MARIUS
BOOK FIRST
PARIS ATOMISED
I. PARVULUS
PARIS has a child, and the forest has a bird; the bird is called the sparrow; the child
is called the
gamin.
Couple these two ideas, the one containing all the heat of the furnace, the other all the light of the
dawn; strike together these two sparks, Paris and infancy; and there leaps
forth from them a little
creature. Homuncio, Plautus would say.
This little creature is full of joy. He has not food to cat every day, yet he goes to the show every
evening, if he sees fit. He has no shirt to his back, no shoes to his feet, no roof over his head; he
is like the flies in the air who have none of all these things. He is from seven to thirteen years of
age, lives in troops, ranges the streets, sleeps in the open air, wears an old pair of his father's
pantaloons down about his heels, an old hat of some other father, winch covers his cars, and a single
suspender of yellow listing, runs about, is always on the watch and on
the search, kills time, colours
pipes, swears like an imp, hangs about the wine-shop, knows thieves and robbers, is hand in glove with
the street-girls, rattles of slang, sings smutty songs, and, withal, has
nothing bad in his heart. This
is because he has a pearl in his soul, innocence; and pearls do not dissolve in mire. So long as man
is a child, God wills that he be innocent.
If one could ask of this vast city; what is that creature? She would answer: "it is my bantling."
II. SOME OF HlS PRIVATE MARKS
The gamin of Paris is the dwarf of the giantess.
We will not exaggerate. This cherub of the gutter sometimes has a shirt, but then he has only one;
sometimes he has shoes, but then they have no seta; sometimes he has a shelter, and he loves it. for
there he finds his mother; but be prefers the street for there be finds
his liberty. He has sports of
his own, roguish tricks of his own, of which a hearty hatred of the bourgeois is the basis: he has his
own metaphors; to be dead he calls eating dandelions by the root: he has his own occupations, such
as running for hacks, letting down carriage-steps, sweeping the crossings
in rainy weather, which he
styles making ponts des arts, crying the speeches often made by the authorities
on behalf of the
French people, and digging out the streaks between the flags of the pavement; he has his own kind of
money, consisting of all the little bits of wrought copper that can be
found on the public thoroughfares.
This curious coin, which takes the name of scraps, has an unvarying and
well-regulated circulation
throughout this little gipsy-land of children.
He has a fauna of his own, which he studies carefully in the corners; the good God's bug, the death's
head grub, the mower, the devil, a black insect that threatens you by twisting about its tail which
is armed with two horns. He has his fabulous monster which has scales on its belly, and yet is not a
lizard, has warts on its back, and yet is not a toad, which lives in the crevices of old lime-kilns
and dry-cisterns, a black, velvety, slimy, crawling creature, sometimes swift and sometimes slow of
motion, emitting no cry, but which stares at you, and is so terrible that nobody has ever seen it;
this monster he calls the "deaf thing." Hunting for deaf things among the stones is a pleasure which
is thrillingly dangerous. Another enjoyment is to raise a flag of the pavement suddenly and see the
wood-lice. Every region of Paris is famous for the discoveries which can be made in it. There are
earwigs in the wood-yards of the Ursulines, there are wood-lice at the Pantheon, and tadpoles in the
ditches of the Champ-de-Mars.
In repartee, this youngster is as famous as Talleyrand. He is equally cynical, but he is more sincere.
He is gifted with an odd kind of unpremeditated jollity; he stuns the shopkeeper with his wild laugh-
ter. His gamut slides merrily from high comedy to farce.
A funeral is passing. There is a doctor in the procession. "Hullo!" shouts a gamin, "how long is it
since the doctors began to take home their work?"
Another happens to be in a crowd. A grave-looking man, who wears spectacles and trinkets, turns upon
him indignantly: "You scamp, you ve been seizing my wife's waist!"
"I, sir! search me!"
III. HE IS AGREEABLE
IN THE EVENING, by means of a few pennies which he always manages to scrape together,
the homuntio
goes to some theatre. By the act of passing that magic threshold he becomes transfigured; he
was a
gamin, he becomes a titi. Theatres are a sort of vessel turned upside down
with the hold at the top;
in this hold the titi gather in crowds. The titi is to the gamin what the
butterfly is to the grub; the
same creature on wings and sailing through air. It is enough for him to
be there with his radiance of
delight, his fulness of enthusiasm and joy and his clapping of hands like the clapping of wings, to make
that hold, close, dark, foetid, filthy, detestable, unwholesome, hideous, and as it is, a very Paradise.
Give to a being the useless, and deprive him of the needful, and you have
the gamin.
The gamin is not without a certain inclination towards literature. His tendency, however we say it
with the befitting quantum of regret--would not be considered as towards the classic. He is, in his
nature, but slightly academic. For instance, the popularity of Mademoiselle Mars among this little
public of children was spiced with a touch of irony. The gamin called her Mademoiselle Muche.
