Les Misérables
off, for what mysterious purpose no one knew. People whispered with
terror monstrous conjectures as to the king’s baths of purple. Barbier
speaks ingenuously of these things. It sometimes happened that the
exempts of the guard, when they ran short of children, took those who
had fathers. The fathers, in despair, attacked the exempts. In that
case, the parliament intervened and had some one hung. Who? The
exempts? No, the fathers.
CHAPTER VII—THE GAMIN SHOULD HAVE HIS PLACE IN THE CLASSIFICATIONS OF
INDIA
The body of street Arabs in Paris almost constitutes a caste. One might
almost say: Not every one who wishes to belong to it can do so.
This word _gamin_ was printed for the first time, and reached popular
speech through the literary tongue, in 1834. It is in a little work
entitled _Claude Gueux_ that this word made its appearance. The horror
was lively. The word passed into circulation.
The elements which constitute the consideration of the gamins for each
other are very various. We have known and associated with one who was
greatly respected and vastly admired because he had seen a man fall
from the top of the tower of Notre-Dame; another, because he had
succeeded in making his way into the rear courtyard where the statues
of the dome of the Invalides had been temporarily deposited, and had
“prigged” some lead from them; a third, because he had seen a diligence
tip over; still another, because he “knew” a soldier who came near
putting out the eye of a citizen.
This explains that famous exclamation of a Parisian gamin, a profound
epiphonema, which the vulgar herd laughs at without comprehending,—
_Dieu de Dieu! What ill-luck I do have! to think that I have never yet
seen anybody tumble from a fifth-story window! _ (_I have_ pronounced
_I’ave_ and _fifth_ pronounced _fift’_.)
Surely, this saying of a peasant is a fine one: “Father So-and-So, your
wife has died of her malady; why did you not send for the doctor?”
“What would you have, sir, we poor folks _die of ourselves_.” But if
the peasant’s whole passivity lies in this saying, the whole of the
free-thinking anarchy of the brat of the faubourgs is, assuredly,
contained in this other saying. A man condemned to death is listening
to his confessor in the tumbrel. The child of Paris exclaims: “He is
talking to his black cap! Oh, the sneak!”
A certain audacity on matters of religion sets off the gamin. To be
strong-minded is an important item.
To be present at executions constitutes a duty. He shows himself at the
guillotine, and he laughs. He calls it by all sorts of pet names: The
End of the Soup, The Growler, The Mother in the Blue (the sky), The
Last Mouthful, etc., etc. In order not to lose anything of the affair,
he scales the walls, he hoists himself to balconies, he ascends trees,
he suspends himself to gratings, he clings fast to chimneys. The gamin
is born a tiler as he is born a mariner. A roof inspires him with no
more fear than a mast. There is no festival which comes up to an
execution on the Place de Grève. Samson and the Abbé Montès are the
truly popular names. They hoot at the victim in order to encourage him.
They sometimes admire him. Lacenaire, when a gamin, on seeing the
hideous Dautin die bravely, uttered these words which contain a future:
“I was jealous of him.” In the brotherhood of gamins Voltaire is not
known, but Papavoine is. “Politicians” are confused with assassins in
the same legend. They have a tradition as to everybody’s last garment.
It is known that Tolleron had a fireman’s cap, Avril an otter cap,
Losvel a round hat, that old Delaporte was bald and bareheaded, that
Castaing was all ruddy and very handsome, that Bories had a romantic
small beard, that Jean Martin kept on his suspenders, that Lecouffé and
his mother quarrelled. “Don’t reproach each other for your basket,”
shouted a gamin to them. Another, in order to get a look at Debacker as
he passed, and being too small in the crowd, caught sight of the
lantern on the quay and climbed it. A gendarme stationed opposite
frowned. “Let me climb up, m’sieu le gendarme,” said the gamin. And, to
soften the heart of the authorities he added: “I will not fall.” “I
don’t care if you do,” retorted the gendarme.
In the brotherhood of gamins, a memorable accident counts for a great
deal. One reaches the height of consideration if one chances to cut
one’s self very deeply, “to the very bone.”
The fist is no mediocre element of respect. One of the things that the
gamin is fondest of saying is: “I am fine and strong, come now!” To be
left-handed renders you very enviable. A squint is highly esteemed.
CHAPTER VIII—IN WHICH THE READER WILL FIND A CHARMING SAYING OF THE
LAST KING
In summer, he metamorphoses himself into a frog; and in the evening,
when night is falling, in front of the bridges of Austerlitz and Jena,
from the tops of coal wagons, and the washerwomen’s boats, he hurls
himself headlong into the Seine, and into all possible infractions of
the laws of modesty and of the police. Nevertheless the police keep an
eye on him, and the result is a highly dramatic situation which once
gave rise to a fraternal and memorable cry; that cry which was
celebrated about 1830, is a strategic warning from gamin to gamin; it
scans like a verse from Homer, with a notation as inexpressible as the
eleusiac chant of the Panathenæa, and in it one encounters again the
ancient Evohe. Here it is: “Ohé, Titi, ohééé! Here comes the bobby,
here comes the p’lice, pick up your duds and be off, through the sewer
with you!”
