After 1823, while the inn at Montfermeil was slowly sinking under small debts, the Thénardiers had two more children. Both were boys. Two girls and three boys made five.
Madame Thénardier was a mother only as far as her daughters. With her sons, her heart ended like a sheer cliff. She disliked her eldest son, Gavroche, and the two younger ones even more. Asked why, she had no answer but: because.
The woman she passed those two boys on to was called Magnon. Magnon had two little sons for whom she had been getting eighty francs a month in support from Monsieur Gillenormand. Then, in the year croup swept the riverside districts, both children died on the same day, one in the morning and one at night. With the children dead, the money would stop. Magnon needed two children, and Madame Thénardier happened to have two. Same sex, same age.
Children on loan
So the two youngest Thénardiers became Magnon’s children. Magnon moved house, and in Paris a single street is enough to turn one person into another. The authorities knew nothing. Thénardier asked ten francs a month for the loan of the children, and Magnon paid it faithfully. Monsieur Gillenormand came every six months to see the boys and never noticed the change. They’re the very image of you, sir, Magnon would say.
On the evening she handed the boys over, Madame Thénardier pretended to have scruples. But this is abandoning your children! Thénardier answered calmly. Jean-Jacques Rousseau did worse. When she asked whether the police might make trouble, whether this was allowed, he said: everything’s allowed. Who’s going to look closely at children without a penny?
Thanks to the eighty francs, the two boys did rather well at Magnon’s. They were decently dressed and fed, and their false mother treated them better than their real one ever had. Magnon even avoided thieves’ slang in front of them. Several years went by like that.
Then came the trap at the Gorbeau house. When the Thénardiers fell, Magnon, who was tangled up with them, fell too. It was not long after Magnon had given Éponine the note about the Rue Plumet. The police raided her house and took away everyone in it.
The two boys, at play in the back yard, saw none of it. When they tried to go in, the door was locked and the house was empty. The cobbler across the street called them over and handed them a paper their mother had left. On it was an address. You don’t live here any more, go there, first street on the left.
The older boy set off holding his little brother’s hand. His small fingers, numb with cold, could not grip the paper tight. As they turned a corner the wind tore it away, and with night falling they could not find it again. From then on the two of them wandered the streets with nowhere to go.
A loaf in three
In the spring of 1832 cholera came to Paris, and bitter winds blew as if winter had come back. It was on one evening when those winds were at their worst. Little Gavroche, wearing a woman’s shawl he had picked up somewhere as a scarf, stood outside a barber’s window. He pretended to be lost in admiration of the wax bride turning round behind the glass, but in fact he was waiting for a chance to pinch a cake of soap. Sold to a barber in the suburbs for a sou, that soap would be his lunch. It was a Friday, and the last time he had eaten supper was three days before.
Just then two children even smaller than he was opened the door of the shop. One looked about seven and the other about five, and they were quite neatly dressed. The little one was sobbing and the older one’s teeth were chattering, so no one could make out what they wanted. The barber, razor still in hand, pushed them out with a hand and a knee and shut the door. Coming in and letting the cold in for nothing!
Gavroche caught up with the two boys as they walked away crying. What’s the matter, kids?
We don’t know where to sleep, said the older one.
Is that all? Crying over nothing, you sillies.
Then, with a kind of gentle authority under his teasing, he said: come with me.
Yes, sir, said the older boy. The two fell in behind him as if he were an archbishop, and they stopped crying.
Going up the Rue Saint-Antoine, Gavroche saw a beggar girl of thirteen or fourteen shivering in a doorway, in a skirt so short it showed her knees. Poor thing, put this on. He unwound the shawl from his neck and threw it over her thin shoulders. The girl took it without a word. At that moment the rain came down harder, and Gavroche, shivering, shouted at the sky. Raining again? If this goes on, I’m cancelling my subscription!
In front of a baker’s he turned round and asked whether they had had supper. Nothing since this morning, said the older boy; they had a mama and papa, but did not know where they were.
Sometimes it’s better not to know, said Gavroche, who was a thinker.
He rummaged for a while among his rags and then, triumphant, pulled out a single sou. Calm down, here’s supper for three. He pushed the two boys into the bakery and slapped the coin on the counter. Five centimes of bread, cut in three, there are three of us.
When the baker looked them over and reached for brown bread, Gavroche objected grandly. What’s that? Make it white, I’m treating today. Holding back a smile, the baker cut a white loaf.
Gavroche gave the biggest piece to the older boy and told him to load his gun with it. The smallest piece he kept for himself. All three were starving. As they walked on, he muttered to himself: all the same, if I had kids, I’d look after them better than that.
