Practical Jokes
We live in a period when practical jokers have the air of undertakers’ men and are generally known as politicians. We never see them now, your real practical joke, your really splendid rag, your happy little games, the healthy forthright jokes of our fathers’ time. And, however, what is there more amusing and more laughable than such jests? What is more amusing than to mystify credulous souls, dupe the cleverest, and make the sharpest fall into inoffensive and comic traps? What is better fun than making adroit mock of people and forcing them to laugh at their own simplicity or even, when they get angry, revenging oneself by a fresh trick?
Oh! I have played a few; I’ve played some practical jokes in my time. And they have been played on me too, I can tell you, and good ones too. Yes, I have played more than one, terrible affairs—make your hair stand on end. One of my victims died of the consequences, and no loss to anyone. I will tell the story one day, but I shall have some difficulty in telling it decently, for it was by no means a very respectable practical joke—oh, by no means. It happened in a little village in the suburbs of Paris. Everyone there is still laughing at the memory of it, although the victim is dead. Peace to his soul!
I am going to tell of two, the last I suffered, and the first I played.
Let us begin with the last, for it amuses me least, since I was the victim.
I was going to hunt one autumn with some friends in their country-house in Picardy. My friends were practical jokers, you understand. I could not know any other kind of people.
When I arrived they gave me a princely reception, which put me on my guard. They fired off guns, they embraced me, they flattered me as if they expected a good deal from me, and I said to myself: “Look out, old man, they’re preparing something for you.”
During dinner the gaiety was excessive, far too loud. I thought: “These people are abnormally amused without any apparent reason. They must be working up for a joke of some sort. I’m fairly certain I’m the destined victim. Look out.”
Throughout the whole evening the laughter was over-boisterous. I could feel a joke in the air, like a dog scenting game. But what? I was on the lookout, and very uneasy. I did not let a word, or a hint, or a gesture go by me. Everything seemed suspicious, even the faces of the servants.
Bedtime came and they formed up in procession to take me to my room. Why? They cried out: “Good night.” I entered, I locked my door, and stood stock-still in the room without moving a foot, my candle in my hand.
I heard laughing and whispering in the corridor. No doubt they were spying on me. And I looked carefully at the walls, the furniture, the ceiling, the hangings and the floor. I saw nothing suspicious. I heard someone walk on the other side of the door. They must have come to look through the keyhole.
An idea occurred to me: “My light is going to go out suddenly and leave me in the dark.” Then I lit all the candles on the chimney. Then I looked round once again without discovering anything. I went round the room on tiptoe. Nothing. I inspected all the objects one after another. Nothing. I went up to the window. The shutters, great wooden shutters, were wide open. I closed them carefully and then pulled the curtains, enormous velvet curtains, and put a chair before them, in order to have nothing to fear from outside.
Then I sat down carefully. The armchair was all right. I did not dare to go to bed. However, time was getting on. And at last I saw that I was making myself ridiculous. Supposing they were spying on me, as I suspected, they must be laughing heartily at my terror while they waited for the climax of the mystification they had prepared.
So I made up my mind to go to bed. But the bed roused my worst suspicions. I pulled the bed curtains. They seemed stiff. There was the danger! Either I was going to receive a douche of cold water from the top of the bed, or else as soon as I lay down I should fall through on the floor with my mattress. I thought over all the tricks of this kind that had been played, so far as I could remember—and I did not intend to be caught. Not if I knew it! No!
Then I suddenly remembered an infallible precaution. Gently I took hold of the edge of the mattress and pulled it quietly towards me. It came, with its sheets and coverings. I dragged them to the very middle of the room opposite the door. I made my bed again as well as I could, far from the suspected bedstead and its disturbing surroundings. Then I extinguished all the lights and returned, feeling my way, to glide between the sheets.
For over an hour I remained awake, shivering at the least noise. Everything seemed calm in the house. I went to sleep.
I must have slept a long time and deeply, but suddenly I was awakened with a start by a heavy body falling on me, while at the same time a burning liquid that made me howl with pain passed over my face, my neck and my shoulders. And a frightful noise, as if a whole dresser full of crockery had come down, filled my ears.
I was stifling under the weight that had fallen on me, and did not move. I stretched out my hand to see what it was. I felt a face, a nose, whiskers. Then I let out, with all my strength, and hit the face. Immediately such a storm of bows fell on me that I jumped with a bound out of my soaked sheets and fled in my nightshirt into the corridor through the door, which I saw standing open.
