With the mania which we Frenchmen have of insisting that everything should have a meaning in spite of all appearances, I asked the Pinauds what their pantomime signified. “Absolutely nothing,” replied one of them. “On the contrary, we try to destroy all connection between the scenes of our entertainment. We only wish to produce upon the audience the impression of violent terror and madness. And therefore we represent a man, alarmed by the successive apparitions of animals which play music when they are touched.” I listened [p301] quietly, but I could not help remembering the invariable question, which I had heard the doctor at the police station ask the drunken maniacs whom the police had picked up in the streets— “You see beasts, do you not, animals that swarm round you?” [Illustration] They all reply in the affirmative, hanging down their heads. These drunken hallucinations, these apparitions of animals, are the framework of the English pantomime, the terrible visions of a gin-drinker who has rolled into a gutter at the door of a drinking bar. The Craggs, “gentlemen acrobats,” also appeared at the Folies-Bergères. They came from New York, where they had made a great success. They had also made large profits during their six [p302] weeks’ engagement, for they received 100 dollars a night. They enter the stage in Indian file, all the seven, wearing evening dress and white ties. They come forward in a line to the front of the stage, and bend their heads; you think that they are going to bow, simply like you or I. Instead they make a somersault. Seven somersaults forward. They are so quickly executed that every one present asks if he is dreaming. Very correctly executed, notwithstanding, very correctly! Not one smooth head is ruffled, not one white tie unloosed, not a shirt front creased. [Illustration] We must however believe that the coat inconveniences the gentlemen in their work, for with very leisurely movements, [p303] and perfect indifference, the seven Craggs go to the back of the stage, and there, one, two, three, in time, as though performing an exercise, they take off their coats and appear in fourteen shirt sleeves. [Illustration] And from that moment, for the space of half an hour, they execute the most wonderful acrobatic feats. The seven Craggs mount upon each other, then fall away like houses built of cards. MM. Craggs senior turn MM. Craggs junior round their arms. One half of the Craggs always has the legs in the air, whilst the other half is head downwards. And what deportment! how completely it differs from the smiles, kisses thrown to the public, and rolling eyes [p304] of the Italian acrobat! We shall see that in the Molier Circus, authentic gentlemen have been converted into passable clowns. Messrs. Craggs have proved to us, a more unexpected fact, that perfect gentlemen can be made from professional clowns. [Illustration]