The Gascon's Dinner Bill

Okay, there’s this Gascon, see—I don’t know what the hell that is, but it’s something big in Louis the Fourteenth’s time. He gets a check for a hundred and fifty pistoles, see? And that’s a fair chunk of cabbage. So he goes to the minister and says, he says, “I need cashed out, doc. You dig me?”

And the minister says, “I gotta finish my dinner. Man’s gotta eat.” Then he says, “Say, why don’t you sit down with us? Plenty here, and my cook is the best. Otherwise, I’d have him dragged down to the dungeon and put on the rack.”

So the Gascon, rubbing his dusty belly, says, “Sure thing, boss. I ain’t ate since the last time we burned a village of heretics.”

Next day, the Gascon goes to get his money, and he’s told by the blue-nosed, cock-eyed, bandy-legged bastardo at the counter, “Here’s a hundred. Don’t spend it all in the same place.”

The Gascon reels and flips and says, “What—you wig already? I got a hundred and fifty coming to me if I got a nickel.”

And the old clerk says, “Yeah, but dinner with our finance minister? That’ll cost you fifty alone.”

So the Gascon, not to be outdone, says, “Well if that’s how we play the game, just wait and I’ll come back tomorrow with this good buddy of mine and we’ll split the difference.”

The minister hears this, throws back his head and laughs, and says, “Damn. You can keep your fifty, bubbeleh, and here’s another fifty pistoles on top of it.”

And as the Gascon rode away into the sunset, the joke made the rounds of the court, and the finance minister or whatever said to himself, “Quite a fellow, that Gascon. A real mensch.”