The chief interest of the slang of habitual criminals is psychological. It furnishes us with a curious insight into the mental processes of those who invent and use it; it is itself an embodiment of criminal tendencies; in Victor Hugo’s vigorous phrase, “C’est le verbe devenu forçat.” It is full of metaphorical expressions, of objects named after their attributes. Nearly everything is degraded, sometimes with coarse and fantastic wit. “While the imagination of the poet gives a soul to animate objects,” remarks M. Joly, “the imagination of the criminal transforms living forms into things, assimilates man to animals.” Thus the skin for them is leather, the face _un mufle_, the mouth _un bec_, the arm _un aileron_. The body is called the corpse, and to eat is to put something in one’s corpse. The woman who supports a bully is called his saucepan (_marmite_), a friend _un poteau_; _ne pas être méchant_ means to be a fool. Everything is thus vulgarised. The criminal instinctively depreciates the precious coinage of language, just as to his imagination money is at Paris “zinc,” and in the Argentine Republic “iron.” The soul in French _argot_ is significantly called _la fausse_, and the conscience _la muette_; shame is simply _la rouge_. In English slang, as Mr. Horsley remarks, “the delicate expression ‘fingersmith’ is descriptive of a trade which a blunt world might call that of a pickpocket. Or, again, to get three months’ hard labour is more pleasantly described as getting thirteen clean shirts, one being served out in prison each week. The tread-wheel again is more politely called the everlasting staircase, or the wheel of life, or the vertical care-grinder. Penal servitude is dignified with the appellation of serving her Majesty for nothing, and an attempt is even made to lighten the horror of the climax of a criminal career by speaking of dying in a horse’s night-cap--_i.e._, a halter.” So that while the better things of life are degraded, there is a tendency to elevate those that truly indicate degradation. The criminal slang of France and Italy has been studied in its psychological bearings much more thoroughly than the English, by Mayor, Lombroso, and others. Lombroso considers that the most marked and most curious characteristic of criminal slang is that already noted by which a thing is designated by its most salient qualities from the criminal point of view. Thus the advocate becomes the _blanchisseur_ or _imbiancatore_ (washerman); the _juge d’instruction_, the _curicux_ or the _père sondeur_; the sermon, _l’ennuyeuse_ or _tediosa_; the purse is _la santa_; the court, _la juste_. “The guillotine,” remarks M. Joly, “is designated without imprecation, without contempt, without hatred, but with a wealth of expressions and with a resignation, one might almost say a fatalistic humour, which is not reassuring for them--or for others. The executioner himself is called the _juge de la paix_.”