with his paws all the arrangements of your joys and sorrows;
more insupportable, and more difficult to get rid of than the dog, they
lie in ambush to pounce upon you, and disconcert by a word or a trick the
feelings you may enjoy, or the projects you intend.

Among characters of this description, there are some whom their
common-place attempts at wit consign to contempt. These performers confine
themselves to vulgar and stale jokes. To thrust the head through the paper
window-pane of a cobbler, and ask him the address of a minister of
finances, or an archbishop; to stretch a cord across a staircase, so as to
cause those who descend to take, in the words of a punster, a _voyage sur
la rein_, or 'a voyage upon the Rhine;' to wake up a notary in the middle
of the night, and send him in great haste to draw up a will for a client,
whom he finds in good health; these and a thousand other silly pranks of
the same nature, are the stock in trade of a jester; and no one knew them
better than did Ganguernet.

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 wo