_Tab._ Humbug! It's because they always will have the last word, so it wouldn't do to let them give the responses. Why, the services would never end. By similar logic Tabarin demonstrates, among others, the following propositions: An ass is a better linguist than his master, because he understands when he is spoken to, while his lingo is all lost upon the man. A fiddler has the hardest lot of all mankind, because his life depends upon a bit of wood and a piece of cord, for all the world like a malefactor's. Cut-purses are the most liberal of all men, for they not only empty their own purses, but those of other people. If you put a miller, a tailor, a bailiff and an attorney in a bag, the first thing to come out will be a thief. The most wonderful gardener and the most wonderful tree in the world are respectively Jack Ketch and the gallows tree, because when the hangman plants that unpleasant vegetable it bears fruit the same day. If you see six birds on a tree, and shoot three, there will be _none_ left, for of course the remaining three will fly away. This last jest is so trite to-day as to be absolutely threadbare. Tabarin's wits were not exhausted by this kind of buffoonery. He issued comic proclamations and almanacs, and even produced short farces in which his wife performed with him. From one of these farces Moliere is supposed to have borrowed the ideas for his sack-scene in the _Fourberies de Scapin_. La Fontaine stole one of Grattelard's dialogues bodily, and converted it into the celebrated fable of _The Acorn and the Pumpkin_. Grattelard was contemporary with Tabarin, as remarked above: he and his partner, Desiderio Descombes, sold quack medicines at the north end of the Pont Neuf. The dialogue in question follows, at least so much of it as is in point, and will serve as tailpiece to the specimens of Tabarin's wit: _Grat._ I had a great discussion this morning with a philosopher, trying to prove to him that Nature often makes great mistakes. _D. D._ No, no, Grattelard: everything that Nature does is done for the best. _Grat._ Just wait now: let me tell you how I had to give in. _D. D._ Well, how was it? _Grat._ We were walking in the garden, and pretty soon we came across a tremendous pumpkin, as big as a Swiss drum. "There!" said I: "Nature has no better sense than to hang a great thing like that on such a slender vine that the least breeze can break it off." _D. D._ Then you blamed Nature in the matter of the pumpkin? _Grat._ Yes, for of course there ought to be some proportion _inter sustinens et sustentum_; but, by Heavens, I soon changed my mind, for just as I was passing under a great oak tree down fell an acorn and struck me on the nose. Of course I had to admit that Nature was right, after all, for if she had put a pumpkin up there I should have been in a pretty pickle. _D. D._ Yes indeed, Grattelard: you would have cut a fine figure drinking out of a bottle with your nose in a sling.