Chapter Chapter 160 · LITTLE GAVROCHE

[Illustration: Little Gavroche]

Eight or nine years after the events narrated in the second part of

this story, people noticed on the Boulevard du Temple, and in the

regions of the Château-d’Eau, a little boy eleven or twelve years of

age, who would have realized with tolerable accuracy that ideal of the

gamin sketched out above, if, with the laugh of his age on his lips, he

had not had a heart absolutely sombre and empty. This child was well

muffled up in a pair of man’s trousers, but he did not get them from

his father, and a woman’s chemise, but he did not get it from his

mother. Some people or other had clothed him in rags out of charity.

Still, he had a father and a mother. But his father did not think of

him, and his mother did not love him.

He was one of those children most deserving of pity, among all, one of

those who have father and mother, and who are orphans nevertheless.

This child never felt so well as when he was in the street. The

pavements were less hard to him than his mother’s heart.

His parents had despatched him into life with a kick.

He simply took flight.

He was a boisterous, pallid, nimble, wide-awake, jeering, lad, with a

vivacious but sickly air. He went and came, sang, played at hopscotch,

scraped the gutters, stole a little, but, like cats and sparrows, gayly

laughed when he was called a rogue, and got angry when called a thief.

He had no shelter, no bread, no fire, no love; but he was merry because

he was free.

When these poor creatures grow to be men, the millstones of the social

order meet them and crush them, but so long as they are children, they

escape because of their smallness. The tiniest hole saves them.

Nevertheless, abandoned as this child was, it sometimes happened, every

two or three months, that he said, “Come, I’ll go and see mamma!” Then

he quitted the boulevard, the Cirque, the Porte Saint-Martin, descended

to the quays, crossed the bridges, reached the suburbs, arrived at the

Salpêtrière, and came to a halt, where? Precisely at that double number

50-52 with which the reader is acquainted—at the Gorbeau hovel.

At that epoch, the hovel 50-52 generally deserted and eternally

decorated with the placard: “Chambers to let,” chanced to be, a rare

thing, inhabited by numerous individuals who, however, as is always the

case in Paris, had no connection with each other. All belonged to that

indigent class which begins to separate from the lowest of petty

bourgeoisie in straitened circumstances, and which extends from misery

to misery into the lowest depths of society down to those two beings in

whom all the material things of civilization end, the sewer-man who

sweeps up the mud, and the rag-picker who collects scraps.

The “principal lodger” of Jean Valjean’s day was dead and had been

replaced by another exactly like her. I know not what philosopher has

said: “Old women are never lacking.”

This new old woman was named Madame Bourgon, and had nothing remarkable

about her life except a dynasty of three paroquets, who had reigned in

succession over her soul.

The most miserable of those who inhabited the hovel were a family of

four persons, consisting of father, mother, and two daughters, already

well grown, all four of whom were lodged in the same attic, one of the

cells which we have already mentioned.

At first sight, this family presented no very special feature except

its extreme destitution; the father, when he hired the chamber, had

stated that his name was Jondrette. Some time after his moving in,

which had borne a singular resemblance to _the entrance of nothing at

all_, to borrow the memorable expression of the principal tenant, this

Jondrette had said to the woman, who, like her predecessor, was at the

same time portress and stair-sweeper: “Mother So-and-So, if any one

should chance to come and inquire for a Pole or an Italian, or even a

Spaniard, perchance, it is I.”

This family was that of the merry barefoot boy. He arrived there and

found distress, and, what is still sadder, no smile; a cold hearth and

cold hearts. When he entered, he was asked: “Whence come you?” He

replied: “From the street.” When he went away, they asked him: “Whither

are you going?” He replied: “Into the streets.” His mother said to him:

“What did you come here for?”

This child lived, in this absence of affection, like the pale plants

which spring up in cellars. It did not cause him suffering, and he

blamed no one. He did not know exactly how a father and mother should

be.

Nevertheless, his mother loved his sisters.

We have forgotten to mention, that on the Boulevard du Temple this

child was called Little Gavroche. Why was he called Little Gavroche?

Probably because his father’s name was Jondrette.

It seems to be the instinct of certain wretched families to break the

thread.

The chamber which the Jondrettes inhabited in the Gorbeau hovel was the

last at the end of the corridor. The cell next to it was occupied by a

very poor young man who was called M. Marius.

Let us explain who this M. Marius was.

BOOK SECOND—THE GREAT BOURGEOIS