunging into the darkness with the assurance of a person who is well acquainted with the apartment he took a plank and stopped up the aperture again Gavrush plunged into the obscurity the children heard the crackling of the match thrust into the phosphoric bottle the chemical match was not yet in existence at that epoch the fumared steel represented progress a sudden light made them blink Gavrush had just managed to ignite one of those bits of cord dipped in resin which are called cellar rats the cellar rat which emitted more smoke than light rendered the interior of the elephant confusedly visible Gavrush's two guests glanced about them and the sensation which they experienced was something like that which one would feel if shot up in the great ton of Heidelberg or better still like what Jonah must have felt in the biblical belly of the whale an entire and gigantic skeleton appeared enveloping them above a long brown beam went started at regular distances massive arching ribs represented the vertebral column with its sides stalactites of plaster depended from them like entrails and vast spider's webs stretching from side to side form dirty diaphragms here and there in the corners were visible large blackish spots which had the appearance of being alive and which changed places rapidly with an abrupt and frightened movement fragments which had fallen from the elephant's back into his belly had filled up the cavity so that it was possible to walk upon it as on a floor the smaller child nestled up against his brother and whispered to him it's black this remark drew an exclamation from Gavrush the petrified air of the two Brats rendered some shock necessary what's that you're gabbling about there he exclaimed are you scoffing at me are you turning up your noses do you want the twilleries are you brutes come say I warn you that I don't belong to the regiment of simpletons ah come now are you Brats from the Pope's establishment a little roughness is good in cases of fear it is reassuring the children drew close to Gavrush Gavrush paternally touched by this confidence passed from grave to gentle and addressing the smaller stupid said he accenting the insulting word with a caressing intonation it's outside that it is black outside it's raining here it does not rain outside it's cold here there's not an atom of wind outside it keeps of people here there's no one outside there ain't even the moon here there's my candle confounded the two children began to look upon the apartment with less terror but Gavrush allowed them no more time for contemplation quick said he and he pushed them towards what they were very glad to be able to call the end of the room there stood his bed Gavrush's bed was complete that is to say the mattress, a blanket, and an alcove with curtains the mattress was a straw mat the blanket a rather large strip of grey woollen stuff very warm and almost new this is what the alcove consisted of three rather long poles thrust into and consolidated with the rubbish which formed the floor that is to say the belly of the elephant two in front and one behind and united by a rope at their summits so as to form a pyramidal bundle this cluster supported a trellis work of brass wire which was simply placed upon it but artistically applied and held by fastenings of iron wire so that it enveloped all three holes a row of heavy stones kept this network down to the floor so that nothing could pass under it this grating was nothing else than a piece of the brass screens with which aviaries are covered in menageries Gavrosh's bed stood as in a cage behind this net the hole resembled an escrimole tent this trellis work took the place of curtains Gavrosh moved aside the stones which fasten the net down in front and the two folds of the net which lapped over each other fell apart down on all fours brats said Gavrosh he made his guests enter the cage with great precaution after them pulling the stones together and closed the opening hermetically again all three had stretched out on the mat Gavrosh still had the cellar rat in his hand now said he go to sleep I'm going to suppress the candelabra Monsieur the elder of the brothers asked Gavrosh pointing to the netting what's that for that answered Gavrosh gravely is for the rats go to sleep nevertheless he felt obliged to add a few words of instruction for the benefit of these young creatures and he continued it's a thing from the Jardin des Plants it's used for fierce animals there's a whole shop full of them there all you've got to do is to climb over a wall, crawl through a window and pass through a door you can get as much as you want as he spoke he wrapped the younger one up bodily in a fold of the blanket and the little one murmured oh how good that is it's warm Gavrosh cast a pleased eye on the blanket that's from the Jardin des Plants too said he I took that from the monkeys and pointing out to the eldest the mat on which he was lying a very thick and admirably made mat he added that belonged to the giraffe after a pause he went on the beasts had all these things I took them away from them it didn't trouble them I told them it's for the elephant he paused then resumed you crawl over the walls and you don't care a straw for the government so there now the two children gazed with timid and stupefied respect on this intrepid and ingenious being a vagabond like themselves isolated like themselves frail like themselves who had something admirable and all powerful about him who seemed supernatural to them and whose physiognomy was composed of all the grimaces of an old mountain bank mingled with the most ingenious and charming smiles Monsieur ventured the elder timidly you are not afraid of the police then Gavrosh contented himself with replying brat! nobody says police they say bobbies the smaller had his eyes wide open but he said nothing as he was on the edge of the mat the elder being in the middle Gavrosh tucked the blanket round him as a mother might have done and heightened the mat under his head with old rags in such a way as to form a pillow for the child then he turned to the elder hey we're jolly comfortable here ain't we ah yes replied the elder gazing at Gavrosh with the expression of a saved angel the two poor little children who had been soaked through began to grow warm once more ah by the way continued Gavrosh what were you bawling about and pointing out the little one to his brother a might like that I've nothing to say about but the idea of a big fellow like you crying it's idiotic half gracious replied the child we have no lodging bother retorted Gavrosh you don't say lodgings you say crib and then we were afraid of being alone like that at night you don't say night you say darkmans thank you sir said the child listen went on Gavrosh you must never ball again over anything I'll take care of you you shall see what fun we'll have in summer we'll go to the Glacier with Navey one of my pals we'll bathe in the gar we'll run stark naked in front of the rafts on the bridge at Old Stelitz that makes the lawndressers raging they scream they get mad and if you only knew how ridiculous they are we'll go and see the manskeleton and then I'll take you to the play I'll take you to see Frederick Lemaet I have tickets I know some of the actors I even played on a piece once there were a lot of us fellas and we ran under a cloth and that made the sea