Yes, perchance, this monologue had some connection with the last occasion on which he had dined, three days before, for it was now Friday.
The barber in his shop, which was warmed by a good stove, was shaving a customer and casting a glance from time to time at the enemy, that freezing and impudent street urchin both of whose hands were in his pockets, but whose mind was evidently unsheathed.
While Gavroche was scrutinizing the shop-window and the cakes of windsor soap, two children of unequal stature, very neatly dressed, and still smaller than himself, one apparently about seven years of age, the other five, timidly turned the handle and entered the shop, with a request for something or other, alms possibly, in a plaintive murmur which resembled a groan rather than a prayer.
They both spoke at once, and their words were unintelligible because sobs broke the voice of the younger, and the teeth of the elder were chattering with cold.
The barber wheeled round with a furious look, and without abandoning his razor, thrust back the elder with his left hand and the younger with his knee, and slammed his door, saying:
“The idea of coming in and freezing everybody for nothing!”
The two children resumed their march in tears.
In the meantime, a cloud had risen; it had begun to rain.
Little Gavroche ran after them and accosted them:—
“What’s the matter with you, brats?”
“We don’t know where we are to sleep,” replied the elder.
“Is that all?” said Gavroche.
“A great matter, truly.
The idea of bawling about that.
They must be greenies!”
And adopting, in addition to his superiority, which was rather bantering, an accent of tender authority and gentle patronage:—
“Come along with me, young ‘uns!”
“Yes, sir,” said the elder.
And the two children followed him as they would have followed an archbishop.
They had stopped crying.
Gavroche led them up the Rue Saint-Antoine in the direction of the Bastille.
As Gavroche walked along, he cast an indignant backward glance at the barber’s shop.
“That fellow has no heart, the whiting," he muttered. “He’s an Englishman.”
A woman who caught sight of these three marching in a file, with Gavroche at their head, burst into noisy laughter. This laugh was wanting in respect towards the group.
“Good day, Mamselle Omnibus,” said Gavroche to her.
An instant later, the wig-maker occurred to his mind once more, and he added:—
“I am making a mistake in the beast; he’s not a whiting, he’s a serpent.
Barber, I’ll go and fetch a locksmith, and I’ll have a bell hung to your tail.”
This wig-maker had rendered him aggressive.
As he strode over a gutter, he apostrophized a bearded portress who was worthy to meet Faust on the Brocken, and who had a broom in her hand.
“Madam,” said he, “so you are going out with your horse?”
And thereupon, he spattered the polished boots of a pedestrian.
“You scamp!” shouted the furious pedestrian.
Gavroche elevated his nose above his shawl.
“Is Monsieur complaining?”
“Of you!” ejaculated the man.
“The office is closed,” said Gavroche,
“I do not receive any more complaints.”
In the meanwhile, as he went on up the street, he perceived a beggar-girl, thirteen or fourteen years old, and clad in so short a gown that her knees were visible, lying thoroughly chilled under a porte-cochere.
The little girl was getting to be too old for such a thing.
Growth does play these tricks.
The petticoat becomes short at the moment when nudity becomes indecent.
“Poor girl!” said Gavroche.
“She hasn’t even trousers.
Hold on, take this.”
And unwinding all the comfortable woollen which he had around his neck, he flung it on the thin and purple shoulders of the beggar-girl, where the scarf became a shawl once more.
The child stared at him in astonishment, and received the shawl in silence.
When a certain stage of distress has been reached in his misery, the poor man no longer groans over evil, no longer returns thanks for good.
That done: “Brrr!” said Gavroche, who was shivering more than Saint Martin, for the latter retained one-half of his cloak.
At this brrr! the downpour of rain, redoubled in its spite, became furious.