, and begin to suspect that they
must certainly both be tipsy. They recommence their inspections from the
door of their neighbor on the right, and again come to the door of their
neighbor on the left. They constantly find these two doors, but not a
vestige of their own: their door has disappeared--vanished! Who could have
taken away their door? Terror seizes them; they ask each other if they
have become demented; and dreading the ridicule which would be cast upon
honest citizens who could not find their own street-door, they grope about
for more than an hour, feeling, poking, inspecting, measuring; but alas!
there is no door; there is nothing but a wall, an unknown wall, an
implacable wall, a desperate wall! At length, terror completely overpowers
them; they utter loud cries, and call lustily for assistance. The
neighbors are attracted by the noise, and after some time, it is
ascertained that the door of the distracted couple has been carefully
bricked up, and plastered over; and when all are trying to discover who
could have played such a pitiful trick upon these honest people,
Ganguernet, who from an opposite window, in company with some kindred
spirits, had been enjoying the tribulation and despair of Monsieur and
Madame Larquet, Ganguernet shouts out his everlasting refrain: 'A capital
joke!' But, answered the neighbors, these poor folks will take their death
of cold.

'Bah!' replies he; 'a capital joke!'

The incensed neighbors petitioned the king's attorney to moderate Monsieur
Ganguernet's strong inclination to play his mischievous pranks; and the
magistrate sent our hero to prison for some days, in spite of his skilful
defence, which consisted in incessantly repeating: 'A capital joke!--what
a capital joke, Mr. Magistrate!'

Notwithstanding his excessive vanity, Ganguernet did not, however, make
boast of all his exploits; and there was one, the authorship of which he
constantly denied, possibly in consequence of a threat that was held out
of cutting off the author's ears, should he be detected. The trick in
question was prompted by the contempt in which he was held in a certain
aristocratic circle; and the subject was no less a personage than an
ancient dame of high birth, and great pretensions, who mingled in the most
fashionable society of Rennes.

Among other customs of the old school, which this lady retained, were the
following: First, that of never mixing in the society of those of plebeian
descent, su