CHAPTER I—ORIGIN
Pigritia is a terrible word.
It engenders a whole world, la pègre, for which read theft, and a hell, la pègrenne, for which read hunger.
Thus, idleness is the mother.
She has a son, theft, and a daughter, hunger.
Where are we at this moment? In the land of slang.
What is slang? It is at one and the same time, a nation and a dialect; it is theft in its two kinds; people and language.
When, four and thirty years ago, the narrator of this grave and sombre history introduced into a work written with the same aim as this39 a thief who talked argot, there arose amazement and clamor.—”What! How! Argot! Why, argot is horrible! It is the language of prisons, galleys, convicts, of everything that is most abominable in society!” etc., etc.
We have never understood this sort o
