ABSTRACT
Jules Valles, who after the Commune would write a trilogy of autobiographical novels about the boyhood origins and formation of the insurgent Jacques Vingtras, was already addressing childhood as a social issue during the latter part of the Second Empire. As the Second Empire progressed, panoramic literature continued to attempt to classify the gamin de Paris while now more frequently admitting defeat. Without the oversized top hat of Gavarni's sweep, which emphasizes an underage vulnerability, Negre's boys are setting off to do their job, even as the shadowed or sooty face of the eldest on the left may seem to recall the earlier stereotyping of gamins de Paris as members of "another race". Illustrated by Gavarni with a more sullen urchin than his earlier one for Les Francais peints par eux-memes, Edmond Texier's brief comment on the gamin in his Tableau de Paris of 1852 initially reiterates that the boy is "that artist of revolutions and barricades".
