Page 1619 - les-miserables

tites of plaster depended from them like entrails, and vast
spiders’ webs stretching from side to side, formed dirty dia-
phragms. Here and there, in the corners, were visible large
blackish spots which had the appearance of being alive, and
which changed places rapidly with an abrupt and fright-
ened movement.
Fragments which had fallen from the elephant’s back
into his belly had filled up the cavity, so that it was possible
to walk upon it as on a floor.
The smaller child nestled up against his brother, and
whispered to him:—
‘It’s black.’
This remark drew an exclamation from Gavroche. The
petrified air of the two brats rendered some shock neces-
sary.
‘What’s that you are gabbling about there?’ he exclaimed.
‘Are you scoffing at me? Are you turning up your noses? Do
you want the tuileries? Are you brutes? Come, say! I warn
you that I don’t belong to the regiment of simpletons. Ah,
come now, are you brats from the Pope’s establishment?’
A little roughness is good in cases of fear. It is reassuring.
The two children drew close to Gavroche.
Gavroche, paternally touched by this confidence, passed
from grave to gentle, and addressing the smaller:—
‘Stupid,’ said he, accenting the insulting word, with a ca-
ressing intonation, ‘it’s outside that it is black. Outside it’s
raining, here it does not rain; outside it’s cold, here there’s
not an atom of wind; outside there are heaps of people,
here there’s no one; outside there ain’t even the moon, here

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