I'll get you an engagement at my theatre we'll go to see the savages they ain't real those savages ain't they wear pink tights that go all in wrinkles and you can see where their elbows have been darned with white then we'll go to the opera we'll get in with the hired applauders the opera clerk is well managed I wouldn't associate with the clerk on the boulevard at the opera just fancy some of them pay 20 sews but they're ninnies they're called dish-clouds and then we'll go to see the guillotine work I'll show you the executioner he lives in the rue de Meret Monsieur Saint-Saint he has a letterbox at his door ah we'll have famous fun at that moment a drop of wax fell on Gavrosha's finger and recalled him to the realities of life the juice said he there's the wick giving out attention I can't spend more than a a month on my lighting when a body goes to bed he must sleep we haven't the time to read Monsieur Paul de Coque's romances and besides the light might pass through the cracks of the Port Cocherre and all the bobbies need to do to see it and then remarked the elder timidly he alone dared to talk to Gavrosha and reply to him a spark might fall in the straw and we must look out and not burn the house down people don't say burn the house down remarked Gavrosha they say blaze the crib the storm increased in violence and the heavy downpour beat upon the back of the colossus amid claps of thunder you're taken in rain said Gavrosha it amuses me to hear the decanter run down the legs of the house winter is a stupid it wastes its merchandise it loses its labour it can't wet us and that makes it kick up a row old water carrier that it is this allusion to the thunder all the consequences of which Gavrosha in his character of a philosopher of the 19th century accepted was followed by a broad flash of lightning so dazzling a hint of it entered the belly of the elephant through the crack almost at the same instant the thunder rumbled with great fury the two little creatures uttered a shriek and started up so eagerly that the network came near being displaced but Gavrosha turned his bald face to them and took advantage of the clap of thunder to burst into a laugh calm down children don't topple over the edifice that's fine first class thunder all right? that's no slouch of a streak of lightning bravo for the good god deuce take it it's almost as good as it is at the ambigu that said he restored order in the netting pushed the two children gently down on the bed pressed their knees in order to stretch them out at full length and exclaimed since the good god is lighting his candle I can blow out mine now babes now my young humans sleepers it's very bad not to sleep it'll make you swallow the strainer or as they say in fashionable society stink in the gullet wrap yourself up well in the hide I'm going to put out the light are you ready? yes, remember the elder I'm all right I seem to have feathers under my head people don't say head cried Gavrosh, they say not the two children nestled close to each other Gavrosh finished arranging them on the mat drew the blanket up to their very ears and repeated for the third time his injunction in the heretical tongue shut your peepers and he snuffed out his tiny light hardly had the light been extinguished when a peculiar trembling began to affect the netting under which the three children lay it consisted of a multitude of dull scratches which produced a metallic sound as if claws and teeth were gnawing at the copper wire this was accompanied by all sorts of little piercing cries the little five-year-old boy on hearing this hubbub overhead and chilled with terror jogged his brother's elbow but the elder brother had already shut his peepers as Gavrosh had ordered then the little one who could no longer control his terror questioned Gavrosh but in a very low tone Gavrosh's breath Sir Hey! said Gavrosh who had just closed his eyes What is that? It's the rats replied Gavrosh and he laid his head down on the mat again the rats in fact who swarmed by thousands in the carcass of the elephant and who were the living black spots which we have already mentioned had been held in awe by the flame so long as it had been lighted but as soon as the cavern which was the same as their city had returned to darkness senting what the good storyteller Pororo calls fresh meat they had hurled themselves in throngs on Gavrosh's tent and had climbed to the top of it and had began to bite the meshes as though seeking to pierce this new fangled trap still the little one could not sleep Sir he began again said Gavrosh what are rats? they are mice this explanation reassured the child a little he had seen white mice in the course of his life and he was not afraid of them nevertheless he lifted up his voice once more Sir Hey! said Gavrosh again why don't you have a cat? I did have one replied Gavrosh I brought one here but they ate her this second explanation undid the work of the first and the little fellow began to tremble again the dialogue between him and Gavrosh began again for the fourth time Sir Hey! who was it that was eaten? the cat and who ate the cat? the rats the mice? yes the rats the child in consternation dismayed at the thought of mice which ate cats pursued Sir would those mice eat us? wouldn't they just ejaculated Gavrosh the child's terror had reached its climax but Gavrosh added don't be afraid they can't get in and besides I'm here here catch hold of my hand hold your tongue and shut your peepers at the same time Gavrosh grasped the little fellow's hand across his brother the child pressed the hand close to him and felt reassured courage and strength have these mysterious ways of communicating themselves silence reigned round them once more the sound of their voices had frightened off the rats at the expiration of a few minutes they came raging back but in vain the three little fellows were fast asleep and heard nothing more the night fled away darkness covered the vast Place de la Bastille a wintery gale which mingled with the rain blue and gusts the patrol searched all the doorways alleyways enclosures and obscure nooks and in their search for nocturnal vagabonds they passed in silence before the elephant the monster erect motionless staring open-eyed into the shadows had the appearance of dreaming happily over his good deed and sheltered from heaven and from men the three poor sleeping children in order to understand what is about to follow the reader must remember that at that apoc the Bastille guard house was situated at the other end of the square and that what took place in the vicinity of the elephant could neither be seen nor heard by the sentinel towards the end of that hour which immediately precedes the dawn a man turned from the rue Sainte-Antoine to run made the circuit of the enclosure of the column of July and glided between the palings until he was underneath the belly of the elephant if any light had illuminated that man it might have been divine from the thorough manner in which he was soaked that he had passed the night in the rain arrived beneath the elephant he uttered a peculiar cry which did not belong to any human tongue and which a parakea alone could have imitated he repeated this cry of whose orthography the following barely conveys an idea at the second cry a clear young merry voice responded from the belly of the elephant yes almost immediately