It appeared to me that the best part of these novels, the portions most appreciated by the readers, were the facts of actual experience. I therefore asked myself if the time had not come to present to the public these facts free from all romantic fiction, in a form in which the author only intervenes in order to arrange the incidents and to point out the philosophy to be derived from them. The success of this book will prove whether the attempt is premature, or whether there will be any reason for a sequel. This publication is really the monograph of an unknown people, related by the pen and pencil. Its laws, its customs, its traditions, its secrets, its hopes, have been seized, defined in spite of reticence, evasions, wavering, and contradictory witnesses. It describes the organization of the _banquiste_ people, the foundation of its agencies, newspapers, and syndicates, it follows the mountebank from his birth in the wandering caravan to his apotheosis in the friezes of the circus. And at the same time it penetrates into the stables to explain the secrets of the trainer, the tamer, and the ring-master; into the booths to ask the clown for the story of his adventures—and by what chance, having become a gentleman himself, he one day met in the land of whims a gentleman who had become a clown! I cannot close this preface without addressing the warmest thanks to all those who have aided us in bringing this work to a successful issue—to our willing correspondents from America, England, Germany, and Russia. But whilst thus paying our debts, we must express our special gratitude to the learned director of the photographic department of the Salpêtrière, M. Albert Londe; to M. Guy de la Brettonière, the well-known _circomane_; to amateurs like MM. de Saint-Senoch, Bucquet, and Mathieu. The photographs which these gentlemen kindly took for us enabled the draughtsman to represent the acrobats in THOSE INTERMEDIATE POSES WHICH THE EYE NEVER SEIZES, and which hitherto the most rapid instantaneous photographs have failed in reproducing. A few figures will prove better than any words the extreme rarity of these plates. In the month of June, 1888, M. Houcke having given us an appointment at the Hippodrome, made the clown, Auguste, and an artist of the fixed bar, vault in our presence. The members of the Société d’Excursions Française de Photographie, headed by its president, were nearly all assembled. Fifty cameras were arranged like a battery: each amateur had brought twelve glasses. After they had been examined, M. Albert Londe sent us ten proofs, which alone out of six hundred had been deemed worthy of being printed, and after a final examination only seven plates were preserved by the painter. They inspired the series of somersaults which are found in the chapter on GYMNASTS. HUGUES LE ROUX. [Illustration] ERRATA. Page 78, line 7 from top, _for_ “bloated Vitelliuses”, _read_, “bloated Vitellii”.