I must now add what the legend neglects to tell.  The model laugher succeeded well enough in his own reign, but he could not beget a large family.  The laughers who never weep, the real clowns of life, who do not, when the curtain drops, retire, after an infinitesimal allowance of ‘cordial,’ to a half-starved, complaining family, with brats that cling round his parti-coloured stockings, and cry to him—­not for jokes—­but for bread, these laughers, I say, are few and far between.  You should, therefore, be doubly grateful to me for introducing to you now one of the most famous of them; one who with all right and title to be lugubrious, was the merriest man of his age.

On Shrove Tuesday, in the year 1638, the good city of Mans was in a state of great excitement:  the carnival was at its height, and everybody had gone mad for one day before turning pious for the long, dull forty days of Lent.  The market-place was filled with maskers in quaint costumes, each wilder and more extravagant than the last.  Here were magicians with high peaked hats covered with cabalistic signs, here Eastern sultans of the medieval model, with very fierce looks and very large scimitars:  here Amadis de Gaul with a wagging plume a yard high, here Pantagruel, here harlequins, here Huguenots ten times more lugubrious than the despised sectaries they mocked, here Caesar and Pompey in trunk hose and Roman helmets, and a mass of other notabilities who were great favourites in that day, appeared.

But who comes here?  What is the meaning of these roars of laughter that greet the last mask who runs into the market-place?  Why do all the women and children hurry together, calling up one another, and shouting with delight?  What is this thing?  Is it some new species of bird, thus covered with feathers and down?  In a few minutes the little figure is surrounded by a crowd of boys and women, who begin to pluck him of his borrowed plumes, while he chatters to them like a magpie, whistles like a song-bird, croaks like a raven, or in his natural character showers a mass of funny nonsense on them, till their laughter makes their sides ache.  The little wretch is literally covered with small feathers from head to foot, and even his face is not to be recognized.  The women pluck him behind and before; he dances round and tries to evade their fingers.  This is impossible; he breaks away, runs down the market pursued by a shouting crowd, is again surrounded, and again subjected to a plucking process.  The bird must be stripped; he must be discovered.  Little by little his back is bared, and little by little is seen a black jerkin, black stockings, and, wonder upon wonder! the bands of a canon.  Now they have cleared his face of its plumage, and a cry of disgust and shame hails the disclosure.  Yes, this curious masker is no other than a reverend abbe, a young canon of the cathedral of Mans!  ’This is too much—­it is scandalous—­it is disgraceful.  The church must be respected, the sacred order must not