|
IN WHICH LITTLE GAVROCHE EXTRACTS PROFIT 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 sepulchre. In these winds one felt
the breath of the cholera.
From a meteorological point of view, these cold winds possessed
this peculiarity, that they did not preclude a strong electric
tension. Frequent storms, accompanied by thunder and lightning,
burst forth at this epoch.
One evening, when these gales were blowing rudely, to such
a degree that January seemed to have returned and that the bourgeois
had resumed their cloaks, Little Gavroche, who was always shivering
gayly under his rags, was standing as though in ecstasy before
a wig-maker's shop in the vicinity of the Orme-Saint-Gervais.
He was adorned with a woman's woollen shawl, picked up no one
knows where, and which he had converted into a neck comforter.
Little Gavroche appeared to be engaged in intent admiration
of a wax bride, in a low-necked dress, and crowned with orange-flowers,
who was revolving in the window, and displaying her smile to passers-by,
between two argand lamps; but in reality, he was taking an observation
of the shop, in order to discover whether he could not "prig"
from the shop-front a cake of soap, which he would then proceed
to sell for a sou to a "hair-dresser" in the suburbs.
He had often managed to breakfast off of such a roll.
He called his species of work, for which he possessed special
aptitude, "shaving barbers."
While contemplating the bride, and eyeing the cake of soap,
he muttered between his teeth:
"Tuesday.
It was not Tuesday. Was it Tuesday?
Perhaps it was Tuesday.
Yes, it was Tuesday."
No one has ever discovered to what this monologue referred.
Yes, perchance, this monologue had some connection with the
last occasion on which he had dined, three days before, for it
was now Friday.
The barber in his shop, which was warmed by a good stove,
was shaving a customer and casting a glance from time to time
at the enemy, that freezing and impudent street urchin both of
whose hands were in his pockets, but whose mind was evidently
unsheathed.
While Gavroche was scrutinizing the shop-window and the cakes
of windsor soap, two children of unequal stature, very neatly
dressed, and still smaller than himself, one apparently about
seven years of age, the other five, timidly turned the handle
and entered the shop, with a request for something or other, alms
possibly, in a plaintive murmur which resembled a groan rather
than a prayer. They both spoke at once, and their words were unintelligible
because sobs broke the voice of the younger, and the teeth of
the elder were chattering with cold.
The barber wheeled round with a furious look, and without
abandoning his razor, thrust back the elder with his left hand
and the younger with his knee, and slammed his door, saying: "The
idea of coming in and freezing everybody for nothing!"
The two children resumed their march in tears.
In the meantime, a cloud had risen; it had begun to rain.
Little Gavroche ran after them and accosted them:--
"What's the matter with you, brats?"
"We don't know where we are to sleep," replied the
elder.
"Is that all?" said Gavroche.
"A great matter, truly.
The idea of bawling about that.
They must be greenies!"
And adopting, in addition to his superiority, which was rather
bantering, an accent of tender authority and gentle patronage:--
"Come along with me, young 'uns!"
"Yes, sir," said the elder.
And the two children followed him as they would have followed
an archbishop.
They had stopped crying.
Gavroche led them up the Rue Saint-Antoine in the direction
of the Bastille.
As Gavroche walked along, he cast an indignant backward glance
at the barber's shop.
"That fellow has no heart, the whiting,"[35] he
muttered. "He's an Englishman."
[35] Merlan:
a sobriquet given to hairdressers because they are white with
powder.
A woman who caught sight of these three marching in a file,
with Gavroche at their head, burst into noisy laughter.
This laugh was wanting in respect towards the group.
"Good day, Mamselle Omnibus," said Gavroche to her.
An instant later, the wig-maker occurred to his mind once
more, and he added:--
"I am making a mistake in the beast; he's not a whiting,
he's a serpent.
Barber, I'll go and fetch a locksmith, and I'll have a bell
hung to your tail."
This wig-maker had rendered him aggressive.
As he strode over a gutter, he apostrophized a bearded portress
who was worthy to meet Faust on the Brocken, and who had a broom
in her hand.
"Madam," said he, "so you are going out with
your horse?"
And thereupon, he spattered the polished boots of a pedestrian.
"You scamp!" shouted the furious pedestrian.
Gavroche elevated his nose above his shawl.
"Is Monsieur complaining?"
"Of you!" ejaculated the man.
"The office is closed," said Gavroche, "I do
not receive any more complaints."
In the meanwhile, as he went on up the street, he perceived
a beggar-girl, thirteen or fourteen years old, and clad in so
short a gown that her knees were visible, lying thoroughly chilled
under a porte-cochere. The little girl was getting to be too old
for such a thing.