This being jeers, wrangles, sneers, jangles, has frippery like a baby and
rags like a philosopher,
fishes in the sewer, hunts in the drain, extracts gaiety from filth, lashes
the street corners with
his wit, fleers and bites, hisses and sings, applauds and hoots, tempers Hallelujah with turalural,
psalmodises all sorts of rhythms from De Profundis to the Chie-en-lit, finds without searching,
knows what he does not know, is Spartan even to roguery, is witless even to wisdom, is lyric even
to impurity, would squat upon Olympus, wallows in the dung-heap and comes out of it covered with
stars. The gamin of Paris is an urchin Rabelais.
He is never satisfied with his pantaloons unless they have a watch-fob.
He is seldom astonished, is frightened still less frequently, turns superstitions into doggerel
verses and sings them, collapses exaggerations, makes light of mysteries, sticks out his tongue
at ghosts, dismounts everything that is on stilts, and introduces caricature into all epic pomp-
osities. This is not because he is prosaic, far from it; but he substitutes
the phantasmagoria of
fun for solemn dreams. Were Adamaster to appear to him, he would shout out: "Hallo, there,
old
Bug-a-boo!"
IV. HE MAY BE USEFUL
PARIS BEGINS with the cockney and ends with the gamin, two beings of which
no other city is cap-
able; passive acceptation satisfied with merely alone on, and exhaustless enterprise; Prudhomme
and Fouillou. Paris the comprises this in its natural history. All monarchy is comprised in the
cockney; all anarchy in the gamin.
This pale child of the Paris suburbs lives, develops, and gets into and out of "scrapes," amid
suffering, a thoughtful witness of our social realities and our human problems.
He thinks himself
careless, but he is not. He looks on, ready to laugh; ready, also, for something else. Whoever
ye are who call yourselves Prejudice, Abuse, Ignominy, Oppression, Iniquity, Despotism, Injustice,
Fanaticism, Tyranny, beware of the gaping gamin.
This little fellow will grow.
Of what clay is he made? Of the first mud of the street. A handful of common soil, a breath and,
behold, Adam! It is enough that a God but pass. A God always has passed
where the gamin is. Chance
works in the formation of this little creature. By this word chance we mean, in some degree, haz-
ard. Now, will this pigmy, thoroughly kneaded with the coarse common earth, ignorant, illiterate,
wild, vulgar, mobbish, as he is, become an Ionian, or a Boeotian? Wait,
currit rota, the life of
Paris, that demon which creates the children of chance and the men of destiny, reversing the work
of the Latin potter, makes of the jug a costly vase.
V. HIS FRONTIERS
The gamin loves the city, he loves solitude also, having something of the sage in
him. Urbis amator,
like Fuscus; ruris amator, like Flaccus.
To rove about, musing, that is to say loitering, is, for a philosopher, a good way of spending
time; especially in that kind of mock rurality, ugly but odd, and partaking of two natures,
which surrounds certain large cities. particularly Paris. To study the banlieue is to study the
amphibious. End of trees, beginning of houses, end of grass, beginning of pavement, end of furrows,
beginning of shops, end of ruts, beginning of passions, end of the divine murmur. beginning of the
human hubbub: hence, the interest is extraordinary.
Hence, it is that in these by no means inviting spots which are always
termed gloomy, the dreamer
selects his apparently aimless walks.
He who writes these lines has long been a loiterer about the Ilarrire of Paris, and to him it is
a source of deepest remembrances. That close-clipped grass, those stony walks, that chalk, that
clay, that rubbish, those harsh monotonies of open lots and fallow land,
those early plants of the
market gardeners suddenly descried in some hollow of the ground, that mixture
of wild nature with
the urban landscape, those wide unoccupied patches where the drum men of
the garrison hold their
noisy school and imitate, as it were. the lighter din of battle, those solitudes by day and ambus-
cade by night, the tottering old mill turning with every breeze the hoisting-wheels
of the stone-
quarries, the drinking shops at the corners of the cemeteries, the mysterious charm of those dark
high walls, which divide into squares immense grounds, dimly seen in the distance, but bathed in
sunshine and alive with butterflies--all these attracted him.
There is hardly anybody but knows those singular places, the Glaciere,
the Cunene, the hideous
wall of Grenelle spotted with balls, the Mont-Parnasse, the Posse-aux-Loups, the white hazel
trees on the high banks of the Marne, Mont-Souris, the Tomhe-Issoire, the Pierre Plate de Chatil-
lon where there is an old exhausted quarry which is of no further use but as a place for the
growth of mushrooms, and is closed on a level with the ground by a trap-door of rotten boards. The
Campagna of Rome is one idea; the imam of Paris is another; to see in whatever forms our horizon,
nothing but fields, houses, or trees, is to be but superficial; all the
aspects of things are
thoughts of God. The place where an open plain adjoins a city always haws the impress of some
indescribable, penetrating melancholy. There, nature and humanity address you at one and the
same moment. There, the originalities of place appear.
