Free The Salt Smugglers by Gérard de Nerval Page B

described by La Fontaine in “The Power of Fables” as a city fickle . A certain orator was haranguing its denizens
about the dangers threatening the Republic. No one listened. What did the orator do?
    A new resource the speaker found.
« Ceres, in a lower tone said he,
Went forth her harvest fields to see.
An eel, as a such might be,
And swallow were her company. »
    Having depicted the eel swimming and the swallow flying in order to cross a river, he paused for a moment.
    The crowd cried out as one:
    Â«And Ceres what did she?
— Why, what she pleased; but first
Yourselves she justly cursed —
A people puzzling up your brains
With children’s tales and children’s play
While Greece puts on her steel array,
To save her limbs from tyrant chains!
Why ask you not what Philip does? »
    And the gentleman (a rather false gentleman) then concludes:
    This feather stuck in Fable’s cap:
We’re all Athenians mayhap
    This fable, so true , reminds me of a scene I once witnessed in a public square.
    A snake-oil salesman used to set up shop every day on the square of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois; — I imagine this would be prohibited these days. First he would set up his table on a pair of sawhorses, then he would pull three birds out of a crate, taking great care to caress them gently one after the other with his hands, — pretending to lull them asleep.
    When the birds appeared to have reached a state of utter immobility, he would call his audience around him by making little tweeting sounds that he produced by means of a tiny bird whistle hidden in his cheeks: « Now, ladies and gentlemen, as you can all see I have just put these birds to sleep. They have been trained to remain completely motionless for several hours. So that the audience can fully appreciate the serenity they have achieved, I will leave them in this state until I have managed to sell twenty bottles of this patent medicine which will not only destroy all insects but cure all illnesses. »
    This patter , though familiar to most, nonetheless always impressed a certain number of gawkers.
    The sale of twenty vials at fifty centimes a piece was pretty much the maximum the quack could hope for. As a result, after a few vials had been sold, the crowd usually thinned out and all that remained were the usual hangers-on, — curious to see what might happen next, — but worldly enough not to allow themselves to be separated from a half a franc. The salesman, unable to unload a decent number of vials, would snatch up his three sleeping birds in a fit of pique and shut them back into their crate, complaining about how bad business was these days.
    The people who had gathered around said: « They’re not asleep: they’re dead!»
    Or: « They’re just stuffed birds!»
    Or: « He’s probably slipped them a potion! ... »
    One day, the crowd was finally reduced to a single spectator, — one of those Parisian street urchins who
won’t take no for an answer and always wants to get to the bottom of things. — The birds were just being put back into their crate when some out-of-towners chanced by and bought up far more than the requisite twenty vials.
    Since they had not heard the first portion of the patter, they left the scene without demanding to see the birds wake up again and go back to work in front of the public.
    But the urchin hadn’t missed a trick: having carefully counted up the number of bottles that had been sold, he sauntered up to the table and said:
    Â« So what about the birds? »
    The salesman looked at him with a mixture of contempt and compassion, proceeded to close up the crate, and addressed the child with a well-known phrase in argot, which I won’t quote here out of respect for the ladies, — but which more or less meant: « Get a life! »
    Please don’t accuse me of regaling you with mere frivolities: this little story can be read as an