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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
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