Acrobats and Mountebanks

And the robust stripling lifts the little doll like an ounce: he holds out one arm and, in the pleasantest manner, the little princess performs a few acrobatic feats over it. She is very [p068] proud of this little social talent. When I was introduced to her behind the scenes, she courteously said:

“Shall I turn a somersault for monsieur?”

And in an instant she was standing on her hands, head down, feet in air, like a clown. With her tiny dress of coral-coloured muslin and satin flying out around her, Princess Paulina did not look any larger than a bouquet of roses enveloped in white paper.

I asked her all the questions that etiquette requires when speaking to a dwarf.

“Princess Paulina, have you a doll?”

“As large as this, Monsieur.”

She raised her hand above her head, but even then it only reached the medium size of the Bébés Hurel.

“Princess Paulina, what did you eat for dinner?”

“Six oysters and some breast of chicken.”

“Princess Paulina, do you speak English?”

“Very well.”

“Princess Paulina, can you speak German?”

“Sehr gut.”

“Princess Paulina, will you give me a kiss?”

“Kiss a gentleman!” cried the little princess, quite alarmed.

And she consulted her tall brother with a look. The tall brother gave an affirmative nod of the head, and the princess submitted to the caress—this is how I am able to inform those who may not be aware of the fact, that, like new-born babies, a little dwarf smells like a grey mouse.

But there is no need for sensitive souls to distress themselves about these fragile beings. Vanity is quite as strong [p069] in a dwarf as in a man, and every “Princess Paulina” in the world is pleased to be exhibited. Besides, the parents of these goslings with golden eggs are too much interested in prolonging their lives ever to maltreat them. Those who should be pitied are the poor children sold once for all to a speculator. One of these dwarfs met with a tragic fate some years ago.

He was named Joseph. At seventeen he measured only 27 inches, and had a thin, woebegone face rendered grotesque by an enormous nose which, like his hands and feet, was abnormally large. [p070]

His parents, small agriculturists at Saintes, sold him in 1882 to a mountebank, who endeavoured to increase the popularity of his show by making this scrap of a man become an animal-tamer.

By dint of great patience six cats were painted to resemble tigers, with yellow and black stripes. The animals were shut into a cage with the dwarf, and the unlucky Joseph, half dead with fear, was forced, with the aid of a riding-whip, to make the cats perform.

The attempt succeeded for some time, when on July 12th, 1882, at the fair of Beaupré-sur-Saône, one of the cats suddenly flew at the dwarf’s throat and threw him down by its weight.

In one second all the other cats had rushed upon Joseph, and before any one could intervene, the cat-tamer was strangled, his eyes torn out, his face covered with blood.

The mountebank fled: a few days later he was arrested at Lille.

I was lately discussing this tragic accident with M. François, and my friend, who was drawing on his riding-boots, paused in the effort to utter these melancholy words:—

“We were certainly happier under the old régime.”

When one is satiated with the abnormal and monstrous, the thoughts naturally tend towards those entertainments which exhibit the perfection of human beauty.

It must be admitted that in this respect the public taste has improved. The infantine and Oriental admiration which the crowd displayed for enormous women, the “fat lady” who weighed 250 lbs., is declining so quickly [p071] that the “colossus” has nearly disappeared from the fair. And really pretty girls are now exhibited in the “Halls of Mystery.”

[p072] The success of the “Beautiful Fatma,” hastened this revolution. No fair of any importance is now held without some imitation of the “Beautiful Fatma” being on the ground. I noticed the Pavillon Marocain amongst the most successful of these imitations.

“Walk in, walk in! ladies and gentlemen,” cries the showman at the top of his voice; “walk in and see the danse du ventre, as danced at Bardo before the Bey of Tunis! Walk in, walk in! Hurry up!”

We enter. The booth is clean and prettily decorated; at one end three women in Oriental dresses are singing a harsh melody accompanied by the traditional thrumming on the bamboo drums, which look like butter pots. They are called, if names are asked for, Aïcha, Dora, and Hardiendja. But there is a Fatma in the house. She is a negress about twenty years old, a fine specimen of her race: at its base the nose is almost as wide as her thick lips, and by this detail Fatma shocks all our ideas of classic proportions; still, when looking at this tall, well-made girl, I, for the first time, understood what travellers mean when they speak of the beauty and exquisite grace of negro women. In spite of all defects there is a pleasant harmony in the dark face, brightened by the modest mischievous eyes. And when Fatma dances before the negro Bouillabaisse,—first comic actor to the Sultan of Zanzibar,—her graceful swaying movements, her languid attitudes and smiling gestures rouse in her audience that innate sympathy with Oriental views of women, the gentle, soulless creature of the East, which lies dormant in the heart of every man.

