AN INTERVIEW WITH A GAMIN.
They knew not what they were fighting for, nor cared. They only felt it was the people against the recognized authorities, and that was enough. The Parisian gamin hates the authorities, for his chief idea is that the name means a prison, police, and everything else that a brigand in a small way don’t like. He loves commotion, for commotion signifies excitement, and excitement is as necessary to him as bread itself. He will stand behind a barricade and load and fire as long as the oldest man, and, firing with a musket, he is as good as a giant.
There are theaters which he patronizes regularly, for next to a revolution he loves the theater. Where he procures the money for admission, small as it is, heaven only knows; but he gets it somehow, for he is there nearly every night. If he cannot get in at the beginning, he hangs about the entrances, waiting for some good-natured man, who does not care to see the performance out, to give him his check, or he wheedles a good natured doorman into letting him pass. And once in, there is no adult in the audience who is so critical an auditor. He knows all about the drama, all about the music, and all about everything connected with it. He applauds at the right place, and if there be the slightest fault of omission or commission in the representation, his hiss is the first and the most distinct and deadly.
The Parisian actor dreads the gamin almost as much as he does the newspaper critics. They have made and unmade many an aspirant for public favor.
I gave a sou to one for the privilege of a minute’s conversation. (I had a friend to translate—a street boy would not understand my French.)
“Where were you born?”
There was a comprehensive wave of the hand which took in all Paris. He might have been born all over the vast city.
“How do you live?”
There was an expressive shrug of the shoulders that meant anything you chose.
“What are you intending to do when you are older?”