|
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 Panathenaea, and in it one encounters again the ancient
Evohe.
Here it is: "Ohe, Titi, oheee!
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 cures." One day, in the Rue de
l'Universite, 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 cure there."
It was there, in fact, that the Papal Nuncio lived.
[19] Louis XVIII.
is represented in comic pictures of that day as having a pear-shaped
head.
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.
|
