Les Miserables, Wilbour Translation

THE gamin of Paris is the dwarf of the giantess.

We will not exaggerate. This cherub of the gutter sometimes has a shirt, but then he has only one ; sometimes he has shoes, but then they have no soles; sometimes he has a shelter, and he loves it, for there he finds his mother; but he prefers the street for there he finds his liberty. He has sports of his own, roguish tricks of his own, of which a hearty hatred of the bourgeois is the basis; he has his own metaphors; to be dead he calls eating dandelions by the root; he has his own occupations, such as running for hacks, letting down carriage-steps, sweeping the crossings in rainy weather, which he styles making ponts des arts, crying the speeches often made by the authorities on behalf of the French people, and digging out the streaks between the flags of the pavement; he has his own kind of money, consisting of all the little bits of wrought copper that can be found on the public thoroughfares. This curious coin, which takes the name of scraps, has an unvarying and well regulated circulation throughout this little gipsy-land of children.