Another “Hall of Mystery” worth visiting is the “House [p073] of Metamorphosis,” Manager Stenegry, at the sign of the “Secret des Dieux.”

The real attraction of this establishment is Mdlle. Stenegry herself, a Romanische of rare beauty, who with her golden sequins and Egyptian diadem forms the most perfect “Esmeralda” that you ever dreamed of at sixteen. Inside we find a second young lady, equally lovely, a charming blonde—Mademoiselle Lutèce. She fills the rôle of Galatea, “the marble statue that acquired life beneath the burning kisses of Pygmalion.”

[p074] “Pygmalion” does not appear, but in a darkened room, by some device of slanting mirrors, the beautiful head of Mdlle. Lutèce changes into a death’s-head before the eyes of the spectators. Then from the youthful polished ivory skull a rose bush suddenly appears. This eminently philosophical contrast has inspired M. Stenegry, the father, with some wonderful variations of the original idea. I recommend his “Programme of visible and mysterious apparitions” to all collectors of comicalities.

“Everything pales. . ,” he says, “everything dissolves, everything blends. Come and see the chef-d’œuvre produced by my researches upon metempsychosis; it will submit its revelations and revolutions to the judgment of the spectators, who will become its sincere admirers.”

But just now the most æsthetic entertainment in the fair is the series of tableaux vivants presented to the public by M. Melchior Bonnefois.

M. Bonnefois is an artist and a literary man. Last year he published a very pathetic article in the Union Mutuelle, “Les Drames de la Vie Foraine,” and I have read some very skilful verses written by him for some of the small reviews published in the South.

This man has tastefully grouped a limited number of models, youths and girls, who are not only well trained in their profession, but also good-looking. Amongst them are Suzanne Bertini, the model from the studio of J. P. Laurens; Arabelle, the model from the Bouguereau studio; Jeanne Laurence, the model from the Baudry studio; Antonio Vega, from the Academy of Madrid; Rose Linon, one of the favourite models from the Gervex studio; Berthe Biéville, [p075] Serge Worouzof, from the Academy of Moscow; last and chief, the star of the troupe, the beautiful Mireille, from the Academy of Marseilles. This little Phocean is crowned with beautiful blue-black hair, and has the profile of Pallas Athene, with all the Olympian coldness, the absence of expression, and the gravity which distinguished the goddess.

Perhaps, since it is a question of perfection, her arms, like her bust, are a little thin, but Mireille’s statuesque divinity reappears in her legs from the hips to the feet. One lady, whose views upon questions of dress are extremely accurate, and in whose society I was lucky enough to witness this [p076] artistic exhibition, made an observation upon Mdlle. Mireille’s attire which I faithfully transmit to this pretty girl and her directors—directors of conscience and others.

An error on the part of the costumier is the cause of the apparent want of harmony in the fine proportions of Mdlle. Mireille’s figure, giving undue importance to the legs. A scarf has been draped across the hips over the salmon-coloured fleshings; it is about the width of a bath-towel, and is so inartistically puffed that its whiteness destroys the harmony of the outlines, and by its vague resemblance to the short breeches worn with trunk hose, it transforms a nude into a travesty. Above the trousers of the page one looks for the shoulders of the man, and because they are missing, Mdlle. Mireille looks too thin.

What remedy can be applied to this serious error which spoils our pleasure? There is some difficulty in the matter, I know, but it has been frequently overcome with greater skill: for instance, by the artist who designed a costume for Madame Théo, as Eve before the Fall, which won the approval of all admirers of plastic beauty, without shocking the susceptible. I shall send a photograph of Madame Théo to M. Bonnefois.

It is a sad proof of our physical decadence that beauty is no longer found allied with strength; the two qualities, formerly blended like metals in an alloy, are now entirely separated, and M. Bonnefois and M. Marseille each presides over representatives of the two attributes, which, when united, produced the most perfect types of humanity. At M. Bonnefois’s establishment beauty is cultivated without strength, and at M. Marseille’s entertainment, strength is [p077] found without beauty. Yesterday I could not stifle these painful thoughts when I took my seat on the velvet benches provided by the celebrated manager of the athletic show, to watch a wrestling match.

