And that is how things stand at the moment. What I want to know is, should I fight their demand in court?
yours et cetera
(signature illegible)
THE ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS
A story told to Guy Cros, aged six
‘Once upon a time, there was an uncle and a nephew ….’
‘Which was which?’
‘Well, the uncle was bigger than the nephew.’
‘Are uncles always big, then?’
‘Yes, they are, usually.’
‘My Uncle Henry isn’t very big.’
‘No, but Uncle Henry is an artist, you see.’
‘Are artists always small, then?’
‘Do you want to hear the story or don’t you?’
‘Sorry.’
‘Once upon a time, there was an uncle and a nephew. The uncle was rich, very rich….’
‘How rich?’
‘His income was 17,000 francs a year, but he also had lots of houses and carriages and land ….’
‘And horses?’
‘Of course. He had to have horses for the carriages.’
‘What about boats? Did he have any boats?’
‘Yes, he had fourteen boats.’
‘Were they motor boats?’
‘Three were motor boats and the rest were yachts.’
‘Did he let his nephew use any of his boats?’
‘Do you want to hear the story or don’t you?’
‘Sorry. I won’t interrupt again.’
‘But the nephew didn’t have any money at all, which made him very sad.’
‘Why didn’t his uncle give him some?’
‘Because the uncle was a terrible old miser who wanted to keep all his money to himself. Still, the nephew was the old man’s sole heir, so …..’
‘What does “heir” mean?’
‘Well, heirs are people who come and get all your money and belongings and everything when you’re dead.’
‘So why didn’t the nephew just kill his uncle and take it all?’
‘That’s a nice thing to ask, I must say! He didn’t kill his uncle because you must never, never kill your uncle however much you want to. Even to get his belongings.’
‘Why not?’
‘In case the police find out.’
‘But what if the police don’t find out?’
‘The police always find out, because the concierge always tells them. Anyway, the nephew had a better idea. He’d noticed that his uncle went very red after each meal …..’
‘I bet he was drunk.’
‘No, he just went red. He was apoplectic, you see.’
‘What does aplopectic mean?’
‘Apoplectic ….. it means that you have too much blood in your head and you might die if you ever got really excited about something.’
‘Will that happen to me?’
‘Not if I know you. Anyway, the nephew noticed that what made his uncle really bright red was listening to funny stories. Once he laughed so much he almost died.’
‘Can you really die laughing?’
‘Yes, if you’re apoplectic ….. So one day the nephew came to see his uncle just after dinner. The uncle had eaten even more than usual; he’d gone as red as a rooster and was puffing away like a seal …..’
‘Like the seals we saw in the Zoo?’
‘No, they were sea-lions ….. and so the nephew thought to himself: “Aha! Now’s the time”. And he told him a funny story, so funny that …..’
‘Tell me the story!’
‘Wait a moment, and I’ll tell it you afterwards ….. anyway, the uncle listened to the story and laughed fit to burst, in fact he did burst because he died before the nephew had even finished telling it.’
‘Yes, but what was the story?’
‘Wait a minute ….. so, after the uncle’s funeral, the nephew got everything.’
‘Even the boats?’
‘Yes, everything. He was the sole heir, I told you.’
‘And what was the story he told his uncle?’
‘It was …… it was the story I’ve just told you.’
‘Which one?’
‘You know, the one about the uncle and the nephew.’
‘I don’t believe it! Tell me another!’
‘Not likely.’
P S
The worst part of seeing a friend off at the station is the empty moment which comes just after the train has left. What do you do next? Well, I don’t know what you do, and to be quite frank I don’t in the least want to know, but I don’t mind telling you what I do next. I repair immediately to the buffet of the said station and take a vermouth and cassis (not too much cassis, please) to drown my sorrow. For, as the poet hath said: ‘Partir, c’est mourir un peu.’
Occasionally I find myself seeing off friends at a time of day which does not fit in with an aperitif like vermouth and cassis, and on such occasions I do not have a vermouth and cassis. I have some other drink instead. Last Tuesday, for instance, at 18.30 hours, you might have seen me sitting at a table in the buffet of the Gare de Lyon drinking an absinthe and anisette (not too much anisette, please). I had just been seeing a young lady off on the train – normally I would not dream of giving away such intimate details, but I refuse to hide anything from my readers – a young lady who was not only surpassingly beautiful but so domineering that I was only too glad to see her on her way to other climes. And I had barely had time to dip my lips in my cloudy liquor before another man sat down at the table next to me.
He promptly ordered a curaçao and bitters (not too much bitters, please) and some writing paper, and proceeded to dash off two quite different letters.
One took no time at all to write and was very soon consigned to an envelope on which he wrote the following address:–
Colonel I A du Rabiot,
Hôtel des Bains,
Pourd-sur-Alaure.
But the other letter was much more trouble to write than the first one. Some phrases fell straight from his pen; others foundered after the first word. On at least two or three occasions he tore the whole letter up and started all over again. And at one point I swear I saw a tear come to his eyes and fall silently on to the station stationery beneath.
