Page 996 - les-miserables

CHAPTER VIII

IN WHICH THE READER

WILL FIND A CHARMING

SAYING OF THE LAST KING

In summer, he metamorphoses himself into a frog; and in
the evening, when night is falling, in front of the bridges
of Austerlitz and Jena, from the tops of coal wagons, and
the washerwomen’s boats, he hurls himself headlong into
the Seine, and into all possible infractions of the laws of
modesty and of the police. Nevertheless the police keep an
eye on him, and the result is a highly dramatic situation
which once gave rise to a fraternal and memorable cry; that
cry which was celebrated about 1830, is a strategic warn-
ing from gamin to gamin; it scans like a verse from Homer,
with a notation as inexpressible as the eleusiac chant of the
Panathenaea, and in it one encounters again the ancient
Evohe. Here it is: ‘Ohe, Titi, oheee! Here comes the bobby,
here comes the p’lice, pick up your duds and be off, through
the sewer with you!’
Sometimes this gnat—that is what he calls himself—

996 Les Miserables