.

As far as sayings are concerned, this child has as many of them as
Talleyrand. He is no less cynical, but he is more honest. He is endowed
with a certain indescribable, unexpected joviality; he upsets the
composure of the shopkeeper with his wild laughter. He ranges boldly
from high comedy to farce.

A funeral passes by. Among those who accompany the dead there is a
doctor. "Hey there!" shouts some street Arab, "how long has it been
customary for doctors to carry home their own work?"

Another is in a crowd. A grave man, adorned with spectacles and
trinkets, turns round indignantly: "You good-for-nothing, you have
seized my wife's waist!"--"I, sir? Search me!"

CHAPTER III--HE IS AGREEABLE

In the evening, thanks to a few sous, which he always finds means
to procure, the homuncio enters a theatre. On crossing that magic
threshold, he becomes transfigured; he was the street Arab, he becomes
the titi.[18] Theatres are a sort of ship turned upside down with the
keel in the air. It is in that keel that the titi huddle together.
The titi is to the gamin what the moth is to the larva; the same being
endowed with wings and soaring. It suffices for him to be there, with
his radiance of happiness, with his power of enthusiasm and joy, with
his hand-clapping, which resembles a clapping of wings, to confer on
that narrow, dark, fetid, sordid, unhealthy, hideous, abominable keel,
the name of Paradise.

Bestow on an individual the useless and deprive him of the necessary,
and you have the gamin.

The gamin is not devoid of literary intuition. His tendency, and we say
it with the proper amount of regret, would not constitute classic
taste. He is not very academic by nature. Thus, to give an example, the
popularity of Mademoiselle Mars among that little audience of stormy
children was seasoned with a touch of irony. The gamin called her
Mademoiselle Muche--"hide yourself."

This being bawls and scoffs and ridicules and fights, has rags like a
baby and tatters like a philosopher, fishes in the sewer, hunts in the
cesspool, extracts mirth from foulness, whips up the squares with his
wit, grins and bites, whistles and sings, shouts, and shrieks, tempers
Alleluia with Matantur-lurette, chants every rhythm from the De
Profundis to the Jack-pudding, finds without seeking, knows what he is
ignorant of, is a Spartan to the point of thieving, is mad to wisdom, is
lyrical to filth, would crouch down on Olympus, wallows in the