"Listen to that, padre," said the colonel. "Read it again, messiou, for the padre, have been told that the Highlanders of Scotland——’" "A semi-savage folk who live in a state of perpetual feud, have kept to the original character of this custom. To drink the health of anyone is to ask him to guard you while you drink and cannot defend yourself; and the person to whom you drink replies, "I pledge you," which means in their language, "I guarantee your safety." Then he draws his dagger, places the point on the table and protects you until your glass is empty.’" "That’s why," said Major Parker, "the pewter pots that they give for golf prizes have always got glass bottoms through which one can see the dagger of the assassin." "Send round the port, messiou, I want to drink the padre’s health in a second glass to hear him reply, ’I pledge you,’ and to see him put the point of his dagger on the table." "I’ve only got a Swiss knife," said the padre. "That’s good enough," said the colonel. "This theory of the origin of toasts is very probable," said the doctor. "We are always repeating ancestral signs which are quite useless now. When a great actress wants to express hate she draws back her charming lips and shows her canine teeth, an unconscious sign of cannibalism. We shake hands with a friend to prevent him using it to strike us, and we take off our hats because our ancestors used to humbly offer their heads, to the bigwigs of those days, to be cut off." At that moment there was a loud crack, and Colonel Bramble fell backwards with a crash. One of the legs of his chair had broken. The doctor and Parker helped him up, while Aurelle and the padre looked on in fits of laughter. "There’s a good example of an ancestral survival," said the major, kindly intervening to save Aurelle, who was trying in vain to stop laughing. "I imagine that one laughs at a fall because the death of a man was one of the most amusing sights for our ancestors. It delivered them from an adversary and diminished the number of those who shared the food and the females." "Now we know you, messiou," said the colonel. "A French philosopher," said Aurelle, who had by this time recovered, "has constructed quite a different theory of laughter: he is called Bergson and——" "I have heard of him," said the padre; "he’s a clergyman, isn’t he?" "I have a theory about laughter," said the doctor, "which is much more edifying than yours, major. I think it is simply produced by a feeling of horror, immediately succeeded by a feeling of relief. A young monkey who is devoted to the old father of the tribe sees him slip on a banana skin, he fears an accident and his chest swells with fright, then he discovers that it’s nothing and all his muscles pleasantly relax. That was the first joke, and it explains the convulsive motions in laughing. Aurelle is shaken physically because he is shaken morally by two strong motives: his anxious affection and respect for the colonel——"