[Masterpiece Les Miserables] Paris Sparks

Ten days later, Gavroche was lying on the side of the street basking in the sun and sleeping, when he heard someone call his name.

"Hey! Gavroche!" shouted the other, kicking him in the calf with his bare feet, "you rascal, we are eating black bread in prison, and here you are at ease!"

Gavroche got up quickly, and saw his sister Éponine. "The note let you go so soon?" He asked with a smile, "Where are your parents? Azma?"

"Azma and I have no evidence, so they were released. The two of them? They said they entered the house with a knife and were sentenced to ten years." Eponine curled her lips. Got a good lawyer. But I don't think that lawyer's curly hair is any newer than other people's."

"Good guy, that's not short." Gavroche said, still smiling, showing no sign of worry or concern, "Then why don't you go to his gang when you get out of prison? Looking for me?"

"I want to ask you about someone."

"who?"

"He is a young student, about 20 years old, very handsome, with black hair, of medium build, always wearing a black suit and a white shirt."

Gavroche stuck out his tongue at her: "Are you looking for a young student who looks like this? There must be at least 3 people in Paris! Here." He pouted at the side, a black-haired man in black The young man happened to be passing across the road, deliberately staying away from the two poor children, for fear of getting fleas from them.Eponine waved her hand impatiently. "It's not him! He's much better-looking than him."

Gavroche looked at her with a smile.

"You want me to find someone, since you can't give me bread, you have to give me a reason?"

"It won't take much trouble for you! You've seen him, you know him. Just tell me if you've seen this man these days."

"I met him?"

"It's the one who used to live next door to our house." Eponine's cheeks flushed slightly when she said this, making her reveal a trace of youthful beauty in the spring sunshine.It's a pity that this beauty only fell into the eyes of the ignorant Gavroche. "Oh—it's him." He proudly made a face at Eponine, "It's you who lives next door to him, not me. If you don't know, how can I know his situation?"

Éponine gave him a hard look, turned and left.Gavroche said lazily after drawing out his voice: "But I know where you should ask."

Éponine turned sharply, like a thin wooden top being whipped. "Where is it?" she asked urgently.

"Go to Mr. Mabeuf in a thatched hut in the village of Austerlitz near the Women's Hospice. He is a white-haired old man. He used to be very close to that student. Maybe he knows."

Éponine was both surprised and delighted, a smile of joy appeared unconsciously on her face devastated by poverty.But she immediately turned down again, and nodded Gavroche viciously with her fingers: "If I know that you little bastard lied to me—"

"And what can you do to me?" asked Gavroche.

Eponine snorted, turned and walked away quickly.Gavroche looked up at the sky with his eyes squinted, and lay comfortably on the bluestone slab warmed by the sun for a while, guessing that the time was almost up, so he turned over and got up, and walked towards the vegetable market.He walked through a street, crossed a square, and crossed two streets, and arrived at a street not far from the banks of the Seine, where a roof made of red tiles could be seen in the distance, and he aimed at the red tiled roof. Go over the roof.

Under the red roof is a small three-story building, which was recently renovated a year or two ago, and the white paint on the walls has not had time to show signs of weathering and peeling.There is a white sign nailed to the door, with a line of neat black characters engraved on it: "Paris Lucy Girls School".Gavroche bypassed the sign and slipped in through the side door.Entering the door is a courtyard with flowers and plants planted around it. Several girls are cleaning the weeds in the flower bed with small shovels, and one of them needs to tiptoe to reach the inside of the flower bed.A black-haired girl with capital letters turned around and saw Gavroche.

"Hey, you're here again!" She greeted him like this.

Several other children also looked back at him, and a girl with hair like dry grass made an unfriendly grimace at him.Gavroche made a strange face, bypassed them, and ran along the wall to the kitchen behind.A tall, thick-handed, middle-aged woman in a white apron and two other little boys were peeling a large pile of potatoes. When they saw him coming, they didn't stand up, but raised their heads a little. He greeted very familiarly: "Come and help."

Gavroche then ran and took a pocket-knife from a side. "Wash your hands first." The cook ordered, so he washed his hands from the faucet against the wall, drank a couple of sips of water along the way, then sat under the shade of a tree, and began to process the pile of potatoes.

