1624 Les Miserables
we’ll go to the Opera. We’ll get in with the hired applauders.
The Opera claque is well managed. I wouldn’t associate with
the claque on the boulevard. At the Opera, just fancy! some
of them pay twenty sous, but they’re ninnies. They’re called
dishclouts. And then we’ll go to see the guillotine work. I’ll
show you the executioner. He lives in the Rue des Marais.
Monsieur Sanson. He has a letter-box at his door. Ah! we’ll
have famous fun!’
At that moment a drop of wax fell on Gavroche’s finger,
and recalled him to the realities of life.
‘The deuce!’ said he, ‘there’s the wick giving out. Atten-
tion! I can’t spend more than a sou a month on my lighting.
When a body goes to bed, he must sleep. We haven’t the
time to read M. Paul de Kock’s romances. And besides, the
light might pass through the cracks of the porte-cochere,
and all the bobbies need to do is to see it.’
‘And then,’ remarked the elder timidly,—he alone dared
talk to Gavroche, and reply to him, ‘a spark might fall in the
straw, and we must look out and not burn the house down.’
‘People don’t say ‘burn the house down,’’ remarked Gav-
roche, ‘they say ‘blaze the crib.’’
The storm increased in violence, and the heavy downpour
beat upon the back of the colossus amid claps of thunder.
‘You’re taken in, rain!’ said Gavroche. ‘It amuses me to hear
the decanter run down the legs of the house. Winter is a
stupid; it wastes its merchandise, it loses its labor, it can’t
wet us, and that makes it kick up a row, old water-carrier
that it is.’
This allusion to the thunder, all the consequences of