BOOK SIXTH.--LITTLE GAVROCHE



CHAPTER I

THE MALICIOUS PLAYFULNESS OF THE WIND


Since 1823, when the tavern of Montfermeil was on the way to shipwreck
and was being gradually engulfed, not in the abyss of a bankruptcy,
but in the cesspool of petty debts, the Thenardier pair had had two
other children; both males. That made five; two girls and three boys.

Madame Thenardier had got rid of the last two, while they were still
young and very small, with remarkable luck.

Got rid of is the word. There was but a mere fragment of nature
in that woman. A phenomenon, by the way, of which there
is more than one example extant. Like the Marechale de La
Mothe-Houdancourt, the Thenardier was a mother to her daughters only.
There her maternity ended. Her hatred of the human race began
with her own sons. In the direction of her sons her evil
disposition was uncompromising, and her heart had a lugubrious
wall in that quarter. As the reader has seen, she detested
the eldest; she cursed the other two. Why? Because. The most
terrible of motives, the most unanswerable of retorts--Because.
"I have no need of a litter of squalling brats," said this mother.

Let us explain how the Thenardiers had succeeded in getting rid of
their last two children; and even in drawing profit from the operation.

The woman Magnon, who was mentioned a few pages further back, was the
same one who had succeeded in making old Gillenormand support the two
children which she had had. She lived on the Quai des Celestins,
at the corner of this ancient street of the Petit-Musc which afforded
her the opportunity of changing her evil repute into good odor.
The reader will remember the great epidemic of croup which ravaged
the river districts of the Seine in Paris thirty-five years ago,
and of which science took advantage to make experiments on a grand
scale as to the efficacy of inhalations of alum, so beneficially
replaced at the present day by the external tincture of iodine.
During this epidemic, the Magnon lost both her boys, who were still
very young, one in the morning, the other in the evening of the same day.
This was a blow. These children were precious to their mother;
they represented eighty francs a month. These eighty francs were
punctually paid in the name of M. Gillenormand, by collector of his rents,
M. Barge, a retired tip-staff, in the Rue du Roi-de-Sicile. The
children dead, the income was at an end. The Magnon sought an expedient.
In that dark free-masonry of evil of which she formed a part,
everything is known, all secrets are kept, and all lend mutual aid.
Magnon needed two children; the Thenardiers had two. The same sex,
the same age. A good arrangement for the one, a good investment
for the other. The little Thenardiers became little Magnons.
Magnon quitted the Quai des Celestins and went to live in the
Rue Clocheperce. In Paris, the identity which binds an individual
to himself is broken between one street and another.

The registry office being in no way warned, raised no objections,
and the substitution was effected in the most simple manner
in the world. Only, the Thenardier exacted for this loan of
her children, ten francs a month, which Magnon promised to pay,
and which she actually did pay. It is unnecessary to add that
M. Gillenormand continued to perform his compact. He came to see
the children every six months. He did not perceive the change.
"Monsieur," Magnon said to him, "how much they resemble you!"

Thenardier, to whom avatars were easy, seized this occasion
to become Jondrette. His two daughters and Gavroche had hardly
had time to discover that they had two little brothers. When a
certain degree of misery is reached, one is overpowered with a sort
of spectral indifference, and one regards human beings as though
they were spectres. Your nearest relations are often no more for
you than vague shadowy forms, barely outlined against a nebulous
background of life and easily confounded again with the invisible.

On the evening of the day when she had handed over her two little
ones to Magnon, with express intention of renouncing them forever,
the Thenardier had felt, or had appeared to feel, a scruple. She said
to her husband: "But this is abandoning our children!" Thenardier,
masterful and phlegmatic, cauterized the scruple with this saying:
"Jean Jacques Rousseau did even better!" From scruples, the mother
proceeded to uneasiness: "But what if the police were to annoy us?
Tell me, Monsieur Thenardier, is what we have done permissible?"
Thenardier replied: "Everything is permissible. No one will see
anything but true blue in it. Besides, no one has any interest in
looking closely after children who have not a sou."

Magnon was a sort of fashionable woman in the sphere of crime.
She was careful about her toilet. She shared her lodgings,
which were furnished in an affected and wretched style, with a clever
gallicized English thief. This English woman, who had become
a naturalized Parisienne, recommended by very wealthy relations,
intimately connected with the medals in the Library and Mademoiselle
Mar's diamonds, became celebrated later on in judicial accounts.
She was called Mamselle Miss.

The two little creatures who had fallen to Magnon had no reason to
complain of their lot. Recommended by the eighty francs, they were
well cared for, as is everything from which profit is derived;
they were neither badly clothed, nor badly fed; they were treated
almost like "little gentlemen,"--better by their false mother than
by their real one. Magnon played the lady, and talked no thieves'
slang in their presence.

Thus passed several years. Thenardier augured well from the fact.
One day, he chanced to say to Magnon as she handed him his monthly
stipend of ten francs: "The father must give them some education."

All at once, these two poor children, who had up to that time been
protected tolerably well, even by their evil fate, were abruptly
hurled into life and forced to begin it for themselves.

A wholesale arrest of malefactors, like that in the Jondrette garret,
necessarily complicated by investigations and subsequent incarcerations,
is a veritable disaster for that hideous and occult counter-society
which pursues its existence beneath public society; an adventure of this
description entails all sorts of catastrophes in that sombre world.
The Thenardier catastrophe involved the catastrophe of Magnon.


One day, a short time after Magnon had handed to Eponine the note
relating to the Rue Plumet, a sudden raid was made by the police
in the Rue Clocheperce; Magnon was seized, as was also Mamselle Miss;
and all the inhabitants of the house, which was of a suspicious character,
were gathered into the net. While this was going on, the two little
boys were playing in the back yard, and saw nothing of the raid.
When they tried to enter the house again, they found the door
fastened and the house empty. A cobbler opposite called them to him,
and delivered to them a paper which "their mother" had left for them.
On this paper there was an address: M. Barge, collector of rents,
Rue du Roi-de-Sicile, No. 8. The proprietor of the stall said to them:
"You cannot live here any longer. Go there. It is near by.
The first street on the left. Ask your way from this paper."

The children set out, the elder leading the younger, and holding
in his hand the paper which was to guide them. It was cold,
and his benumbed little fingers could not close very firmly,
and they did not keep a very good hold on the paper. At the
corner of the Rue Clocheperce, a gust of wind tore it from him,
and as night was falling, the child was not able to find it again.

They began to wander aimlessly through the streets.