Les Misérables
The gamin examined the rope, the flue, the wall, the windows, and made
that indescribable and disdainful noise with his lips which signifies:—
“Is that all!”
“There’s a man up there whom you are to save,” resumed Montparnasse.
“Will you?” began Brujon again.
“Greenhorn!” replied the lad, as though the question appeared a most
unprecedented one to him.
And he took off his shoes.
Guelemer seized Gavroche by one arm, set him on the roof of the shanty,
whose worm-eaten planks bent beneath the urchin’s weight, and handed
him the rope which Brujon had knotted together during Montparnasse’s
absence. The gamin directed his steps towards the flue, which it was
easy to enter, thanks to a large crack which touched the roof. At the
moment when he was on the point of ascending, Thénardier, who saw life
and safety approaching, bent over the edge of the wall; the first light
of dawn struck white upon his brow dripping with sweat, upon his livid
cheek-bones, his sharp and savage nose, his bristling gray beard, and
Gavroche recognized him.
“Hullo! it’s my father! Oh, that won’t hinder.”
And taking the rope in his teeth, he resolutely began the ascent.
He reached the summit of the hut, bestrode the old wall as though it
had been a horse, and knotted the rope firmly to the upper cross-bar of
the window.
A moment later, Thénardier was in the street.
As soon as he touched the pavement, as soon as he found himself out of
danger, he was no longer either weary, or chilled or trembling; the
terrible things from which he had escaped vanished like smoke, all that
strange and ferocious mind awoke once more, and stood erect and free,
ready to march onward.
These were this man’s first words:—
“Now, whom are we to eat?”
It is useless to explain the sense of this frightfully transparent
remark, which signifies both to kill, to assassinate, and to plunder.
_To eat_, true sense: _to devour_.
“Let’s get well into a corner,” said Brujon. “Let’s settle it in three
words, and part at once. There was an affair that promised well in the
Rue Plumet, a deserted street, an isolated house, an old rotten gate on
a garden, and lone women.”
“Well! why not?” demanded Thénardier.
“Your girl, Éponine, went to see about the matter,” replied Babet.
“And she brought a biscuit to Magnon,” added Guelemer. “Nothing to be
made there.”
“The girl’s no fool,” said Thénardier. “Still, it must be seen to.”
“Yes, yes,” said Brujon, “it must be looked up.”
In the meanwhile, none of the men seemed to see Gavroche, who, during
this colloquy, had seated himself on one of the fence-posts; he waited
a few moments, thinking that perhaps his father would turn towards him,
then he put on his shoes again, and said:—
“Is that all? You don’t want any more, my men? Now you’re out of your
scrape. I’m off. I must go and get my brats out of bed.”
And off he went.
The five men emerged, one after another, from the enclosure.
When Gavroche had disappeared at the corner of the Rue des Ballets,
Babet took Thénardier aside.
“Did you take a good look at that young ’un?” he asked.
“What young ’un?”
“The one who climbed the wall and carried you the rope.”
“Not particularly.”
“Well, I don’t know, but it strikes me that it was your son.”
“Bah!” said Thénardier, “do you think so?”
BOOK SEVENTH—SLANG
CHAPTER I—ORIGIN
_Pigritia_ is a terrible word.
It engenders a whole world, _la pègre_, for which read _theft_, and a
hell, _la pègrenne_, for which read _hunger_.
Thus, idleness is the mother.
She has a son, theft, and a daughter, hunger.
Where are we at this moment? In the land of slang.
What is slang? It is at one and the same time, a nation and a dialect;
it is theft in its two kinds; people and language.
When, four and thirty years ago, the narrator of this grave and sombre
history introduced into a work written with the same aim as this39 a
thief who talked argot, there arose amazement and clamor.—“What! How!
Argot! Why, argot is horrible! It is the language of prisons, galleys,
convicts, of everything that is most abominable in society!” etc., etc.
We have never understood this sort of objections.
Since that time, two powerful romancers, one of whom is a profound
observer of the human heart, the other an intrepid friend of the
people, Balzac and Eugène Sue, having represented their ruffians as
talking their natural language, as the author of _The Last Day of a
Condemned Man_ did in 1828, the same objections have been raised.
People repeated: “What do authors mean by that revolting dialect? Slang
is odious! Slang makes one shudder!”
Who denies that? Of course it does.
When it is a question of probing a wound, a gulf, a society, since when
has it been considered wrong to go too far? to go to the bottom? We
have always thought that it was sometimes a courageous act, and, at
least, a simple and useful deed, worthy of the sympathetic attention
which duty accepted and fulfilled merits. Why should one not explore
everything, and study everything? Why should one halt on the way? The
halt is a matter depending on the sounding-line, and not on the
leadsman.
Certainly, too, it is neither an attractive nor an easy task to
undertake an investigation into the lowest depths of the social order,
where terra firma comes to an end and where mud begins, to rummage in
those vague, murky waves, to follow up, to seize and to fling, still
quivering, upon the pavement that abject dialect which is dripping with
filth when thus brought to the light, that pustulous vocabulary each
word of which seems an unclean ring from a monster of the mire and the
shadows. Nothing is more lugubrious than the contemplation thus in its
nudity, in the broad light of thought, of the horrible swarming of
slang. It seems, in fact, to be a sort of horrible beast made for the
night which has just been torn from its cesspool. One thinks one
beholds a frightful, living, and bristling thicket which quivers,
rustles, wavers, returns to shadow, threatens and glares. One word
resembles a claw, another an extinguished and bleeding eye, such and
such a phrase seems to move like the claw of a crab. All this is alive
with the hideous vitality of things which have been organized out of
disorganization.
