The most wonderful gardener and the most wonderful tree in the world are respectively Jack Ketch and the gallows tree, because when the hangman plants that unpleasant vegetable it bears fruit the same day.
If you see six birds on a tree, and shoot three, there will be none left, for of course the remaining three will fly away. This last jest is so trite to-day as to be absolutely threadbare.
Tabarin's wits were not exhausted by this kind of buffoonery. He issued comic proclamations and almanacs, and even produced short farces in which his wife performed with him. From one of these farces Molière is supposed to have borrowed the ideas for his sack-scene in the Fourberies de Scapin.
La Fontaine stole one of Grattelard's dialogues bodily, and converted it into the celebrated fable of The Acorn and the Pumpkin. Grattelard was contemporary with Tabarin, as remarked above: he and his partner, Désidério Descombes, sold quack medicines at the north end of the Pont Neuf. The dialogue in question follows, at least so much of it as is in point, and will serve as tailpiece to the specimens of Tabarin's wit:
Grat. I had a great discussion this morning with a philosopher, trying to prove to him that Nature often makes great mistakes.
D.D. No, no, Grattelard: everything that Nature does is done for the best.
Grat. Just wait now: let me tell you how I had to give in.
D.D. Well, how was it?
Grat. We were walking in the garden, and pretty soon we came across a tremendous pumpkin, as big as a Swiss drum. "There!" said I: "Nature has no better sense than to hang a great thing like that on such a slender vine that the least breeze can break it off."
D.D. Then you blamed Nature in the matter of the pumpkin?