Only the sermon left
At the corner of a lane within sight of the low gate of La Force prison, someone called out to him. Gavroche, is that you? It was Montparnasse in disguise, wearing blue spectacles. Gavroche knew him at once.
Montparnasse drew him into a dark doorway and gave him the news. Babet had broken out that morning, turning left instead of right in a corridor on his way to be questioned. With a dagger hidden in his cane, he said only that he had things to do that night.
Oh, and a funny thing happened the other day. I ran into an old gentleman who handed me a sermon along with his purse. Into my pocket it went, and a minute later I felt for it and there was nothing there.
Only the sermon left, said Gavroche.
When Montparnasse asked where he was off to, Gavroche pointed to the two boys and said he was taking them to bed. Where, at your place? Where is your place, then, Montparnasse pressed, and Gavroche answered.
Inside the elephant.
Even Montparnasse was taken aback. If he ever needed him some night, Gavroche said, he could find him there. There was no porter, he lived on the mezzanine, and Montparnasse should just ask for Monsieur Gavroche. Then he headed towards the Bastille.
The useless elephant
In the south-east corner of the Place de la Bastille stood an elephant about forty feet high. It was the model for a giant fountain Napoleon had meant to build. Made of timber and plaster with a tower on its back, it had been neglected by everyone since 1814. Every year more plaster fell away, leaving sores in its flanks, and grass grew between its legs. Respectable passers-by clicked their tongues: what use is a thing like that?
Gavroche got the two boys through a gap in the fence, lifted a ladder that the workmen from a nearby site used and stood it against the elephant’s front leg. Near the top of the ladder a black hole showed in the elephant’s belly. Climb up and go in.
The two boys looked at each other in terror. Scared? Watch. Without even using the ladder, Gavroche hugged the rough leg, shinned up to the hole in an instant and slid inside like a snake. A moment later his pale face appeared at the edge of the dark hole.
The older boy wobbled up the ladder while Gavroche coached him along, no fear, that’s it, foot there, hand here, and hauled him in. The five-year-old, left alone below, wanted to cry but did not dare. Gavroche slid back down, set the little one on the middle of the ladder and pushed from behind, shouting: I’ll push, you pull!
Once all three were inside, he kicked the ladder over into the grass and clapped his hands. Here we are, kids, this is my place!
He blocked the hole with a plank and lit a bit of string dipped in resin. In its smoky light a vast skeleton appeared. Overhead a long beam ran like a backbone, and from it curved braces came down like ribs. Lumps of plaster hung like guts. In every corner, black blotches moved quickly, as if alive. The little one pressed close to his brother and whispered: it’s dark.
It’s dark outside, said Gavroche. Outside it’s raining and in here it isn’t; outside it’s cold and in here there’s not a breath of wind. Outside there isn’t even a moon, and in here there’s my candle!
The cat the rats ate
At the far end was his bed: a straw mat, a thick grey blanket, and a canopy. He had set up three poles tied at the top, covered them with a brass net and weighted its edges all round with stones so that nothing could get under. It was the kind of netting used for birdcages at the zoo.
Gavroche moved a few stones to open the netting and told them to crawl in on all fours. The three lay down side by side on the mat inside.
What’s this, asked the older boy, pointing at the netting, and Gavroche answered gravely. It’s for the rats, I got it from the botanical garden. The blanket, he said, came from the monkeys and the mat from the giraffe. He had told the animals it was for the elephant, and they hadn’t minded.
He tucked the blanket round the little one at the edge, as a mother would, and made him a pillow of old rags. The older boy gazed at him like an angel who had been rescued. When Gavroche asked why they had been crying, the boy said: we had nowhere at all to go, and we were scared of being alone at night.
No more whining. I’ll look after you. In summer we’ll go swimming in the stream, we’ll go to the theatre, we’ll sneak into the opera. Just then a drop of wax fell on his finger. A sou a month was all he could afford for light, he said, and got ready to blow it out. A great clap of thunder made the two boys scream, but Gavroche laughed that since God had lit his candle, he could put out his own.
The moment the light went out, a strange trembling began on the netting overhead. It was the sound of countless claws and teeth scraping the brass wire, and of thin squeaking. The older boy was already asleep. The little one, frozen with fear, held his breath and called out.
Sir?
What?
What’s that?
Rats.
What are rats?
Mice.
The little one had seen white mice before, so he felt a bit better. Still, he had another question. Haven’t you got a cat?
I brought one, but the rats ate it.
Mice that ate cats! The little one began to tremble again. Will those mice eat us too?