Growth does play these tricks.
The petticoat becomes short at the moment when nudity becomes
indecent.
"Poor girl!" said Gavroche.
"She hasn't even trousers.
Hold on, take this."
And unwinding all the comfortable woollen which he had around
his neck, he flung it on the thin and purple shoulders of the
beggar-girl, where the scarf became a shawl once more.
The child stared at him in astonishment, and received the
shawl in silence.
When a certain stage of distress has been reached in his misery,
the poor man no longer groans over evil, no longer returns thanks
for good.
That done:
"Brrr!" said Gavroche, who was shivering more than
Saint Martin, for the latter retained one-half of his cloak.
At this brrr! the downpour of rain, redoubled in its spite,
became furious.
The wicked skies punish good deeds.
"Ah, come now!" exclaimed Gavroche, "what's the
meaning of this? It's re-raining! Good Heavens, if it goes on
like this, I shall stop my subscription."
And he set out on the march once more.
"It's all right," he resumed, casting a glance at
the beggar-girl, as she coiled up under the shawl, "she's
got a famous peel."
And looking up at the clouds he exclaimed:--
"Caught!"
The two children followed close on his heels.
As they were passing one of these heavy grated lattices, which
indicate a baker's shop, for bread is put behind bars like gold,
Gavroche turned round:--
"Ah, by the way, brats, have we dined?"
"Monsieur," replied the elder, "we have had
nothing to eat since this morning."
"So you have neither father nor mother?" resumed
Gavroche majestically.
"Excuse us, sir, we have a papa and a mamma, but we don't
know where they are."
"Sometimes that's better than knowing where they are,"
said Gavroche, who was a thinker.
"We have been wandering about these two hours,"
continued the elder, "we have hunted for things at the corners
of the streets, but we have found nothing."
"I know," ejaculated Gavroche, "it's the dogs
who eat everything."
He went on, after a pause:--
"Ah! we have lost our authors.
We don't know what we have done with them.
This should not be, gamins.
It's stupid to let old people stray off like that.
Come now! we must have a snooze all the same."
However, he asked them no questions.
What was more simple than that they should have no dwelling
place!
The elder of the two children, who had almost entirely recovered
the prompt heedlessness of childhood, uttered this exclamation:--
"It's queer, all the same.
Mamma told us that she would take us to get a blessed spray
on Palm Sunday."
"Bosh," said Gavroche.
"Mamma," resumed the elder, "is a lady who
lives with Mamselle Miss."
"Tanflute!" retorted Gavroche.
Meanwhile he had halted, and for the last two minutes he had
been feeling and fumbling in all sorts of nooks which his rags
contained.
At last he tossed his head with an air intended to be merely
satisfied, but which was triumphant, in reality.
"Let us be calm, young 'uns.
Here's supper for three."
And from one of his pockets he drew forth a sou.
Without allowing the two urchins time for amazement, he pushed
both of them before him into the baker's shop, and flung his sou
on the counter, crying:--
"Boy! five centimes' worth of bread."
The baker, who was the proprietor in person, took up a loaf
and a knife.
"In three pieces, my boy!" went on Gavroche.
And he added with dignity:--
"There are three of us."
And seeing that the baker, after scrutinizing the three customers,
had taken down a black loaf, he thrust his finger far up his nose
with an inhalation as imperious as though he had had a pinch of
the great Frederick's snuff on the tip of his thumb, and hurled
this indignant apostrophe full in the baker's face:--
"Keksekca?"
Those of our readers who might be tempted to espy in this
interpellation of Gavroche's to the baker a Russian or a Polish
word, or one of those savage cries which the Yoways and the Botocudos
hurl at each other from bank to bank of a river, athwart the solitudes,
are warned that it is a word which they [our readers] utter every
day, and which takes the place of the phrase:
"Qu'est-ce que c'est que cela?"
The baker understood perfectly, and replied:--
"Well!
It's bread, and very good bread of the second quality."
"You mean larton brutal [black bread]!" retorted
Gavroche, calmly and coldly disdainful.
"White bread, boy! white bread [larton savonne]! I'm
standing treat."
The baker could not repress a smile, and as he cut the white
bread he surveyed them in a compassionate way which shocked Gavroche.
"Come, now, baker's boy!" said he, "what are
you taking our measure like that for?"
All three of them placed end to end would have hardly made
a measure.
When the bread was cut, the baker threw the sou into his drawer,
and Gavroche said to the two children:--
"Grub away."
The little boys stared at him in surprise.
Gavroche began to laugh.
