Page 2049 - les-miserables

Esplanade de l’Observatoire, or in the neighboring carre-
four, dominated by the pediment on which could be read:
Invenerunt parvulum pannis involutum, some mounte-
bank’s booth from which they had fled; perhaps they had,
on the preceding evening, escaped the eye of the inspec-
tors of the garden at the hour of closing, and had passed
the night in some one of those sentry-boxes where people
read the papers? The fact is, they were stray lambs and they
seemed free. To be astray and to seem free is to be lost. These
poor little creatures were, in fact, lost.
These two children were the same over whom Gavroche
had been put to some trouble, as the reader will recollect.
Children of the Thenardiers, leased out to Magnon, attrib-
uted to M. Gillenormand, and now leaves fallen from all
these rootless branches, and swept over the ground by the
wind. Their clothing, which had been clean in Magnon’s
day, and which had served her as a prospectus with M. Gil-
lenormand, had been converted into rags.
Henceforth these beings belonged to the statistics as
‘Abandoned children,’ whom the police take note of, collect,
mislay and find again on the pavements of Paris.
It required the disturbance of a day like that to account
for these miserable little creatures being in that garden. If
the superintendents had caught sight of them, they would
have driven such rags forth. Poor little things do not enter
public gardens; still, people should reflect that, as children,
they have a right to flowers.
These children were there, thanks to the locked gates.
They were there contrary to the regulations. They had

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