Volume 3/Book 1/Chapter 2

Les Misérables, Volume 3: Marius, Book First: Paris Studied in its Atom, Chapter 2: Some of his Particular Characteristics
(Tome 3: Marius, Livre premier: Paris étudié dans son atome, Chapitre 2: Quelques-uns de ses signes particuliers)

French text

Le gamin de Paris, c'est le nain de la géante.

N'exagérons point, ce chérubin du ruisseau a quelquefois une chemise mais alors il n'en a qu'une; il a quelquefois des souliers, mais alors ils n'ont point de semelles; il a quelquefois un logis, et il l'aime, car il y trouve sa mère; mais il préfère la rue, parce qu'il y trouve la liberté. Il a ses jeux à lui, ses malices à lui dont la haine des bourgeois fait le fond; ses métaphores à lui; être mort, cela s'appelle manger des pissenlits par la racine; ses métiers à lui, amener des fiacres, baisser les marchepieds des voitures, établir des péages d'un côté de la rue à l'autre dans les grosses pluies, ce qu'il appelle faire des ponts des arts, crier les discours prononcés par l'autorité en faveur du peuple français, gratter l'entre-deux des pavés; il a sa monnaie à lui, qui se compose de tous les petits morceaux de cuivre façonné qu'on peut trouver sur la voie publique. Cette curieuse monnaie, qui prend le nom de loques, a un cours invariable et fort bien réglé dans cette petite bohème d'enfants.

Enfin il a sa faune à lui, qu'il observe studieusement dans des coins; la bête à bon Dieu, le puceron tête-de-mort, le faucheux, le «diable», insecte noir qui menace en tordant sa queue armée de deux cornes. Il a son monstre fabuleux qui a des écailles sous le ventre et qui n'est pas un lézard, qui a des pustules sur le dos et qui n'est pas un crapaud, qui habite les trous des vieux fours à chaux et des puisards desséchés, noir, velu, visqueux, rampant, tantôt lent, tantôt rapide, qui ne crie pas, mais qui regarde, et qui est si terrible que personne ne l'a jamais vu; il nomme ce monstre «le sourd». Chercher des sourds dans les pierres, c'est un plaisir du genre redoutable. Autre plaisir, lever brusquement un pavé, et voir des cloportes. Chaque région de Paris est célèbre par les trouvailles intéressantes qu'on peut y faire. Il y a des perce-oreilles dans les chantiers des Ursulines, il y a des mille-pieds au Panthéon, il y a des têtards dans les fossés du Champ de Mars.

Quant à des mots, cet enfant en a comme Talleyrand. Il n'est pas moins cynique, mais il est plus honnête. Il est doué d'on ne sait quelle jovialité imprévue; il ahurit le boutiquier de son fou rire. Sa gamme va gaillardement de la haute comédie à la farce.

Un enterrement passe. Parmi ceux qui accompagnent le mort, il y a un médecin.—Tiens, s'écrie un gamin, depuis quand les médecins reportent-ils leur ouvrage?

Un autre est dans une foule. Un homme grave, orné de lunettes et de breloques, se retourne indigné:—Vaurien, tu viens de prendre «la taille» à ma femme.

—Moi, monsieur! fouillez-moi.

English text

The gamin—the street urchin—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, his own bits of mischief, whose foundation consists of hatred for the bourgeois; his peculiar metaphors: to be dead is to eat dandelions by the root; his own occupations, calling hackney-coaches, letting down carriage-steps, establishing means of transit between the two sides of a street in heavy rains, which he calls making the bridge of arts, crying discourses pronounced by the authorities in favor of the French people, cleaning out the cracks in the pavement; he has his own coinage, which is composed of all the little morsels of worked copper which are found on the public streets. This curious money, which receives the name of loques—rags—has an invariable and well-regulated currency in this little Bohemia of children.

Lastly, he has his own fauna, which he observes attentively in the corners; the lady-bird, the death's-head plant-louse, the daddy-long-legs, "the devil," a black insect, which menaces by twisting about its tail armed with two horns. He has his fabulous monster, which has scales under its belly, but is not a lizard, which has 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 crawls sometimes slowly, sometimes rapidly, which has no cry, but which 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. There are ear-wigs in the timber-yards of the Ursulines, there are millepeds in the Pantheon, there are tadpoles in the ditches of the Champs-de-Mars.

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 urchin, "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!"

Translation notes

Le gamin / The street urchin

"Le gamin" should be translated as "the street urchin" or a similar term. Reference sources define "gamin" as a street urchin or a kid making a living on the streets; also, an child assistant to a tradesman, typically a glassmaker. In Isabel F. Hapgood's translation of Les Misérables, published in 1887, "gamin" is translated "street Arab." "Le gamin" has neither etymologic nor lexiconic connection to the aforementioned racist English term, nor does the latter adhere to the spirit of Hugo's story.

Textual notes

les chantiers des Ursulines / timber-yards of the Ursulines

The Ursulines are an order of Catholic nuns. In Paris, on rue de faubourg Saint Jacques (a faubourg was similar to a suburb), the order stayed in Hôtel de Saint André beginning in 1607, but wealthy donors gave a piece of land nearby the Hôtel, called les Poteries, to expand the order to include a convent, girls' school, and chapel. The order remained the first few years of the revolution, but they fled on 1 October 1792. The convent grounds were sold in 1798, probably as part of the government's consolidated thirds financial scheme or the resulting two-thirds bankruptcy, then the convent was destroyed (we can assume by the buyer). In 1807, the convent was commemorated with a road over its former site, named rue des Ursulines. Hence, we can suppose that gamin played in and around the construction sites on the land that once belonged to the Ursuline convent.