Lavatory poetry

In my grandmother’s beautiful apartment near the Parc Monceau in Paris was a tiny little lavatory. The toilet was one of those old ones with the elevated cistern mounted high up on the wall and a pull chain for flushing.

To the right of the door was a little note in my mother’s handwriting that had been hanging there forever. It was a funny little poem wittingly reminding the visitor to flush after themselves.

I still know it by heart to this day. It goes like this:

Noble étranger, lorsque ton cas
Se trouve au fond de la cuvette,
Je t’en supplie, ne l’y laisse pas,
Mais fais agir la machinette…

Ne plonge pas dans l’embarras
L’amphitryon ni la soubrette,
La charité n’a rien de bas !
Qu’après toi la place soit nette.

I’m rather fond of it. My mother was always the artist in the family, so it’s fitting that she would be the one to put it up there. Until recently I thought she had composed it herself, which she certainly would have been capable of. I’ll have to ask her sometime where she got it from.