Full of recollections of Plutarch, one remembers that in the palestrea, Lycurgus made the young girls rub themselves with oil and contend with the Spartan ephebes; the lines of Theocritus on the fight between Castor and Pollux are haunting the lips; the eyes are full of visions of the beautiful forms of the wrestlers of the tribune—the young men of Cephissodote, so beautiful that they were taken for the sons of Niobe, of whom Apollo was jealous. One enters the canvas booth, the movable temple of the heroic Hercules, with a religious shiver, and, alas! what do you see? Stout, [p078] heavy men, their hair shining with pomatum, with abnormally developed chests—this is the glorious phalange; on the other hand, amateurs without either masks or black coats, but who are nearly all in the service of the Compagnie Lasage, men who have served their time, or porters in the Great Market. No well-bred figures, no delicate limbs. Compare these bloated Vitellii to the gods? There, my good fellows, go home to your lock-picking and your work.

Yet I remember one tragic anecdote of wrestling. It happened at the fair at Loges about fifteen years ago. We had gone into a booth to witness a fight with single-sticks between a fencing-master’s assistant from St. Germains and the proprietor of the establishment. The soldier and the mountebank evidently knew and disliked each other; they were engaged for some time, and seemed less like holding a [p079] match than settling a quarrel; a good many people had followed the soldier into the booth.

The mountebank was completely beaten. He foamed at the mouth, rolling his eyes terribly, whilst the fencing-master, swinging himself to and fro, made his cane whistle above his head.

When the applause ended, the wrestler demanded:

“My revenge! take a belt!”

A woman intervened—a tall dark girl, a gipsy, who had juggled before us with weights and knives.

“Do not fight,” she cried to the soldier in a voice full of pain. “He is furious! he will hurt you!”

The mountebank sneered:

“Madame fears that I might break you! Are you a man?”

The soldier turned white. He was a tall lissom man, but he did not look strong. However, he quietly unbuttoned the waistcoat that he had put on, and picked up the belt.

The other waited, his arms crossed, a smile on his lips.

They grasped each other, but the struggle did not last long. The soldier was immediately thrown underneath the other; the mountebank put one knee on his neck, seized his head with both hands, and turned it completely round. We heard a crack. The soldier uttered a horrible cry—the wrestler had broken his neck like a rabbit’s back. I did not want to see any more and rushed out, whilst the crowd threw itself upon the mountebank. But in the evening an accidental turn in my walk brought me in front of the booth.

In the midst of all the gaiety, of songs, of meals in the [p080] open air, of the illuminations and noise of the shows, the wrestler’s booth, silent and closed, was the only dark spot in the fair. An indistinct form cowered on the wooden steps. I went a little nearer to it. It was the gipsy, the juggler with weights. She was sobbing bitterly, her head buried in her apron—weeping for the prisoner or for the dead.

Although an open secret is now called Punch’s secret, it is certain that the marionettes’ theatre and the puppet dance are great mysteries in their way.

Very few people have ever penetrated behind the scenes of these theatres. They are far better defended than the Opera, and I am not a little proud of having been admitted one day at the Versailles Fair behind the curtain of the Bermont Theatre during the performance of a grand drama, in one act, The Spanish Brigands.

I had been attracted by a very brilliant oration from Punch, detailing all the amusements to be found within. [p082]

“This, ladies and gentlemen,” he spluttered between his teeth in the usual way, “this is the real society and family entertainment. Everything is calculated, everything is arranged, to please the eye: a review of the greatest Parisian artists, dances in character, Icarian games held in honour both by the Greeks and Romans, a Spanish bolero, Harlequin’s celebrated feats on a bicycle, and, lastly, the great unpublished drama, now performed for the first time in this town, The Brigands.”

We crowded in, about one hundred urchins, grandmothers, and nurses, eyes wide open in pleasant anticipation.

A small Italian musician, his teeth gleaming like ivory from contact with hard crusts, formed the whole orchestra. He played the accordion on the front bench. His melody ended, some one rapped three times, the performance commenced.

