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.’ ”