What is the use of “half-lights”? Such was the countersign.
Now, the erring child is the corollary of the ignorant child.
Besides this, the monarchy sometimes was in need of children, and in that case it skimmed the streets.
Under Louis XIV., not to go any further back, the king rightly desired to create a fleet.
The idea was a good one. But let us consider the means.
There can be no fleet, if, beside the sailing ship, that plaything of the winds, and for the purpose of towing it, in case of necessity, there is not the vessel which goes where it pleases, either by means of oars or of steam; the galleys were then to the marine what steamers are to-day.
Therefore, galleys were necessary; but the galley is moved only by the galley-slave; hence, galley-slaves were required.
Colbert had the commissioners of provinces and the parliaments make as many convicts as possible.
The magistracy showed a great deal of complaisance in the matter.
A man kept his hat on in the presence of a procession—it was a Huguenot attitude; he was sent to the galleys.
A child was encountered in the streets; provided that he was fifteen years of age and did not know where he was to sleep, he was sent to the galleys.
Grand reign; grand century.
Under Louis XV. children disappeared in Paris; the police carried them 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 Greve.
Samson and the Abbe Montes 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.”