"The deuce!" Gavroche continued, "are you going to have a turn-up with the slops?" "There's no knowing," Montparnasse answered carelessly; "it's always as well to have a pin about you." Gavroche pressed him. "What are you going to do to-night?" Montparnasse again became serious, and said, mincing his words,-- "Some things." And he suddenly changed the conversation. "By the bye--" "What?" "Something that happened the other day. Just fancy. I meet a bourgeois, and he makes me a present of a sermon, and a purse. I put it in my pocket, a moment later I feel for it, and there was nothing there." "Only the sermon," said Gavroche. "But where are you going now?" Montparnasse continued. Gavroche pointed to his two protégés, and said,-- "I am going to put these two children to bed." "Where?" "At my house." "Have you a lodging?" "Yes." "Where?" "Inside the elephant," said Gavroche. Montparnasse, though naturally not easy to astonish, could not refrain from the exclamation,-- "Inside the elephant?" "Well, yes, kekçaa?" This is another word belonging to the language which nobody reads and everybody speaks; kekçaa signifies, _qu'est-ce-que cela a_? The gamin's profound remark brought Montparnasse back to calmness and good sense: he seemed to entertain a better opinion of Gavroche's lodgings. "Ah, yes," he said, "the 'elephant.' Are you comfortable there?" "Very," Gavroche replied. "Most comfortable. There are no draughts as there are under the bridges." "How do you get in? Is there a hole?" "Of course there is, but you have no need to mention it; it's between the front legs, and the police-spies don't know it." "And you climb in? yes, I understand." "A turn of the hand, cric crac, it's done; and there's no one to be seen." After a pause Gavroche added,-- "I shall have a ladder for these young ones." Montparnasse burst into a laugh. "Where the devil did you pick up those kids?" "A barber made me a present of them." In the mean while Montparnasse had become pensive. "You recognized me very easily," he said. He took from his pocket two small objects, which were quills wrapped in cotton, and thrust one into each nostril; they made him quite a different nose. "That changes you," said Gavroche; "you are not so ugly now, and you ought to keep them in for good." Montparnasse was a handsome fellow, but Gavroche was fond of a joke. "Without any humbug," Montparnasse asked; "what do you think of me now?" It was also a different sound of voice; in a second Montparnasse had become unrecognizable. "Oh! play Porrichinelle for us!" Gavroche exclaimed. The two lads, who had heard nothing up to this moment, engaged as they were themselves in thrusting their fingers up their noses, drew nearer on hearing this name, and gazed at Montparnasse with a beginning of joy and admiration. Unhappily Montparnasse was in no humor for jesting; he laid his hand on Gavroche's shoulder, and said, with a stress on each word,--