Droll Stories, vol 2 | Page 4

their terrors are proved to
have been idle, they exclaimed triumphantly, "Ha! ha! I knew it. I
always said so."
In order not to discourage fine sentiments, intolerable though they be,

the Author leaves to his friends his old shoes, and in order to make
their minds easy, assures them that he has, legally protected and
exempt from seizure, seventy droll stories, in that reservoir of nature,
his brain. By the gods! they are precious yarns, well rigged out with
phrases, carefully furnished with catastrophes, amply clothed with
original humour, rich in diurnal and nocturnal effects, nor lacking that
plot which the human race has woven each minute, each hour, each
week, month, and year of the great ecclesiastical computation,
commenced at a time when the sun could scarcely see, and the moon
waited to be shown her way. These seventy subjects, which he gives
you leave to call bad subjects, full of tricks and impudence, lust, lies,
jokes, jests, and ribaldry, joined to the two portions here given, are, by
the prophet! a small instalment on the aforesaid hundred.
Were it not a bad time for a bibliopolists, bibliomaniacs, bibliographers,
and bibliotheques which hinder bibliolatry, he would have given them
in a bumper, and not drop by drop as if he were afflicted with dysury of
the brain. He cannot possibly be suspected of this infirmity, since he
often gives good weight, putting several stories into one, as is clearly
demonstrated by several in this volume. You may rely on it, that he has
chosen for the finish, the best and most ribald of the lot, in order that he
may not be accused of a senile discourse. Put then more likes with your
dislikes, and dislikes with your likes. Forgetting the niggardly
behaviour of nature to story-tellers, of whom there are not more than
seven perfect in the great ocean of human writers, others, although
friendly, have been of opinion that, at a time when everyone went about
dressed in black, as if in mourning for something, it was necessary to
concoct works either wearisomely serious or seriously wearisome; that
a writer could only live henceforward by enshrining his ideas in some
vast edifice, and that those who were unable to construct cathedrals and
castles of which neither stone nor cement could be moved, would die
unknown, like the Pope's slippers. The friends were requested to
declare which they liked best, a pint of good wine, or a tun of cheap
rubbish; a diamond of twenty-two carats, or a flintstone weighing a
hundred pounds; the ring of Hans Carvel, as told by Rabelais, or a
modern narrative pitifully expectorated by a schoolboy. Seeing them
dumbfounded and abashed, it was calmly said to them, "Do you

thoroughly understand, good people? Then go your ways and mind
your own businesses."
The following, however, must be added, for the benefit of all of whom
it may concern:--The good man to whom we owe fables and stories of
sempiternal authority only used his tool on them, having taken his
material from others; but the workmanship expended on these little
figures has given them a high value; and although he was, like M.
Louis Ariosto, vituperated for thinking of idle pranks and trifles, there
is a certain insect engraved by him which has since become a
monument of perennity more assured than that of the most solidly built
works. In the especial jurisprudence of wit and wisdom the custom is to
steal more dearly a leaf wrested from the book of Nature and Truth,
than all the indifferent volumes from which, however fine they be, it is
impossible to extract either a laugh or a tear. The author has licence to
say this without any impropriety, since it is not his intention to stand
upon tiptoe in order to obtain an unnatural height, but because it is a
question of the majesty of his art, and not of himself--a poor clerk of
the court, whose business it is to have ink in his pen, to listen to the
gentleman on the bench, and take down the sayings of each witness in
this case. He is responsible for workmanship, Nature for the rest, since
from the Venus of Phidias the Athenian, down to the little old fellow,
Godenot, commonly called the Sieur Breloque, a character carefully
elaborated by one of the most celebrated authors of the present day,
everything is studied from the eternal model of human imitations which
belongs to all. At this honest business, happy are the robbers that they
are not hanged, but esteemed and beloved. But he is a triple fool, a fool
with ten horns on his head, who struts, boasts, and is puffed up at an
advantage due to the hazard of dispositions, because glory lies only in
the cultivation