This cluster supported a trellis-work of brass wire which was simply placed upon it, but artistically applied, and held by fastenings of iron wire, so that it enveloped all three holes.
A row of very heavy stones kept this network down to the floor so that nothing could pass under it.
This grating was nothing else than a piece of the brass screens with which aviaries are covered in menageries.
Gavroche’s bed stood as in a cage, behind this net.
The whole resembled an Esquimaux tent.
This trellis-work took the place of curtains.
Gavroche moved aside the stones which fastened the net down in front, and the two folds of the net which lapped over each other fell apart.
“Down on all fours, brats!” said Gavroche.
He made his guests enter the cage with great precaution, then he crawled in after them, pulled the stones together, and closed the opening hermetically again.
All three had stretched out on the mat.
Gavroche still had the cellar rat in his hand.
“Now,” said he, “go to sleep!
I’m going to suppress the candelabra.”
“Monsieur,” the elder of the brothers asked Gavroche, pointing to the netting, “what’s that for?”
“That,” answered Gavroche gravely, “is for the rats.
Go to sleep!”
Nevertheless, he felt obliged to add a few words of instruction for the benefit of these young creatures, and he continued:—
“It’s a thing from the Jardin des Plantes.
It’s used for fierce animals.
There’s a whole shopful of them there.
All you’ve got to do is to climb over a wall, crawl through a window, and pass through a door.
You can get as much as you want.”
As he spoke, he wrapped the younger one up bodily in a fold of the blanket, and the little one murmured:— “Oh! how good that is! It’s warm!”
Gavroche cast a pleased eye on the blanket.
“That’s from the Jardin des Plantes, too,” said he.
“I took that from the monkeys.”
And, pointing out to the eldest the mat on which he was lying, a very thick and admirably made mat, he added:—
“That belonged to the giraffe.”
After a pause he went on:—
“The beasts had all these things.
I took them away from them.
It didn’t trouble them.
I told them:
‘It’s for the elephant.’”
He paused, and then resumed:—
“You crawl over the walls and you don’t care a straw for the government.
So there now!”
The two children gazed with timid and stupefied respect on this intrepid and ingenious being, a vagabond like themselves, isolated like themselves, frail like themselves, who had something admirable and all-powerful about him, who seemed supernatural to them, and whose physiognomy was composed of all the grimaces of an old mountebank, mingled with the most ingenuous and charming smiles.
“Monsieur,” ventured the elder timidly, “you are not afraid of the police, then?”
Gavroche contented himself with replying:— “Brat! Nobody says ‘police,’ they say ‘bobbies.’”
The smaller had his eyes wide open, but he said nothing.
As he was on the edge of the mat, the elder being in the middle, Gavroche tucked the blanket round him as a mother might have done, and heightened the mat under his head with old rags, in such a way as to form a pillow for the child.
Then he turned to the elder:—
“Hey!
We’re jolly comfortable here, ain’t we?”
“Ah, yes!” replied the elder, gazing at Gavroche with the expression of a saved angel.
The two poor little children who had been soaked through, began to grow warm once more.
“Ah, by the way,” continued Gavroche, “what were you bawling about?”
And pointing out the little one to his brother:—
“A mite like that, I’ve nothing to say about, but the idea of a big fellow like you crying! It’s idiotic; you looked like a calf.”