But all things must come to an end, even love letters, and when he had covered four sheets of paper in thick passionate handwriting, the man eventually folded them up and reluctantly packed them away in a second envelope which he addressed as follows:–
Madame Louise du R……
Poste restante
Pourd-sur-Alaure
‘Waiter!’ he cried loudly. ‘Bring me a couple of 3 sou stamps!’
‘Sir,’ said the waiter.
So far, my neighbour’s features had borne all the classic signs of resigned melancholy. But without warning his face suddenly went purple with rage and he became as apoplectic as you can become without actually falling over. He wrenched the letter out of the envelope marked Mme du R…… and wrote on it a swift PS in the white heat of his new passion. Only two lines – but what lines they must have been! Take that, woman!!
By this time I felt quite intrigued by the little one-sided melodrama, though it was pretty obvious what was afoot. The man at the next table was clearly not only a close friend of Colonel du Rabiot (who had gone off to nurse his ailments in the spa waters of P-s-A rather like Napoleon nursing his grievances on St. Helena) but also the lover of Mme du Rabiot, the beautiful wife of the Colonel. At least, I supposed she was beautiful. Between you and me, I had already fallen madly in love with the colonel’s wife myself.
‘Waiter!’ I cried. ‘Bring me a timetable, would you?’
‘Sir,’ said the waiter.
The next train to P-s-A was at 19.40 hours. That gave me just enough time to get a bite to eat and buy a ticket.
Pourd-sur-Alaure, in case you didn’t know, is a little spa town in the hills, not very fashionable but absolutely delightful and (as the guide book inimitably says) in a marvellous sett
ing. When I arrived at about midnight, I took a cab to the Hotel des Bains and there took a room to sleep all night dreaming of Mme Louise du Rabiot.
The morning took a long time coming but at last the breakfast bell sounded and I went downstairs, my heart beating like a temple gong at the prospect of seeing the very same Louise du Rabiot who had inspired so many crossings out, and rewritten sentences and such a passionate PS.
I recognised her straightaway.
She was small, young, well-built, blonde and everything you could wish for. Well, not pretty perhaps, but everything else you could wish for. At any rate, she was everything I could wish for. She had come down to breakfast before her husband and, while waiting for him, was reading a certain letter which looked very familiar. When she came to the PS she smiled – a funny sort of smile – and tucked the letter away in her pocket. Then the Colonel lumbered in and sat down.
‘I’ve had a letter from Alfred,’ I heard her say.
‘Ah?’
‘He sends you lots of love.’
‘Ah.’
And she shook with a long, silent, very private and discreet laugh. Then she looked up and realised that I was drinking her in with my eyes.
She did not seem in the least offended.
By lunch-time we were both on good speaking terms.
We got to know each other better in the afternoon.
By dinner time we were close friends.
After our evening together at the Casino we felt we had always known each other.
At 10 o’clock she whispered to me:
‘What’s the number of your hotel room?’
‘17.’
‘Right…. If you leave now, I will be with you in five minutes’ time.’
In five minutes’ time, she was with me.
‘But your husband….’ I said nervously.
‘Don’t worry about my husband,’ she said. ‘He is playing whist. Do you know what the English mean when they say “whist!”?’
‘Yes. It means “quiet”…..’
‘Exactly. So keep quiet and do just what I do…..’
In a flash she had slipped out of her clothes.
In a second flash, she had slipped between the sheets.
In a third flash, so to speak, she was all mine.
Time for a discreet line of dots.
…………………………………………………………………
When the fun and games were over, we got chatting again.
‘What about Alfred, then?’ I said, a bit maliciously.
‘You know Alfred, do you?’ she said, slightly taken aback.
‘No, not at all. All I know is that he wrote a letter to you yesterday. And added a PS to it.’
‘I’ll say he did! It might have been quite a nice letter without that PS. Would you like to read his little PS?’
‘I’d love to.’
So she showed it to me. It read:-
‘PS – I’ve just realised what a complete fool I’ve been over you. I never want to see you again. As far as I’m concerned, you can go and get……..’
This last word was written out in full.
‘Well…..?’ she said.
THE DOCTOR
Monologue for Cadet
For sheer nerve you can’t beat a good doctor. For sheer, infernal, unbeatable nerve…. Nor for callousness, either.
What happens when you fall ill? You call your doctor. And he feels you all over and taps your chest and asks you a few questions – all with his mind a million miles away – then writes out a prescription and says ‘I’ll call in next time I’m passing’. And he passes by a few times and makes a few passes over you until it comes to pass one day that you quietly pass away.
At which point the undertaker is in like a flash to give the doctor his cut of the funeral expenses.
If you do manage to avoid serious illness (which isn’t too hard) and stand up to his treatment (which is much more difficult), the good doctor will still be rubbing his hands with glee. Because every visit means a fee from you and a lovely commission from your chemist and it all snowballs very soon into a small fortune for him.