This girls' school, which has been opened for more than a year, only accepts female students, but they also allow street children under the age of 12 to come here to help with some chores. Girls can also choose to go to literacy classes at night, while boys just eat.Gavroche was not used to being restrained, so he only worked half a day every now and then in exchange for a meal of bread.He was very dexterous with his pocket knife.He peeled the potatoes quickly, and sometimes he pursued peeling a potato to the bottom without continuous peeling, thinking it was a pleasure.When this kind of fun is achieved, he quickly throws it away, and instead counts how many holes there are on a potato, how many places are damaged or rotten.Now and then he would peel off a piece of potato with a knife and put it in his mouth to chew, but the cook ignored him.When he got close to exploring the fun of potatoes, he began to fidget and get distracted, so she assigned him to fetch water and chop vegetables, and the children who were cutting vegetables were replaced to peel potatoes.He fetched water from the well, washed the vegetables, and broke off the stalks of the vegetables one by one, making a crisp "crack" sound, as if he was not working, but just playing a game of slaughtering the vegetables.

The afternoon passed gradually like this, the water was boiled, potatoes, vegetables and salt were thrown in to cook, and a few pieces of meat were added, even though they looked big, they disappeared in an instant when thrown into the soup.The cook took out the huge black bread, chopped it into pieces on the chopping board, and divided them into plates according to the number of people who were eating at the school.

The end bell at the front of the school rang.Another slightly shorter woman with a kind face poked her head in.

"Mother Prita, is the meal ready?"

"Everything is all right!" Gavroche replied loudly, imitating Prita's mother's usual tone, which made them both laugh.Several children helped scoop the stew and soup into two smaller tin buckets and carried them to the front.Another eight loaves and eight bowls of stew were left for the boys who worked here today.The boys who worked in the front yard quickly squeezed into the kitchen one by one, each grabbed a bowl, dropped the bread into the soup, and munched.

"There is meat today!" A frail child said in surprise.

"I've reserved a piece for everyone," Gavroche replied triumphantly.

The bowl was quickly emptied, and several children left empty bowls and scattered like birds and beasts.But Gavroche did not go, he waited in the kitchen, brushing the empty bowls along the way.After a while, the cook came back with an empty iron bucket, a pile of dishes, and a smell of stew, and was surprised to see him still sitting by the fire. "Why are you still here?" she asked him.

"I'm thinking of something," replied Gavroche.

"what's up?"

"I was thinking that if a person does something, he must finish it. It's like taking a bite of bread and swallowing it. You can't always choke it in your throat. Isn't it?"

"What are you trying to say, kid?" asked the cook.There are thirty people's dishes waiting to be washed in front of her, which makes her a little impatient to coax the children.

"What I'm saying is that you've done work in the poorhouse and won't see it through. If you take waifs to work, why do you keep only the girls and don't give the boys a place?"

The cook turned around and looked at him curiously. "I thought you wouldn't want to be adopted," she said.

"Me! Of course I don't want to!" said Gavroche, with an air of the greatest offense a count could have shown if he had been asked to pass through the passage of servants. "But I met two small children. Too young and don't know the art of street life. Parents are gone. Don't you care?"

"We're a school, not an orphanage," Mama Prieta said, sighing. "The headmaster and Miss Evermond are hard enough. She's rich, but she's not an emperor, who cares?" Eat and drink for everyone in France. The emperor doesn’t care, God doesn’t care, so why push it to her?”

"All right," muttered Gavroche, "I know grown-ups are unreliable."

He turned to leave, but at this moment a young lady in a long black dress opened the door. She seemed to be looking for the cook, but she caught sight of Gavroche. "Why did you stay so late?" she asked kindly.

Gavroche recognized Mademoiselle Cosette.She and her mother Fantine came to help with school affairs from time to time, and most of the children who often came here to help knew her, but Gavroche came rarely, and she did not know Gavroche.The cook told the story from the side.

"The school does not accept boys, there is no way." Miss Cosette explained softly, "But if you want, let's go to see Corona and ask her if there is another way to do it." help."

The author has something to say: I know why I wrote longer and longer, and why I stuffed a branch into it...

There are too many characters in Les Miserables! (despair.jpg