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Gavroche 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 Emperor's, had become the box of a street urchin. The brat had been accepted and sheltered by the colossus.
The two little creatures uttered a shriek, and started up so eagerly that the network came near being displaced, but Gavroche turned his bold 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!
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.
"Let us contemplate the tiger." He gazed at it for several minutes in ecstasy; then, turning to Jean Valjean, he held out the coin to him, and said majestically to him: "Bourgeois, I prefer to smash lanterns. Take back your ferocious beast. You can't bribe me. That has got five claws; but it doesn't scratch me." "Have you a mother?" asked Jean Valjean. Gavroche replied:
He made his guests enter the cage with great precaution, then he crawled in after them, pulled the stones together, and closed the opening hermetically again. All three had stretched out on the mat. Gavroche still had the cellar rat in his hand. "Now," said he, "go to sleep! I'm going to suppress the candelabra."
It was headed by a Jazz band and a troupe of niggers, dancing. Appropriately it took its name from music the art that is always behind the times. Gavroche was killed on the barricades, and it was with his name that Jazz should have been associated.
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.
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:
Gavroche raised it with remarkable vigor, and placed it against one of the elephant's forelegs. Near the point where the ladder ended, a sort of black hole in the belly of the colossus could be distinguished. Gavroche pointed out the ladder and the hole to his guests, and said to them: "Climb up and go in." The two little boys exchanged terrified glances.
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," murmured the elder, "I'm all right. I seem to have feathers under my head." "People don't say 'head," cried Gavroche, "they say 'nut'."
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