Babet, Gueulemer, Claquesous, and Montparnasse — Les Misérables

A quartette of ruffians governed the third lower floor of Paris from 1830 to 1835: Claquesous, Gueulemer, Babet, and Montparnasse. Gueulemer was a Hercules of no defined position. For his lair he had the sewer of the Arche-Marion. He was six feet high, marble and brass in the muscles, the breath of a cavern, the torso of a colossus, the head of a bird. Built after this sculptural fashion, he might have subdued monsters. He had found it more expeditious to be one. His muscles called for work. His stupidity would have none of it. He was a great, idle force. He was an assassin through coolness. After a stage as a porter at Avignon, he had turned ruffian.

The diaphaneity of Babet contrasted with that grossness. Babet was thin and learned. Daylight was visible through his bones, but nothing through his eyes. He declared that he was a chemist. He had played in vaudeville, sold plaster busts in the open air, extracted teeth, and exhibited phenomena at fairs. He had been married and had had children. He did not know what had become of his wife and children. He had lost them as one loses his handkerchief. Babet read the papers, a striking exception in the world to which he belonged. Later on he had abandoned everything in order to undertake Paris. Who was Claquesous? He was night. He waited until the sky was daubed with black before he showed himself. He only addressed his accomplices in the most absolute darkness, and with his back turned to them. If a candle was brought, he put on a mask. He was a ventriloquist. Babet said: Claquesous is a nocturne for two voices. No one was sure whether he had a name, a voice, or a face. He disappeared as though he had vanished into thin air. When he appeared, it was as though he sprang from the earth.

A lugubrious being was Montparnasse. He was a child, less than twenty, with a handsome face, lips like cherries, the brilliant light of springtime in his eyes. He had all vices and aspired to all crimes. The digestion of evil aroused in him an appetite for worse. He was the street boy turned pickpocket, and a pickpocket turned garroter. He lived by robbery with violence. His coat was of the best cut, but threadbare. Montparnasse was a fashion-plate in misery and given to the commission of murders. The cause of all this youth's crimes was the desire to be well-dressed. The first girl who had said to him, You are handsome, had cast the stain of darkness into his heart, and had made a Cain of this Abel. Finding that he was handsome, he desired to be elegant. The height of elegance is idleness. Idleness in a poor man means crime. At eighteen he had already numerous corpses in his past. Curled, pomaded, a bludgeon in his pocket, a flower in his buttonhole: such was this dandy of the sepulchre.