"The pear is on that also."[19] The gamin loves uproar. A certain state of violence pleases him.
He execrates "the cures." One day, in the Rue de l''Universite, one of these scamps was putting his thumb to his nose at the carriage gate of No. 69.
"Why are you doing that at the gate?" a passer-by asked.
The boy replied: "There is a cure there."
It was there, in fact, that the Papal Nuncio lived.
[19] Louis XVIII.
is represented in comic pictures of that day as having a pear-shaped head.
Nevertheless, whatever may be the Voltairianism of the small gamin, if the occasion to become a chorister presents itself, it is quite possible that he will accept, and in that case he serves the mass civilly.
There are two things to which he plays Tantalus, and which he always desires without ever attaining them: to overthrow the government, and to get his trousers sewed up again.
The gamin in his perfect state possesses all the policemen of Paris, and can always put the name to the face of any one which he chances to meet.
He can tell them off on the tips of his fingers. He studies their habits, and he has special notes on each one of them.