Gamin

Dearest Eloise,— There is one little and perhaps insignificant French cake, which I feel certain would soon become a favourite in the cottage, more particularly amongst its juvenile inhabitants. It is the famed galette, the melodramatic food of the gamins, galopins, mechanics, and semi-artists of France.

The Paris gamin is respectful, ironical, and insolent. He has bad teeth, because he is poorly fed, and his stomach suffers and fine eyes because he has genius. [...] To sum up all once more, the gamin of Paris of the present day is, as the grœculus of Rome was in ancient times, the people as a child, with the wrinkles of the old world on its brow. The gamin is a beauty and, at the same time, a disease of the nation—a disease that must be cured. How? By light.

Here, in front, the deserted street was white and black and silent, under the electric lamps. All the lonelier for two wretched gamins, counting their dirty sous, and draggled newspapers.

Then—far-off music and excitement. Faces at the windows. Naked yellow gamins begin to dance. [...] Down the square the procession goes, followed by the music, turns a corner, and is lost. The gamins leave off dancing.

According to [Gustave] d'Outrepont, Paris is the boy's metaphoric mother, rocking and nursing him in the streets. Attending all municipal events, street spectacles, and popular theater (where he managed by his wits to get in for free), the gamin is constructed in dualities: child and man, cowardly and brave, serious and laughing, cruel and sympathetic.