And plunging into the darkness with certainty like a man who knows every corner of the room, he took a plank and stopped up the hole. Gavroche plunged again into the darkness; the children heard the fizzing of a match dipped into the bottle of phosphorus,--for lucifer matches did not yet exist, and the Fumade fire-producer represented progress at that day. A sudden light made them wink. Gavroche had lit one of those bits of string dipped in pitch which are called "cellar rats;" and this thing, which smoked more than it illumined, rendered the inside of the elephant indistinctly visible. Gavroche's two guests looked around them, and had much such a feeling as any one would have if shut up in the Heidelberg tun, or, better still, what Jonas must have experienced in the biblical belly of the whale. An entire gigantic skeleton was visible to them and enveloped them; above their heads a long brown beam, from which sprang at regular distances massive cross-bars, represented the spine with the ribs; stalactites of plaster hung down like viscera, and vast spider webs formed from one side to the other dusty diaphragms. Here and there in corners could be seen large black spots which seemed alive, and changed places rapidly with a quick and startled movement. The pieces which had fallen from the elephant's back on its belly had filled up the concavity, so that it was possible to walk on it as on a flooring. The youngest lad nudged his brother and said,-- "It is black." This remark made Gavroche cry out, for the petrified air of the two lads rendered a check necessary. "What's that you give me?" he shouted; "do you gab? You have dislikes, eh! I suppose you want the Tuileries? Are you brutes? Tell me, but I warn you that I do not belong to the regiment of spoonies. Well, to hear you talk one would think that your father was a prince of the blood." A little roughness is good in terror, for it reassures; the two children drew nearer to Gavroche, who, affected paternally by this confidence, passed from sternness to gentleness, and addressing the younger lad,-- "Blockhead," he said, toning down the insult with a caressing inflection of the voice, "it is outside that it's black. Outside it rains, and here it does not rain; outside it is cold, and here there is not a breath of wind; outside there is a heap of people, and here there's nobody; outside there's not even the moon, and here there's a candle, the deuce take it all!" The two lads began looking round the apartment with less terror, but Gavroche did not allow them any leisure for contemplation. "Quick," he said.