Patron-Minette - Character Descriptions

Character Descriptions

Montparnasse was, in the words of Hugo, "scarcely more than a child, a youth of under twenty with a pretty face, cherry-lips, glossy dark hair and the brightness of Springtime in his eyes. ... The gamin turned vagabond and the vagabond become an assassin ... A fashion plate living in squalor and committing murder."

Claquesous is described by Hugo as a creature of the night, and a vague underworld dweller at best, a ventriloquist, more often masked than not and shrouded in a thick cloud of mystery. He is possibly a police informer, given his almost miraculous talent for escaping police custody, most notably after Javert captures the gang at Gorbeau house. Javert ponders, "Had Claquesous melted into the shadows like a snow-flake in water? Had there been unavowed connivance of the police agents?" Under the name of Le Cabuc he joins the revolutionaries at the barricade, where he is shot by Enjolras for murdering an innocent citizen. Hugo suggests that he may have been sent to discredit the revolutionaries.

Babet was a jack of all trades, a performer, a doctor, tall and thin with "daylight ... visible through his bones." He had a family (a wife and children) at one point, but lost them "as one loses a pocket handkerchief."

Gueulemer is described as the most physically imposing of the gang members, "a Hercules ... come down in the world." However, he was known to have very little brain.