A German newspaper having recently published a translation of Father Goriot, a huge cry of indignation arose from all the scandalized Bochies. No doubt it may seem unpleasant to Germans that the greatest novelist was not born between Berlin and Dresden and that he did not write The Human Comedy in the language of Maximilien Harden... But the pleasant part of the story . it is precisely that they did not dare to frankly admit such an act. The publication of Father Goriot was interrupted and the director of the newspaper was fined because Balzac's novel is an immoral and indecent work and Balzac is a pornographic writer!

The usual good faith and critical spirit of our kind neighbors are fully reflected in this little tendentious maneuver. However, the night cabarets of Berlin offer shows whose license exceeds anything that can be written or even conceived.

Under the pretext of propaganda, a certain film is currently being filmed across the Rhine intended to protect youth and childhood against the dangers of love and chance. This film is starred by teenagers. A fifteen-year-old boy and a fourteen-year-old girl engage in a series of manual and other exercises in front of an audience made up of spectators of the same age, accompanied by their parents, which leave no doubt about the nature of their relationships and their romance. under a haystack agitated with the most suggestive and precise jolts.

On the other hand, we know that all German youth are passionate about the theories of Freud, this strange doctor of inaccurate sciences who reduced sexual psychopathy to methodical obscenity.

This does not prevent all these people from making German virtue a sort of dogma. As long as they don't make it an export item!

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As if there were not enough nationalities since this formidable peace treaty which satisfied no one (not even the vanquished!), some reporters persist in believing that there exists somewhere an indeterminate region whose inhabitants are called "indigenous" and which extends between the Indies and Brazil. Last Thursday, again, I read with amazement, in a major daily newspaper, this front page article title: A TRAGEDY IN A BARRACKS A native soldier kills a sergeant, wounds a captain and an adjutant. This news item happened in Montauban. And the brave local correspondent who communicated it to our colleague even made a discovery that he himself would not hesitate to describe as sensational: he set the limits of indigenousness, because, a few lines later, he reveals to us that the indigenous soldier Kouanli BiFrie is from Douala (Ivory Coast). Thus the natives would be the naturals of A. E. F. and A. O. F., that is to say the inhabitants of West Africa.

How we would surprise this brave informant if we told him that the inhabitants of Montauban are also natives! But he wouldn't believe it! And yet, some dictionaries still claim that the word indigenous means “naturals of a country”! In this regard, we are all indigenous by definition and the Indians are neither more nor less than us. It is true that if we had to worry about all these little questions of grammar and linguistics, we would never write! And that would be a shame! Ah! While I'm there, I would like to ask this little indiscreet question to a few editors from the Parisian press:
Why then, my dear colleagues, did you think it was necessary to add an i to the present subjunctive of the verb to have? Why do you commonly write (if I dare say so!): “that we have, that you have?” What examples do you allow yourself? Are you not committing (unconsciously, I want it... and I deplore it!) a regrettable barbarism?... I appeal to the Grammaire Club, to Marcel Boulenger, to Thérive, to the few writers who still have the respect French.

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The good painter Paul Robert, who knows the most beautiful stories of the world, the demi-world and the other world, reminded me the other evening of this one, which our dear master Adrien Hébrard told with such finesse and wry irony :
"...Arriving at Le Paradis, Baron Groussard was astonished to meet his old close enemy there, Prosper Ducourot, who, for fifty years, had annoyed all of Parisian society with his unbearable character, his unpleasant mood, his party taken to denigrate everything and his mania for always “looking for the little beast”. How, the devil! he said to himself, could God have received into the Stay of the Blessed like this terrible razor? He is capable of damning all the saints! Sapristi, what company! as Bossuet said... And to think that I will be forced to endure such proximity for all eternity... My faith! the best is still to burn my ships, break the dogs and take the bull by the horns "And, against fortune good hearted, Baron Groussard used his wings of Blessed to fly to Ducourot "What joy of meet you here, dear friend! he shouted to her. "Eh ? replied the other... It blows your mind and you weren't expecting this one! You were saying to yourself, I am sure: “This Ducourot animal who preceded me by ten years in the grave must have collected seven or eight thousand years of purgatory up there! ". Well, not even a day, do you hear, Groussard? My holy and worthy wife, whom I left a widow and who will come to us one of these days, had so many masses said for the rest of my soul, she burned so many candles and said so many rosaries that on arriving here I had a credit account at the cash register for indulgence, You who have always lacked so much on earth! said the baron, giving an immaterial smile (and for good reason!). Finally, I hope, dear friend, that we will continue our good earthly relations. I rely heavily on you to serve as my guide. you must be aware of all the arrivals and the latest gossip of this enchanting stay.
Enchanting! enchanting! grumbled Ducourot... That pleases you to say... because you are new here. But you will end up, like me, until then! What is Paradise? Would we get tired of it?
Heaven ? It's not worth all the noise we're making about it, my poor Groussard! Oh! without doubt, there is the Angels choir which is of the highest order and the Seraphim orchestra which we would hear with pleasure... if we didn't hear it all the time! And that’s what spoils everything here, you understand? The idea that it will never end, that all our joys will be eternal!... And then, above all, there is this sacredness. Aureole! I could never get used to it and it doesn't fit on my head! »

CUR nonsky.