the plank which closed the hole was drawn aside and gave passage to a child who descended the elephant's leg and fell briskly near the man it was Gavrosh who was Montparnasse as for his cry of Kirikikiu that was doubtless what the child had meant when he had said you will ask for Monsieur Gavrosh on hearing it he had waked with a start had crawled out of his alcove pushing apart the netting a little and carefully drawing it together again then he had opened the trap and descended the man and the child recognized each other silently amid the gloom Montparnasse confined himself to the remark we need you come lend us a hand the lad asked for no further enlightenment I'm with you said he and both took their way towards the Rue Saint-Antoine whence Montparnasse had emerged winding rapidly through the long file of market gardeners cards which descend towards the markets at that hour the market gardeners crouching half asleep in their wagons the salads and vegetables enveloped to their very eyes and their mufflers on account of the beating rain did not even glance at these strange pedestrians end of book 6 chapter 2 chapter 3 of book 6 of Les Mesarabes volume 4 by Victor Hugo this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Rachel Weaver Les Mesarabes volume 4 by Victor Hugo translated by Isabel Florence Hopgood book 6 Little Gavros chapter 3 the vicissitudes of flight this is what had taken place that same night at La Force an escape had been planned between Babet, Brejean, Guélemère and Tenardier although Tenardier was in close confinement Babet had arranged the matter for his own benefit on the same day as a reader has seen from Montparnasse account of Togavroche Montparnasse was to help them from the outside Brejean after having passed a month in the punishment cell Babet had time in the first place to weave a rope in the second to mature a plan in former times those severe places where the discipline of the prison delivers the convict to his own hands were composed of four stone walls a stone ceiling a flagged pavement a camp bed a graded window and a door lined with iron and were called dungeons but the dungeon was judged to be too terrible nowadays they are composed of an iron door a graded window a camp bed a flagged pavement four stone walls and a stone ceiling and are called chambers of punishment a little light penetrates towards midday the inconvenient point about these chambers which as the reader sees are not dungeons is that they allow the persons who should be at work to think so Brejean meditated and he emerged from the chamber of punishment with a rope as he had the name of being very dangerous in the Charlemagne Courtyard he was placed in the new building the first thing he found in the new building was Guélemère the second was a nail Guélemère that is to say crime a nail that is to say liberty Brejean of whom it is high time that the reader should have a complete idea with an appearance of delicate health and a profoundly premeditated langer a polished intelligence brig and a thief who had a caressing glance and an atrocious smile his glance resulted from his will and his smile from his nature his first studies in his art had been directed to roofs he had made great progress in the industry of men who tear off lead who plunder the roofs and to spoil the gutters by the process called double pickings the circumstance which put the finishing touch on the moment peculiarly favorable for an attempt at escape was when the roofers were relaying and rejointing at that very moment a portion of the slates on the prison the Saint Bernard Courtyard was no longer absolutely isolated from the Charlemagne and the Saint Louis Courtyard up above there were scaffoldings and ladders in other words bridges and stairs in the direction of liberty the new building which was the most cracked and decrepit thing to be seen anywhere in the world was the weak point in the prison the walls were eaten by Salt Peter to such an extent that the authorities had been obliged to line the vaults of the dormitories with the sheathing of wood because stones were in the habit of becoming detached and falling on the prisoners in their beds in spite of this antiquity the authorities committed the error of confining in the new building the most troublesome prisoners a placing there the hard cases as they say in prison parlant the new building contained four dormitories one above the other and a top story which was called the bell air or fine air a large chimney flew probably from some ancient kitchen the big stale of force started from the ground floor traversed all four stories cut the dormitories where it figured as a flattened pillar into two portions and finally pierced the roof Guelomer and Brejean were in the same dormitory they had been placed by way of precaution on the lower story chance ordained that the heads of their beds should rest against the chimney Tenerdi air was directly over their heads in the top story known as bell air the pedestrian who halts on the rue culture Saint Catherine after passing the barracks of the fireman in front of the port Couchier of the bathing establishment beholds a yard full of flowers and shrubs and wooden boxes at the extremity of which spreads out a little white rotunda with two wings brightened up with green shutters the bucolic dream of Jean Jacques not more than ten years ago there rose above the rotunda an enormous black hideous bare wall by which it was backed up this was the outer wall of La Force this wall beside that rotunda was Milton viewed for berquin lofty as it was this wall was overtopped by a still blacker roof which could be seen beyond this was a roof of the new building there one could describe four dormer windows guarded with bars they were the windows of the bell air a chimney pierced the roof this was the chimney which traversed the dormitories the bell air that top story of the new building was a sort of a large hall with a mansard roof guarded with a triple gratings and double doors of sheet iron which were studded with enormous bolts when one entered from the north end one had on ones left the four dormer windows on ones right facing the windows at regular intervals four square tallow-brilly vast cages separated by narrow passages built of masonry to about the height of the elbow and the rest up to the roof of iron bars tenardier had been in solitary confinement in one of these cages since the night of the third of february no one was ever able to discover how and by what connivance he succeeded in procuring and secreting a bottle of wine invested, so it is said by Deru with which a narcotic is mixed and which the band of the endormeule or sleep-compellors rendered famous there are in many prisons treacherous employees half jailers, half thieves who assist in escapes who sell to the police an unfaithful service and who turn a penny whenever they can on that same night then when little Gavroge picked up the two lost children Brejean and Guelomere who knew that Babay who had escaped that morning was waiting for them in the street as well as Montparnasse rose softly and with the nail which Brejean had found began to pierce the chimney against which their bed stood the rubbish fell on Brejean's bed so that they were not heard showers mingled with thunder shook the doors on their hinges and created in the prison a terrible and opportune