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
