In addition to the philological origins which we have indicated, slang has other and more natural roots, which issue, so to speak, directly from the human mind. In the first place, there is the direct creation of words, for it is the mystery of language to paint with words which have, we know not how or why, faces. This is the primitive foundation of every human language, or what might be called the granite. Slang swarms with words of this nature, immediate words created all of one piece; it is impossible to say when, or by whom, without etymologies, analogies, or derivatives,--solitary, barbarous, and at times hideous words, which have a singular power of expression, and are alive. The executioner, _le taule_ (the anvil's face); the forest, _le sabri_ (cudgels); fear or flight, _taf_; the footman, _le larbin_; the general, prefect, or minister, _pharos_ (head man); and the devil, _le rabouin_ (the one with the tail). Nothing can be stranger than these words, which form transparent masks; some of them, _le rabouin,_ for instance, are at the same time grotesque and terrible, and produce the effect of a Cyclopean grimace. In the second place, there is metaphor, and it is the peculiarity of a language which wishes to say everything and conceal everything, to abound in figures. Metaphor is an enigma in which the robber who is scheming a plot, or the prisoner arranging an escape, takes the refuge. No idiom is more metaphorical than slang; _dévisser_ (to unscrew) _le coco_ (the cocoa-nut), to twist the neck; _tortiller_ (to wind up), to eat; _être gerbé_ (sheaved), to be tried; _un rat_, a stealer of bread; _il lansquine_, it rains,--an old striking figure, which bears to some extent its date with it, assimilates the long oblique lines of rain to the serried sloping pikes of the lansquenets, and contains in one word the popular adage, "It is raining halberts." At times, in proportion as slang passes from the first to the second stage, words pass from the savage and primitive state to the metaphorical sense. The devil ceases to be _le rabouin,_ and becomes "the baker," or he who puts in the oven. This is wittier but not so grand; something like Racine after Corneille, or Euripides after Æschylus. Some slang phrases which belong to both periods, and have at once a barbarous and a metaphorical character, resemble phantasmagorias: _Les sorgueurs vont sollicer des gails à la lune_ (the prowlers are going to steal horses at night). This passes before the mind like a group of spectres, and we know not what we see. Thirdly, there is expediency: slang lives upon the language, uses it as it pleases, and when the necessity arises limits itself to denaturalizing it summarily and coarsely. At times, with the ordinary words thus deformed and complicated with pure slang, picturesque sentences are composed, in which the admission of the two previous elements, direct creation and metaphor, is visible,--_le cab jaspine, je marronne que