in token of good-will.

_Tab._ So you say taking off hats is the pink of politeness? Now, if
that's so, do you want to know who I think are the politest people?

_Mon._ Yes: who?

_Tab._ Why, our Paris street-thieves, for they don't stop at taking off
hats, but take cloaks off too.

* * * * *

_Tab._ Master, why don't they let women take orders?

_Mon._ Because the sex is frail, Tabarin, and not worthy to conduct the
services of the Church, which are sacred mysteries.

_Tab._ Humbug! It's because they always will have the last word, so it
wouldn't do to let them give the responses. Why, the services would
never end.

By similar logic Tabarin demonstrates, among others, the following
propositions:

An ass is a better linguist than his master, because he understands when
he is spoken to, while his lingo is all lost upon the man.

A fiddler has the hardest lot of all mankind, because his life depends
upon a bit of wood and a piece of cord, for all the world like a
malefactor's.

Cut-purses are the most liberal of all men, for they not only empty
their own purses, but those of other people.

If you put a miller, a tailor, a bailiff and an attorney in a bag, the
first thing to come out will be a thief.

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 Moliere 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,
Desiderio 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, tryi