He who, like ourselves, has rambled through these solitudes contiguous to our suburbs, which one
might term the limbo of Paris, has noticed dotted about, here and there, always in the most des-
erted spot and at the most unexpected moment, beside some straggling bedgeor in the corner of
some dismal wall, little helter-skelter groups of children, filthy, muddy, dusty, uncombed, dis-
hevelled, playing mumble-peg crowned with violets. These are all the runaway children of poor
families. The outer boulevard is their breathing medium, and the banlieue belongs to diem. There,
they play truant, continually. There they sing, innocently, their collection of low songs. They
are, or rather, they live there, far f mom every eye, in the soft radiance of May or June, kneel-
ing around a hole in the ground, playing marbles, squabbling for pennies, irresponsible, birds
flown, fet loose and happy; and, the moment they see you. remembering that
they have a trade
and must make their living, they offer to sell you an old woollen stocking full of May-bugs, or
a bunch of lilacs. These meetings with strange children are among the seductive but at the same
tune saddening charms of the environs of Paris.
Sometimes among this crowd of boys, there are a few little girls --are they their sisters?--almost
young women, thin, feverish, freckled, gloved with sunburn, with bead-dresses of rye-straw and pop-
pies,gay, wilitharefooted. Some of than are seen eating cherries among the growing grain. In the
evening, they are heard laughing. These groups, warmly lighted up by the full blaze of noon-day,
or seen dimly in the twilight, long occupy the attention of the dreamer, and these visions mingle
with his reveries.
Paris, the centre; the banlieue, the circumference: to these children,
this is the whole world.
They never venture beyond it. They can no more live out of the atmosphere of Paris than fish can
live out of water. To them, beyond two leagues from the barrieres there
is nothing more. Ivry,
Gentilly, Arcueil, Belleville, Aubervilliers, Menilmontant, Choisy-le-Roi,
Billancourt, Meudon, Issy,
Vaunvre, Sevres, Puteaux, Neuilly, Gennevilliers, Colombes, Romainville,
Chatou, Asnieres, Bougival,
Nanterre, Enghien, Noisy-le-Sec, Nogent, Gournay, Drancy, Gonesse; these
are the end of the world.
VI. A SCRAP OF HISTORY
AT the period, although it is almost contemporaneous, in which the action of this story is laid,
there was not, as there now is, a police officer at every street-corner an advantage we have no
time to enlarge upon); truant children abounded in Paris. The statistics gave an average of two
hundred and sixty homeless children, picked up annually by the police on their rounds, in open
lots, in houses m process of building, and under the arches of bridges. One of these nests, which
continues famous, produced "the swallows of the bridge of Arcola." This, moreover, is the most
disastrous of our social symptoms. All the crimes of man begin with the vagrancy of childhood.
We must except Paris. however. To a considerable degree, and notwithstanding the reminiscence
we have just recalled, the exception is just. While in every other city, the truant boy is the lost
man; while, almost everywhere, the boy given up to himself is, in some sort, devoted and abandon-
ed to a species of fatal immersion in public vices which eat out of him
all that is respectable,
even conscience itself, the gamin of Paris, we must insist, chipped and spotted as he is on the
surface. is almost intact within. A thing magnificent to think of. and one that shines forth res-
plendently in the glorious probity of our popular revolutions; a certain
incorruptibility results
from the mental fluid which is to the air of Paris what salt is to the
water of the ocean. To
breathe the air of Paris preserves the soul.
What we here say alleviates, in no respect, that pang of the heart which we feel whenever we
meet one of these children, around whom we seem to see floating the broken
ties of the disrupt-
ed family. In our present civilisation, which is still so incomplete, it
is not a very abnormal thing
to find these disruptions of families, separating in the darkness, scarcely
knowing what has
become of their children--dropping fragments of their life, as it were,
upon the public high-
way. Hence arise dark destinies. This is called, for the sad chance has coined its own expression,
"being cast upon the pavement of Paris."
These abandonments of children, be it said. in passing, were not discouraged
by the old monar-
chy. A little of Egypt and of Bolicnna in the lower strain, accommodated the
higher spheres,
and answered the purpose of the powerful. Hatred to the instruction of
the children of the peo-
ple was a dogma. What was the use of "a little learning?" Such
was the password. Now the truant
child is the corollary of the ignorant child. Moreover, the monarchy sometimes
had need of child-
ren, and then it skimmed the street.
Under Louis XIV., not to go any further hick, the king. very wisely, desired to build up a navy.
The idea was a good one. But let xis look at the means. No navy could there be, if, side by side
with the sailing vessel, the sport of the wind, to tow it along, in ease of need, there were not
another vessel capable of going where it pleased. either by the oar or
by steam; the galleys
were to the navy. then, what steamers now arc. Hence, there must be galleys; but galleys could
be moved only by galley-slaves, and therefore there must he galley-slaves.
Colbert, through the
provincial intendants and the parlements, made as many galley-slaves as
possible. The magis-
tracy set about the work with good heart. A man kept his hat on before a procession, a Huguenot
attitude; he was sent to the galleys. A boy was found in the street; if he had no place to sleep
in, and was fifteen years old, he was sent to the galleys. Great reign, great age.
Under Louis XV. children disappeared in Paris; the police carried them
off--nobody knows for what
mysterious use. People whispered with affright horrible conjectures about the purple baths
of
the king. Derbies speaks ingenuously of these things. It sometimes happened that the officers
running short of children, took some who had fathers. The fathers, in despair.
rushed upon
the officers. In such cases, the parlement interfered and hung--whom?The officers? No; the
fathers.
