To quote but one instance: Erminia Chelli, the queen of equilibrists upon the trapeze, is a natural somnambulist. From May till July, 1887, Paris possessed this charming [p233] young girl at the Cirque d’Été, and her departure has left us inconsolable. I shall never forget the emotion which her performance caused me at our first meeting. I at once begged M. Franconi to introduce me to her father. M. Chelli and I exchanged cards. I have copied the document here as an extraordinary monument of acrobatic and paternal pride: EMILIO CHELLI, EX-ARTIST, GYMNAST, AND CLOWN, FATHER OF THE CELEBRATED AERIAL EQUILIBRIST, SIGNORINA ERMINA CHELLI. The wife’s card said “Madame Mère.” Erminia Chelli is not more than nineteen; she is a Venetian, and by lengthening her legs in the trapeze she has acquired the supreme grace in walking, the elegant proportions, which are usually rather lacking in Italians The bust is youthful yet charming, the neck delicate; the little dark head is proudly carried upon shoulders which the trapeze has rendered supple without unduly developing the shoulder blades. Since the appearance of Oceana no one of such perfect proportions has been seen in either of the circuses or the Hippodrome. The beauty of Oceana was, perhaps, a little more individual and original; but Erminia is better bred and more typical. [p234] “She is her father’s pupil,” Madame Chelli, her mother informed me, as she assisted Erminia in putting on a large pelisse. “She began to appear in public when she was quite a little girl. . . .” [Illustration] As she spoke an equestrian came in to tell them that the net was being prepared for Mademoiselle Chelli’s performance. Erminia threw off her mantle, and with the caressing tones [p235] of a young girl, a little seriously and gravely, she went up to her mother and put her arms round her neck: “Addio, mamma,” she said, kissing her. A little surprised, I inquired: “Is this a superstition, Madame Chelli?” “No one knows,” the mother answered. “It has been her custom since childhood.” Truly, in spite of the net extended beneath her, she might well be excused, poor little girl, for having one moment’s uneasiness whenever she was fetched for her dizzy work on the trapeze. For one whole month I strained my neck watching her extraordinary performance in the friezes. Without the assistance of her hands, which she used as a counterpoise, she bent low enough to pick up with her teeth a handkerchief laid upon the trapeze. She mounted a ladder which was only poised upon the round oscillating piece of wood. Lastly, she balanced an immense ball still upon this frail support, and then, without leaning upon anything, she mounted upon it. And thus, lost in space, the globe beneath her feet, she seemed, the little acrobat, so beautiful, so unconscious of danger, like a goddess travelling through the air with the earth for a movable pedestal.