First, two Polish warriors entered and performed a military dance, marking the time with their heels. Then followed a couple of Spanish dancers, who executed some wonderful pirouettes and pigeons’ flights. Then appeared the india-rubber man, who stretched and stretched himself, and finally bent himself until his nose touched his heels, and then he sneezed, a performance which convulsed the spectators with delight. He was succeeded by a lawyer in a black dress, who doubled himself, became triple and quadruple—a naïve symbol of the craftiness of his profession—then played in each of the four corners of the stage with his duplicates and suddenly flew through the frieze.

The curtain falls.

From every bench a sorrowful cry is heard, “Is it over?” [p083]

No. The second part is going to begin.

Rap! rap! rap!

The curtain rises upon a second curtain, which represents a forest, a chief, two brigands, three acolytes. This is the band.

The Captain.—“My friends, I have heard from the old postillion that a post-chaise will pass through this narrow road. You must stop it.”

The Band.—“Yes, captain.”

The Captain.—“You, Pedro, must guard this defile. We, my friends, must away to the mountains.” [p084]

(The band disappears on the side to the court. Pedro remains alone for one moment. A monk enters front the garden side.)

Pedro.—“Halt there; your money or your life!”

The Monk.—“But, my brother, I am as poor as you are. Capuchins have no money.”

Pedro.—“What are those twenty-five golden louis I see in this purse? And the repeater that I see; I—”

(Pedro attempts to rob the monk. The Capuchin falls on his knees.)

The Monk.—“Mercy! If I go home without this money the superior will shut me up in a dungeon.”

Pedro.—“That’s not my business!”

The Monk.—“At least fire into the folds of my frock without wounding me, so that I can prove that I was attacked.”

Pedro.—Very well. (He fires.)

The Monk, springing upon Pedro, and stabbing him with a dagger.—“Fool! You missed me, but I shall not miss you!”

(He disappears on the court side; the captain and his band re-enter from the garden side.

They pause before the body of Pedro.)

A Brigand.—“The coward, he is asleep!”

The Captain.—“No, he is bathed in blood. The monk has killed him. Let us pillage the monastery.”

The curtain falls; the show is really over this time.

I went behind the scenes to ask the impresario Bermont for the name of the author of this fine historical drama.

“I wrote it myself,” he modestly replied. “I have a book [p085] of plays. I write them in the evenings, when they occur to me—recollections, ideas, anything. We also play The Passion, The Temptation of Saint Anthony, Hell, and Geneviève de Brabant. The book is very old, and has never been printed. We repeat it through over and over again. I also perform Camilla Underground; or, the Dangerous Forest. But once in that piece the ‘author’s rights’ found a pretext for coming in, but they did not recognize the piece; I had changed it all.”

His wife stood near him whilst he spoke, leaning on his shoulder, tenderly proud of belonging to a man gifted with so much imagination.

If you should ever have an opportunity of examining the large volumes in which the Brothers Parfaict, the Des Beulmiers, de [p086] Monnet, and some other authors have scientifically discussed the origin of fair theatres, you will find that they have been always forced to contend against that hereditary enemy which the impresario Bermont now calls the “author’s rights,” and which has borne different names in different ages.

At the epoch when the fair theatres first attracted notice, that is to say about 1595, it might have been justly styled the “comedians’ rights.” The brotherhood of the Passion and the actors of the Hôtel de Bourgogne would not allow any extension of theatrical performances by their side, and as they held the power they easily obtained a rule which restricted the comedies in a fair to wooden actors, marionettes of Brioché, learned animals, acrobats, and juggling tricks.

But the banquistes are a tenacious race, and towards 1678, in spite of the opposition from the comedians, the fair theatres commenced to mount a few well-seasoned farces with actors of flesh and blood. The head of the police protested, and the managers once more pretended to restrict themselves within the limits of the law, resorting to some ingenious infraction of the spirit of it, which provoked laughter and put the comedians in the wrong; for instance, the artifice used by La Grille, who opened, in the fair of Saint Germaine, an Opera de Bamboche, in which the sole actor was a huge marionette, that gesticulated to the melodies of an invisible musician concealed in the prompter’s box.

At the same time the companies of Allard, Maurice and Bertrand, Selle, Dominique and Octave, obtained great success in Paris and the provinces. Conjuring tricks and [p088] feats of agility still formed the chief part of the entertainment, but to them were added scenes with dialogue, comedies in song, from which our comic operas have developed.