Now, when has horror ever excluded study? Since when has malady
banished medicine? Can one imagine a naturalist refusing to study the
viper, the bat, the scorpion, the centipede, the tarantula, and one who
would cast them back into their darkness, saying: “Oh! how ugly that
is!” The thinker who should turn aside from slang would resemble a
surgeon who should avert his face from an ulcer or a wart. He would be
like a philologist refusing to examine a fact in language, a
philosopher hesitating to scrutinize a fact in humanity. For, it must
be stated to those who are ignorant of the case, that argot is both a
literary phenomenon and a social result. What is slang, properly
speaking? It is the language of wretchedness.
We may be stopped; the fact may be put to us in general terms, which is
one way of attenuating it; we may be told, that all trades,
professions, it may be added, all the accidents of the social hierarchy
and all forms of intelligence, have their own slang. The merchant who
says: “Montpellier not active, Marseilles fine quality,” the broker on
’change who says: “Assets at end of current month,” the gambler who
says: _“Tiers et tout, refait de pique,”_ the sheriff of the Norman
Isles who says: “The holder in fee reverting to his landed estate
cannot claim the fruits of that estate during the hereditary seizure of
the real estate by the mortgagor,” the playwright who says: “The piece
was hissed,” the comedian who says: “I’ve made a hit,” the philosopher
who says: “Phenomenal triplicity,” the huntsman who says: _“Voileci
allais, Voileci fuyant,”_ the phrenologist who says: “Amativeness,
combativeness, secretiveness,” the infantry soldier who says: “My
shooting-iron,” the cavalry-man who says: “My turkey-cock,” the
fencing-master who says: “Tierce, quarte, break,” the printer who says:
“My shooting-stick and galley,”—all, printer, fencing-master, cavalry
dragoon, infantry-man, phrenologist, huntsman, philosopher, comedian,
playwright, sheriff, gambler, stock-broker, and merchant, speak slang.
The painter who says: “My grinder,” the notary who says: “My
Skip-the-Gutter,” the hairdresser who says: “My mealyback,” the cobbler
who says: “My cub,” talks slang. Strictly speaking, if one absolutely
insists on the point, all the different fashions of saying the right
and the left, the sailor’s _port_ and _starboard_, the scene-shifter’s
_court-side_, and _garden-side_, the beadle’s _Gospel-side_ and
_Epistle-side_, are slang. There is the slang of the affected lady as
well as of the _précieuses_. The Hotel Rambouillet nearly adjoins the
Cour des Miracles. There is a slang of duchesses, witness this phrase
contained in a love-letter from a very great lady and a very pretty
woman of the Restoration: “You will find in this gossip a fultitude of
reasons why I should libertize.”40 Diplomatic ciphers are slang; the
pontifical chancellery by using 26 for Rome, _grkztntgzyal_ for
despatch, and _abfxustgrnogrkzu tu XI_. for the Duc de Modena, speaks
slang. The physicians of the Middle Ages who, for carrot, radish, and
turnip, said _Opoponach, perfroschinum, reptitalmus, dracatholicum,
angelorum, postmegorum_, talked slang. The sugar-manufacturer who says:
“Loaf, clarified, lumps, bastard, common, burnt,”—this honest
manufacturer talks slang. A certain school of criticism twenty years
ago, which used to say: “Half of the works of Shakespeare consists of
plays upon words and puns,”—talked slang. The poet, and the artist who,
with profound understanding, would designate M. de Montmorency as “a
bourgeois,” if he were not a judge of verses and statues, speak slang.
The classic Academician who calls flowers “Flora,” fruits, “Pomona,”
the sea, “Neptune,” love, “fires,” beauty, “charms,” a horse, “a
courser,” the white or tricolored cockade, “the rose of Bellona,” the
three-cornered hat, “Mars’ triangle,”—that classical Academician talks
slang. Algebra, medicine, botany, have each their slang. The tongue
which is employed on board ship, that wonderful language of the sea,
which is so complete and so picturesque, which was spoken by Jean Bart,
Duquesne, Suffren, and Duperré, which mingles with the whistling of the
rigging, the sound of the speaking-trumpets, the shock of the
boarding-irons, the roll of the sea, the wind, the gale, the cannon, is
wholly a heroic and dazzling slang, which is to the fierce slang of the
thieves what the lion is to the jackal.
No doubt. But say what we will, this manner of understanding the word
_slang_ is an extension which every one will not admit. For our part,
we reserve to the word its ancient and precise, circumscribed and
determined significance, and we restrict slang to slang. The veritable
slang and the slang that is pre-eminently slang, if the two words can
be coupled thus, the slang immemorial which was a kingdom, is nothing
else, we repeat, than the homely, uneasy, crafty, treacherous,
venomous, cruel, equivocal, vile, profound, fatal tongue of
wretchedness. There exists, at the extremity of all abasement and all
misfortunes, a last misery which revolts and makes up its mind to enter
into conflict with the whole mass of fortunate facts and reigning
rights; a fearful conflict, where, now cunning, now violent, unhealthy
and ferocious at one and the same time, it attacks the social order
with pin-pricks through vice, and with club-blows through crime. To
meet the needs of this conflict, wretchedness has invented a language
of combat, which is slang.