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Page 263
APPENDIX TWO
A MOST PARISIAN EPISODE
Alphonse Allais
Chapter I
In which we meet a Lady and a Gentleman who might have known happiness, had it not been for their constant misunderstandings.
At the time when this story begins, Raoul and Marguerite (a splendid name for lovers) have been married for approximately five months.
Naturally, they had married for love.
One fine night Raoul, while listening to Marguerite singing Colonel Henry d'Erville's lovely ballad:
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L'averse, chère à la grenouille,
Parfume le bois rajeuni.
. . . Le bois, il est comme Nini.
Y sent bon quand y s'débarbouille.
Raoul, as I was saying, swore to himself that the divine Marguerite (diva Margarita) would never belong to any man but himself.
They would have been the happiest of all couples, except for their awful personalities.
At the slightest provocation, pow! a broken plate, a slap, a kick in the ass.
At such sounds, Love fled in tears, to await, in the neighborhood of a great park, the always imminent hour of reconciliation.
O then, kisses without number, infinite caresses, tender and knowing, ardors as burning as hell itself.
You would have thought the two of thempigs that they were!had fights only so they could make up again.
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Translated by Fredric Jameson. The epigraphs have not been translated because they play upon elements of slang, phonetic analogies, and so on.

 
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