The forain stage has retained the triple characteristics—acrobatic, musical, and charlatan—which appear to have belonged to it from the earliest days of its existence; but since the century in its refinement values distinction of style, the grande banque has adapted itself to its requirements.

There are three kinds of theatre booths:

Singing theatres.

Theatres with good variety performances.

Theatres with conjuring entertainments.

The theatres with operetta are the least amusing. No original work has been produced in them for a long time, not even any new songs. At the present moment the café concerts provide the majority of the tedious repetitions which make the tour of France. The forain opera lives by spurious imitations and clumsy changes of title. All its skill is expended in successfully defying the aforesaid “author’s rights.” It succeeds to its own satisfaction when it advertises the

with a large G. Its inventive power is limited to the substitution of this one letter. And the individuals who appear upon the stages of the booths to sing the “trial d’operette” are also the refuse of the café concerts. They can only impose upon an unsophisticated audience. For this reason the forain opera is no longer found in the suburban fairs of Paris or other large cities. It is confined to country fairs and provincial festivities.

But the variety houses are on quite a different scale. The most flourishing and the best known at the present time are the establishments kept by Marquette and Emile Cocherie, who styles himself on his programmes, “Head of the fêtes of Paris.” At the commencement of each campaign, that is to say before the Fair du Trône, Emile Cocherie gives an audience in his villa at the Porte de Montrouge to all the [p090] artists who aspire to enter his troupe. In his presence the candidates must all jouent le canevas, i.e. improvise a scene with dialogue upon a given subject. The same old themes are used which have served ever since the origin of the open-air [p091] stage; all the situations of the Italian comedies and Gallic farces which amused the crowd even in the time of the escholiers. A new topic is not prohibited, but there are very few “patterers” who can speak outside as well as inside, as the terms of the engagements run.

Still clever actors who can improve the performance receive extra salaries. The illustrious Clam, who is called the last of the merry-andrews, earned as much as five hundred francs a month at the forain theatres. I asked M. Cocherie, who was left inconsolable by the departure of this whimsical performer, why he did not try to replace him by some young student of comedy who had passed creditably through the Conservatoire.

“He would not suit me,” replied the experienced manager. “I have tried them, and still have one in my show, but he does not succeed. The lads have not effective voices, they are not merry and, above all, they have no gift for improvisation. A commercial traveller who can push a sale well, a hawker from the street, would be much more in my line than M. Coquelin aîné.”

And it is quite true, this Clam is a splendid clown. I do not recommend you to make his acquaintance in the Clamiana, a collection of jokes which seem very dull when they are read, printed with old type in a small newspaper. Clam should be heard outside the show in the tumult of smacks and kicks which accompanies his improvised dialogue with his butt.

I begged this important personage to give me a few notes on his life, and I now publish them as they were given to me. The last of the red-tails belongs to literary history. [p092]

“At noon, on the 5th June, 1837, a baby uttered its first cry. The son of the actor Chanet entered the world in the native place of Casimir Delavigne! Brought up in more than poverty and naturally delicate, my childhood was passed in an asylum at Havre, about the time of the great cholera epidemic, which spared my life; later on, I sold [p093] checks at the theatre door, and considered myself lucky if I occasionally managed to see one act.

“My only recreation was reading plays and acting them in a footwarmer by means of little dolls. I was the most ignorant of the Brothers’ class. In spite of all I became errand boy and lithographer.

“In 1853 I made my début as a comic singer in the Théâtre des Familles, established in an old prison.

“Some time afterwards I tired of shining in the carnaval fêtes of the period and returned to Havre as a chorus-singer, under the direction of M. Defossez.

“I sang in choruses and made floats. Some years later I returned to the same theatre and gave some performances.

“But in spite of this success Paris has seen me almost barefooted, ill, and homeless; my food gathered from the scraps found under the umbrellas round the Fontaine des Innocents. My mother was poor and could not help me, and for my own part I would not tell her of my distress, wishing to spare her tears. By dint of struggles and of [p094] work I distinguished myself as an actor at Nancy, Limoges, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Havre, Rouen, Besançon, Geneva, Nantes, Paris, &c.

