Chapter Chapter 153 · A BIT OF HISTORY

At the epoch, nearly contemporary by the way, when the action of this

book takes place, there was not, as there is to-day, a policeman at the

corner of every street (a benefit which there is no time to discuss

here); stray children abounded in Paris. The statistics give an average

of two hundred and sixty homeless children picked up annually at that

period, by the police patrols, in unenclosed lands, in houses in

process of construction, and under the arches of the bridges. One of

these nests, which has become famous, produced “the swallows of the

bridge of Arcola.” This is, moreover, the most disastrous of social

symptoms. All crimes of the man begin in the vagabondage of the child.

Let us make an exception in favor of Paris, nevertheless. In a relative

measure, and in spite of the souvenir which we have just recalled, the

exception is just. While in any other great city the vagabond child is

a lost man, while nearly everywhere the child left to itself is, in

some sort, sacrificed and abandoned to a kind of fatal immersion in the

public vices which devour in him honesty and conscience, the street boy

of Paris, we insist on this point, however defaced and injured on the

surface, is almost intact on the interior. It is a magnificent thing to

put on record, and one which shines forth in the splendid probity of

our popular revolutions, that a certain incorruptibility results from

the idea which exists in the air of Paris, as salt exists in the water

of the ocean. To breathe Paris preserves the soul.

What we have just said takes away nothing of the anguish of heart which

one experiences every time that one meets one of these children around

whom one fancies that he beholds floating the threads of a broken

family. In the civilization of the present day, incomplete as it still

is, it is not a very abnormal thing to behold these fractured families

pouring themselves out into the darkness, not knowing clearly what has

become of their children, and allowing their own entrails to fall on

the public highway. Hence these obscure destinies. This is called, for

this sad thing has given rise to an expression, “to be cast on the

pavements of Paris.”

Let it be said by the way, that this abandonment of children was not

discouraged by the ancient monarchy. A little of Egypt and Bohemia in

the lower regions suited the upper spheres, and compassed the aims of

the powerful. The hatred of instruction for the children of the people

was a dogma. 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.