Les Misérables Volume IV Book 6 Chapter 1

In which the shadowy commerce of poverty and parental neglect reveals itself through the Thénardier family's cruel abandonment of their youngest sons, who are furtively exchanged and cared for under false pretences in the inscrutable alleys of Paris. The fragile tether of childhood security is abruptly severed by a police raid, thrusting the two small wanderers into the cold anonymity of the city's wintry streets, their fate uncertain and their guide lost to the capricious wind.