2.M.1.4. HE MAY BE OF USE
PARIS begins with the lounger and ends with the street Arab,
two beings of which no other city is capable; the passive
acceptance, which contents itself with gazing, and the
inexhaustible
initiative; Prudhomme and Fouillou. Paris alone
has this in its natural history. The whole of the monarchy is
contained in the lounger; the whole of anarchy in the gamin.
This pale child of the Parisian faubourgs lives and
develops,
makes connections, "grows supple" in suffering, in the presence
of social realities and of human things, a thoughtful witness.
He thinks himself heedless; and he is not. He looks
and is on the verge of laughter; he is on the verge of something
else also. Whoever you may be, if your name is Prejudice,
Abuse, Ignorance, Oppression, Iniquity, Despotism, Injustice,
Fanaticism, Tyranny, beware of the gaping gamin.
The little fellow will grow up.
Of what clay is he made? Of the first mud that comes to
hand. A handful of dirt, a breath, and behold Adam. It suffices
for a God to pass by. A God has always passed over
the street Arab. Fortune labors at this tiny being. By the
word "fortune" we mean chance, to some extent. That pigmy
kneaded out of common earth, ignorant, unlettered, giddy,
vulgar, low. Will that become an Ionian or a Boeotian? Wait,
currit rota, the Spirit of Paris, that demon which
creates the
children of chance and the men of destiny, reversing the
process of the Latin potter, makes of a jug an amphora.