1614 Les Miserables
This stove-pipe, which has been baptized by a sonorous
name, and called the column of July, this monument of a
revolution that miscarried, was still enveloped in 1832, in
an immense shirt of woodwork, which we regret, for our
part, and by a vast plank enclosure, which completed the
task of isolating the elephant.
It was towards this corner of the place, dimly lighted by
the reflection of a distant street lamp, that the gamin guided
his two ‘brats.’
The reader must permit us to interrupt ourselves here
and to remind him that we are dealing with simple reality,
and that twenty years ago, the tribunals were called upon to
judge, under the charge of vagabondage, and mutilation of
a public monument, a child who had been caught asleep in
this very elephant of the Bastille. This fact noted, we pro-
ceed.
On arriving in the vicinity of the colossus, Gavroche
comprehended the effect which the infinitely great might
produce on the infinitely small, and said:—
‘Don’t be scared, infants.’
Then he entered through a gap in the fence into the el-
ephant’s enclosure and helped the young ones to clamber
through the breach. The two children, somewhat frightened,
followed Gavroche without uttering a word, and confided
themselves to this little Providence in rags which had given
them bread and had promised them a shelter.
There, extended along the fence, lay a ladder which by
day served the laborers in the neighboring timber-yard.
Gavroche raised it with remarkable vigor, and placed it