"Ah! hullo, that's so! they don't understand yet, they're
too small."
And he repeated:--
"Eat away."
At the same time, he held out a piece of bread to each of
them.
And thinking that the elder, who seemed to him the more worthy
of his conversation, deserved some special encouragement and ought
to be relieved from all hesitation to satisfy his appetite, he
added, as be handed him the largest share:--
"Ram that into your muzzle."
One piece was smaller than the others; he kept this for himself.
The poor children, including Gavroche, were famished. As they
tore their bread apart in big mouthfuls, they blocked up the shop
of the baker, who, now that they had paid their money, looked
angrily at them.
"Let's go into the street again," said Gavroche.
They set off once more in the direction of the Bastille.
From time to time, as they passed the lighted shop-windows,
the smallest halted to look at the time on a leaden watch which
was suspended from his neck by a cord.
"Well, he is a very green 'un," said Gavroche.
Then, becoming thoughtful, he muttered between his teeth:--
"All the same, if I had charge of the babes I'd lock
'em up better than that."
Just as they were finishing their morsel of bread, and had
reached the angle of that gloomy Rue des Ballets, at the other
end of which the low and threatening wicket of La Force was visible:--
"Hullo, is that you, Gavroche?" said some one.
"Hullo, is that you, Montparnasse?" said Gavroche.
A man had just accosted the street urchin, and the man was
no other than Montparnasse in disguise, with blue spectacles,
but recognizable to Gavroche.
"The bow-wows!" went on Gavroche, "you've got
a hide the color of a linseed plaster, and blue specs like a doctor.
You're putting on style, 'pon my word!"
"Hush!" ejaculated Montparnasse, "not so loud."
And he drew Gavroche 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 portecochere,
sheltered from the rain and from all eyes:--
"Do you know where I'm going?" demanded Montparnasse.
"To the Abbey of Ascend-with-Regret,"[36] replied
Gavroche.
[36] The scaffold.
"Joker!"
And Montparnasse went on:--
"I'm going to find Babet."
"Ah!" exclaimed Gavroche, "so her name is Babet."
Montparnasse lowered his voice:--
"Not she, he."
"Ah!
Babet."
"Yes, Babet."
"I thought he was buckled."
"He has undone the buckle," replied Montparnasse.
And he rapidly related to the gamin how, on the morning of
that very day, Babet, having been transferred to La Conciergerie,
had made his escape, by turning to the left instead of to the
right in "the police office."
Gavroche expressed his admiration for this skill.
"What a dentist!" he cried.
Montparnasse added a few details as to Babet's flight, and
ended with:--
"Oh!
That's not all."
Gavroche, 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 gendarme disguised as a bourgeois."
Montparnasse winked.
"The deuce!" resumed Gavroche, "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."
Gavroche persisted:--
"What are you up to to-night?"
Again Montparnasse took a grave tone, and said, mouthing every
syllable:
"Things."
And abruptly changing the conversation:--
"By the way!"
"What?"
"Something happened t'other day.
Fancy.
I meet 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 Gavroche.
"But you," went on Montparnasse, "where are
you bound for now?"
Gavroche pointed to his two proteges, and said:--
"I'm going to put these infants to bed."
"Whereabouts is the bed?"
"At my house."
"Where's your house?"
"At my house."
"So you have a lodging?"
"Yes, I have."
"And where is your lodging?"
"In the elephant," said Gavroche.
Montparnasse, though not naturally inclined to astonishment,
could not restrain an exclamation.
"In the elephant!"
"Well, yes, in the elephant!" retorted Gavroche.
"Kekcaa?"
This is another word of the language which no one writes,
and which every one speaks.
Kekcaa signifies:
Quest que c'est que cela a?
[What's the matter with that?]
The urchin's profound remark recalled Montparnasse to calmness
and good sense.
He appeared to return to better sentiments with regard to
Gavroche's lodging.
"Of course," said he, "yes, the elephant.
Is it comfortable there?"
"Very," said Gavroche.
"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.
"Parbleu!
I should say so.
But you mustn't tell.
It's between the fore legs.
The bobbies haven't seen it."
"And you climb up?
Yes, I understand."
"A turn of the hand, cric, crac, and it's all over, no
one there."
After a pause, Gavroche added:--
"I shall have a ladder for these children."
Montparnasse burst out laughing:--
"Where the devil did you pick up those young 'uns?"
Gavroche replied with great simplicity:--
"They are some brats that a wig-maker made me a present
of."
Meanwhile, Montparnasse had fallen to thinking:--
"You recognized me very readily," he muttered.
|
