Bab Bab 155 · IN WHICH THE READER WILL FIND A CHARMING SAYING OF THE

LAST KING

In summer, he metamorphoses himself into a frog; and in the evening,

when night is falling, in front of the bridges of Austerlitz and Jena,

from the tops of coal wagons, and the washerwomen’s boats, he hurls

himself headlong into the Seine, and into all possible infractions of

the laws of modesty and of the police. Nevertheless the police keep an

eye on him, and the result is a highly dramatic situation which once

gave rise to a fraternal and memorable cry; that cry which was

celebrated about 1830, is a strategic warning from gamin to gamin; it

scans like a verse from Homer, with a notation as inexpressible as the

eleusiac chant of the Panathenæa, and in it one encounters again the

ancient Evohe. Here it is: “Ohé, Titi, ohééé! Here comes the bobby,

here comes the p’lice, pick up your duds and be off, through the sewer

with you!”

Sometimes this gnat—that is what he calls himself—knows how to read;

sometimes he knows how to write; he always knows how to daub. He does

not hesitate to acquire, by no one knows what mysterious mutual

instruction, all the talents which can be of use to the public; from

1815 to 1830, he imitated the cry of the turkey; from 1830 to 1848, he

scrawled pears on the walls. One summer evening, when Louis Philippe

was returning home on foot, he saw a little fellow, no higher than his

knee, perspiring and climbing up to draw a gigantic pear in charcoal on

one of the pillars of the gate of Neuilly; the King, with that

good-nature which came to him from Henry IV., helped the gamin,

finished the pear, and gave the child a louis, saying: “The pear is on

that also.”19 The gamin loves uproar. A certain state of violence

pleases him. He execrates “the curés.” One day, in the Rue de

l’Université, one of these scamps was putting his thumb to his nose at

the carriage gate of No. 69. “Why are you doing that at the gate?” a

passer-by asked. The boy replied: “There is a curé there.” It was

there, in fact, that the Papal Nuncio lived.

Nevertheless, whatever may be the Voltairianism of the small gamin, if

the occasion to become a chorister presents itself, it is quite

possible that he will accept, and in that case he serves the mass

civilly. There are two things to which he plays Tantalus, and which he

always desires without ever attaining them: to overthrow the

government, and to get his trousers sewed up again.

The gamin in his perfect state possesses all the policemen of Paris,

and can always put the name to the face of any one which he chances to

meet. He can tell them off on the tips of his fingers. He studies their

habits, and he has special notes on each one of them. He reads the

souls of the police like an open book. He will tell you fluently and

without flinching: “Such an one is a _traitor_; such another is very

_malicious_; such another is _great_; such another is _ridiculous_.”

(All these words: traitor, malicious, great, ridiculous, have a

particular meaning in his mouth.) That one imagines that he owns the

Pont-Neuf, and he prevents _people_ from walking on the cornice outside

the parapet; that other has a mania for pulling _person’s_ ears; etc.,

etc.