Some of His Particular Characteristics — Les Misérables

The gamin of Paris is the dwarf of the giant. Let us not exaggerate. This cherub of the gutter sometimes has a shirt, but in that case he owns but one. He sometimes has shoes, but then they have no soles. He sometimes has a lodging, and he loves it, for he finds his mother there. But he prefers the street, because there he finds liberty. He has his own games, whose foundation consists of hatred for the bourgeois. His peculiar metaphor: to be dead is to eat dandelions by the root. He calls coaches, makes a bridge of arts across a flooded street, and spends a copper coinage of loques found on the pavement, a well-regulated currency in this little Bohemia of children.

Lastly he has his own fauna, which he observes attentively in the corners. He has his fabulous monster, which has scales under its belly but is not a lizard, pustules on its back but is not a toad, which inhabits the nooks of old lime-kilns and wells that have run dry, which is black, hairy, sticky, which has no cry but has a look, and is so terrible that no one has ever beheld it. He calls this monster the deaf thing. The search for these deaf things among the stones is a joy of formidable nature. Another pleasure consists in suddenly prying up a paving-stone and taking a look at the wood-lice. Each region of Paris is celebrated for the interesting treasures which are to be found there.

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 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.