He Is Agreeable — Les Misérables

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. 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. He is not devoid of literary intuition. He is not very academic by nature. 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, and emerges from the dunghill covered with stars. The gamin of Paris is Rabelais in this youth. He is not content with his trousers unless they have a watch-pocket. He is not easily astonished. He is still less easily terrified. He makes songs on superstitions, thrusts out his tongue at ghosts, and replaces the solemn vision by the farcical phantasmagoria. If Adamastor were to appear to him, the street Arab would say: Hi there. The bugaboo.