VII. THE GAMIN WILL HAVE HIS PLACE AMONG THE CLASSIFICATIONS OF INDIA
THE Parisian order of gamins is almost a caste. One might say: nobody wants to have anything
to do with them.
This word gamin was printed for the first time, and passed from the popular language into
that
of literature. in 1834. It was in a little work entitled Claude Gueux that the word first ap-
peared. It created a great uproar. The word was adopted.
The elements that go to make up respectability among the gamins are very
varied. We knew and
had to do with one who was greatly respected and admired. because he had seen a man fall from
the towers of Notre Dame; another, because he had succeeded in making his way into the rear
inclosure where the statues intended for the dome of the Invalides were
deposited. and had
scraped off some of the lead; a third. because he had seen a diligence
upset; and still ano-
ther, because he knew a soldier who had almost knocked out the eye of a bourgeois.
This explains that odd exclamation of a Parisian gamin, a depth of lamentation which the mul-
titude laugh at without comprehending. "Oh, Lordy, Lordy, a'nt' I unlucky! only think I never
saw anybody fall from a fifth story;"-the words pronounced with an inexpressible twang of
his own.
What a rich saying for a peasant was this "Father so-and-so, your,
wife's illness has killed
her; why didn't you send for a doctor? "What are you thinking about,
friend?" says the other.
"Why, we poor people we haves to die ourselves." But, if all the passiveness of the peasant
is found in this saying, all the rollicking anarchy of the urchin of the suburbs is contained
in the following:--A poor wretch on his way to the gallows was listening
to his confessor,
who sat beside him in the cart. A Paris boy shouted out: "He's talking to his long-gown.
Oh, the sniveller!"
A certain audacity in religious matters sets off the gamin. It is a great thing to be strong-
minded.
To be present at executions is a positive duty. These imps point at the guillotine and laugh.
They give it all kinds of nicknames: "End of the Soup"--"Okl Growler"--"Sky-Mother"--"Thc
Last Mouthful," etc., etc. That they may lose nothing of the sight, they scale walls,
hang
on to ledconies, climb trees, swing to gratings, crouch into chimneys. The gamut is a born
skater as he is a born sailor. A roof inspires him with no more fear than a oast. No festival
is equal to the execution-firoundr--La Greve. Samson and the Abbe Montes are the really pop-
ular names. They shout to the victim to encourage him. Sometimes, they
admire him. The gamin
Lacenaire, seeing the horrible Dautun die bravely, used an expression which
was full of future:
"I was jealous of him!" In the order of gamins Voltaire is unknown, but they are acquainted
with Papavoine. They mingle in the same recital, "the politicals"
with murderers. They have trad-
itions of the last clothes worn by them all. They know that Tolleson bad on a forgcman'scap,
and tint Avril wore one of otter skin; that Laurel had on a round hat, that old Delaporte
was bald and bareheaded, that Castling was ruddy and good-looking, that Barks bad a sweet
little beard, that Jean Martin kept on his suspenders. and that Lecouffe and his mother
quar-
relled. Don't be finding fault now with your basket, shouted a gamin to the latter couple.
Another, to see Debacker pass, being too short in the crowd, began to climb
a lamppost on
the quay. A gendarme on that limit scowled at him. "Let me get up, Mister Gendarme," said
the gamin. And then, to soften the official, be added: "I won't fall." "Little do I care
about you falling," replied the gendarme.
In the order of gambit, a memorable accident is greatly prized. One of
their number reaches
the very pinnacle of distinction if he happen to cut himself badly, "into
the bone." as they say.
The fist is by no means an inferior element of respect. One of the things
the gamin is
fondest of saying is, "I'm jolly strong. I am!" To be left-handed
makes you an object of
envy. Squinting is highly esteemed.
VIII. IN WHICH WILL BE FOUND A CHARMING PLEASANTRY OF THE LATE KING
IN summer, he transforms himself into a frog; and in the evening, at nightfall,
opposite
the bridges of Austerlitz and Jena, from the coal rafts and washerwomen's boats, he plunges
head-foremost into the Seine, and into all sorts of infractions of the laws of modesty and
the police, However, the policemen are on the look-out, and there results from this
cir-
cumstance a highly dramatic situation which, upon one occasion, gave rise to a fraternal
and memorable cry. This cry, which was quite famous about 1830, is a strategic
signal
front gamin to gamin; it is scanned like averse of Homer. with a style of notation almost
as inexplicable as the Eleusinian melody of the Panathenaeans, scrolling once more the an-
cient "Evothe!" It is as follows: "Ohe! Titi, ohe! lookee yonder! they're comin' to ketch
ye! Grab yer clothes and cut through the drain!"
Sometimes this gnat--it is thus that he styles himself--can read; sometimes
heron write;
he always knows how to scrawl. Ile gets by some unknown and mysterious mutual instruction,
talents which may be useful in public affairs; from 1813 to 1830, he imitated the call of
the turkey; from 1830 to 18.18. he scratched a pear on the walls. One satiates evening,
Louis Philippe retuning to the palace on foot, saw one of thent,a little fellow, so high,
sweating and stretching upon tiptoe, to make a charcoal sketch of a gigantic pear, on one
of the pillars of the Neu illv gateway;the king. with that good nature which he inherited
front Henry IV., helped the boy, completed the pear, and gave the youngster a gold Louis,
saying: "The pear's on that too!" The gamin loves uproar. Violence and noise please him.
