*
Naturalists have observed that however savage a jaguar may be in its natural state, it becomes even more unsociable when locked away in a trunk for seven days, even if its owner has taken the precaution of packing twelve kilos of fresh horse meat with it. Captain Cap’s jaguar was no exception to this general rule.
Unfortunately, the hotel waiter who had already been guilty of the theft of a collar was unaware of this and took advantage of Cap’s return to investigate the possibility of abstracting a handkerchief. Once more, he opened the trunk. But, oh dear, this time the lid rose faster than the delinquent hotel employee could possibly have anticipated …..
Properly grateful for deliverance from such cramped quarters, the jaguar celebrated with a little orgy of carnage which involved the demise of the guilty waiter, two chamber maids, three tourists, the manager, the manager’s wife and several passing gentlemen of no particular importance.
Yes, when a jaguar is having a good time, it’s very hard to stop him.
‘And do you know?’ twinkles Captain Cap whenever he relates this tale, ‘Do you know, I have often been back to that hotel since then, and have never lost so much as a single collar stud? Not that I cared a damn about the collar in the first place. It’s just that I hate to be made a fool of.’
THE BOY AND THE EEL
I have heard our best comic songwriters indulge in the wildest flights of fancy. I have seen playwrights dream up some totally unlikely situations, especially when drunk. But I have never known either of them produce anything half so incredible, so impossible, as the things which happen in everyday life. The sort of thing of which drama critics are wont to say: ‘If this were not on the stage but in the papers, no-one would believe it.’
I apologise for this pseudo-philosophical preamble but it is designed to prepare my worthy readers for a little real-life incident. Many of you will greet it with an incredulous smile, garnished no doubt with a shrug of the shoulder and perhaps even topped with a curl of the lip. I don’t blame you. The tale I am about to unfold is so fraught with improbability that, did I not know the persons involved intimately, I too would not believe a word of it. As it is, I can vouch for its utter authenticity.
It all started last Friday at about 10.15 a.m. (note the careful circumstantial evidence) when my gardener’s wife told her little boy to pop down to the fishmonger’s, near the Seine.
‘Now listen, Julien,’ she said. ‘Old Mme Pointu says that they’ve got some very good eels today, so I want you to get me a nice big one. Here’s a five franc piece. Don’t pay more than a franc for it, though, and don’t let them cheat you with the change.’
Julien was quite used to doing little errands, as his mother had trained him from an early age to go shopping by himself, but he had never been sent to buy a real live eel before so he went off feeling very excited. He ran along throwing the coin up in the air and catching it again, throwing it up and catching it, as boys are wont to do, till – just as he had reached the river – he missed it and saw it roll straight off the quai into the Seine.
Disaster! He dashed to the edge and lay down to look into the river, but it had fallen into at least twenty foot of water and there was no sign of it.
As if things weren’t bad enough, a sudden gust of wind then whipped off his beret and a moment later that too was in the water.
Well, he thought, at least he could rescue the beret if he were quick enough. He jumped into a convenient dinghy and rowed out in an effort to save it from a watery grave. He was just in time; when he reached it, the thing was completely waterlogged and about to sink, so he quickly grabbed it and pulled it into the boat. It was then he realised, to his utter amazement, that caught in the beret was an eel, a magnificent eel, which must easily have weighed 1½lbs.
This unexpected stroke of luck made Julien feel a little better and he went back home bearing the eel for his mother to kill and prepare for cooking.
Which is where the plot thickens.
Because when she cut the eel open, what do you think she found lying in its stomach?
If I told you that she found the five franc piece, would you believe me?
Well, you would be wrong.
There was absolutely no sign of a five franc piece.
For one thing, a long thin creature like an eel could never get a five franc piece down its throat. Even if it could, its stomach is too small to take it.
No, what my gardener’s wife found in the eel’s stomach was (were) eight 50-centime pieces. Adding up to a total of four francs. Which was exactly the amount of change she had expected to get back from the fishmonger.
Quite a nice little coincidence, don’t you think?
PUTTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT
Many people have been amazed, and rightly so, at the absence of my name from the list of new Cabinet Ministers, and they have demanded to know the truth behind it. Was it an unforgiveable oversight? Or is there some conspiracy to keep me out of office? The first theory is, of course, hardly possible. As for the second, I would rather not comment. I prefer to let France judge for herself. These are the facts, as follows.
On Monday December 5th 1892, at nine o’clock on the dot or perhaps half past nine, my bell was rung by none other than M. Bourgeois, the Foreign Secretary. I jumped into my trousers, pulled on a shirt, hastily pinned on my Académie Française ribbon and opened the door.
‘President Carnot has sent for you,’ he announced. ‘I have a carriage waiting. Let’s go.’
‘Right – ‘I’ll just get dressed properly.’
‘No time for that – you look fine just as you are.’
‘But my dear Bourgeois, for the President of France…..’