uproar those of the prisoners who woke pretended to fall asleep again and left Guelomere and Brejean to their own devices Brejean was adroit Guelomere was vigorous before any sound had reached the watcher who was sleeping in the grated cell which opened into the dormitory the wall had been pierced the chimney scaled the iron grating which bared the upper orifice and the flu forced and the two redoubtable Ruffians were on the roof the wind and rain redoubled the roof was slippery what a good night to leg it said Brejean an abyss six feet broad and eight feet deep separated them from the surrounding wall at the bottom of this abyss they could see the musket of a sentinel gleaming through the gloom they fastened on one end of the rope which Brejean had spread in his dungeon to the stumps of the iron bars which they had just wrenched off flung the other over the outer wall crossed the abyss at one bound clung to the coping of the wall got astride of it let themselves slip one after the other in the rope upon a little roof which touches the bath house pulled their rope after them jumped down into the courtyard of the bath house traversed it pushed open the porter's wicket beside which hung his rope pulled this open the port couche and found themselves in the street three quarters of an hour had not elapsed since they had risen in bed in the dark nail in hand and their project in their heads two months later they had joined Babet and Montparnasse who were prowling about the neighborhood they had broken their rope in pulling it after them and a bit of it remained attached to the chimney on the roof they had sustained no other damage however than that of scratching nearly all the skin off their hands that night T'Nardiar was warned without anyone being able to explain how and was not asleep towards one o'clock in the morning at night being very dark he saw two shadows passing along the roof in the rain and squalls in front of the dormer window which was opposite his cage one halted at the window long enough to dart in a glance this was Brejean T'Nardiar recognized him and understood this was enough T'Nardiar raided as a burglar and detained as a measure of precaution under the charge of organizing a nocturnal ambush with armed force was captain's sight the sentry who was relieved every two hours marched up and down in front of his cage with a loaded musket the bell air was lighted by a skylight the prisoner had on his feet fetters weighing fifty pounds every day at four o'clock in the afternoon a jailer escorted by two dogs this was still in vogue at that time entered his cage deposited beside his bed a loaf of black bread a jug of water a bowl filled with rather thin bullion in which swam a few mayagin beans inspected his irons and tapped the bars this man and his dog made two visits during the night T'Nardiar had obtained permission to keep a sort of iron bolt which he used to spike his bread into a crack in the wall in order to preserve it from the rats as he said as T'Nardiar was captain's sight the rejection had been made to this spike still it was remembered afterward that one of the jailers had said it would be better to let him have only a wooden spike at two o'clock in the morning the sentinel who was an old soldier was relieved and replaced by a conscript a few moments later the man with the dogs paid his visit and went off without noticing anything except possibly the excessive youth and the rustic air of the raw recruit two hours afterward at four o'clock when they came to relieve the conscript he was found asleep on the floor lying like a log near T'Nardiar's cage as for T'Nardiar he was no longer there there was a hole in the ceiling of his cage and above it another hole in the roof one of the planks of his bed had been wrenched off and probably carried away with him as it was not found they also seized in his cell an empty bottle which contained the remains of the stupefying wine with which the soldier had been drugged the soldier's bayonet had disappeared at the moment when this discovery was made it was assumed that T'Nardiar was out of reading the truth is that he was no longer in the new building but that he was still in great danger T'Nardiar on reaching the roof of the new building had found the remains of Brejan's rope hanging to the bars of the upper trap of the chimney but as this broken fragment was much too short he had not been able to escape by the outer wall as Brejan and Guelamer had done when one turns from the Rue de Belay into the Rue de Rue de Cecile one almost immediately encounters a repulsive ruin there stood on that spot in the last century a house of which only the back wall now remains a regular wall of masonry of the third story between the adjoining building this ruin can be recognized by two large square windows which are still to be seen there the middle one that nearest the right gable is barred with a warm eaten beam adjusted like a prop through these windows there was formally visible a lofty and lugubiris wall which was a fragment of the outer wall of La Force the empty space on the street left by the demolished house filled by a fence of rotten boards shored up by five stone posts in this recess lies concealed a little shanty which leans against the portion of the ruin which has remained standing the fence has a gate which a few years ago was fastened only by a latch it was the crest of this ruin that Tenardier had succeeded in reaching a little after one o'clock in the morning how had he got there that is what no one has ever able to explain or understand the lightning must at the same time have hindered and helped he had made use of the ladders and scaffoldings of the slaters to get from roof to roof from enclosure to enclosure from compartment to compartment to the buildings of the Charlemagne court then to the buildings of the St. Louis court and thence to the hut on the rue de Roy de Sicily had he made use of the ladders and scaffoldings of the slaters to get from roof to roof from enclosure to enclosure from compartment to compartment to the buildings of the Charlemagne court then to the buildings of the St. Louis court to the outer wall and thence to the hut on the rue de Roy de Sicily but in that itinerary there existed prikes which seemed to render it an impossibility had he placed the plank from his bed like a bridge from the roof of the Bel Air flat on his belly on the coping of the outer wall to the whole distance round the prison as far as the hut but the outer wall of the force formed a crenellated and unequal line it mounted and descended it dropped at the fireman's barracks it rose towards the bath house it was cut in twain by billon it was not even of the same height on the Hotel Lameignan as on the rue Pavey everywhere occurred falls to the right angles and then the sentinel must have aspired the dark form of the fugitive hence the route taken by Tarnardier still remains rather inexplicable in two manners flight was impossible had Tarnardier spurred on by the thirst for liberty which changes precipices into ditches iron bars into waddles of oisere a legless man into an athlete a gaudy man into a bird stupidity into instinct into intelligence and intelligence into genius had Tarnardier invented a third mode no one has ever found out the marvels of escape cannot always be accounted for the man who makes his escape with repeat is inspired