“Thanks to them we have Aristophanes in miniature. When the curtain has risen on an aerial landscape and we have watched the two semicircles of birds taking their places on either side of the sacrifice, we have formed some idea of the theatre of Bacchus. What a delightful representation! One of the two leaders of the birds turning to the spectators utters these words: ‘Feeble men, like unto the leaf, vain creatures fashioned out of clay and wanting wings, unhappy mortals condemned to an ephemeral and fugitive life, shadows, baseless dream....’ It is the first time, I think that marionettes have spoken with this melancholy gravity.” All this is very interesting and very serious, no doubt, but what of the piping, impertinent voice of Polichinelle? And of this merry Guignol who makes the children laugh? It may seem odd to insert these slapstick buffoons into the midst of aristocratic literary puppets, but after all Guignol was growing and thriving contemporaneously with them and the hardy little fellow has outlived the most of them. Less elaborate and socially less select than those others installed in their artistic theatres, these al fresco performances in the Champs Élysées, in the gardens of the Tuileries and Luxembourg follow the traditional custom of their kind. The _castellet_ of Guignol is little different from Punch’s booth, the dolls are most often simple creatures worked on the fingers, squeaking extemporary dialogue such as one might hear from the pupazzi of Italy or the figures of the Chinese peripatetic showman swathed in his linen bag. Polichinelle has been through difficult times. The French Revolution found him obscure but a patriot, rejoicing at the new order of things. Later he was discovered amusing Emperor Napoleon the Third at the Tuileries Palace. In 1854 the French Zouaves and Grenadiers in the Crimea took Polichennello along with them and he loyally followed up to the very battlefield. But oftenest he was to be seen, through the long lapse of years, humiliated, humbled,--dancing on a board at the twitch of a horizontal string tied to the knee of some little Savoyard boy who beat a tambourine or blew upon a pipe and sang a pathetic song as he journeyed on to Paris. And there, too, on sidewalks and, when the wind blew cold, in the shelter of arches puppets danced on the board and the little boy gathered his pennies to send back home to his mother.