Kabanata Kabanata 151 · HE MAY BE OF USE

Paris begins with the lounger and ends with the street Arab, two beings

of which no other city is capable; the passive acceptance, which

contents itself with gazing, and the inexhaustible initiative;

Prudhomme and Fouillou. Paris alone has this in its natural history.

The whole of the monarchy is contained in the lounger; the whole of

anarchy in the gamin.

This pale child of the Parisian faubourgs lives and develops, makes

connections, “grows supple” in suffering, in the presence of social

realities and of human things, a thoughtful witness. He thinks himself

heedless; and he is not. He looks and is on the verge of laughter; he

is on the verge of something else also. Whoever you may be, if your

name is Prejudice, Abuse, Ignorance, Oppression, Iniquity, Despotism,

Injustice, Fanaticism, Tyranny, beware of the gaping gamin.

The little fellow will grow up.

Of what clay is he made? Of the first mud that comes to hand. A handful

of dirt, a breath, and behold Adam. It suffices for a God to pass by. A

God has always passed over the street Arab. Fortune labors at this tiny

being. By the word “fortune” we mean chance, to some extent. That pigmy

kneaded out of common earth, ignorant, unlettered, giddy, vulgar, low.

Will that become an Ionian or a Bœotian? Wait, _currit rota_, the

Spirit of Paris, that demon which creates the children of chance and

the men of destiny, reversing the process of the Latin potter, makes of

a jug an amphora.