Sometimes this gnat—that is what he calls himself—knows how to read;
sometimes he knows how to write; he always knows how to daub. He does
not hesitate to acquire, by no one knows what mysterious mutual
instruction, all the talents which can be of use to the public; from
1815 to 1830, he imitated the cry of the turkey; from 1830 to 1848, he
scrawled pears on the walls. One summer evening, when Louis Philippe
was returning home on foot, he saw a little fellow, no higher than his
knee, perspiring and climbing up to draw a gigantic pear in charcoal on
one of the pillars of the gate of Neuilly; the King, with that
good-nature which came to him from Henry IV., helped the gamin,
finished the pear, and gave the child a louis, saying: “The pear is on
that also.”19 The gamin loves uproar. A certain state of violence
pleases him. He execrates “the curés.” One day, in the Rue de
l’Université, one of these scamps was putting his thumb to his nose at
the carriage gate of No. 69. “Why are you doing that at the gate?” a
passer-by asked. The boy replied: “There is a curé there.” It was
there, in fact, that the Papal Nuncio lived.
Nevertheless, whatever may be the Voltairianism of the small gamin, if
the occasion to become a chorister presents itself, it is quite
possible that he will accept, and in that case he serves the mass
civilly. There are two things to which he plays Tantalus, and which he
always desires without ever attaining them: to overthrow the
government, and to get his trousers sewed up again.
The gamin in his perfect state possesses all the policemen of Paris,
and can always put the name to the face of any one which he chances to
meet. He can tell them off on the tips of his fingers. He studies their
habits, and he has special notes on each one of them. He reads the
souls of the police like an open book. He will tell you fluently and
without flinching: “Such an one is a _traitor_; such another is very
_malicious_; such another is _great_; such another is _ridiculous_.”
(All these words: traitor, malicious, great, ridiculous, have a
particular meaning in his mouth.) That one imagines that he owns the
Pont-Neuf, and he prevents _people_ from walking on the cornice outside
the parapet; that other has a mania for pulling _person’s_ ears; etc.,
etc.
CHAPTER IX—THE OLD SOUL OF GAUL
There was something of that boy in Poquelin, the son of the
fish-market; Beaumarchais had something of it. Gaminerie is a shade of
the Gallic spirit. Mingled with good sense, it sometimes adds force to
the latter, as alcohol does to wine. Sometimes it is a defect. Homer
repeats himself eternally, granted; one may say that Voltaire plays the
gamin. Camille Desmoulins was a native of the faubourgs. Championnet,
who treated miracles brutally, rose from the pavements of Paris; he
had, when a small lad, inundated the porticos of Saint-Jean de
Beauvais, and of Saint-Étienne du Mont; he had addressed the shrine of
Sainte-Geneviève familiarly to give orders to the phial of Saint
Januarius.
The gamin of Paris is respectful, ironical, and insolent. He has
villainous teeth, because he is badly fed and his stomach suffers, and
handsome eyes because he has wit. If Jehovah himself were present, he
would go hopping up the steps of paradise on one foot. He is strong on
boxing. All beliefs are possible to him. He plays in the gutter, and
straightens himself up with a revolt; his effrontery persists even in
the presence of grape-shot; he was a scapegrace, he is a hero; like the
little Theban, he shakes the skin from the lion; Barra the drummer-boy
was a gamin of Paris; he Shouts: “Forward!” as the horse of Scripture
says “Vah!” and in a moment he has passed from the small brat to the
giant.
This child of the puddle is also the child of the ideal. Measure that
spread of wings which reaches from Molière to Barra.
To sum up the whole, and in one word, the gamin is a being who amuses
himself, because he is unhappy.
CHAPTER X—ECCE PARIS, ECCE HOMO
To sum it all up once more, the Paris gamin of to-day, like the
_græculus_ of Rome in days gone by, is the infant populace with the
wrinkle of the old world on his brow.
The gamin is a grace to the nation, and at the same time a disease; a
disease which must be cured, how? By light.
Light renders healthy.
Light kindles.
All generous social irradiations spring from science, letters, arts,
education. Make men, make men. Give them light that they may warm you.
Sooner or later the splendid question of universal education will
present itself with the irresistible authority of the absolute truth;
and then, those who govern under the superintendence of the French idea
will have to make this choice; the children of France or the gamins of
Paris; flames in the light or will-o’-the-wisps in the gloom.
The gamin expresses Paris, and Paris expresses the world.
For Paris is a total. Paris is the ceiling of the human race. The whole
of this prodigious city is a foreshortening of dead manners and living
manners. He who sees Paris thinks he sees the bottom of all history
with heaven and constellations in the intervals. Paris has a capital,
the Town-Hall, a Parthenon, Notre-Dame, a Mount Aventine, the Faubourg
Saint-Antoine, an Asinarium, the Sorbonne, a Pantheon, the Pantheon, a
Via Sacra, the Boulevard des Italiens, a temple of the winds, opinion;
and it replaces the Gemoniæ by ridicule. Its _majo_ is called “faraud,”
its Transteverin is the man of the faubourgs, its _hammal_ is the
market-porter, its lazzarone is the pègre, its cockney is the native of
Ghent. Everything that exists elsewhere exists at Paris. The fishwoman
of Dumarsais can retort on the herb-seller of Euripides, the discobols
Vejanus lives again in the Forioso, the tight-rope dancer.
Therapontigonus Miles could walk arm in arm with Vadeboncœur the
grenadier, Damasippus the second-hand dealer would be happy among
bric-à-brac merchants, Vincennes could grasp Socrates in its fist as
just as Agora could imprison Diderot, Grimod de la Reynière discovered
larded roast beef, as Curtillus invented roast hedgehog, we see the
trapeze which figures in Plautus reappear under the vault of the Arc of