there is something of the star and of the lightning in the mysterious gleam of flight the efforts toward deliverance is no less surprising than the flight toward the sublime one says of the escaped thief how did he contrive to scale that wall in the same way that one says of corneel where did he find the means of dying at all events dripping with perspiration drenched with rain with his clothes hanging in ribbons his hands flayed his elbows bleeding his knees torn Tarnardier had reached what children in their figurative language call the edge of the wall of the ruin there he had stretched himself out at full length and there his strength had failed him a steep escarpment three stories high separated him from the pavement of the street the rope which he had was too short there he waited pale exhausted desperate with all the despair which he had undergone still hidden by the night but telling himself that the day was on the point of dawning the idea of hearing the neighboring clock of St. Paul's strike four within a few minutes an hour when the sentinel was relieved and when the latter would be found asleep under the pierced roof staring in horror at a terrible depth at the light of the street lanterns the wet black pavement that pavement longed for yet frightful which meant death and which meant liberty he asked himself whether his three accomplices in flight had succeeded if they had heard him and if they would come to his assistance he listened with the exception of the patrol no one had passed through the street since he had been there nearly the whole of the descent of the market gardeners from Montroul from Charon from Vincen and from Burcy to the markets was accomplished to the rue Saint-Antoine four o'clock struck a few moments later that terrified and confused uproar which follows the discovery of an escape broke forth in the prison the sound of doors opening and shutting the creaking of gratings on their hinges a tumult in the guardhouse the horse shouts of the turn keys the shock of the musket butts on the pavement of the courts reached his ears lights ascended and descended past the graded windows of the dormitories a torch ran along the ridge pull of the top story of the new building the firemen belonging in the barracks on the right had been summoned their helmets with the torch lighted up in the rain went and came along the roofs at the same time to Nardier perceived in the direction of the bestill a wane whiteness lighting up the edge of the sky and doleful wise he was on top of a wall ten inches wide stretched out under the heavy rains with two gulfs to the right and the left unable to stir subject to the giddiness of a possible fall and to the horror of a certain arrest and his thoughts like the pendulum of a clock swung from one of these ideas to the other dead if I fall caught if I stay in the midst of this anguish he suddenly saw the street being still dark a man who is gliding along the walls and coming from the roof heavy haul in the recess above which to Nardier was as it were suspended here this man was joined by a second who walked with the same caution then by a third then by a fourth when these men were reunited one of them lifted the latch of the gate in the fence and all four entered the enclosure in which this shanty stood they halted directly under to Nardier these men had evidently chosen this vacant space in order that they might consult without being seen by the passersby or by the sentinel who guards the wicket of law force a few paces distant it must be added that the rain kept this sentinel blocked in his box to Nardier not being able to distinguish their visages lent an ear to their words with a desperate attention of a wretch who feels himself lost Nardier saw something resembling a gleam of hope flashed before his eyes these men conversed in slang the first said in a low but distinct voice let's cut what are we up to here the second replied it's raining hard enough to put out the very devil's fire and the bobbies will be a long instanter there's a soldier on guard yonder we shall get nabbed here these two words Aishigo and Aishikale both of which mean Aishi and which belong the first to the slang of the barriers the second to the slang of the temple were flashes of light for Nardier by the Aishiko he recognized Burjan who was a prowler of the barriers by the Aishikale he knew Babay who was among his other trades he was a broker at the temple the antique slang of the great century is no longer spoken except in the temple and Babay was really the only person who spoke it in all its purity had it not been for the Aishikale then Nardier would not have recognized him for he had entirely changed his voice in the meanwhile the third man had intervened there's no hurry yet let's wait a bit by this which was nothing but French to Nardier recognized Montparnasse who made it a point in his elegance to understand all slangs and to speak none of them as for the fourth he held his peace but his huge shoulders betrayed him Nardier did not hesitate it was Guelamer Burjan replied almost impetuously but still in a low tone what are you jabbering about he was cutistic he don't tumble into the racket that he don't you have to be a pretty knowing cove to tear up your shirt cut up your sheet to make a rope punch holes in doors get up false papers make false keys file your irons hang out your cord hide yourself and disguise yourself the old fellow hasn't managed to play it he doesn't understand how to work the business to clear up and which is to the bold new highly colored and risky Argo used by Burjan what the language of our scene is to the language of André Charnier your tavernkeeper must have been nabbed in the act he's only a green horn he must have let himself be taken in by a bobby perhaps even by a sheep who played it on him listen Montparnasse You have seen all those lights. He's recaptured there. He'll get off with twenty years. I ain't afraid. I ain't a coward. But there ain't anything more to do. Or otherwise they'd lead us at once. Don't get mad. Come with us. Let's go drink a bottle of old wine together. One doesn't desert one's friends in a scrape, crumbled Montparnasse. I tell you he's nabbed, retorted Przhon. At the present moment the innkeeper ain't worth a happening. We can't do nothing for him. Every minute I think a Bobby has got me in his fist. Montparnasse no longer offered more than a feeble resistance. The fact is that these four men, with the fidelity of Ruffians who never abandoned each other, had prowed all night long about the force, great as was their peril, and the hope of seeing Tonardierre make his appearance on the top of some wall. But the night which was really growing too fine for the downpour was such as to render all the streets deserted. The cold which was overpowering them soaked their garments, their whole reddened shoes, the alarming noise which had just burst forth from the prison, the hours which had elapsed, the patrol which they had encountered, the hope which was vanishing all urged them to beat a retreat. Montparnasse himself, who was perhaps almost Tonardierre's son-in-law, yielded. A moment more and they would be gone. Tonardierre was panting on his wall like the shipwrecked sufferers of the Medus on their raft, when they beheld the vessel which had appeared in sight vanish on the horizon. He dared not call to them. A