Under Louis XV children disappeared in Paris; the police carried them off, for what mysterious purpose no one knew. People whispered with terror monstrous conjectures as to the king’s baths of purple. Barbier speaks ingenuously of these things. It sometimes happened that the exempts of the guard, when they ran short of children, took those who had fathers. The fathers, in despair, attacked the exempts. In that case, the parliament intervened and had someone hung. Who? The exempts? No, the fathers.

The Gamin Should Have His Place in the Classifications of India

The body of street arabs in Paris almost constitutes a caste. One might almost say: Not everyone who wishes to belong to it can do so.