A moment after the hair-dresser returning to his mind, he added,—
"I made a mistake about the brute; he is not a whiting, but a snake. Barber, I'll go and fetch a locksmith, and order him to put a bell on your tail."
This barber had made him aggressive; as he stepped across a gutter, he addressed a bearded portress, worthy to meet Faust on the Brocken, and who was holding her broom in her hand,—
"Madame," he said to her, "I see that you go out with your horse."
And after this he plashed the varnished boots of a passer-by.
"Scoundrel!" the gentleman said furiously. Gavroche raised his nose out of the shawl.
"Have you a complaint to make, sir?"
"Yes, of you," said the gentleman.
"The office is closed," Gavroche remarked. "I don't receive any more complaints to-day."
As he went along the street he noticed a girl of thirteen or fourteen, shivering in a gateway, in such short petticoats that she showed her knees. But the little girl was beginning to get too tall a girl for that. Growth plays you such tricks, and the petticoat begins to become short when nudity grows indecent.