As the days go by

Worthy of the Palais-Bourbon!

During his electoral tour, one of our deputy candidates was having a bad time. He gave a particularly pathetic and eloquent speech. Now, every half a minute, with implacable tenacity, one of his listeners interrupted him with a word that was both angry and ironic:

- Smoker!...

It came back methodically, like a leit-motif. And the speaker, who had not paid much attention at first, found himself more and more embarrassed.
-If this animal continues, he said to himself, I might lose my train of thought and flounder abominably.

He also saw clearly that the gallery was starting to make money. We laughed, we nudged each other, we waited for the contemptuous and derisory epithet, the effect of which never failed:

-Fumist!…

The switch didn't say another syllable. As it was, the word did its job. Is there any worse torture than water falling, drop by drop, every twenty or thirty seconds, on the skull of an unfortunate captive? The speaker could no longer hold it, when a brilliant inspiration brought the laughter on his side.

Facing his torturer, he said to him in an icy tone: If the citizen who persists in interrupting me will tell me his name instead of his profession, I will be delighted to give him the floor. The man collapsed and his victim won all the way.

There was thunderous applause.