During the period when both he and Cosette are unhappy, Valjean makes his historic visit to the Thénardiers. When he comes back the next day with an ugly wound on his arm that keeps him in bed with a fever for a month, Cosette cares for him with angelic devotion. Their renewed intimacy fills Jean Valjean with delight, and Cosette, for her part, finds a distraction in her new responsibilities and satisfaction in her father's improvement. Then April comes, and spring is an infallible balm for a young and delicate soul.
One evening, Gavroche, tired of a two-day fast, decides to go on a food-hunting expedition. In investigating an apple bin in a garden, he overhears a conversation between M. Mabeuf and his old servant, Mother Plutarch. She is reminding him there is no food in the larder, and no one will give them credit because they owe money everywhere.
This doleful exchange compels Gavroche to abandon his designs on the apple bin and to think about this poverty even greater than his own. He is distracted from his meditations by a puzzling and alarming sight. An old gentleman is strolling toward him, unaware that he is being followed by Montparnasse, Gavroche's underworld friend. Before the urchin has a chance to intervene, the thief pounces on his intended victim, but he has underestimated his opponent. To his immense humiliation, he is beaten to the ground and held as if by a vise. Without letting go, the passerby gives him a sobering lecture, a preview of his potential fate as a convict in a living hell. Then he hands Montparnasse his purse and quietly resumes his walk. Montparnasse is stunned — a fatal paralysis. Gavroche sneaks up on him like a cat, steals his purse, and drops it in Mabeuf's garden. Mabeuf cannot believe his eyes as the purse falls from the sky before him.
