And when he was within reach he quickly and powerfully seized him by the arm, and drew him to him.
"Swallowed!" he said.
The boy had passed through the crevice.
"Now," said Gavroche, "wait for me. Pray sit down, sir."
And leaving the hole in the same way as he had entered it, he slid down the elephant's leg with the agility of a monkey, fell on his feet in the grass, seized the youngest boy round the waist and planted him on the middle of the ladder; then he began ascending behind him, shouting to the elder boy,—
"I'll push him and you'll pull him."
In a second the little fellow was pushed up, dragged, pulled, and drawn through the hole before he knew where he was; and Gavroche, entering after him, kicked away the ladder, which fell in the grass, and clapped his hands as he shouted, "There we are! Long live General Lafayette!" This explosion over, he added, "Brats, you are in my house."
Gavroche was, in fact, at home. Oh, unexpected utility of the useless! Oh, charity of great things! Oh, goodness of the giants! This huge monument, which had contained a thought of the Emperor, had become the lodging of a gamin. The brat had been accepted and sheltered by the colossus. The cits in their Sunday clothes who passed by the elephant of the Bastille were prone to say, as they measured it with a contemptuous look from the eyes flush with their head, Of what service is that? It served to save from cold, from frost, from damp and rain; to protect from the winter wind; to preserve from sleeping in the mud, which entails fever, and from sleeping in the snow, which causes death, a little fatherless and motherless boy without bread, clothes, or shelter. It served to shelter the innocent boy whom society repulsed. It served to diminish the public wrong. It was a lair opened to him against whom all doors were closed. It seemed as if the old wretched mastodon, attacked by vermin and oblivion, covered with warts, mould, and ulcers, tottering, crumbling, abandoned, and condemned,—a species of colossal mendicant asking in vain the alms of a benevolent glance in the midst of the highway,—had taken pity on this other beggar, the poor pygmy who walked about without shoes on his feet, without a ceiling over his head, blowing his fingers, dressed in rags, and supporting life on what was thrown away. This is of what use the elephant of the Bastille was; and this idea of Napoleon, disdained by men, had been taken up again by God. What had only been illustrious had become august. The Emperor would have needed, in order to realize what he meditated, porphyry, bronze, iron, gold, and marble; but for God the old collection of planks, beams, and plaster was sufficient. The Emperor had had a dream of genius. In this Titanic elephant, armed, prodigious, raising its trunk, and spouting all around glad and living waters, he wished to incarnate the people; and God had made a greater thing of it, for He lodged a child in it.
The hole by which Gavroche entered was a breach scarce visible from the outside, as it was concealed, as we said, under the elephant's belly, and so narrow that only cats and boys could pass through it.
"Let us begin," said Gavroche, "by telling the porter that we are not at home."