The child of Paris exclaims: "He is talking to his black cap!
Oh, the sneak!"
A certain audacity on matters of religion sets off the gamin. To be strong-minded is an important item.
To be present at executions constitutes a duty.
He shows himself at the guillotine, and he laughs.
He calls it by all sorts of pet names: The End of the Soup, The Growler, The Mother in the Blue (the sky), The Mouthful, etc., etc.
In order not to lose anything of the affair, he scales the walls, he hoists himself to balconies, he ascends trees, he suspends himself to gratings, he clings fast to chimneys.
The gamin is born a tiler as he is born a mariner. A roof inspires him with no more fear than a mast.
There is no festival which comes up to an execution on the Place de Greve. Samson and the Abbe Montes are the truly popular names.
They hoot at the victim in order to encourage him.
They sometimes admire him. Lacenaire, when a gamin, on seeing the hideous Dautin die bravely, uttered these words which contain a future:
"I was jealous of him." In the brotherhood of gamins Voltaire is not known, but Papavoine is. "Politicians" are confused with assassins in the same legend. They have a tradition as to everybody''s last garment.
It is known that Tolleron had a fireman''s cap, Avril an otter cap, Losvel a round hat, that old Delaporte was bald and bare-headed, that Castaing was all ruddy and very handsome, that Bories had a romantic small beard, that Jean Martin kept on his suspenders, that Lecouffe and his mother quarrelled.