THE RHYME CHRONICLES OF "L'AUTO"

THE EMBARRASSMENTS OF PARIS
In the manner of... Boileau.

Who strikes the air, good God, with these lugubrious cries?

Are we at Pluto's? Are we in Paris?

And what an unfortunate influx of heavy upholsterers,
Of trams, buses, great blowers of dust;
Of trucks, taxis, makes a horrible magma
From the Étoile to Pantin, from the Throne to the Opera!

With my 6 HP, if I have to travel,
I don't know if I'm going forward, or if I'm going backward:
At all the crossroads, by the stuck taxis,
I see, at every moment, my dented cuckoo:
Here, it's the Clichy-Batignolles bus
Which, from the sacred heights, at full throttle tumbles
And which, turning left, close to my hood,
Suddenly makes sweat stream down my skin...
Pavers, rue Daunou, block my way!
There, they are signs and scaffolding
Splashing my eyes with a wheezing Bibendum
Or carrying the eczema of a big Baby Cadum!...
There, on a cart, a rickety beam
Comes threatening from afar the crowd that it increases. To cap it all, the horse, on the slippery pavement,
Comes to collapse at the feet of a placid passer-by!
From a truck, while tipping over, it catches a wheel
And the shock overturns it in a pile of mud,
When another, at that moment trying to pass,
In the same embarrassment comes to embarrass itself.
A hundred taxis, immediately, arriving in a row,
There are followed in less than nothing by more than a thousand.
And the noises of the engines, the bells, the horns,
Seem like three thousand dying calves murdered!
While the driver of each vehicle,
On the neighboring driver all his bile accumulates,
And while, biting my bit, I think with fury
Of the missed rendezvous, sabotaging my happiness!...
Abandoning as soon as possible this furious mob,.
I try to "get away" towards the Tuileries,
And, wanting to get to this place as quickly as possible,
I go down the Rue de Richelieu at full throttle,
Hoping that perhaps an energetic ukase
Would have prescribed, finally, "one way" there!
But, I had barely reached the Rue de Rivoli,
When a deliveryman tore me apart, six months riveted me to bed!...
It is there that, cursing the engines and the men,
While traveling the Auto I take a few good naps,

And I dream of that time - heaven forbid! - near
When we will each live on our rock,
At the North Pole in the summer, in Malaysia in the winter,
Far from the Grands Boulevards and their frenzy,
When we will each have our little plane
To come and take a look at the Editorial Office!
On the roof of the Auto, without worrying about the garage,
We will land on the eighteenth floor...
Or better... to save our wings and our feet,
It is by the T.S.F. that we will "read" our papers!

Fernand Vélon.