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] [Illustration] “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. [Illustration] “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.