I have said that M. Mennesson was very fond of a joke and very witty; wherever he could find a joke he would fasten upon it, no matter whether it happened to concern a woman's virtue or a man's reputation. When the frenzy of joking seized him he gave himself up to it unreservedly, heart and soul. Finding nothing, probably, on this day, better to chew, he set upon me; the pasture was poor, but it was far better to crack my sorry bones than to chew at nothing or gulp only the air. After several of those whispered remarks, then, and bursts of stifled laughter, which had disturbed my equanimity, M. Mennesson raised his voice. "My dear friend," he said, "it is a chapter out of the _Diable boiteux_ re-discovered and still unpublished, which I mean to have printed the next time I go to Paris, to complete Lesage's work." "Ah! tell it me," Lebègue replied; "I will tell it to my wife, who will pass it on to her sisters, who will tell it to everybody; then our publication will be disposed of in advance." M. Mennesson began:-- "There was once upon a time at Salamanca a scholar who was descended from a race of Arabs and who was called Samud.[1] He was still so young that if anyone had pulled his nose, milk would most certainly have come out: this did not prevent him from being absurd enough to fancy himself a man; perhaps also--for, to be fair, we must say all there is to say--this ridiculous fancy would not have entered his head had not that happened which we are about to relate." It may be imagined that I was listening attentively. I had recognised from the very first words that I was undoubtedly the person in question, and I wondered uneasily where the story was going to lead after this beginning--a beginning which, so far as I was concerned, I found more impertinent than graphic. M. Mennesson went on, and I listened with my ears open, my pen idle in my hand.