He execrates "the" cures. One day, in the Rue de l'Universite. one of these young scamps
was making faces at the porte-cochere of No. 69. "Why are you doing
that at this door?" asked
a passer-by. The boy rephed; " there's a cure there." It was, in fact, the residence of the
Papal Nuncio. Nevertheless, whatever may be the Voltairian tendencies of the gamin, should
an occasion present itself to become a choir-boy, he would, very likely,
accept, and in
such case would serve the mass properly. There are two things of which
he is the Tantalus,
which he ts always wishing for, but never attains--to overthrow the government.
and to get
his trousers mended.
The gamin, in his perfect state, possesses all the policemen of Paris, and, always. upon
meeting one, can put a name to the countenance. He counts them off on his fingers. He
studies their ways, and has special notes of his own upon each one of them.
He reads their
souls as an open book. He will tell you off-hand and without hesitating--Such a one is a
traitor; such a one is very cross; such a one is great, such a one is ridiculous; (all
these expressions, traitor, cross, great and ridiculous, have in his mouth a peculiar
signification)-- "That chap thinks the Pont Neuf belongs to him, and
hinders people from
walking on the cornice outside of the parapets; that other one has a mania
for pulling
persons' ears;" etc. etc.
IX. THE ANCIENT SOUL OF GAUL
THERE was something of this urchin in Poquelin, the son of the market-place; there was
something of him in Beaumarchais. The gamin style of life is a shade of the Gallic mind.
Mingled with good sense, it sometimes gives it additional strength, as alcohol does to
wine. Sometinws, it is a defect; Homer nods; one might say Voltaire plays gamin. Camille
Desmoulins was a suburban. Championnet, who brutalised miracles, was a child of the Paris
streets; he had when a little boy besprinkled the porticoes of St. Jean de Beauvais and
St. Etienne du Mont; he had chatted with the shrine of St. Genevieve enough to throw
into convulsions the sacred vial of St. Januanus.
The Paris gamin is respectful, ironical, and insolent. He has bad teeth, because be is
poorly fed, and his stomach suffers, and fine eyes because he has genius. In the very
presence of Jehovah, he would go hopping and Jumping up the steps of Paradise. He is very
good at boxing with both hands and feet. Every description of growth is possible to him.
He plays in the gutter and rises from it by revolt; his effrontery is not cured by grape;
he was a blackguard, lo! he is a hero! like the little Theban he shakes
the lion's skin;
Barra the drummer was a Paris gamin; he shouts "Forward!" as the charger of Holy Writ
says "'Ha! ha!" and in a moment, he passes from the urchin to the giant.
This child of the gutter is, also, the child of the ideal. Measure this sweep of wing
which reaches from Moliere to Barra.
As sum total, and to embrace all in a world, the gamin is a being who amuses himself
because he is unfortunate.
X. ECCE PARIS, ECCE HOMO
To sum up all once more, the gamin of Paris of the present day. is as the graeulus of
Rome was in ancient times, the people as a child, with the wrinkles of the old world
on its brow.
The gamin is a beauty and, at the same time, a disease of the nation--a disease that
must be cured. How? By light.
Light makes whole.
Light enlightens.
All the generous irradiations of society spring from science, letters, the arts, and
instruction. Make men, make men. Give them light, that they may give you
warmth.
Soon or late, the splendid question of universal instruction will take
its position with
the irresistible authority of 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 is the expression of Paris, and Paris is the expression of the world.
For Paris is a sum total. Paris is the ceiling of the human race. All this prodigious
city is an epitome of dead and living manners and customs. He who sees Paris, seems
to see all history through with sky and constellations in the intervals. Paris has a
Capitol, the Hotel de Ville; a Parthenon, Notre Dame; a Mount Aventine, the Faubourg
St; Antoine; an Asinarium, the Sorbonne: a Pantheon. the Pantheon; a Via
Sacra, the
Boulevard des Italiens; a tower of the Winds; public opinion--and supplies
the place
of the Gemoniae by ridicule. Its majo is the "faraud." its Trasteverino is the suburb-
an; its hammal is the strong man of the market-place; its lazzarone is the pegre; its
cockney is the gandin:. Alf that can be found anywhere can be found in Paris. The fish-
seaman of Dumarsais can hold her own with the herb-woman of Euripides.
the discobolus
Vejanis lives again in Forioso the rope-dancer, Therapomimmus Miles might
go arm
in arm with the grenadier Valdeboncoeur, Damasippus the curiosity broker
would be
happy among the old curiosity shops, Vincennes would lay hold of Socrates just as the
whole Agora would clap Diderot into a strong box; Grimod de la Reyniere discovered
roast-beef cooked with its own fat as Curtillus had invented roast hedgehog;
we see,
again. under the balloon of the are de l'Etoile the trapezium mentioned
in Plautus; the
sword-eater of the Poecilium met with by Apuleius is the swallower of sabres
on the
Pont-Neuf; the nephew of Raman and Curculion the parasite form a pair; Ergasilus
would get himself presented to Cambaceres by d'Aigrefeuille; the four dandies
of Rome.
