At that time a boy of eleven or twelve could be seen wandering around the Boulevard du Temple. He wore a man’s trousers and a woman’s jacket, neither from his parents; they were rags that strangers had put on him out of pity. Parents, he did have. It was only that his father gave him no thought, and his mother gave him no love. He was more at ease in the street than at home. He had no home, no bread, no fire and no love, but he was free, and so he was happy. People on the boulevard called him little Gavroche.
Even so, every two or three months he would say he was going to see his mother, cross the river and make his way to the Gorbeau house. His family was the poorest in the building. Father, mother and two grown daughters lived in a single room, and the father had given his name as Jondrette when he took it. He had also told the old woman who kept the door that if anyone came asking for a Pole, or an Italian, or perhaps a Spaniard, that would be him.
When the boy came in, they asked where he had come from, and he said the street. When he left and they asked where he was going, he said the street. His mother would ask what he had come for. She loved only her daughters. The Jondrettes’ room was at the very end of the corridor, and next door lived a very poor young man called Marius.