“I have acted with Henry Monnier, my master, Scrivaneck, Vieuxtemps, Hoffman, Darcier, and Renard. Circumstances have forced me to give performances in every description of city and small town. I have played in stables and theatres, in barns, and in the Rothschilds’ drawing-rooms; I have travelled on foot, by railway, and in carts. I journeyed through one part of France with some acrobats, with whom I saw it through many colours and on the road I collected some instructive and still unpublished notes, of which I am the sole owner.

“My travelling diaries are all my fortune. Afterwards I went to the café concert with the remnant of my voice, and was successively engaged in various large cities. I know some parts of Holland and Germany, a little of Switzerland and Prussia, a great deal of Belgium, and something of Italy and Spain. But I know Bohemia best of all.

“Like the late Bilboquet, I have tampered with every banque except the Banque de France, but this does not prevent me from living a quiet, unobtrusive life; my only wish is that no one should annoy me (this is very difficult to get), to live a long time and to die without pain.

“I add for the edification of the reader that my sons bear my name, an item which my father forgot to bestow upon me (he was so heedless).”

Clam, who—as you may judge from this narrative—has some claim to be noticed in any complete anthology of [p095] French writers in prose, has “teased the muse” at times. But his poems echo the prevailing note of his century—they are cynical and melancholy. You may judge by these three verses on the death of a comrade in the show. Clam dedicated them to me:

A man who has so many strings to his bow is not anxious about the future. One day when I hinted before Clam that old age might surprise him, without any provision for it, he replied:

“When I am no good for anything else my friends will [p096] make a politician of me. But I have still some chest left, and I shall put off the death of the show for many years yet.”

The improvements, the tricks of every kind which have destroyed the “outside shows,” have enriched the entertainments given inside the booths, and have most successfully transformed the conjuring performances like those found in the establishments of Adrian Delille and Pietro Gallici.

Since Delille bought the theatre and tricks of Laroche he is the king of showmen conjurers. He is third representative of the name. The first Adrian, the grandfather, was conjurer to King Charles X., and, since that remote date, at every fair held in Paris or any large town, a magician bearing the name of Delille has been seen making omelettes in hats, juggling with balls, &c., without the aid of pointed hat, long sleeves, wand, or cabalistic words—a modern sorcerer in evening dress and lavender kid gloves. The Delilles first introduced the trick of the Speaking Head into France. They bought the patent for 4,000 francs, never hesitated to bring a lawsuit against any one who infringed it, and always won their case.

The science of white magic has made great progress since that date. There are always some means of improving an old trick, and every year Adrian Delille spends his six months of enforced rest in preparing for the summer season.

Like all his comrades, he disbands his troupe in the month of November, and takes up his winter quarters in Paris, where he has a study devoted to experiments. He must [p097] be ready to renew the campaign at Easter, to astonish the Parisians at the Fair du Trône. In his youth the conjurer worked almost alone, and for hours he would keep the public breathless with interest and wonder. For this he required great facility of speech, a mind always on the alert, and the [p098] skill to draw the eyes of the spectators in any direction he wished away from his secret manipulations. Conjuring implies a constant struggle against the malicious curiosity of the audience. “I am not strong enough now,” Delille observed to me, “to bear the strain during a succession of tricks; I was obliged to divide the performance. Besides, now, the public like that best.”

The troupe consists of forty persons. It is a little difficult to realize the size of the establishment required to work these large show-theatres. A booth like that of Adrian Delille can seat 1,200 people, and it is always crowded for the Sunday performances. They cost an average of 400 francs [p100] per diem, for the principal performers receive high salaries. Clowns, acrobats, buffoons, and equilibrists, all these artists—and they are the same who appear in the hippodrome and circuses—are engaged through the agencies. The engagements are concluded for one month, but they can be cancelled at the end of a week at the wish of the proprietor.

A good clown, a skilful gymnast, can earn in a forain theatre like that of Delille as much as at the circus—about 2,000 francs per month.

The dancers employed to pose in the tableaux vivants are paid according to their beauty and skill—180, 240, or even 500 francs per month.

Delille paid a still higher sum to the two pretty girls who lately posed for him as the two little combatants in Emile Bayard’s picture An Affair of Honour.

