Now, between these coarse scenes and these subtle suggestions there is room for a countless number of amusing effects, for all those that can be obtained by talking about persons as one would do about mere things.  We will only select one or two instances from the plays of Labiche, in which they are legion.

Just as M. Perrichon is getting into the railway carriage, he makes certain of not forgetting any of his parcels:  “Four, five, six, my wife seven, my daughter eight, and myself nine.”  In another play, a fond father is boasting of his daughter’s learning in the following terms:  “She will tell you, without faltering, all the kings of France that have occurred.”  This phrase, “that have occurred,” though not exactly transforming the kings into mere things, likens them, all the same, to events of an impersonal nature.

As regards this latter example, note that it is unnecessary to complete the identification of the person with the thing in order to ensure a comic effect.  It is sufficient for us to start in this direction by feigning, for instance, to confuse the person with the function he exercises.  I will only quote a sentence spoken by a village mayor in one of About’s novels:  “The prefect, who has always shown us the same kindness, though he has been changed several times since 1847...”

All these witticisms are constructed on the same model.  We might make up any number of them, when once we are in possession of the recipe.  But the art of the story-teller or the playwright does not merely consist in concocting jokes.  The difficulty lies in giving to a joke its power of suggestion, i.e. in making it acceptable.  And we only do accept it either because it seems to be the natural product of a particular state of mind or because it is in keeping with the circumstances of the case.  For instance, we are aware that M. Perrichon is greatly excited on the occasion of his first railway journey.  The expression “to occur” is one that must have cropped up a good many times in the lessons repeated by the girl before her father; it makes us think of such a repetition.  Lastly, admiration of the governmental machine might, at a pinch, be extended to the point of making us believe that no change takes place in the prefect when he changes his name, and that the function gets carried on independently of the functionary.

We have now reached a point very far from the original cause of laughter.  Many a comic form, that cannot be explained by itself, can indeed only be understood from its resemblance to another, which only makes us laugh by reason of its relationship with a third, and so on indefinitely, so that psychological analysis, however luminous and searching, will go astray unless it holds the thread along which the comic impression has travelled from one end of the series to the other.  Where does this progressive continuity come from?  What can be the driving force, the strange impulse which causes the comic to glide thus from image to