Page 1655 - les-miserables

perfroschinum, reptitalmus, dracatholicum, angelorum,
postmegorum, talked slang. The sugar-manufacturer who
says: ‘Loaf, clarified, lumps, bastard, common, burnt,’—this
honest manufacturer talks slang. A certain school of criti-
cism twenty years ago, which used to say: ‘Half of the works
of Shakespeare consists of plays upon words and puns,’—
talked slang. The poet, and the artist who, with profound
understanding, would designate M. de Montmorency as
‘a bourgeois,’ if he were not a judge of verses and statues,
speak slang. The classic Academician who calls flowers ‘Flo-
ra,’ fruits, ‘Pomona,’ the sea, ‘Neptune,’ love, ‘fires,’ beauty,
‘charms,’ a horse, ‘a courser,’ the white or tricolored cock-
ade, ‘the rose of Bellona,’ the three-cornered hat, ‘Mars’
triangle,’—that classical Academician talks slang. Alge-
bra, medicine, botany, have each their slang. The tongue
which is employed on board ship, that wonderful language
of the sea, which is so complete and so picturesque, which
was spoken by Jean Bart, Duquesne, Suffren, and Duperre,
which mingles with the whistling of the rigging, the sound
of the speaking-trumpets, the shock of the boarding-irons,
the roll of the sea, the wind, the gale, the cannon, is wholly a
heroic and dazzling slang, which is to the fierce slang of the
thieves what the lion is to the jackal.
[40] ‘Vous trouverez dans ces potains-la, une foultitude
de raisons pour que je me libertise.’
No doubt. But say what we will, this manner of under-
standing the word slang is an extension which every one will
not admit. For our part, we reserve to the word its ancient
and precise, circumscribed and determined significance,

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