It would be quite as indiscreet to ask a conjurer to explain his tricks, as a pretty woman to tell you what scent she uses for her toilet, and therefore I have never discussed the subject. The exclusive ownership of a conjuring trick is difficult to defend in law, and for this reason prestidigitators are always on their guard against the indiscretion of their workpeople. They have been betrayed a hundred times for a bottle of wine and a few banknotes, and now, taught by misfortune, they surround their experiments with as much mystery as the old Egyptian priests used in their worship of the veiled Isis. After all, our pleasure lies in this mystery only. “These phantasmagorias,” it has been well said by one of our contemporaries, whom a taste for philosophic acrobatics has led to esteem acrobats in [p101] fleshings,—“these phantasmagorias please us like every other phenomena which seems to contradict the universal order of things, to counteract the laws of nature. The universe being what it is, we have no other consolation than the dream that it is otherwise, and this is the true essence of poetry. Conjuring is lyrical poetry—fable in action.”5

The time has passed when conjurers were forced to ascend a woodpile and worthy folk clung to the honour of bringing a faggot to roast them with. Every one knows that there is nothing supernatural in the illusions they create. Usually the explanation is one of the most simple things in the world, but our search for it is nearly always unsuccessful, yet whilst we persevere in it we cannot be bored, and this is really the only aim in view.

There is one conjurer more modern than Delille, more ingenious than Robert Houdin, who has carried the art of white magic to a state of perfection unknown before. This is M. de Kolta.

This extraordinary man takes a sheet of paper, rolls it up like a cornucopia, and from this horn of plenty he immediately pours an avalanche of roses into a crystal cup. [p103]

The spectator is bewildered.

“Where do these roses come from?” he asks. Apparently they had been in some way concealed in the waistcoat of the thaumaturgist; but how did they get into the horn? what pushed them? what secret spring made them flow forth? [p104]

We must own that no one knows.

M. de Kolta then removes his coat and takes a cage containing a live bird into his hands. One, two, three!

The cage and the bird are gone; nothing is left! The clever ones will gravely tell you that the cage was jointed; by pressing some secret spring it unjoints, closes or elongates itself. Most probably it assumes the shape of a narrow cylinder, in the midst of which the bird is imprisoned but not hurt.

That is all very well, but what becomes of the cylinder? The magician has no accomplice; he performs the trick alone, before the eyes of the public. It seems impossible that any movement could escape that watchful gaze.

Lastly, M. de Kolta is not satisfied with making a bird disappear, he causes a woman to vanish—his wife, so they say; and although he chose one so frail, so tiny, so nearly related to the elves, that she looks as though she might run across a meadow without bending a blade of grass, still she is a woman of flesh and blood, who could not be forced into the sheath of a sword.

M. de Kolta, who is cleverer than you are, spreads a newspaper upon the floor and places a chair on the paper. Madame de Kolta seats herself upon the chair, and her husband covers the little parcel of lace with a red and black veil; then rapidly takes the veil off again.

The woman has gone!

Evidently the woman disappeared through a trap; but yet, whilst she went through it, the veil never moved, and the newspaper is still intact, though it is much larger than the [p105] edges of the veil. We feel humiliated at being the victims of such an illusion, although we were forewarned. And we ask ourselves with some alarm, what is, then, the value of the feeble organs of knowledge we call our senses, in which we so blindly place our trust?

But through this uneasiness, this distrust of our judgment, which conjuring leaves, this entertainment becomes an excellent school of wisdom. You may believe M. Jules Lemaître on this point, for he first discovered the philosophical side of these performances. “M. de Kolta,” he said, “should be a happy man. He is a true sorcerer. He forces us to see with our eyes things which we cannot see, and not to see things which we do see, and this is solely through the marvellous skill of his agile fingers. In his place, I would go to the mysterious and credulous East, where I would found a new religion based upon miracles. M. Renan would provide a dogma suited to the requirements of those far-distant souls, and M. de Kolta would work the miracles. He would be a prophet during his life, a saint, perhaps a god, after his death. . . . But one sorrowful reflection tempers the pleasure which this idea gives me. The miracles worked by M. de Kolta are practically injurious. Since we do not believe in the false miracles he performs—since nothing distinguishes them from real ones, and we have only the magician’s word to assure us they are false, what, then, should we do if real miracles were worked in our presence? We should say, We know all about them; it’s only conjuring! And thus the small remnant of faith which we may still retain in the supernatural is insidiously destroyed. [p106] When the prophet Elijah returns to earth at the end of time he will meet other De Koltas here; he will himself be sent to the Eden or to the Folies Bergères. And that is how the last men will lose their souls—just like the first, however.”