CHAPTER XIII--LITTLE GAVROCHE

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  Eight or nine years after the events narrated in the second part of thisstory, people noticed on the Boulevard du Temple, and in the regions ofthe Château-d'Eau, a little boy eleven or twelve years of age, who wouldhave realized with tolerable accuracy that ideal of the gamin sketchedout above, if, with the laugh of his age on his lips, he had not had aheart absolutely sombre and empty. This child was well muffled up in apair of man's trousers, but he did not get them from his father, and awoman's chemise, but he did not get it from his mother. Some people orother had clothed him in rags out of charity. Still, he had a father anda mother. But his father did not think of him, and his mother did notlove him.

  He was one of those children most deserving of pity, among all, one ofthose who have father and mother, and who are orphans nevertheless.

  This child never felt so well as when he was in the street. Thepavements 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 avivacious but sickly air. He went and came, sang, played at hopscotch,scraped the gutters, stole a little, but, like cats and sparrows, gaylylaughed 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 becausehe was free.

  When these poor creatures grow to be men, the millstones of the socialorder meet them and crush them, but so long as they are children, theyescape because of their smallness. The tiniest hole saves them.

  Nevertheless, abandoned as this child was, it sometimes happened, everytwo or three months, that he said, "Come, I'll go and see mamma!" Thenhe quitted the boulevard, the Cirque, the Porte Saint-Martin, descendedto the quays, crossed the bridges, reached the suburbs, arrived at theSalpêtrière, and came to a halt, where? Precisely at that double number50-52 with which the reader is acquainted--at the Gorbeau hovel.

  At that epoch, the hovel 50-52 generally deserted and eternallydecorated with the placard: "Chambers to let," chanced to be, a rarething, inhabited by numerous individuals who, however, as is always thecase in Paris, had no connection with each other. All belonged tothat indigent class which begins to separate from the lowest of pettybourgeoisie in straitened circumstances, and which extends from miseryto misery into the lowest depths of society down to those two beingsin whom all the material things of civilization end, the sewer-man whosweeps up the mud, and the ragpicker who collects scraps.

  The "principal lodger" of Jean Valjean's day was dead and had beenreplaced by another exactly like her. I know not what philosopher hassaid: "Old women are never lacking."

  This new old woman was named Madame Bourgon, and had nothing remarkableabout her life except a dynasty of three paroquets, who had reigned insuccession over her soul.

  The most miserable of those who inhabited the hovel were a family offour persons, consisting of father, mother, and two daughters, alreadywell grown, all four of whom were lodged in the same attic, one of thecells which we have already mentioned.

  At first sight, this family presented no very special feature except itsextreme destitution; the father, when he hired the chamber, had statedthat his name was Jondrette. Some time after his moving in, which hadborne a singular resemblance to _the entrance of nothing at all_, toborrow the memorable expression of the principal tenant, this Jondrettehad said to the woman, who, like her predecessor, was at the same timeportress and stair-sweeper: "Mother So-and-So, if any one should chanceto 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 andfound distress, and, what is still sadder, no smile; a cold hearthand cold hearts. When he entered, he was asked: "Whence come you?" Hereplied: "From the street." When he went away, they asked him: "Whitherare 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 plantswhich spring up in cellars. It did not cause him suffering, and heblamed no one. He did not know exactly how a father and mother shouldbe.

  Nevertheless, his mother loved his sisters.

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

  The chamber which the Jondrettes inhabited in the Gorbeau hovel was thelast at the end of the corridor. The cell next to it was occupied by avery poor young man who was called M. Marius.

  Let us explain who this M. Marius was.

  BOOK SECOND.--THE GREAT BOURGEOIS