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.

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.

CHAPTER IX--THE OLD SOUL OF GAUL

There was something of that boy in Poquelin, the son of the fish-market;
Beaumarchais had something of it. Gaminerie is a shade of the Gallic
spirit. Mingled with good sense, it sometimes adds force to the latter,
as alcohol does to wine. Sometimes it is a defect. Homer repeats himself
eternally, granted; one may say that Voltaire plays the gamin. Camille
Desmoulins was a native of the faubourgs. Championnet, who treated
miracles brutally, rose from the pavements of Paris; he had, when a
small lad, inundated the porticos of Saint-Jean de Beauvais, and of
Saint-Etienne du Mont; he had addressed the shrine of Sainte-Genevieve
familiarly to give orders to the phial of Saint Januarius.

The gamin of Paris is respectful, ironical, and insolent. He has
v