He had, moreover, invented some original tricks, which had given him a colossal reputation among the admirers of this branch of the fine arts. The only truly witty one I ever knew him to perpetrate, took place at a country-house where a large party of us were assembled. Among the guests, Ganguernet had singled out a lady of some thirty years, rather fantastic in her manners and appearance, who was doatingly fond of Parisian elegance, and who preferred the pale face of a well-looking youth of rather shallow intellect, to the coarse, purple visage of Ganguernet. Our humourist endeavored in vain to render this youth ridiculous in the eyes of the lady, who regarded his simplicity as a poetical absence of mind, and his credulity as an indication of sincerity and honest good faith. One evening, after a brisk defence of the pale-faced youth on the part of the lady, which was listened to by Ganguernet with a patience and a peculiar expression of the eye which boded no good, we had all retired to our apartments. In about half an hour, the house resounded with loud outcries of ‘fire! fire!’ which seemed to proceed from the hall upon the ground-floor. Every one hastened thither, men and women half-dressed, or half-undressed, which ever you please. They entered pell-mell, candlestick in hand, and there found Ganguernet stretched upon a sofa. To the reiterated questions that were put him as to the cause of the clamor, he answered not a word; but taking the pale-faced young man by the hand in a very solemn manner, and leading him up to the fine lady, gravely said to her: ‘I have the honor, Madam, of presenting to you the most poetic genius of the company in a cotton night-cap.’ We all burst into a shout of laughter, but the lady never forgave Ganguernet, nor the cotton night-cap.
All the jokes which Ganguernet played, however, were not prompted by vengeance; a spirit of fun merely being the grand principle of most of his tricks. Before we come to the occurrence which showed this man to me in his true colors, I must relate a few more of the humorous pranks in which he took the greatest pride. Opposite his residence at Rennes there dwelt a worthy pair of venerable citizens, who were the sole occupants of a small house, which was their only possession. Once a week this honest couple were in the habit of dining, and having a little game of piquet with a relation, who resided at some distance from their abode. On these occasions they were usually regaled with curds and whey, which they moistened with sparkling cider; and not unfrequently a bowl of punch concluded the repast; so that the worthy pair commonly returned home about eleven o’clock, singing and staggering along in a state of happy elevation.
On a certain fatal Sunday evening, these good folks returned to their abode, both of them pretty much, ‘how came you so.’ They arrived at the door of their next neighbour, which they recognized, and then proceeded on ten paces farther, which was just the distance to their own door. The husband, after fumbling in his pocket for the key of the street-door, pulled it out, and sought the key-hole; but no key-hole was to be found. ‘What has become of the key-hole?’ cried he. ‘You have drank too much cider, Monsieur Larquet,’ said his wife; ‘you are looking for the key-hole, and we are still before the wall of neighbour Bompart.’
‘That is true,’ replied Monsieur Larquet; ‘we must go a few paces farther.’ They walked on; but this time they went too far, for as they had before recognized the door of their right-hand neighbor, they now found themselves in front of that of their neighbor on the left hand. Their own door ought to be between these two doors. They return, groping along the wall until they come to a door, which to their consternation they again find to be that of their right-hand neighbor! The honest couple become alarmed about the soundness of their wits, and begin to suspect that they must certainly both be tipsy. They recommence their inspections from the door of their neighbor on the right, and again come to the door of their neighbor on the left. They constantly find these two doors, but not a vestige of their own: their door has disappeared—vanished! Who could have taken away their door? Terror seizes them; they ask each other if they have become demented; and dreading the ridicule which would be cast upon honest citizens who could not find their own street-door, they grope about for more than an hour, feeling, poking, inspecting, measuring; but alas! there is no door; there is nothing but a wall, an unknown wall, an implacable wall, a desperate wall! At length, terror completely overpowers them; they utter loud cries, and call lustily for assistance. The neighbors are attracted by the noise, and after some time, it is ascertained that the door of the distracted couple has been carefully bricked up, and plastered over; and when all are trying to discover who could have played such a pitiful trick upon these honest people, Ganguernet, who from an opposite window, in company with some kindred spirits, had been enjoying the tribulation and despair of Monsieur and Madame Larquet, Ganguernet shouts out his everlasting refrain: ‘A capital joke!’ But, answered the neighbors, these poor folks will take their death of cold.
‘Bah!’ replies he; ‘a capital joke!’
The incensed neighbors petitioned the king’s attorney to moderate Monsieur Ganguernet’s strong inclination to play his mischievous pranks; and the magistrate sent our hero to prison for some days, in spite of his skilful defence, which consisted in incessantly repeating: ‘A capital joke!—what a capital joke, Mr. Magistrate!’
Notwithstanding his excessive vanity, Ganguernet did not, however, make boast of all his exploits; and there was one, the authorship of which he constantly denied, possibly in consequence of a threat that was held out of cutting off the author’s ears, should he be detected. The trick in question was prompted by the contempt in which he was held in a certain aristocratic circle; and the subject was no less a personage than an ancient dame of high birth, and great pretensions, who mingled in the most fashionable society of Rennes.
Among other customs of the old school, which this lady retained, were the following: First, that of never mixing in the society of those of plebeian descent, such as Ganguernet: and secondly; that of always being carried in a sedan-chair by porters, when she went abroad. One evening she went to a ball, given by the first president of the court of assizes, a ball at which Ganguernet was also present. She left about midnight, carried as usual in her sedan-chair through a pelting shower of rain. At the moment she got under one of those loop-holes in the eaves-gutters, through which the rain pours down into the street in long dashing cascades, two or three shrill whistles were heard on the right and left hand. Immediately four men in masks made their appearance, at sight of whom the porters, abandoning their charge, took to their heels; but at the moment when the noble dame believed herself on the point of being assassinated, a terrible dash of cold water upon her head took away her breath, and almost deprived her of consciousness. The top of the chair had disappeared as if by magic, and the gutter poured its contents directly into the vehicle, the occupant of which in vain attempted to force open the door. She beat and thumped against it with fury, mounted the seat, and like an incarnate fiend, invoked the divine wrath upon the vile miscreants, who were giving her such a cruel shower-bath; and who only replied to her invectives by profound bows, and the most humble salutations. The worst part of this wicked trick was, that the lady wore hair-powder, and the mystifiers carried umbrellas.
My acquaintance with Ganguernet continued about ten years. In the low and vulgar circles of society which he was fond of frequenting, he was held up as the most jovial, the best-natured, and the most amusing fellow in the world; although there were some, whose sense of propriety and moral feelings were not entirely destroyed, who held him in merited contempt. For my own part, I always had a dread of the man. That odious smile, forever hanging on those large red lips, singularly annoyed me; that imperturbable gayety, exhibited on all occasions of life, troubled me like the constant presence of a hideous phantom; that phrase, which he appended like a moral to every thing he did, that detested phrase, ‘A capital joke,’ sounded in my ears as doleful and sombre as the Trappists’ motto, ‘Brother, we must die!’
There was a fatality about the man; and it was destined that a life should be sacrificed to his mad propensity for mischief. A day came, on which his famous words, ‘A capital joke!’ was to be pronounced over a tomb.