Never before in her life had Azelma felt so much like a vulture. She didn't want to be here, looting corpses with her father, but he had a way of dragging her into things she didn't want to do. She felt like she would throw up any second. These men's bodies were riddled with bullet holes. They used to be little boys like her brother Gavroche. Azelma remembered how he sometimes snuck her and Éponine into the theater with him. Azelma didn't go with them often, though. They loved the thrill of it, but she was too scared of being caught.

Thénardier hummed to himself as he made his way from body to body. Azelma didn't understand how her father could pick rings and trinkets off these men as carelessly as if he was buying food for the week. To her, it felt like the highest form of dishonor, an unforgivable breach of propriety. She couldn't bring herself to defile these schoolboys.

She came upon the body of a girl lying among the dead. What on earth would a girl be doing at the barricade? she wondered. Someone's sweetheart, perhaps? She gingerly brushed the tangled auburn hair out of the girl's face to reveal the face of her very own sister, Éponine. Azelma stumbled back in shock and horror. Her sister's clothes were stiff and dark with dried blood. Azelma found the source: a gunshot wound in her chest, which had gone through her hand first. This time she did throw up. Then she cried.

"Father," she spoke with great effort, "Éponine's here."

"She got what she deserved," Thénardier said without looking up. "Any fool such as she was should 'ave known to stay away from the barricades. But she was too smitten with those boys. She always was a worthless hussy."

Azelma sank down to her knees. How could her father talk that way about his own daughter?

"There's a brat among them!" Azelma looked up at the exclamation from her father. He was crouching over the body of a boy about twelve years old. "Par Dieu, c'est le petit oiseau!"

"Gavroche!" Azelma choked. Once her father had uttered that statement, she knew she had lost the remainder of her family. Thénardier was now digging through his son's pockets for potential valuables. Azelma couldn't bear to look anymore.

"C'mon, 'Zelma, this spot's been picked clean," Thénardier urged, already vacating the area. There was nothing clean about what he had just done.

Azelma slowly got to her feet. She looked one last time at Éponine and Gavroche, and at the other dead students. "Forgive us," she whispered.


translations

Par Dieu, c'est le petit oiseau!—By God, it's the little bird!