Course they would, said Gavroche, then added at once: don’t be scared, they can’t get in, and anyway I’m here. Here, hold my hand and go to sleep.
He reached across the older boy and took the little one’s hand. The child held it tight and was comforted. A few minutes later the rats came back in force, but the three children heard nothing.
The man on the wall
That same night there was an escape from La Force. Brujon, who had spent a month in the punishment cell plaiting a rope, worked through a chimney with a single nail together with Gueulemer, who shared his dormitory. The two got out onto the roof and over the wall. Thénardier, locked in a cage in the attic, had been warned. He drugged his guard with doped wine and broke out through the ceiling and the roof. But the stub of rope left at the chimney was too short for him to get over the wall.
By a route that has never been explained, he reached the top of a ruined house against the prison wall a little after three in the morning. Soaked by the rain, his hands and knees torn, he lay along a ledge barely a hand’s breadth wide, unable to move. Below was a drop of three storeys. At four the guard would be changed and the escape discovered. Fall and he was dead; stay and he was caught.
Then four men slipped into the fenced plot at the foot of the wall. From the slang they used, he recognised Brujon, Babet, Montparnasse and Gueulemer. They had circled the prison all night waiting for him and were just about to give up. Unable to shout, he threw the stub of rope from his pocket down at their feet.
With the two pieces knotted together, the rope would be long enough. The trouble was that Thénardier, exhausted and numb-handed, could not tie it to the wall. Someone had to climb up. An old flue ran up the wall almost to the top, but it was far too narrow for a man. We need a kid, said Brujon. Leave it to me, said Montparnasse, and ran off towards the Bastille.
Just before daybreak, a cry like a parrot’s sounded twice under the elephant. A clear voice answered from the hole, and Gavroche slid down the leg. We need you, come and give us a hand. Gavroche asked no questions. I’m coming.
It makes no difference
Inside the fence, Gueulemer turned to Gavroche, whose hair was dripping with rain. Kid, are you a man? Gavroche shrugged and retorted that a kid like him was a man and men like them were kids. The job was to climb the flue and tie the rope. Gavroche looked over the flue, the wall and the window and made a scornful little noise with his lips, as if to say: is that all?
Up there is a man, said Montparnasse, and you’re going to save him. Will you? Stupid question, said Gavroche, and took off his shoes.
Gueulemer lifted him onto the roof of the shed and handed him the rope. Just as the boy was about to enter the flue through a wide crack, Thénardier, seeing rescue on its way, leaned out over the edge. Dawn’s first light showed his sweat-soaked forehead, his bloodless cheekbones, his sharp nose and his bristling grey beard. Gavroche recognised him.
“Tiens! c’est mon père!… Oh! cela n’empêche pas.” Well! It’s my father!… Oh, that makes no difference. (Part 4, Book 6, Chapter 3)
He took the rope in his teeth, climbed the flue, straddled the old wall like a rider and tied the rope fast to the crossbar above the window. Moments later Thénardier stood in the street.
The instant his feet met the cobbles he was no longer tired or shaking. The first thing he said was this.
Now, who are we going to eat?
Brujon said there had been a job in the Rue Plumet that looked good. A lonely house, an old railing round a garden, only women living there. Your daughter Éponine went and looked it over, said Babet, and Gueulemer added that she had brought Magnon a biscuit. Meaning there was nothing to be done there.
My daughter’s no fool, said Thénardier. Still, we’ll have to go and see.
All this time nobody looked at Gavroche. The boy sat on one of the fence posts and waited a little, in case his father might turn round to him. Then he put his shoes back on and spoke.
All done? You don’t need me any more, gentlemen? You’re all out, so I’m off, I’ve got to go and get my kids up.
And he left.
When the boy had vanished round the corner, Babet drew Thénardier aside and asked whether he had seen the kid who climbed the wall with the rope. Not really, said Thénardier.
I can’t be sure, but he looked like your son.
Really? Do you think so? said Thénardier, and he left too.
Today, a loaf in three pieces
That night Gavroche took in two boys he did not know, divided a one-sou loaf in three, and ate the smallest piece. He held the hand of the little one who was trembling at the rats until he fell asleep. He never knew that the two boys were his brothers. The man who had lent them out for ten francs a month was his father.
At dawn he climbed a wet wall barefoot to bring a man down. Knowing it was his father, he still took the rope in his teeth and went all the way up. Once on the ground, the man began planning whom to rob, and never looked round at his son.
The elephant everyone dismissed as useless kept three children out of the rain that night.
Have you ever waited for someone to recognise you, and finally just turned away?