Alcesimarchus. Phoedromus. Diabolus, and Argyrippe may be seen going down
in la Cor-
tille in the Labutat post-coach; Aulus Gellius did not stop longer in front
of Congrio than
Charles Nodier before Punch and Judy; Marton is not a tigress, but Pardalisca was not
a dragon; Pantolabus the buffoon chaffs Nomentanus the fast-liver at the
Cafe Anglais;
Hermogenus is a tenor in the Champs Elysees, and around him, Thrasius the
beggar
in the costume of Bobeche plies his trade; the bore who buttonholes you
in the Tui-
leries makes you repeat, after the lapse of two thousand years, the apostrophe of Thes-
prion: quis properantem me prehendit palliao? The wine of Surene parodies the wine of
Alba; the red rim of Desaugiers balances the huge goblet of Balatron, Pere
Lachaise
exhales, under the nocturnal rains, the same lurid emanations that were seen in the
Esquilies, and the grave of the poor purchased for five years, is about
the equivalent
of the hired coffin of the slave.
Ransack your memory for something which Paris has not. The vat of Trophonius
contains
nothing that is not in the washtub of Mesmer; Ergaphilas is resuscitated
in Cagliostro;
the Brahmin Vasapbantit is in the flesh again in the Count Saint Germain;
the cemetery
of St. Medard turns out quite as good miracles as the Oumoumie mosque at
Damascus.
Paris has an Aesop in Mayeux, and a Canidia in Mademoiselle Lenormand.
It stands
aghast like Delphos at the blinding realities of visions; it tips tables as I Fodona did
tripods, It enthrones the grisette as Rome did the courtesan; and, in fine, if Louis XV.
is worse than Claudius. Madame Duliarry is better than Metscilina. Paris combines in
one wonderful type which has had real existence, and actually elbowed us,
the Greek
nudity, the Hebrew ulcer, the Gascon jest. It mingles Diogenes, Job, and Paillasse,
dresses up a ghost in old numbers of the Constitutionnel, and produces Shadrac Duclos.
Although Plutarch may say: the tyrant never grows old, Rome, tinder Sylla as well as
under Domitian. resigned herself and of her own accord put water in her
wine. The Tiber
was a Lethe, if we may believe the somewhat doctrinal eulogy pronounced
upon it by
Varus Vibiscus: Contra Gracchos Tiberim habemus. Bibere Tiberim, id est seditionem
oblivisci. Paris drinks a quarter of a million of gallons of water per day, but
that
does not prevent it upon occasion from beating the alarm and sounding the
tocsin.
With all that, Paris is a good soul. It accepts everything right royally;
it is not
difficult in the realms of Venus; its Callipyge is of the Hottentot stamp:
if it but
laughs, it pardons, ugliness makes it merry; deformity puts it in a good
humour, vice di-
verts its attention; be droll and you may venture to be a scamp; even hypocrisy. that
sublimity of cynicism, it doees not revolt at; it is so literary that it
does not hold its
nose over Basilius, and is no more shocked at the prayer of Tartuffe than Horace
was at the hiccough of Priapus. No feature of the universal countenance is wanting
in the profile of Paris. The Mabile dancing garden is not the polyhymnian
dance of
the Janiculum, but the costume-hirer devours the lorette there with her
eyes exactly
as the procures Staphyla watched the virgin Planesium. The Barriere du Combat is not
a Coliseum, but there as much ferocity exhibited as though Cesar were a spectator. The
Syrian hostess has more grace than Mother Sagud, but, if Virgil haunted the Roman wine-
shop, David d'Angers, Balzac, and Charlet have sat down in the drinking-places
of Paris.
Paris is regnant. Geniuses blaze on all sides, and red perukes flourish. Adonis passes
by in his twelve-wheeled car of thunder and lightning; Silenus makes his entry upon his
tun. For Silenus read Ramponnmu.
Paris is a synonym of Cosmos. Paris is Athens, Rome, Sybaris, Jerusalem, Pantin. All
the eras of civilisation are there in abridged edition, all the epochs of barbarism
also. Paris would be greatly vexed, had she no guillotine.
A small admixture of the Place de Grave is good. What would all this continual merry-
making be without that seasoning? Our laws have wisely provided for this,
and, thanks
to them, this relish turns its edge upon the general carnival.
