“Well,” returned Jean Valjean, “keep the money for your mother!”
Gavroche was touched.
Moreover, he had just noticed that the man who was addressing him had no hat, and this inspired him with confidence.
“Truly,” said he, “so it wasn’t to keep me from breaking the lanterns?”
“Break whatever you please.”
“You’re a fine man,” said Gavroche. And he put the five-franc piece into one of his pockets.
His confidence having increased, he added:—
“Do you belong in this street?”
“Yes, why?”
“Can you tell me where No. 7 is?”
“What do you want with No. 7?”
Here the child paused, he feared that he had said too much; he thrust his nails energetically into his hair and contented himself with replying:—
“Ah! Here it is.”
An idea flashed through Jean Valjean’s mind.
Anguish does have these gleams.
He said to the lad:— “Are you the person who is bringing a letter that I am expecting?”
“You?” said Gavroche. “You are not a woman.”
“The letter is for Mademoiselle Cosette, is it not?”
“Cosette,” muttered Gavroche.
“Yes, I believe that is the queer name.”
“Well,” resumed Jean Valjean,
“I am the person to whom you are to deliver the letter. Give it here.”
“In that case, you must know that I was sent from the barricade.”
“Of course,” said Jean Valjean.
Gavroche engulfed his hand in another of his pockets and drew out a paper folded in four.
Then he made the military salute.
“Respect for despatches,” said he.
“It comes from the Provisional Government.”
“Give it to me,” said Jean Valjean.
Gavroche held the paper elevated above his head.
“Don’t go and fancy it’s a love letter.
It is for a woman, but it’s for the people.
We men fight and we respect the fair sex.
We are not as they are in fine society, where there are lions who send chickens55 to camels.”
“Give it to me.”
“After all,” continued Gavroche, “you have the air of an honest man.”
“Give it to me quick.”
“Catch hold of it.”
And he handed the paper to Jean Valjean.
“And make haste, Monsieur What’s-your-name, for Mamselle Cosette is waiting.”
Gavroche was satisfied with himself for having produced this remark.
Jean Valjean began again:— “Is it to Saint-Merry that the answer is to be sent?”
“There you are making some of those bits of pastry vulgarly called brioches [blunders].
This letter comes from the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and I’m going back there.
Good evening, citizen.”
That said, Gavroche took himself off, or, to describe it more exactly, fluttered away in the direction whence he had come with a flight like that of an escaped bird.
He plunged back into the gloom as though he made a hole in it, with the rigid rapidity of a projectile; the alley of l’Homme Arme became silent and solitary once more; in a twinkling, that strange child, who had about him something of the shadow and of the dream, had buried himself in the mists of the rows of black houses, and was lost there, like smoke in the dark; and one might have thought that he had dissipated and vanished, had there not taken place, a few minutes after his disappearance, a startling shiver of glass, and had not the magnificent crash of a lantern rattling down on the pavement once more abruptly awakened the indignant bourgeois.
It was Gavroche upon his way through the Rue du Chaume.
CHAPTER III—WHILE COSETTE AND TOUSSAINT ARE ASLEEP
Jean Valjean went into the house with Marius’ letter.