ADMINISTRATIVE CHINOISERIES
"A Certificate of Life, my good gentlemen!"

You have certainly already been the victim of one of these "administrative Chineseries" that delight comedians and terrify the public. No doubt also, in such a case, you have hesitated between two solutions: either get angry, which is useless, or, out of discouragement, abandon all effort.
A good woman from Yonne has just found a third way that shows both a strong dose of optimism and an unusual spirit of consistency.
Arriving in Paris a few days ago, she went to the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations to collect the remainder of a sum due to her. She had all the documents required to prove her identity, but she lacked a "certificate of life".
Contact the town hall, she was advised, they will issue you with one.
The good lady, who had stayed in a hotel in the centre, went to the town hall of the district where she had been staying since the day before, took out her papers and presented her request.
It was without the slightest success! Living in a hotel cannot, it seems, be reconciled with being alive.
Mrs X... did not lose heart. That same day, she changed hotels and districts, which allowed her, the next day, to make a new attempt, in a new town hall where she suffered a new failure.
She persisted and, still smiling, she visited all the districts of Paris one by one in the hope, not yet fulfilled, of finding a sympathetic mayor. To date, she has thus visited nine districts in nine days.
I still have eleven chances in Paris, she declared after which, if I have not succeeded, I will start the communes of the suburbs. Maybe I will end up finding someone to see that I am alive. Very much alive!
We wish good luck to this courageous woman who has highlighted in a witty and ironic way what can be grotesque in the "fooorme", dear to Brid'oison and the sacrosanct administration.

DORSEL.