Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/165

Rh him make fun of the "single eyeglass" dandy: "They're a poor lot, anyhow; only got one eye for seein' and can't see out o' that without a skylight!" And he must have written down his criticism of a lady's very thin legs on a windy day: "Say, where did you get your tenpins?" He has illustrated his impudence by making him carelessly address a passing gentleman, disfigured by smallpox, with a "Why didn't you take out an insurance policy against hail?" and by making him say to himself, after a low whistle, on meeting a man with an unusually long nose: "I guess he got up before breakfast the day noses were handed round! "All this free and easy impudence, flung off with inimitable accent and gestures, belongs specially to the gamin de Paris.

The great actor Bouffé and the greater actress Déjazet transferred the gamin's quaint and amusing peculiarities to the stage with endless and unvarying success, and he always holds his own at Guignol, the French Punch and Judy show, on the Champs Elysées. There are four of these small puppet booths under the clumps of trees in the neighborhood of the President's residence, the Elysée, four tiny theaters fully exposed to view, with neither roof nor inclosure for their spectators, simply a few rows of chairs, where maids and nurses sit with their young charges, while behind them there are always a number of gamins who, as they occupy "standing room only," do not pay, and nevertheless enjoy every good point made. The smallest, plainest, and oldest of these booths is by far more popular than the others, and alone bears the title, par excellence, of "Guignol." It permits its modern rivals, "Bambochinet," "Gringalet," or whatever they choose to call themselves, boasting of richer decorations, and a more numerous troupe of actors, with more perfectly jointed limbs; but Polichinelle, the constable, and the two traditional Guignols, father and son, the latter a gamin, belong to the oldest booth, and sufficiently explain a popularity which has lasted for several generations.

The legless actors, seen only to the waist, are moved by means of three fingers, and the "squeaker," a little tin instrument in the invisible showman's mouth, produces very amusing varieties of shrill or hoarse voices, with that genuine Parisian drawl and throaty roll of the letter R called grasseyement. Young Guignol, the gamin, wears a blue linen blouse, a leather belt, and his cap awry. He surpasses even Polichinelle in squabbling with the landlord whom his father refuses to pay, and in playing tricks on the constable sent to arrest the family and lead them off to prison. The two representatives of law and order are invariably clubbed and circumvented, to the delirious joy of the young spectators, and they applaud Guignol's success with all their might.

In fact, both the gamin, from his earliest days, as well as the French Punch, have a strong tendency to oppose the ruling powers, although this opposition is usually limited to making a noise.

He may, however, become a much more seriously conspicuous figure in revolutionary times, and far more than a mere nuisance, even going as far as burning down buildings "for fun," as he did, alas! during the Commune. Yet we must add that he is just as likely to die at thirteen, like little Bara, shouting "Vive la république!" when "Vive le roi!" would have saved his life.

One of Charlet's splendid drawings shows two gamins, six or seven years old, in rags, under their newspaper soldier hats, their wooden swords at their side, playing at "war" and shouting: "The guard dies, but does not surrender!"

The gamin has always been infatuated with "the Little Corporal" in his gray overcoat, but he, however, not being logical, is fond of liberty. Delacroix has painted him black with gunpowder under his torn cap, standing, pistol in hand, on one of the street barricades during the revolution of 1830. In 1848 we saw him scale the very throne of Louis Philippe at the Tuileries, and have himself carried about on it in triumph. Always impulsive, he is as ready to save as to destroy, and will leap into the Seine to rescue a drowning child of his own age without ever stopping to think whether he knows how to swim or not.

What is he doing when not playing tops or marbles in the gutter? Sometimes he is a plasterer's help, and so powdered with white dust as to seem Pierrot himself; sometimes an apprentice in a green linen apron; or a pastry-cook's boy, clothed in a questionably white cotton suit from head to heels, balancing his basket on his head as he saunters along; or a printer's "devil" in blouse and paper cap; or he pushes a hand-cart, or sells flowers, newspapers, matches, etc.; or he may join the army of young telegraph messengers. He may,