XI. RIDICULE AND REIGN
OF bounds and limits, Paris has none. No other city ever enjoyed that supreme control
which sometimes derides those whom it reduces to submission. To please you, O Athen-
ians! exclaimed Alexander. Paris does more than lay down the law it lays down the
fashion; Paris does more than lay down the fashion; it lays down the routine. Paris
may be stupid if it please; sometimes it allows itself this luxury; then, the whole u-
niverse is stupid with it. Upon this, Paris awakes, rubs its eyes, and says: "Am I stu-
pid!" and bursts out laughing in the face of mankind. What a marvel
is such a city!
how strange a thing that all this mass of what is grand and what is ludicrous should be
so harmonious, that all this majesty is not disturbed by all this parody, and that the
same mouth can today blow the trump of the last judgment and tomorrow a
penny-
whistle; Paris possesses an all-commanding joviality. Its gaiety is of
the thunderbolt,
and its frolicking holds a sceptre. Its hurricanes spring sometimes from
a wry face. Its
outbursts, its great days, its masterpieces, its prodigies, its epics fly to the ends
of the universe, and so do its cock and bull stories also. Its laughter is the mouth of
a volcano that bespatters the whole earth. Its jokes are sparks that kindle. It forces
upon the nations its caricatures as well as its ideal; the loftiest monuments of human
civilisation accept its sarcasms and lend their eternity to its waggeries. It is superb;
it has a marvellous Fourteenth of July that delivers the globe; it makes all the nations
take the oath of the tennis-court; its night of the Fourth of August disperses in three
hours a thousand years of feudalism; it makes of its logic the muscle of the unanimous
will; it multiplies itself under all the forms of the sublime; it fills with its radiance
Washington, Kosciusko, Bolivar, Botzaris, Riego, Bem, Manin, Lopez, John
Brown, Gari-
baldi; it is everywhere, where the future is being enkindled, at Boston in 1779 at the
Isle de St. Leon in 1820, at Pesth in 1848, at Palermo in 1860; it whispers
the mighty
watchword Liberty in the ears of the American Abolitionists grouped together in the boat
at Harper's Ferry, and also in the ears of the patriots of Ancona assembled in the gloom
at the Arai, in front of the Gleam tavern, on the seaside; it creates Canaris; it creates
Quiroga; it creates Pise cane; it radiates greatness over the earth; it is in going whi-
ther its broth impels, that Byron dies at Missolonghi, and Mazet at Barcelona; it is a
rostrum beneath the feet of hbrabeau, and a crater beneath the feet of Robespierre; its
books, its stage, its art, its science, its literature, its philosophy are the manuals
of the human race; to it belong Pascal, Regnier, Corneille, Descartes, Jean Jacques; Vol-
taire for every moment, Moliere for every century; it makes the universal mouth speak
its language, and that language becomes the Word; it builds up in every
mind the idea of
progress; the liberating dogmas which it forges are swords by the pillows
of the generations,
and with the soul of its thinkers and poets have all the heroes of all nations since 1789
been made; but that does not prevent it from playing the gamin; and this enormous genius
called Paris, even while transfiguring the world with its radiance, draws
the nose of Bou-
ginier in charcoal on the wall of the Temple of Theseus, and writes Credeville the robber
on the Pyramids.
Paris is always showing its teeth; when it is not scolding, it is laughing.
Such is Paris. The smoke of its roofs is the ideas of the universe. A heap of mud and
stone, if you will, but above all, a moral being. It is more than great,
it is immense. Why?
Because it dares.
To dare; progress is at this price.
All sublime conquests are, more or less, the rewards of daring. That the revolution should
come, it was not enough that Montesquieu should foresee it, that Diderot
should preach it,
that Beaumarchais should announce it, that Condorcet should calculate it,
that Arouet
should prepare it, that Rousseau should premeditate it; Danton must dare
it.
That cry, "Audace," is a Fiat Lux! The onward march of the human race requires that the
heights around it should be ablaze with noble and enduring lessons of courage. Deeds of
daring dazzle history, and form one of the guiding lights of man. The dawn
dares when
it rises. To strive, to brave all risks, to persist, to persevere, to be
faithful to yourself,
to grapple hand to hand with destiny, to surprise defeat by the little
terror it inspires,
at one time to confront unrighteous power, at another to defy intoxicated
triumph, to
hold fast, to hold hard--such is the example which the nations need. and
the light that
electrifies them. The same puissant lightning darts front the torch of Prometheus and
the clay-pipe of Cambronne.
XII. THE FUTURE LATENT IN THE PEOPLE
As to the people of Paris, even when grown to manhood, it is, always. the gamin; to depict
the child is to depict the city, and therefore it is that we have studied this eagle in
this open-hearted sparrow.
It is in the suburbs especially, we insist, that the Parisian race is found; there is the
pure blood; there is the true physiognomy; there this people works and suffers, and suf-
fering and toil are the two forms of men. There are vast numbers of unknown beings teeming
with the strangest types of humanity, from the stevedore of the Rapee to the horsekiller
of Montfaucon. Fex Urbis exclaims Cicero; mob, adds the indignant Burke; the herd, the multi-
tude, the populace. Those words are quickly said. But if it be so, what matters it? What
is it to me that they go barefoot? They cannot read. So much the worse. Will you abandon
them for that? Would you make their misfortune their curse? Cannot the light penetrate
these masses? Let us return to that cry: Light! and let us persist in it!
Light! light!