M. Bourgeois cut off the rest of the sentence by the simple expedient of grasping me firmly in one hand, hauling me down the four storeys from my bachelor apartment to the ground floor and thrusting me into his cab. Five minutes later we were in the Palais de l’Elysée.
*
I was received most graciously by President Carnot, who ushered me to a seat without seeming to notice my lack of jacket, my moose-skin slippers or my balmoral (a kind of Scottish headwear).
‘Now tell me,’ he said, ‘which Ministry would you prefer to take over?’
My first instinct was to ask for the Ministry of Arts. As you know, the Minister for the Arts is given automatic entrée to the Paris Conservatoire where there are many beautiful young pupils to hand.
My second instinct was to plump for the Treasury, for reasons I need not explain.
But if there is any instinct more highly developed in me than lust and avarice, it is patriotism. So I made this firm reply:
‘M. le Président, I humbly ask to be given the War Office.’
‘Ah! Do you have any particular reforms in mind in the field of defence?’
‘I’ll say!’ I replied, a little informally perhaps. But Carnot merely invited me courteously to unfold my plans for progress and improvement.
‘Right. First, I shall do away with the entire artillery….’
‘!!!’
‘Yes, I insist. The noise made by modern cannons and field artillery is quite intolerable, especially if you have the bad luck to live next to a firing range; it must be banned forthwith.’
M. Carnot muttered something which I did not catch.
‘I’m afraid the cavalry will also have no place in my plans for the future of the French Army.’
‘???’
‘I’m sorry, I must insist. The human suffering involved in so many falls from horses and the widespread incidence of so many bruised buttocks is something which no modern army should have on its conscience.’
‘I see. Will you spare the infantry?’
‘The infantry? Not a chance! Tell me, M. le Président, have you ever served as an ordinary foot soldier?’
For a few moments M. Carnot seemed to be riffling through his memories: then he said firmly:–
‘Never.’
‘Then you have no ide
a how blistered and footsore the average poor bloody infantryman gets on the average forced march. You have no idea, M. le Président, absolutely no idea at all.’
‘Hmm. Will you keep the engineers?’
‘I have nothing personal against the engineers, but… well, let me tell you a little story. Some years ago I had a little girlfriend from America whose name was Angie, and whom I dearly wished to marry. And she might well have become my wife had she not left me for a friend of mine called Caran d’Ache. Friend! Anyway, this girl, whose full name was Angie Nears, left such a gaping hole in my heart that ever since I only have to hear her name, or one like it, to be overcome by distressing memories. Hence my aversion to the Engineers. Yes, I would do away with them as well.’
I fell silent. The President of France wiped away a furtive tear.
‘Which brings us to the catering corps. A fine body of men, M. le Président, but I fail to see any advantage in preserving them as a regiment when, after my reforms, there will be no-one left for them to feed.’
At this point the head of state rose to his feet, as if to indicate that the audience was now over. Having noticed that during the entire session no-one had thought fit to serve drinks, I issued a general invitation to Messrs. Bourgeois and Carnot to come and have a vermouth in the café in the Place Beauvau. Neither of them was, apparently, in a position to accept my offer so I thought it polite not to press them and retired gracefully.
Since then I have not heard a single word from either of them.
THE IMPRUDENTIAL ASSURANCE COMPANY
‘To protect you against the risk of penal detention’
(I have received a touching letter from a famous lawyer who wishes to be allowed to make an appeal to our vast and distinguished readership. And why not, I say? They are all yours, my learned colleague.)
*
As you may know, there was set up in Paris some two years ago a new firm called the ‘Compagnie d’Assurances sur le Vol,’ to enable people to insure themselves against burglary. It has grown and prospered ever since, which I take to be a sure sign that theft is now firmly established as one of our most popular sports.
The principle behind this new institution was most enterprising and I would be disposed to applaud it unreservedly if I did not at the same time find it deplorable that the Company has done so much to protect the victims of burglary and nothing at all to safeguard the interests of those responsible for the burglaries. But surely one cannot have a burgled person without having a burglar? Why, then, should protection be afforded to one and not to the other?
In a perfectly free and equal society (such as we now enjoy) this anomaly, deliberate or not, stands out as a crying injustice. I would go so far as to call it an immoral omission, for it deprives the brave and often heroic burglar of all the honour due to him.
An old judge I know, who has acquired a vast knowledge of the annals of larceny over the years (and thus become doubly dangerous to society), once related to me the exploits of an ex-client of his. They were superb. I can only call them deeds of prowess, passages of arms, feats of single combat – more than enough, at any rate, to make the knights of old look tame indeed. And when one thinks of the long, patient years of study and apprenticeship he had to go through before attaining such perfection, in a society which tends to be hostile to such effort, then one cannot help admiring him and all other unassuming champions of the jemmy and skeleton key.
For it is no easy trade. His client can sit comfortably at home, assured by his policy and reassured by the police, doing nothing to make the burglar’s job any easier – seeking, indeed, to hamper him – while the burglar has not a moment’s rest; night and day he is on his lonely beat in country lane and city street. Sometimes, faced with a recalcitrant bourgeois determined to place obstacles in his path, he is even obliged to resort to physical violence. Then the police, cheered on by merciless magistrates, hunt him down implacably. His liberty is perpetually at risk, not to mention his life.
