Page 1622 - les-miserables

‘That belonged to the giraffe.’
After a pause he went on:—
‘The beasts had all these things. I took them away from
them. It didn’t trouble them. I told them: ‘It’s for the ele-
phant.’’
He paused, and then resumed:—
‘You crawl over the walls and you don’t care a straw for
the government. So there now!’
The two children gazed with timid and stupefied respect
on this intrepid and ingenious being, a vagabond like them-
selves, isolated like themselves, frail like themselves, who
had something admirable and all-powerful about him, who
seemed supernatural to them, and whose physiognomy was
composed of all the grimaces of an old mountebank, min-
gled with the most ingenuous and charming smiles.
‘Monsieur,’ ventured the elder timidly, ‘you are not afraid
of the police, then?’
Gavroche contented himself with replying:—
‘Brat! Nobody says ‘police,’ they say ‘bobbies.’’
The smaller had his eyes wide open, but he said noth-
ing. As he was on the edge of the mat, the elder being in the
middle, Gavroche tucked the blanket round him as a moth-
er might have done, and heightened the mat under his head
with old rags, in such a way as to form a pillow for the child.
Then he turned to the elder:—
‘Hey! We’re jolly comfortable here, ain’t we?’
‘Ah, yes!’ replied the elder, gazing at Gavroche with the
expression of a saved angel.
The two poor little children who had been soaked

1622 Les Miserables