cry might be heard and ruin everything. An idea occurred to him. A last idea. A flash of inspiration. He drew from his pocket the end of Brejean's rope, which he had detached from the chimney of the new building, and flung it into the space enclosed by the fence. The rope fell at their feet. A widow, said Babet. My tortue, said Brejean. The tavernkeeper is there, said Montparnasse. They raised their eyes. Tonardierre thrust out his head very little. Quick, said Montparnasse. Have you the other end of the rope, Brejean? Yes. Not the two pieces together. We'll fling him the rope. He can fasten it to the wall, and he'll have enough of it to get down with. Tonardierre ran the risk and spoke. I am paralyzed with cold. We will warn you up. I can't budge. Let yourself slide. We'll catch you. My hands are benumbed. Only fasten the rope to the wall. I can't. Then one of us must climb up, said Montparnasse. Three stories ejaculated Brejean. The ancient plaster flue which had served for a stove that had been used in the shanty and former times ran along the wall and mounted almost to the very spot where they could see Tonardierre. This flue then much damaged and full of cracks has since fallen, but the marks of it are still visible. It was very narrow. One might get up by the help of that, said Montparnasse. By that flue, exclaimed Bebe. A grown-up cove never. It would take a brat. A brat must be got, resumed Brejean. Where are we to find a youngin, said Guilomere? Wait, said Montparnasse. I've got the very article. He opened the gate of the fence very softly, made sure that no one was passing along the street, stepped out cautiously, shut the gate behind him, and set off at a run in the direction of the Bastille. Seven or eight minutes elapsed. Eight thousand centuries to Tonardierre. Bebe, Brejean, and Guilomere did not open their lips. At last the gate opened once more, and Montparnasse appeared, breathless, and followed by Gavroche. The rain still rendered the street completely deserted. Little Gavroche entered the enclosure and gazed at the forms of these ruffians with a tranquil air. The water was dripping from his hair. Guilomere addressed him. Are you a man, youngin? Gavroche shrugged his shoulders and replied, A youngin like me is a man, and men like you are babes. The brat's tongue is well hung, exclaimed Bebe. The Paris brat ain't made a mere straw at a Brejean. What do you want, asked Gavroche. Montparnasse answered. Climb up that flue. With this rope, said Bebe. And fasten it, continued Brejean. To the top of the wall went on Bebe. To the cross-bore of the window at a Brejean. And then, said Gavroche, there, said Guilomere. The gammon examined the rope, the flue, the wall, the windows, and made that indescribable and disdainful noise with his lips, which signifies, is that all? There's a man up there, whom you are to save, resume Montparnasse. Will you, began Brejean again? Greenhorn replied the lad, as though the question appeared a most unprecedented one to him. And he took off his shoes. Guilomere seized Gavroche by one arm and set him on the roof of the shanty, whose warm-eaten planks bent beneath the urchin's weight, and handed him the rope with Brejean had knotted together during Montparnasse's absence. The gammon directed his steps toward the flue, which it was easy to enter, thanks to the large crack which touched the roof. At the moment, when he was on the point of ascending, Tenardier, who saw life and safety approaching, bent over the edge of the wall, the first light of dawn struck white upon his brow, dripping with sweat upon his livid cheekbones, his sharp and savage nose, his bristling gray beard, and Gavroche recognized him. Hello, it's my father. Oh, that won't hinder. And taking the rope in his teeth, he resolutely began the ascent. He reached the summit of the hut, bestowed the old wall, as though it had been a horse, and knotted the rope firmly to the upper cross-bar of the window. A moment later, Tenardier was in the street. As soon as he touched the pavement, as soon as he found himself out of danger, he was no longer either weary or chilled or trembling. The terrible things from which he had escaped vanished like smoke. All that strange and ferocious mind awoke once more, and stood erect and free, ready to march onward. These were the man's first words. Now, whom are we to eat? It is useless to explain the sense of this frightfully transparent remark, which signifies both to kill, to assassinate, and to plunder, to eat, true sense, to devour. Let's get well into a corner, let's settle it in three words and part it once. There was an affair that promised well in the Rue Plumais, a deserted street, an isolated house, an old rotten gate on a garden, and lone woman. Well, why not, demanded Tenardier. Your girl, Eponine, went to see about the matter, replied Babet. And she brought a biscuit to Magnum, added of Guilamer, nothing to be made there. The girl's no fool, said Tenardier. Still, it must be seen to. Yes, yes, said Brejean, it must be looked up. In the meanwhile, none of the men seemed to seek avroge, who during this colloquy had seeded himself on one of the fence posts. He waited a few moments, thinking that perhaps his father would turn towards him. Then he put on his shoes again, and said, Zedal, you don't want me any more, my men? Now you're out of your scrape. I'm off. I must go and get my brats out of bed. And off he went. The five men emerged one after another from the enclosure. When Gavroge had disappeared at the corner of the Rue de Belet, Babet took Tenardier aside. Did you take a good look at that youngen, he asked? What youngen? The one who climbed the wall and carried you the rope. Not particularly. Well, I don't know, but it strikes me that it was your son. Bah! said Tenardier. Do you think so? Recording by Rachel Nelson Smith. Les Miserables, Volume 4 by Victor Hugo. Translated by Isabelle Florence Hapgood. Book 7. Slang. Chapter 1. Origin. Pigrita is a terrible word. It engenders a whole world. La pegr, for which red theft, and a hell, la pegrin, for which red hunger. Thus idleness is the mother. She has a son, theft, and a daughter, hunger. Where are we at this moment, in the land of slang? What is slang? It is at one and the same time a nation and a dialect. It is theft in its two kinds, people and language. When, four and thirty years ago, the narrator of this grave and somber history introduced into a work written with the same aim as this, a thief who talked Argo, there arose amazement and clamour. What? How? Argo? Why, Argo is horrible. It is the language of prisons, galleys, convicts, of everything that is most abominable in society, et cetera, et cetera. We have never understood this sort of objections. Since that time, two powerful romancers, one of whom is a profound observer of the human heart, the other, an intrepid friend of the people, Balzac and Eugene Su, having represented their ruffians as talking their natural language, as the author of The Last Day of a Condemned Man did in 1828. The same objections have been raised. People repeated, what do authors mean by that revolting dialect? Slang is odious, slang makes one shudder. Who denies that? Of course it does. When it is a question of probing a wound, a gulf, a society, since when has it been considered wrong to go too far, to go to the bottom? We have always thought that it