Les Miserables, Wilbour Translation

PARIS begins with the cockney and ends with the gamin, two beings of which no other city is capable; passive acceptation satisfied with merely looking on, and exhaustless enterprise : Prudhomme and Fouillou. Paris alone comprises this in its natural history. All monarchy is comprised in the cockney: all anarchy in the gamin.

This pale child of the Paris suburbs lives, develops, and gets into and out of " scrapes," amid suffering, a thoughtful witness of our social realities and our human problems. He thinks himself careless, but he is not. He looks on, ready to laugh; ready, also, for something else. Whoever ye are who call yourselves Prejudice, Abuse, Ignominy, Oppression, Iniquity, Despotism, Injustice, Fanaticism, Tyranny, beware of the gaping gamin. This little fellow will grow.