2.M.1.10. ECCE PARIS, ECCE HOMO
To sum it all up once more, the Paris gamin of to-day, like
the graeculus of Rome in days gone by, is the infant
populace
with the wrinkle of the old world on his brow.
The gamin is a grace to the nation, and at the same time
a disease; a disease which must be cured, how? By light.
Light renders healthy.
Light kindles.
All generous social irradiations spring from science,
letters,
arts, education. Make men, make men. Give them light
that they may warm you. Sooner or later the splendid question
of universal education will present itself with the irresistible
authority of the absolute truth; and then, those who
govern under the superintendence of the French idea will
have to make this choice; the children of France or the gamins
of Paris; flames in the light or will-o'-the-wisps in the gloom.
The gamin expresses Paris, and Paris expresses the
world.
For Paris is a total. Paris is the ceiling of the human
race.
The whole of this prodigious city is a foreshortening of dead
manners and living manners. He who sees Paris thinks he
sees the bottom of all history with heaven and constellations
in the intervals. Paris has a capital, the Town-Hall, a
Parthenon, Notre-Dame, a Mount Aventine, the Faubourg
Saint-Antoine, an Asinarium, the Sorbonne, a Pantheon, the
Pantheon, a Via Sacra, the Boulevard des Italiens, a temple
of the winds, opinion; and it replaces the Gemoniae by ridicule.
Its majo is called "faraud," its Transteverin is the
man of the faubourgs, its
hammal is the market-porter,
its
lazzarone is the pegre, its cockney is the native of Ghent.
Everything that exists elsewhere exists at Paris. The fish-woman
of Dumarsais can retort on the herb-seller of Euripides,
the discobols Vejanus lives again in the Forioso, the
tight-rope dancer. Therapontigonus Miles could walk arm in
arm with Vadeboncoeur the grenadier, Damasippus the secondhand
dealer would be happy among bric-a-brac merchants,
Vincennes could grasp Socrates in its fist as just as Agora
could imprison Diderot, Grimod de la Reyniere discovered
larded roast beef, as Curtillus invented roast hedgehog, we
see the trapeze which figures in Plautus reappear under the
vault of the Arc of l'Etoile, the sword-eater of Poecilus
encountered by Apuleius is a sword-swallower on the Pont-Neuf,
the nephew of Rameau and Curculio the parasite make
a pair, Ergasilus could get himself presented to Cambaceres by
d'Aigrefeuille; the four dandies of Rome: Alcesimarchus,
Phoedromus, Diabolus, and Argyrippus, descend from Courtille
in Labatut's posting-chaise; Aulus Gellius would halt no
longer in front of Congrio than would Charles Nodier in front
of Punchinello; Marto is not a tigress, but Pardalisca was not
a dragon; Pantolabus the wag jeers in the Cafe Anglais at
Nomentanus the fast liver, Hermogenus is a tenor in the
Champs-Elysees, and round him, Thracius the beggar, clad
like Bobeche, takes up a collection; the bore who stops you
by the button of your coat in the Tuileries makes you repeat
after a lapse of two thousand years Thesprion's apostrophe:
Quis properantem me prehendit pallio? The wine on Surene
is a parody of the wine of Alba, the red border of Desaugiers
forms a balance to the great cutting of Balatro, Pere Lachaise
exhales beneath nocturnal rains same gleams as the Esquiliae,
and the grave of the poor bought for five years, is certainly
the equivalent of the slave's hived coffin.
Seek something that Paris has not. The vat of Trophonius
contains nothing that is not in Mesmer's tub; Ergaphilas
lives again in Cagliostro; the Brahmin Vasaphanta become
incarnate in the Comte de Saint-Germain; the cemetery of
Saint-Medard works quite as good miracles as the Mosque of
Oumoumie at Damascus.
Paris has an AEsop-Mayeux, and a Canidia, Mademoiselle
Lenormand. It is terrified, like Delphos at the fulgurating
realities of the vision; it makes tables turn as Dodona did
tripods. It places the grisette on the throne, as Rome placed
the courtesan there; and, taking it altogether, if Louis XV.
is worse than Claudian, Madame Dubarry is better than Messalina.
Paris combines in an unprecedented type, which has
existed and which we have elbowed, Grecian nudity, the
Hebraic ulcer, and the Gascon pun. It mingles Diogenes,
Job, and Jack-pudding, dresses up a spectre in old numbers of
the Constitutional, and makes Chodruc Duclos.
Although Plutarch says: the tyrant never grows
old, Rome,
under Sylla as under Domitian, resigned itself and willingly
put water in its wine. The Tiber was a Lethe, if the rather
doctrinary eulogium made of it by Varus Vibiscus is to be
credited: Contra Gracchos Tiberim habemus, Bibere Tiberim,
id est seditionem oblivisci. Paris drinks a million litres
of
water a day, but that does not prevent it from occasionally
beating the general alarm and ringing the tocsin.
With that exception, Paris is amiable. It accepts
everything
royally; it is not too particular about its Venus; its
Callipyge is Hottentot; provided that it is made to laugh, it
condones; ugliness cheers it, deformity provokes it to laughter,
vice diverts it; be eccentric and you may be an eccentric; even
hypocrisy, that supreme cynicism, does not disgust it; it is so
literary that it does not hold its nose before Basile, and is no
more scandalized by the prayer of Tartuffe than Horace was
repelled by the "hiccup" of Priapus. No trait of the universal
face is lacking in the profile of Paris. The bal Mabile
is not the polymnia dance of the Janiculum, but the dealer in
ladies' wearing apparel there devours the lorette with her eyes,
exactly as the procuress Staphyla lay in wait for the virgin
Planesium. The Barriere du Combat is not the Coliseum, but
people are as ferocious there as though Caesar were looking on.
The Syrian hostess has more grace than Mother Saguet, but,
if Virgil haunted the Roman wine-shop, David d'Angers,
Balzac and Charlet have sat at the tables of Parisian taverns.
Paris reigns. Geniuses flash forth there, the red tails prosper
there. Adonai passes on his chariot with its twelve wheels of
thunder and lightning; Silenus makes his entry there on his
ass. For Silenus read Ramponneau.
Paris is the synonym of Cosmos, Paris is Athens, Sybaris,
Jerusalem, Pantin. All civilizations are there in an abridged
form, all barbarisms also. Paris would greatly regret it if it
had not a guillotine.
A little of the Place de Greve is a good thing. What
would
all that eternal festival be without this seasoning? Our laws
are wisely provided, and thanks to them, this blade drips on
this Shrove Tuesday.