The gamin expresses Paris, and Paris expresses the world. For Paris is
a total; it is the ceiling of the human race, and the whole of this
prodigious city is an epitome of dead manners and living manners.
The man who sees Paris imagines that he sees universal history, with
sky and constellations in the intervals. Paris has a Capitol, the
Town Hall; a Parthenon, Notre Dame; a Mons Aventinus, the Faubourg
St. Antoine; an Asinarium, the Sorbonne; a Pantheon, the Panthéon; a
Via Sacra, the Boulevard des Italians; a Tower of the Winds, public
opinion; and ridicule has been substituted for the Gemoniæ. Its majo
is called the "faraud," its Transteverine is called the faubourien,
its hammal the "fort de la Halle," its lazzarone the "pegre," and its
cockney the "Gandin." All that is elsewhere is in Paris. Dumarsais'
fish-fag can give a reply to the herb-seller of Euripides; Vejanus the
discobolus lives again in the rope-dancer Forioso; Therapontigonus
Miles could walk arm-in-arm with Grenadier Vadeboncœur; Damasippus the
broker would be happy among the dealers in _bric-à-brac;_ Vincennes
would hold Socrates under lock, just as the Agora would pounce on
Diderot; Grimod de la Reynière discovered roast-beef with tallow, in
the same way as Curtillus invented roast hedgehog. We have seen the
trapeze of which we read in Plautus reappear under the balloon of the
Arc de l'Étoile; the sword-swallower of Pœcile met by Apuleius is a
swallower of sabres on the Pont Neuf; Rameau's nephew and Curculion
the parasite form a pair; Ergasites would have himself introduced to
Cambaceres by d'Aigre feuille; the four fops of Rome, Alcesimarchus,
Phœdromus, Dicabolus, and Argiryppus descend the Courtille in Labatut's
post-chaise; Aulus Gellius stopped before Congrio no longer than
Charles Nodier did before Punchinello; Marton is not a tigress, but
Pardalisca was not a dragon. Pantolabus humbugs Nomentamus the gourmet
at the Café Anglais; Hermogenes is the Tenor in the Champs Élysées,
and Thrasius the beggar, dressed as Bobêche, carries round the hat for
him; the troublesome fellow who catches hold of your coat-button in
the Tuileries makes you repeat after two thousand years the apostrophe
of Thesperon,--_Quis properantem me prehendit pallio_? The wine of
Suresne is a parody of the wine of Alba; Père Lachaise exhales in the
night showers the same gleams as the Esquiliæ; and the poor man's grave
bought for five years is quite equal to the hired coffin of the slave.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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