The wicked skies punish good deeds.
“Ah, come now!” exclaimed Gavroche, “what’s the meaning of this?
It’s re-raining!
Good Heavens, if it goes on like this, I shall stop my subscription.”
And he set out on the march once more.
“It’s all right,” he resumed, casting a glance at the beggar-girl, as she coiled up under the shawl, “she’s got a famous peel.”
And looking up at the clouds he exclaimed:—
“Caught!”
The two children followed close on his heels.
As they were passing one of these heavy grated lattices, which indicate a baker’s shop, for bread is put behind bars like gold, Gavroche turned round:—
“Ah, by the way, brats, have we dined?”
“Monsieur,” replied the elder, “we have had nothing to eat since this morning.”
“So you have neither father nor mother?” resumed Gavroche majestically.
“Excuse us, sir, we have a papa and a mamma, but we don’t know where they are.”
“Sometimes that’s better than knowing where they are,” said Gavroche, who was a thinker.
“We have been wandering about these two hours,” continued the elder, “we have hunted for things at the corners of the streets, but we have found nothing.”
“I know,” ejaculated Gavroche, “it’s the dogs who eat everything.”
He went on, after a pause:—
“Ah! we have lost our authors.
We don’t know what we have done with them.
This should not be, gamins.
It’s stupid to let old people stray off like that.
Come now! we must have a snooze all the same.”
However, he asked them no questions.
What was more simple than that they should have no dwelling place!
The elder of the two children, who had almost entirely recovered the prompt heedlessness of childhood, uttered this exclamation:—
“It’s queer, all the same.
Mamma told us that she would take us to get a blessed spray on Palm Sunday.”
“Bosh,” said Gavroche.
“Mamma,” resumed the elder, “is a lady who lives with Mamselle Miss.”
“Tanflute!” retorted Gavroche.
Meanwhile he had halted, and for the last two minutes he had been feeling and fumbling in all sorts of nooks which his rags contained.
At last he tossed his head with an air intended to be merely satisfied, but which was triumphant, in reality.
“Let us be calm, young ‘uns.
Here’s supper for three.”
And from one of his pockets he drew forth a sou. Without allowing the two urchins time for amazement, he pushed both of them before him into the baker’s shop, and flung his sou on the counter, crying:—
“Boy! five centimes’ worth of bread.”
The baker, who was the proprietor in person, took up a loaf and a knife.
“In three pieces, my boy!” went on Gavroche.
And he added with dignity:—
“There are three of us.”
And seeing that the baker, after scrutinizing the three customers, had taken down a black loaf, he thrust his finger far up his nose with an inhalation as imperious as though he had had a pinch of the great Frederick’s snuff on the tip of his thumb, and hurled this indignant apostrophe full in the baker’s face:—
“Keksekca?”
Those of our readers who might be tempted to espy in this interpellation of Gavroche’s to the baker a Russian or a Polish word, or one of those savage cries which the Yoways and the Botocudos hurl at each other from bank to bank of a river, athwart the solitudes, are warned that it is a word which they [our readers] utter every day, and which takes the place of the phrase:
“Qu’est-ce que c’est que cela?”
The baker understood perfectly, and replied:—
“Well!
It’s bread, and very good bread of the second quality.”
“You mean larton brutal [black bread]!” retorted Gavroche, calmly and coldly disdainful.
“White bread, boy! white bread [larton savonne]!