Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [370]
“Oh! yes, monsieur,” answered Toussaint. “It is over by Saint Merry.”
There are some mechanical impulses which come to us, without our knowledge even, from our deepest thoughts. It was doubtless under the influence of an impulse of this kind, and of which he was hardly conscious, that Jean Valjean five minutes afterwards found himself in the street.
He was bare-headed, seated upon the stone block by the door of his house. He seemed to be listening.
The night had come.
2
THE GAMIN AN ENEMY OF LIGHT
SUDDENLY he raised his eyes, somebody was walking in the street, he heard steps near him, he looked, and, by the light of the lamp, in the direction of the Archives, he perceived a livid face, young and radiant.
Gavroche had just arrived in the Rue de l‘Homme Armé.
Gavroche was looking in the air, and appeared to be searching for something. He saw Jean Valjean perfectly, but he took no notice of him.
Gavroche, after looking into the air, looked on the ground; he raised himself on tiptoe and felt of the doors and windows of the ground floors; they were all closed, bolted, and chained. After having found five or six houses barricaded in this way, the gamin shrugged his shoulders, and took counsel with himself in these terms:
“Golly!”
Then he began to look into the air again.
Jean Valjean, who, the instant before, in the state of mind in which he was, would not have spoken nor even replied to anybody, felt irresistibly impelled to address a word to this child.
“Little boy,” said he, “what is the matter with you?”
“The matter is that I am hungry,” answered Gavroche tartly. And he added: “Little yourself.”
Jean Valjean felt in his pocket and took out a five-franc coin.
But Gavroche, who was of the wagtail species, and who passed quickly from one action to another, had picked up a stone. He had noticed a lamp.
“Hold on,” said he, “you have your lamps here still. You are not regular, my friends. It is disorderly. Break that for me.”
And he threw the stone into the lamp, the glass from which fell with such a clatter that some bourgeois, hid behind their curtains in the opposite house, cried: “There is ‘Ninety-three!”
The lamp swung violently and went out. The street became suddenly dark.
“That’s it, old street,” said Gavroche, “put on your nightcap.”
Jean Valjean approached Gavroche.
“Poor creature,” said he, in an undertone, and speaking to himself, “he is hungry.”
And he put the hundred-sous coin into his hand.
Gavroche cocked up his nose, astonished at the size of this big sou; he looked at it in the dark, and the whiteness of the big sou dazzled him. He knew five-franc coins by hearsay; their reputation was agreeable to him; he was delighted to see one so near. He said: “let us contemplate the tiger.”
He gazed at it for a few moments in ecstasy; then, turning towards Jean Valjean, he handed him the coin, and said majestically:
“Bourgeois, I prefer to break lamps. Take back your wild beast. You don’t corrupt me. It has five claws; but it don’t scratch me.”
“Have you a mother?” inquired Jean Valjean.
Gavroche answered:
“Perhaps more than you have.”
“Well,” replied Jean Valjean, “keep this money for your mother.”
Gavroche felt softened. Besides he had just noticed that the man who was talking to him, had no hat, and that inspired him with confidence.
“Really,” said he, “it isn’t to prevent my breaking the lamps?”
“Break all you like.”
“You are a fine fellow,” said Gavroche.
And he put the five-franc coin into one of his pockets.
His confidence increasing, he added:
“Do you live here?”
“Yes; why?”
“Could you show me number seven?”
“What do you want with number seven?”
Here the boy stopped; he feared that he had said too much; he plunged his nails vigorously into his hair, and merely answered:
“Ah! that’s it.”
An idea flashed across Jean Valjean’s mind. Anguish has such lucidities. He said to the child:
“Have you brought the letter I am waiting for?”
“You?” said Gavroche. “You are not a woman.”
“The letter is for Mademoiselle Cosette; isn’t it?”
“Cosette?” muttered Gavroche, “yes, I believe