Not Too Proud Candle Holder...

A scoundrel of the worst kind, a caricature of a coquillard…. The Cour des Miracles was, under the Ancien Régime, a group of lawless spaces composed of districts of Paris, so named because the supposed infirmities of the beggars who had made it their ordinary place of residence disappeared there at nightfall, “as if by miracle”. In reality, some of them did not really suffer from any handicap. Coming from the countryside to look, in vain, for work, or destitute from the cities, the most disadvantaged swelled the ranks of the Cours des Miracles in the 17th century, during the reigns of Louis XIII and Louis XIV. A facetious popular writing around 1630 by Ollivier Chereau, from Tours. According to the carnivalesque descriptions of this author, the beggars, members of the Argot (corporation of beggars), who were hierarchical and perfectly organized, had laws, a language. They went so far as to elect a king of the slangists. This one was called "the great Coësre" or "king of Thunes." This king commanded all the beggars of France. The beggars of each province obeyed the "cagous," that is, the lieutenants of the great Coësre; it was they who instructed the beggars beginning in the trade. Below these came, in the hierarchy, the "archisuppôts," who were the scholars of the kingdom of the beggars. They were for the most part former students; they taught slang to the beggars new to the association and enjoyed the privilege of not paying any taxes to the great Coësre. The caricaturist Guillemin, author of this babbitt torch, was spoiled for choice when it came to creating his sad character. Among the mocking, the riffodés, the puny, the hubins, clots or rabouteux, the most vile was the false pilgrim who rang his offering box at the end of mass? He wore pious images on his hat and in his buttonhole. He brandished his thinness and his false smile to monopolize the good people... Don't be fooled by him, in the same hand as his fife, he holds his club