The Man is sleeping peacefully in his furs, but it is time we were turning for home.
"Then we shan't get any violets this time?" says W. V. with a sly gleam in her eyes.
Oh, little woman, yes; the woods and the world are full of the smell of violets.
THE PARIS GAMIN.
By Th. Bentzon (Madame Blanc).
With drawing by Boutet de Monvel. See frontispiece.
EVERY city has its street boys or Arabs, but Paris has the monopoly of the gamin; for he is the product of a special civilization. Indeed, the street alone seems to have borne all the costs of his education. Still, Parisian streets are more suggestive than others; they fill his eyes and his imagination with sights and influences which develop and refine him, either for better or worse, according to his disposition, environing conditions and events. He inhales wit in puffs, while art enters at every pore; he may be lamentably precocious, idle, and even vicious, but he is never coarse in the brutal sense of the word, and never romps or flings about wildly. A pretty young girl is not offended if she is thought to have something of the look of a gamin, for that particular look supposes an indefinable compound of roguishness, mischief, and piquancy; and a humorous writer is delighted when his wit is said to have a touch of gaminerie.
Gamin, in fact, cannot be translated either by boy, urchin, scamp, or rogue, and yet it is a mixture of all these, together with much besides, all going to make up the ironical, indomitable, and unique creature named, once for all and for posterity,—Gavroche—by Victor Hugo in his great work, "Les Misérables;" although his unconscious sins and sufferings had been pictured still earlier by Eugène Sue in the character of Tortillard, and Jules Janin, with his usual mannerism, had called him "the policeman's butterfly." He is the gay rioter, the mischievous revolutionist, respecting and fearing nothing under the sun, and ever ready at a moment's notice to tear up pavements and build barricades. He is, indeed, the strangest child in France, or in the world, for that matter; good and bad at once, without any surplus animal spirits to work off in rough-and-tumble play; but, on the other hand, having more brains than he knows what to do with; above all else, witty and critical, quizzing everybody and everything—in short, philosophy and good humor personified. He is the young chap who opens your carriage door in front of the theater and waggishly says: "Thanks, Prince," in case your gratuity is slender. It is he, too, who, after dining on two cents' worth of galette, his cheap and favorite pastry, puts a bit of cigarette, picked up from the pavement, between his lips, and climbs to the uppermost gallery of the theater to applaud or hiss a melodrama, interrupt the villain, and then go to the stage door to address the popular actor; for Titi, as the youngster is called at the "Ambigu" or the "Porte St. Martin" theaters, is a critic to whom a certain kind of authority is granted there. He sets off fire-crackers on the fourteenth of July, throws confetti at Carnival time, dangles from the trees and lamp-posts to watch a procession, follows the passing regiment, keeping step with it, or puts all his admiration in the word "Mazette!" when an elegant woman passes him and he turns to gaze at her with the look that Madame Récamier preferred to all compliments.
For he has taste and brilliant fancy, besides being what Americans call "smart," and our journalists frequently borrow his bold and keen wit. Gavarni must certainly have heard him make the remark he puts in the mouth of the funny urchin who, with hands crossed behind his back, stands staring at a stout lady in heavy furs and ample crinoline sailing by him: "What a barge!" No doubt he had seen
Editor's Note.—Madame Blanc—better known, perhaps, by her pen name of "Th. Bentzon"—has long been a member of the staff of the French "Revue des Deux Mondes." (See the June number of McClure's for her interesting account of the "Revue" and its editors.) She is the recognized authority in France on English, and particularly American, literature, which has always been her special interest and study. She has, however, written a large number of novels: novels of purely French life—not the Parisian life which gives its peculiar distinction to the so-called "French school," but the wholesome life of the intelligent and worthy French middle class. As the result of her first visit to the United States, she wrote a book on the "Condition of Women in America," a series of critical essays thoroughly sympathetic and friendly, which has justly attracted wide attention and has been awarded a prize by the French Academy.
