Another, in order to get a look at Debacker as he passed, and being too small in the crowd, caught sight of the lantern on the quay and climbed it.
A gendarme stationed opposite frowned.
"Let me climb up, m'sieu le gendarme," said the gamin.
And, to soften the heart of the authorities he added: "I will not fall."
"I don't care if you do," retorted the gendarme.
In the brotherhood of gamins, a memorable accident counts for a great deal.
One reaches the height of consideration if one chances to cut one's self very deeply, "to the very bone."
The fist is no mediocre element of respect.
One of the things that the gamin is fondest of saying is:
"I am fine and strong, come now!"
To be left-handed renders you very enviable.
A squint is highly esteemed.
BOOK FIRST.--PARIS STUDIED IN ITS ATOM
CHAPTER VIII
IN WHICH THE READER WILL FIND A CHARMING SAYING OF THE LAST KING
In summer, he metamorphoses himself into a frog; and in the evening, when night is falling, in front of the bridges of Austerlitz and Jena, from the tops of coal wagons, and the washerwomen's boats, he hurls himself headlong into the Seine, and into all possible infractions of the laws of modesty and of the police.
Nevertheless the police keep an eye on him, and the result is a highly dramatic situation which once gave rise to a fraternal and memorable cry; that cry which was celebrated about 1830, is a strategic warning from gamin to gamin; it scans like a verse from Homer, with a notation as inexpressible as the eleusiac chant of the Panathenaea, and in it one encounters again the ancient Evohe.
Here it is: "Ohe, Titi, oheee!