And do you imagine that if, in spite of so many difficulties, he does manage to commit an elegantly planned and beautifully executed burglary, he will receive any praise? Far from it. Everyone’s sympathy will go to the passive object of the burglary, the so-called ‘victim’. No-one will spare a word for the burglar. Or if they do, it will not be a very polite word. (Listen to any judge’s summing up.)
The injustice involved is so blatant and the loss to their livelihood so grievous that I am astonished that the brotherhood of pickpockets, cut-throats and fellow-swindlers has never gone on strike. A burglars’ strike! That would set the cat among the pigeons, indeed. As we all know, ‘property is theft’. Ergo, if there were no more theft, there would be no more property. Which would mean no more landlords, no more concierges, no more rent! Can you imagine? Not to mention what chaos there would be in the law courts, with everyone having to be acquitted, all judges having to retire and thousands of unemployed lawyers being set loose to roam the streets. It does not bear thinking about.
There is a very real problem here, therefore, and we must take immediate steps to support the sterling work of all those malefactors without whom our legal and police forces would not have a shred of justification for their existence. And it is for this reason that I propose to found a new insurance company for protection against the risk of imprisonment and to help compensate all those poor wretches condemned by a harsh society to lie in sorrow on a damp prison pallet.
I propose to call the new company the ‘Imprudential Assurance Company’. It will have its head office here in Paris, but there will be branches all over France, especially in those parts of the country where the statistics of arrest and detention are highest.
The Company would insure policy holders against every kind of imprisonment including imprisonment for political crimes, though there would be higher premiums for the latter as this branch of crime is becoming increasingly popular. (We would not, however, be prepared to insure anyone appearing before the High Court.)
For a small surcharge, it would be possible to insure against police raids, third degree interrogation, false arrest and other street accidents.
If a client wished to insure himself against the effects of a house search or an appearance before an examining magistrate, there would be a special sliding scale of charges depending both on the intellectual calibre of the magistrate and on the political hue of the customer.
The advantage of insuring one’s self against the risk of imprisonment should be obvious not only to professional burglars but to anyone liable to sudden arrest, so our scheme will naturally appeal to members of parliament, senators and cabinet ministers as well. And in an age when judicial errors seem to be on the increase, I need hardly say that a policy held with our company will be the only safeguard against total ruin for any innocent man jailed by mistake.
Such, in brief, is the nature of my new enterprise. I appeal to all your readers to lend it the moral and financial support which it deserves. I appeal to them not just for France but for all humanity. I am confident that they will respond to my appeal.
THE DOGS OF WAR
If the military experts are to be believed, dogs are really going to have their work cut out in the great European wars ahead of us. Apparently there are going to be sentry dogs, reconnaissance dogs, dispatch dogs, anti-bicycle dogs – the way things are going, we may not be needing soldiers at all. And I need hardly tell you that the Germans are already well ahead of the rest of us in this new-fangled field of military research; not a day goes by without some Prussian officer or other thinking of an ingenious new way of adapting dogs to a military function.
So I think I ought to disclose a highly disturbing development which I had the luck to witness while on holiday recently in the little-known German countryside round Königsberg (little-known to me, at any rate – I was completely lost at the time) because it should be brought to the attention of the relevant authority without delay.
I had just emerged from a large wood in which I
had spent a happy morning going round in circles when I was amazed to find myself the witness of the following scene. There before me was a whole company of French and Russian soldiers (yes, Russian soldiers! I couldn’t believe my eyes) who were busy…..
It might make things simpler if I tell you straightaway that what I saw was a whole company of Germans dressed up as French and Russian soldiers. They were busy feeding a large pack of dogs. Or rather, a pack of large dogs, the kind you see in Flanders pulling milk floats. It was most touching. They stroked them and patted them. They sorted out the best bits of meat for them. They talked to them and scratched their ears and called them nauseating pet names. And when it was all over and the dogs were quite full, these false French and pseudo-Russians harnessed them gently to little dog-carts, tethered them to posts and went off, leaving them behind.
But as soon as they had vanished, more soldiers appeared, this time in German uniform, who promptly attacked the dogs brutally, kicking them, whipping them, snatching their bones from them. Then, still shouting furiously at them, they untied them and let them go. Not surprisingly, the poor beasts couldn’t wait to get away and set off at top speed cross country in search of their French and Russian friends, dragging the little carts behind them.
What on earth could this amazing demonstration be in aid of? I was baffled. At the same time I had no intention of leaving the area until I had found out, and that very same day I made my way to Königsberg at the risk of being arrested to pursue my patriotic investigations with my usual unshakeable determination and exceptional intelligence. Neither was needed, luckily, as I very soon learned the truth from a rather drunk and indiscreet German lieutenant.
The World of Alphonse Allais Page 7
