t Jean
Martin kept on his suspenders, that Lecouffe and his mother quarrelled.
"Don't reproach each other for your basket," shouted a gamin to them.
Another, in order to get a look at Debacker as he passed, and being too
small in the crowd, caught sight of the lantern on the quay and climbed
it. A gendarme stationed opposite frowned. "Let me climb up, m'sieu le
gendarme," said the gamin. And, to soften the heart of the authorities
he added: "I will not fall." "I don't care if you do," retorted the
gendarme.

In the brotherhood of gamins, a memorable accident counts for a great
deal. One reaches the height of consideration if one chances to cut
one's self very deeply, "to the very bone."

The fist is no mediocre element of respect. One of the things that the
gamin is fondest of saying is: "I am fine and strong, come now!" To be
left-handed renders you very enviable. A squint is highly esteemed.

CHAPTER VIII--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