was sometimes a courageous act, and, at least, a simple and useful deed worthy of the sympathetic attention which duty accepted in fulfilled merits. Why should one not explore everything and study everything? Why should one halt on the way? The halt is a matter depending on the sounding line and not on the Leedsman. Certainly, too, it is neither an attractive nor an easy task to undertake an investigation into the lowest depths of the social order, where terra firma comes to an end and where mud begins, to rummage in those vague murky waves, to follow up, to seize and to fling, still quivering upon the pavement that abject dialect which is dripping with filth when thus brought to the light. That postulous vocabulary, each word of which seems an unclean ring from a monster of the mire and the shadows. Nothing is more lugubrious than the contemplation thus in its nudity, in the broad light of thought of the horrible swarming of slang. It seems, in fact, to be a sort of horrible beast made for the night which has just been torn from its cesspool. One thinks one beholds a frightful, living and bristling thicket which quivers, rustles, wavers, returns to shadow, threatens and glares. One word resembles a claw, another an extinguished and bleeding eye. Such and such a phrase seems to move like the claw of a crab. All this is alive with the hideous vitality of things which have been organized out of organization. Now, when has horror ever excluded study? Since when has malady banished medicine, can one imagine a naturalist refusing to study the viper, the bat, the scorpion, the centipede, the tarantula, and one who would cast them back into their darkness saying, oh, how ugly that is. The thinker, who should turn aside from slang, would resemble a surgeon who would avert his face from an ulcer or a wart. He would be like a philologist refusing to examine a fact in language, a philosopher hesitating to scrutinize a fact in humanity. For it must be stated to those who are ignorant of the case that our go is both a literary phenomenon and a social result. What is slang, properly speaking, it is the language of wretchedness. We may be stopped, the fact may be put to us in general terms, which is one way of attenuating it. We may be told that all trades, professions, it may be added, all the accidents of the social hierarchy and all forms of intelligence have their own slang. The merchant who says, Montpellier, not active, Marseille, fine equality. The broker on change who says, assets at end of current month. The gambler who says, Thiers à deux, refait de bique. The sheriff of the Norman Isles who says, the holder in fee reverting to his landed estate cannot claim the fruits of that estate during the hereditary seizure of the real estate by the morgue agor. The playwright who says, the peace was hissed. The comedian who says, I've made a hit. The philosopher who says, phenomenal triplicity. The huntsman who says, voile si allez, voile si fouillons. The phrenologist who says, amativeness, combativeness, secretiveness. The infantry soldier who says, my shooting iron. The cavalryman who says, my turkey cock. The fencing master who says, Thiers gert break. The printer who says, my shooting stick and galley. All printer, fencing master, cavalry, dragoon, infantryman, phrenologist, huntsman, philosopher, comedian, playwright, sheriff, gambler, stockbroker and merchant, speak slang. The painter who says, my grinder. The notary who says, my skip the gutter. The hairdresser who says, my mealy back. The cobbler who says, my cub talks slang. Strictly speaking, if one absolutely insists on the point, all the different fashions of saying the right and the left, the sailors port and starboard, the scene shifters, court side and garden side, the Beatles, gospel side and epistol slide, are slang. There is the slang of the affected lady as well as of the press users. The hotel Ramboolay nearly adjoins the court in Miracle. There is a slang of duchesses. Witness this phrase contained in a love letter from a very great lady and a very pretty woman of the restoration. You will find in this gossip a faultitude of reasons why I should libertize. Diplomatic ciphers are slang. The pontifical chen salari by using 26 for Rome, Gersichtin diesel for dispatch, and Abfuxtegor Gersu to XI for the due demodena, speaks slang. The physicians of the Middle Ages who for carrot, radish and turnip said, opopinoc perfrosinum, reptitalmus, dracotholicum, engelorum, postmigorum, talked slang. The sugar manufacturer who says loaf, clarified, lumps, bastard, common, burnt. This honest manufacturer talks slang. A certain school of criticism 20 years ago which used to say half of the works of Shakespeare consists of plays upon words and puns talked slang. The poet and the artist who with profound understanding would designate M de Montmorency as a bourgeois, if you were not a judge of verses and statutes, speaks slang. The classic academician who calls flowers flora, fruits, Pomona, the sea, Neptune, love, fires, beauty, charms, a horse, a coarser, the white or tricolored cockade, the rose of Belona, the three-cornered hat, Mars' triangle, that classical academician talks slang. Algebra, medicine, botany, have each their slang. The tongue which is employed on board ship, that wonderful language of the sea, which is so complete and so picturesque, which was spoken by Jean-Bart, Dikesny, Sufrin, and Dupur, which mingles with the whistling of the rigging, the sound of the speaking trumpets, the shock of the boarding irons, the roll of the sea, the wind, the gale, the cannon is wholly a heroic and dazzling slang, which is to the fierce slang of the thieves, what the lion is to the jackal. No doubt, but say what we will, this manner of understanding, the word slang is an extension which everyone will not admit. For our part, we reserve to the word its ancient and precise circumscribed and determined significance, and we restrict slang to slang, the veritable slang, and the slang that is preeminently slang, if the two words can be coupled thus, the slang imbemorial, which was a kingdom, is nothing else we repeat than the homely, uneasy, crafty, treacherous, venomous, cruel, equivocal, vile, profound, fatal tongue of wretchedness. There exists, at the extremity of all abasement and all misfortunes, a last misery which revolts and makes up its mind to enter into conflict with the whole mass of fortunate facts and reigning rites. A fearful conflict where now cunning, now violent, unhealthy, and ferocious at one and the same time, it attacks the social order with pinpricks through vice and with clubblows through crime. To meet the needs of this conflict, wretchedness has invented a language of combat which is slang. To keep afloat and to rescue from oblivion, to hold above the gulf were it but a fragment of some language which man has spoken and which would otherwise be lost. That is to say, one of the elements, good or bad, of which civilization is composed, or by which it is complicated to extend the records of social observation, is to serve civilization itself. The service Plautus rendered, consciously or unconsciously, by making two Carthaginian soldiers talk Phoenician. That service Molière rendered by making so many of his characters talk Levantine and all sorts of dialects. Here objections bring up a fresh Phoenician, very good, Levantine, quite