Exercises in Style (14 page)

Two hours later, my unlucky day, I came
upon the
same bastard holding forth with another bastard in front of that nauseating monument
they call the gare Saint-Lazare. They were yammering about a button. Whether he has his
furuncle raised or lowered, I said to myself, he’ll still be just as lousy, the
dirty bastard.

astronomical

After slowly roasting in the browned butter of the sun I finally managed to get into a pistachio bus which was crawling with customers as an overripe cheese crawls with maggots. Having paid my fare, I noticed among all these noodles a poor fish with a neck as long as a stick of celery and a loaf surmounted by a ridiculous donkey’s dinner. This unsavoury character started to beef because a chap was pounding the joints of his cheeses to pulp. But when he found that he had bitten off more than he could chew, he quailed like a lily-livered dunghill-cock and bolted off to stew in his own juice.

I was digesting my lunch going back in the bus when I saw this half-baked individual in front of the buffet of the gare Saint-Lazare with a chap of his own kidney who was giving him the fruit of his experience on the subject of garnishing his coating, with particular reference to a cheese plate.

oological

In the dog days while I was in a bird cage at feeding time I noticed a young puppy with a neck like a giraffe who, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wore yet a precious beaver upon his head. This queer fish obviously had a bee in his bonnet and was quite bats, he started yak-yakking at a wolf in sheep’s clothing claiming that he was treading on his dogs with his beetle-crushers. But the sucker got a flea in his ear; that foxed him, and quiet as a mouse he ran like a hare for a perch.

I saw him again later in front of the Zoo with a young buck who was telling him to bear in mind a certain drill about his fevvers.

How can one describe the impression created by the contact of ten bodies
squeezed together on the back platform of an S bus one day about noon near the rue de
Lisbonne? How can one express the impression made by the sight of an individual with a
neck so long as to be deformed and with a hat whose ribbon has been replaced, no one
knows why, by a bit of string? How can one convey the impression given by a quarrel
between a placid passenger unjustly accused of purposely treading on the toes of someone
and that grotesque someone happening to be the individual described above? How can one
translate the impression
provoked by the latter’s flight,
disguising his feeble cowardice by pretending to benefit by a seat?

Finally, how can one formulate the impression caused by the
reappearance of this specimen in front of the gare Saint-Lazare two hours later
accompanied by a well-dressed friend who was suggesting a sartorial amelioration to
him?

odern style

In a bus one day it so happened that I was a witness of the following as you might say tragi-comedy which revealing as it does the way our French cousins go on these days I thought I ought to put you in the picture. When the bus is full all the passengers foregather on the back platform, and one of them was a fancy-pants of the first water with a fantastic long neck and a hat with a plaited cord or what have you round it and a pansy sort of overcoat—the lot. All very pricey, no doubt, but definitely not my cup of tea. Well this chap, what he did, he started to go for the chap standing next to him, claimed he kept
treading on his toes if you please. Whether he was or wasn’t I wouldn’t know, to tell the truth I never saw, but if he was, well, fair enough, I mean to say, these sort of smart alecs there ought to be a law against them. Not that I’m so particularly choosy myself — I really couldn’t care less. I reckoned he’d have his work cut out to cut any ice, and to be fair I must say I was right. What do you know, he just ran away. How yellow can you get?

Well, the thing is, two hours later I saw him again, he was with another chap who was giving him some technical know-how. He was telling him he ought to contact a tailor to move a button on that pansy overcoat of his, it was a must.

The contacts between inhabitants of a large town are so numerous that one
can hardly be surprised if there occasionally occurs between them a certain amount of
friction which generally speaking is of no consequence. It so happened that I was
recently present at one of these unmannerly encounters which generally take place in the
vehicles intended for the transport of passengers in the Parisian region in the rush
hours. There is not in any case anything astonishing in the fact that I was a witness of
this encounter because I frequently travel in this fashion. On the day in question the
incident was of the lowest order, but my
attention was especially
attracted by the physical aspect and the headgear of one of the protagonists of this
miniature drama. This was a man who was still young, but whose neck was of a length
which was probably above the average and whose hat-ribbon had been replaced by a plaited
cord. Curiously enough I saw him again two hours later engaged in listening to some
advice of a sartorial order which was being given to him by a friend in the company of
whom he was walking up and down, rather nonchalantly I should have said.

There was not much likelihood now that a third encounter would take
place, and the fact is that from that day to this I have never seen the young man again,
in conformity with the established laws of probability.

The styal is a very long-necked biped that frequents the buses of the
S-line at about midday. It is particularly fond of the back platform where it can be
found, wet behind the ears, its head covered by a crest which is surrounded by an
excrescence of the thickness of a finger and bearing some resemblance to a piece of
string. Of peevish disposition, it readily attacks its weaker brethren, but if it
encounters a somewhat lively retort it takes flight into the interior of the vehicle
where it hopes it will be forgotten.

It may also be seen, but much more rarely, in
the
environs of the gare Saint-Lazare in the shedding season. It keeps its old skin to
protect it against the cold in winter, but it is often torn to allow for the passage of
the body; this kind of overcoat should fasten fairly high up by artificial means. The
styal, incapable of discovering these for itself, goes off at that time to find another
biped of a closely related species which gives it exercises to do,

Styalography is a branch of theoretic and deductive zoology which can be
cultivated at any time of year.

athematical

In a rectangular parallepiped moving along a line representing an integral solution of the second-order differential equation:

y” + PPTB(x)y’ + S = 84

two homoids(of which only one, the homoid A, manifests a cylindrical element of length L > N encircled by two sine waves of period π immediately below its crowning hemisphere) cannot suffer point contact at their lower extremities without proceeding upon divergent courses. The oscillation of two homoids tangentially to the above trajectory has as a
consequence the small but significant displacement of all significantly small spheres tangential to a perpendicular of length l < L described on the supra-median line of the homoid A’s shirt-front.