The only thing that makes a doctor sad is when you recover immediately. Even then he puts a brave face on it and has the infernal cheek to say:
‘Good! good! Caught you just in time.’
I have known some doctors with the most infernal nerve, but the worst of the lot is my own doctor. My ex-doctor, rather, because I have just given him the push. And believe me, I’m not the loser.
It all began one day when I woke up in a cold sweat, or maybe a hot sweat, I can never tell the difference, and realised I had caught something nasty. So, as I have a healthy regard for myself – what do you expect? I’m the only one I’ve got – I phoned my doctor immediately and he arrived within the hour.
I wasn’t feeling very well when he arrived. By the time he had gone I felt awful. I took to my bed at once.
More visits. More medicine. More symptoms than ever.
Within a few days I was kilos lighter and pounds poorer.
Then one morning when I was feeling absolutely wretched my doctor examined me rather more thoroughly than usual and said:
‘Quite happy in this flat, are you?’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘How much rent do you pay?’
‘Three thousand four hundred a year.’
‘The concierge seems all right, does he?’
‘No complaints so far.’
‘How about the landlord?’
‘The landlord is very reasonable, actually.’
‘Good. Do you get any trouble from smoking chimneys?’
‘Not really.’
And so on and so forth.
Till I began to wonder: What is the brute driving at? I can understand him being interested in the humidity or otherwise of my quarters, seeing how ill I am, but why on earth should he take any interest in the amount of rent I have to pay? So, weak as I was, I felt impelled to ask:
‘What are all these questions in aid of, doctor?’
‘To be quite frank,’ he said, ‘I’m looking for a new flat and yours is just the sort of place I’m after.’
‘Yes, but I have no intention of moving out of here…’
‘Perhaps not, but you may have to in the very near future.’
‘Move? But why?’
‘Ah! Well…..’
Suddenly I twigged.
My doctor thought I was for it, and was trying to tell me so in no uncertain terms.
I can hardly tell you what effect this curt revelation had on me.
A terrible sort of stage fright, to begin with.
Followed very shortly by a blind rage. What a way to treat a sick man, I thought! Not just any old sick man, either, but a customer! A good customer at that.
So you’d like my flat would you, my friend? Nothing doing!
*
If you ever fall ill, I can recommend my own course of treatment to you. Work yourself up into a tremendous rage. It may not do you much good, but it certainly cured me.
I kicked my doctor down the stairs.
I threw his prescriptions out of the window.
(When I say I threw them out of the window, I’m exaggerating slightly. I don’t like scattering broken glass around because that could hurt passers-by and I don’t like hurting the man in the street – what do you take me for? A doctor?)
What I actually did was send back the offending medicaments to the chemist accompanied by a stiff letter.
My God, I have never seen so many bottles and packets and jars in all my life!
I had been given so many prescriptions that on one occasion I had got the doctor’s orders all wrong; I had slapped a linctus on my stomach and swallowed a dressing.
It was the only time I had ever felt at all better.
And when the whole episode was over I renewed the lease on my flat. And let my option on a new doctor lapse.
LIONISATION
> In our last issue I courageously published an article in which I mercilessly flayed the vile activities of our funeral undertakers. I revealed their attempts to corrupt the concierges of France and proved irrefutably that they are inciting the latter to murder their tenants in return for a hefty commission on the burial expenses.
It brought me a heavy mailbag.
Mainly foul insults and gross libels from the tradesmen in question.
And a good many indignant protests from our friends the concierges who swore blind that never, never would they conceive the slightest designs on the life of the humblest tenant (oh how little I knew about concierges!) even if it meant them earning enough to last them the rest of their days.
But also a few very interesting ideas on the subject from my readers, to whom I am alas unable to offer the royal welcome they deserve on account of the miserly space allotted to us writers.
I am therefore restricted to publishing only one of these epistles.
To the Editor-in-Chief
Sir,
On behalf of right-minded people of all parties, I welcome the masterly way in which you have exposed the dangerous dealings of these macabre tradesmen who make their living from other people’s deaths.
But is there any solution to this disgraceful scandal?
Yes, sir, there is. There is one solution and one only, to wit:
The banning of all funerals!
I know that when I urge an immediate stop to all kinds of funeral service I am asking for the impossible, but at least let us take immediate steps to change funeral undertaking from a scandalous private industry into a dignified public service.
If I were something in the government, I would make a start by doing everything in my power to do away with the barbarous custom whereby we so brutally let our deceased putrefy in the foul humus of our cemeteries.
I find the system of cremation equally unappealing.
You yourself, my dear M. Allais, have in the past suggested an ingenious alternative. As far as I can recall, it involved treating the corpse with a solution of nitric and sulphuric acids, much in the same way as guncotton is made, then transforming the dear departed into a spectacular firework show.
The World of Alphonse Allais Page 12