“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.’ ”