Some years back, at the moment of the anarchist “Terror,” Achille, whose illusions regarding his intellect are on a par with those of Bibi regarding his person, offered himself as a candidate for the Academy. He made the customary “visits” to the Academicians attired in the uniform of a Mexican general, and wherever he was not received left an ominous-looking brass kettle to which, along with his visiting card, this inscription was attached:
Other contemporary freaks who help to swell the picturesqueness and gaiety of the _Quartier_ are: the anarchist cobbler _chansonnier_ Père La Purge (author of the _Chanson du Père La Purge_, quoted in a previous chapter), whose customers (mainly the poets and artists of the _Quartier_) visit his shop in the rue de la Parcheminerie to enjoy the piquancy of the contrast between his ruddy, contented face and his anathemas against society; Gaillepand, a big, athletic-looking fellow, who, having failed to earn a living by legitimate sculpture, took to making plaster medallions of the celebrities of Paris, especially those of the _Quartier_, and selling them up and down the Boulevard St. Michel, while his brother “_Môme l’Histoire_” (now dead) displayed his phenomenal memory by reciting biographies and poems; the Mère Souris (Mother Mouse), so called from her conical head and her funny little walk, ex-proprietor of an artists’ restaurant and present palmist, fortune-teller, and reputed usurer,—in short, a very useful personage to the _étudiantes_; Victor Sainbault, author, editor, publisher, and bookseller, like Achille Leroy; and the poet Coulet, who gives author’s readings before the terraces of the cafés, and who between times, if hearsay may be credited, provides petty bourgeois families with wedding, christening, and funeral verses at so much per yard.
It is because these freaks take themselves seriously, because they are unconscious humourists and involuntary _farceurs_, that they are amusing. But the _Quartier_ has always had among its choicer Bohemians a class of conscious, almost professional humourists and deliberate _farceurs_, called _fumistes_,[79] who by drolly expressing their very disrespect for life have done much to make life worth the living.