Who knows but that these opacities will become transparent? are not revolutions trans-
figurations? Proceed, philosophers, teach, enlighten, enkindle, think aloud,
speak aloud,
run joyously towards the broad daylight, fraternise in the public squares, announce the
glad tidings, scatter plenteously your alphabets, proclaim human rights,
sing your Marsei-
llaises, sow enthusiasms broadcast, tear off green branches from the oak-trees. Make
thought a whirlwind. This multitude can be sublimated. Let us learn to
avail ourselves
of this vast combustion of principles and virtues, which sparkles, crackles, and thrills
at certain periods. These bare feet, these naked arms, these rags, these shades of igno-
rance, these depths of abjectness, these abysses of gloom may be employed in the con-
quest of the ideal. Look through the medium of the people, and you shall
discern the truth.
This lowly sand which you trample beneath your feet, if you cast it into the furnace,
and let it melt and seethe, shall become resplendent crystal, and by means of such as
it a Galileo and a Newton shall discover stars.
XIII. LITTLE GAVROCHE
ABOUT eight or nine years after the events narrated in the second part
of this story,
there was seen, on the Boulevard du Temple, and in the neighbourhood of the Chateau
d'Eau, a little boy of eleven or twelve years of age, who would have realised with consid-
erable accuracy the ideal of the gamin previously sketched, if, with the
laughter of his
youth upon his lips, his heart had not been absolutely dark and empty. This child was well
muffled up in a man's pair of pantaloons, but he had not got them from his father, and
in a woman's chemise, which was not an inheritance from his mother. Strangers had clothed
him in these rags out of charity. Still, he had a father and a mother. But his father nev-
er thought of him, and his mother did not love him. He was one of those
children so deser-
ving of pity from all, who have fathers and mothers, and yet are orphans.
This little boy never felt so happy as when in the street. The pavement
was not so hard
to him as the heart of his mother.
His parents had thrown him out into life with a kick.
He had quite ingenuously spread his wings, and taken flight.
He was a boisterous, pallid, nimble, wide-awake, roguish urchin, with an air at once viva-
cious and sickly. He went, came, sang, played pitch and toss, scraped the
gutters, stole
a little, but he did it gaily, like the cats and the sparrows, laughed
when people called him
an errand-boy, and got angry when they called him a ragamuffin. He had no shelter, no
food, no fire, no love, but he was light-hearted because he was free.
When these poor creatures are men, the millstone of our social system almost always comes
in contact with them, and grinds them, but while they are children they escape because they
are little. The smallest hole saves them.
However, deserted as this lad was, it happened sometimes, every two or three months that he
would say to himself: "Come, I'll go and see my mother!" Then
he would leave the Boulevard,
the Cirque, the Porte Saint Martin, go down along the quays, cross the bridges, reach the
suburbs, walk as far as the Salpetriere, and arrive--where? Precisely at that double
number,
50-52, which is known to the reader, the Gorbeau building.
At the period referred to. the tenement No. 50.52, usually empty. and permanently decorated
with the placard "Rooms to let," was, for a wonder, tenanted by several persons who, in all
other respects, as is always the ease at Paris. had no relation to or connection with each
other. They all belonged to that indigent class which begins with the small bourgeois in em-
barrassed circumstances, and descends. from grade to grade of wretchedness,
through the
lower strata of society, until it reaches those two beings in whom all the material things
of civilisation termitutte, the scavenger and the ragpicker.
The "landlady" of the time of Jean Valjean was dead, and had been replaced by another exact-
ly like her. I do not remember what philosopher it was who said: "There is never any lack
of old women."
The new old woman was called Madame Burgon, and her life had been remarkable
for nothing
except a dynasty of three paroquets, which had in succession wielded the sceptre of her af-
fections.
Among those who lived in the building, the wretcbedest of all were a family of four persons,
father, mother, and two daughters nearly grown, all four lodging in the same garret room,
one of those cells of which we have already spoken.
This family at first sight presented nothing very peculiar but its extreme destitution; the
father, in renting the room, had given his name as Jondrette. Some time after his moving in,
which had singularly resembled, to borrow the memorable expression of the landlady, the en-
trance of nothing at all, this Jondrette said to the old woman, who, like her predecessor,
was, at the same time, portress and swept the stairs: "Mother So-and-So, if anybody should
come and ask for a Pole or an Italian or, perhaps, a Spaniard, that is for me."
Now, this family was the family of our sprightly little bare-footed urchin.
When he came there,
he found distress and, what is sadder still, no smile; a cold hearthstone
and cold hearts. When
he came in, they would ask: "Where have you come from?" He would
answer: "From the street."
When he was going away they would ask him: "Where are you going to?"
He would answer: "Into
the street." His mother would say to him: "What have you come
here for?"
The child lived, in this absence of affection, like those pale plants that spring up in cel-
lars. He felt no suffering from this mode of existence, and bore no ill-will
to anybody. He
did not know how a father and mother ought to be.
But yet his mother loved his sisters.
We had forgotten to sae that on the Boulevard du Temple this boy went by the name of little
Gavrothe. Why was his name Gavroche? Probably because his father's name was Jondrette.
To break all links seems to he the instinct of some wretched families.
The room occupied by the Jondrettes in the Gorbeau tenement was the last
at the end of the
hall. The adjoining cell was tenanted by a very poor young man who was called Monsieur Marius.
Let us see who and what Monsieur Marius was.
BOOK