Patron-Minette was the name given to a street gang in Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo

Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....

's novel Les Misérables

Les Misérables

Les Misérables , translated variously from the French as The Miserable Ones, The Wretched, The Poor Ones, The Wretched Poor, or The Victims), is an 1862 French novel by author Victor Hugo and is widely considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century...

and the musical of the same name

Les Misérables (musical)

Les Misérables , colloquially known as Les Mis or Les Miz , is a musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg, based on the novel of the same name by Victor Hugo....

. They acted as secondary villains and were referred to, in the book, as "Devils of Crime". The gang consisted of Montparnasse, Claquesous, Babet, and Gueulemer. They were clearly well acquainted with the Thénardiers

Thénardiers

The Thénardiers, commonly known as Thénardier and Madame Thénardier , are two of the primary villains in Victor Hugo's novel Les Misérables and the stage musical of the same name...

, who brought them in for the ambush on Jean Valjean

Jean Valjean

Jean Valjean is the protagonist of Victor Hugo's 1862 novel Les Misérables...

, alias Ultime Fauchelevant.

Montparnasse

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

As described by the author, Claquesous was 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 policeman in disguise, given his almost miraculous talent for escaping police custody. Hugo suggests that he may have been killed in the line of duty at the barricade, disguised there as a revolutionary, as no one saw Claquesous again thereafter.

Babet

Babet was a jack of all trades, a performer, a dentist, 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

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.

Gang in the musical

The character of Gueulemer is replaced by Brujon, who appears in the novel but not as one of the Patron-Minette quartet. The gang first appears in Look Down/The Robbery/Javert's Intervention at which point they are introduced to the audience by Thénardier ("Everyone here?/You know your place./ Brujon, Babet, Claquesous!/ You, Montparnasse / Watch for the law with Éponine..."). Montparnasse also appears in a brief scene with Éponine at the beginning of "The Attack on Rue Plumet". That scene is often cut from recordings, but implies that the two are close. The gang attempts to rob Jean Valjean's house until Éponine, afraid that Marius will think her a criminal, screams to send them away.