lacets (dealers in stay-laces), then coquers, then cognes; the executioner is le taule, then Charlot, l''atigeur, then le becquillard. In the seventeenth century, to fight was "to give each other snuff"; in the nineteenth it is "to chew each other''s throats." There have been twenty different phrases between these two extremes. Cartouche''s talk would have been Hebrew to Lacenaire.
All the words of this language are perpetually engaged in flight like the men who utter them.
Still, from time to time, and in consequence of this very movement, the ancient slang crops up again and becomes new once more.
It has its headquarters where it maintains its sway.
The Temple preserved the slang of the seventeenth century; Bicetre, when it was a prison, preserved the slang of Thunes.
There one could hear the termination in anche of the old Thuneurs.
Boyanches-tu (bois-tu), do you drink? But perpetual movement remains its law, nevertheless.
If the philosopher succeeds in fixing, for a moment, for purposes of observation, this language which is incessantly evaporating, he falls into doleful and useful meditation.
No study is more efficacious and more fecund in instruction.
There is not a metaphor, not an analogy, in slang, which does not contain a lesson. Among these men, to beat means to feign; one beats a malady; ruse is their strength.