“‘No, no,’ said I, ‘there’s a small creature goes about here, on an organ, in a three-cornered cocked-hat and a red coat, and I can have him for half an hour for two sous.’
“‘Votre serviteur, Madame,’ said he, with an angry whisk of his tail; for although I did not intend it, the beast was annoyed at my remark.
“Away they went, Messieurs, and from that hour to this I never heard more of the creature, nor of his companions; for my husband makes it a rule never to converse on topics relating to his business,—and it seems he was, somehow or other, mixed up in the transaction.”
“But, Madame,” cried one of the passengers, “you don’t mean to palm this fable on us for reality, and make us believe something more absurd than Æsop himself ever invented?”
“If it be only an impertinent allegory,” said the old gentleman opposite, “I must say, it is in the worst possible taste.”
“Or if,” said a little white-faced fat man, with spectacles,—“or if it be a covert attack upon the National Guard of Paris, as the corporal of the 95th legion, of the 37th arrondissement, I repel the insinuation with contempt.”
“Heaven forbid, gentlemen! The facts I have narrated are strictly true; my husband can confirm them in every particular, and I have only to regret that any trait in the ape’s character should suggest uncomfortable recollections to yourselves.”
The train had now reached its destination, and the old lady got out, amid the maledictions of some, and the stifled laughter of others of the passengers,—for only one or two had shrewdness enough to perceive that she was one of those good credulous souls who implicitly believed all she had narrated, and whose judgment having been shaken by the miraculous power of a railroad which converted the journey of a day into the trip of an hour, could really have swallowed any other amount of the apparently impossible it might be her fortune to meet with.
For the benefit of those who may not be as easy of belief as the good Madame Geoffroy, let me add one word as the solution of this mystery. The ape was no other than M. Gouffe, who, being engaged to perform as a monkey in the afterpiece of “La Pérouse,” was actually cracking nuts in a tree, when he learned from a conversation in “the flats,” that the director, M. Laborde, had just made his escape with all the funds of the theatre, and six months of M. Gouffe’s own salary. Several police-officers had already gained access to the back of the stage, and were arresting the actors as they retired. Poor Jocko had nothing for it, then, but to put his agility to the test, and, having climbed to the top of the tree, he scrambled in succession over the heads of several scenes, till he reached the back of the stage, where, watching his opportunity, he descended in safety, rushed down the stairs, and gained the street. By immense exertions he arrived at the Bois de Boulogne, where he lay concealed until the starting of the early train for Versailles. The remainder of his adventure the reader already knows.
Satisfactory as this explanation may be to some, I confess I should be sorry to make it, if I thought it would reach the eyes or ears of poor Madame Geoffroy, and thus disabuse her of a pleasant illusion, and the harmless gratification of recounting her story to others as unsuspecting as herself.