right. Even dialect, let that pass. They are tongues which have belonged to nations or provinces, but slang. What is the use of preserving slang? What is the good of assisting slang to survive? To this we reply in one word only, assuredly. If the tongue which a nation or a province has spoken is worthy of interest, the language which has been spoken by a misery is still more worthy of attention and study. It is the language which has been spoken in France, for example, for more than four centuries, not only by a misery, but by every possible human misery. And then we insist upon it, the study of social deformities and infirmities and the task of pointing them out with the view to remedy is not a business in which choice is permitted. The historian of manners and ideas has no less austere mission than the historian of events. The latter has a surface of civilization, the conflicts of crowns, the births of princes, the marriages of kings, battles, assemblages, great public men, revolutions in the daylight, everything on the exterior, the other historian has the interior, the depths, the people who toil, suffer, wait, the oppressed woman, the agonizing child, the secret war between man and man, obscure ferocities, prejudices, plotted iniquities, the subterranean, the indistinct tremors of multitudes, the die of hunger, the counter blows of the law, the secret evolution of souls, the go-bear fort, the bear armed, the disinherited, the orphans, the unhappy, and the infamous, all the forms which roam through the darkness. He must descend with his heart full of charity and severity at the same time, as a brother and as a judge, to those impenetrable casemates who are crawl, pel-mel, those who bleed and those who deal the blow, those who weep and those who curse, those who fast and those who devour, those who endure evil and those who inflict it. Have these historians of hearts and souls duties at all inferior to the historians of external facts? Does anyone think that Alighiri has any fewer things to say than Machiavelli? Is the underside of civilization any less important than the upper side merely because it is deeper and more somber? Do we really know the mountain well when we are not acquainted with the cavern? Let us say, moreover, parenthetically, that from a few words of what precedes a marked separation might be inferred between the two classes of historians, which does not exist in our mind. No one is a good historian of the patent visible, striking, and public life of peoples, if he is not, at the same time, in a certain measure, the historian of their deep and hidden life, and no one is a good historian of the interior unless he understands at need to be the historian of the exterior also. The history of manners and ideas permeates the history of events, and this is true reciprocally. They constitute two different orders of facts which correspond to each other, which are always interlaced, and which often bring forth results. All the liniments, which providence traces on the surface of a nation, have their parallels, somber but distinct in their depths, and all convulsions of the depths produce ebullations on the surface. True history being a mixture of all things, the true historian mingles in everything. Man is not a circle with a single center, he is an ellipse with a double focus. Facts form one of these, and ideas the other. Slang is nothing but a dressing room where the tongue, having some bad action to perform, disguises itself. There it clothes itself in word masks, in metaphor rags, in the skies it becomes horrible. One finds it difficult to recognize, is it really the French tongue, the great human tongue? Behold it ready to step upon the stage, and to retort upon crime, and prepared for all the employments of the repertory of evil. It no longer walks, it hobbles, it limps on the crutch of the court of miracles. A crutch met a more foesable into a club, it is called vagrancy. Every sort of spectre its dressers have painted its face, it crawls and rears the double gate of the reptile. Henceforth it is apt at all roles, and is made suspicious by the counterfeiter, covered with their degree by the forger, blacked by the soot of the incendiary, and the murderer applies its rouge. When one listens by the side of honest men at the portals of society, one overhears the dialogues of those who are on the outside. One distinguishes questions and replies. One perceives, without understanding it, a hideous murmur, sounding almost like human accents, but more nearly resembling a howl than an articulate word. It is slang. The words are misshapen and stamped with an indescribable and fantastic bestiality. One thinks one hears hydras talking. It is unintelligible in the dark, it gnashes and whispers, completing the gloom with mystery. It is black in misfortune. It is blacker still in crime. These two blacknesses amalgamated compose slang. Obscurity in the atmosphere, obscurity in acts, obscurity in voices, terrible toed-like tongue, which goes and comes, leaps, crawls, slobbers and stirs about and monstrous-wise in that immense grave fog composed of rain and night, of hunger, of vice, of falsehood, of injustice, of nudity, of suffocation and of winter, the high noonday of the miserable. Let us have compassion on the chastised, alas, who are we ourselves? Who am I who now address you? Who are you who are now listening to me? And are you very sure that we have done nothing before we were born? The earth is not devoid of resemblance to a jail. Who knows whether man is not a recaptured offender against divine justice? Look closely at life. It is so made that everywhere we feel the sense of punishment. Are you what is called a happy man? Well, you are sad every day. Each day has its own great grief for its little care. Yesterday you were trembling for a health that is dear to you. Today you fear for your own. Tomorrow it will be anxiety about money. The day after, tomorrow the diatribe of a slanderer. The day after that the misfortune of some friend. Then the prevailing weather. Then something that has been broken or lost. Then a pleasure with which your conscience and your vertebral column reproach you. Again, the course of public affairs. This without reckoning in the pains of the heart, and so it goes on. One cloud is dispelled, another forms. There is hardly one day out of a hundred, which is wholly joyous and sunny. And you belong to that small class who are happy? As for the rest of mankind, stagnating night rests upon them. Thoughtful minds make but little use of the phrase, the fortunate and the unfortunate. In this world evidently the vestibule of another, there are no fortunate. The real human division is this, the luminous and the shady. To diminish the number of the shady, to augment the number of the luminous, that is the object. That is why we cry education, science. To teach reading means to light the fire. Every syllable spelled out sparkles. However, he who says light does not necessarily, say joy. People suffer in the light, excess burns. The flame is the enemy of the wing, to burn without ceasing to fly. Therein lies the marvel of genius. When you shall have learned to know and to love, you will still suffer. The day is born in tears, the luminous weep if only over those in darkness. End of book seven, chapter one, recording by Rachel Nelson Smith, Santa Cruz, California.