Good heavens! it was broad day. Everybody ran out at the noise and they found, stretched across my bed, the dismayed footman, who had been bringing me my morning cup of tea and had stumbled over my rough and ready couch on his way. He had fallen on me, spilling my breakfast in a most uncalled-for fashion over my face.
The very precautions I had taken to close my shutters and sleep in the middle of the bedroom had made me the laughingstock I had dreaded being.
Oh, there was a good deal of laughter that day!
The other joke I want to tell you about dates from my early youth. I was fifteen years old, and I used to spend my holidays with my relations, always in a country-house, always in Picardy.
An old lady from Amiens was in the habit of visiting us. She was unbearable, preaching, grumbling, faultfinding, bad-tempered and vindictive. She disliked me, I don’t know why, and she never gave up telling tales about me, making the worst of my least words or doings. Oh, she was an old beast!
She was called Mme. Dufour, she wore a fine black wig though she was at least sixty, and on it ridiculous little caps with red ribbons. Everybody respected her because she was rich. I hated her from the bottom of my heart, and I resolved to have my revenge for the ill turns she did me.
I had just passed out of the second form, and I had been particularly struck in the chemistry lessons by the properties of a substance called phosphide of lime, which when thrown into water catches fire, explodes, and gives off rings of white smoke with a disagreeable odour. To amuse myself during the holidays, I had helped myself to some handfuls of this substance, which looked very like what we call crystal.
I had a cousin of my own age. I told him my plan. He was frightened by my boldness.
Then, one evening, while all the family were in the drawing room, I stole into Mme. Dufour’s bedroom, and got hold (I hope the ladies will excuse me) of a round receptacle which is generally kept not far from the head of the bed. I made sure that it was perfectly dry and I put at the bottom a handful, a big handful, of phosphide of lime.
Then I went to hide in the garret till the time came. Soon the sound of voices and footsteps told me that people were going to bed; then came silence. I came down barefoot, holding my breath, and I went and put my eye to the keyhole of my enemy’s door.
She was carefully putting away her odds and ends. Then one by one she took off her clothes, putting on a great white dressing-gown that seemed stuck to her bones. She took a glass, filled it with water, and, putting her hand in her mouth as if she was going to pull out her tongue, brought out something red and white that she put in the water. I was as frightened as if I had taken part in some shameful and terrible mystery. It was only her false teeth.
Then she took off her black wig and appeared with a small skull powdered with a few white hairs, so comic that this time I almost laughed behind the door. Then she said her prayers, rose, approached my instrument of vengeance, put it on the floor in the middle of the room, and, stooping down, covered it entirely with her dressing-gown.
I was waiting with a beating heart. She was tranquil, content, happy. I was waiting … happy, too, as we are when we are taking vengeance.
I heard at last a very gentle noise, a lapping sound, and then suddenly a series of muffled detonations like distant firing.
An expression of unutterable fright and surprise passed in a flash over Mme. Dufour’s face. Her eyes opened, closed, reopened, then she leaped up with a suppleness of which I would never have believed her capable, and she looked.
The white object was crackling, exploding, full of rapid floating flames like the Greek fire of the ancients. And a thick cloud was rising, mounting towards the ceiling, a mysterious cloud, full of fearsome witchcraft.
What must the poor woman have thought? Did she believe it was a trick of the devil? Or some fearful malady? Did she think that this fire came out of her body, was going to ravage her entrails, overflow like the crater of a volcano, or make her burst like an overloaded cannon?
She remained standing rigid, stupefied with fear, her look fixed on what was happening. Then suddenly she uttered a cry such as I had never heard, and fell on her back.
I ran away and buried myself in my bed, and closed my eyes firmly, trying to prove to myself that I had done nothing, seen nothing, and had never left my bedroom.
I kept on saying to myself: “She is dead! I have killed her!” and I listened anxiously for the noises of the house.
There was much coming and going and talking; then I heard them laughing; then I suffered a sound thrashing from the paternal hand.
Next morning, Mme. Dufour was very pale, and drank water all the time. Perhaps, in spite of what her doctor said, she was trying to extinguish the fire that she believed was enclosed in her inside.
Ever afterwards, when anyone talks of illness before her, she heaves a deep sigh, and murmurs:
“Oh, madame, if you knew! There are diseases so curious …”
She never says any more.