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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.
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