I pushed through the wicket (not a soul was in the place, it seemed) and went softly and rapidly up the stairs. At the top I came upon a sight that at first astounded, then inspired me. I was in one of those _salles de spectacle_ that were at that time as numerous in Paris as were political clubs--a wide, low room, with an open platform at its further end for musicians, and, round three of its walls, a roped-in enclosure for figures in waxwork. It was these bowelless dolls that caused me my start, and in which I immediately saw my one little chance of salvation. I went down the row gingerly, on tiptoe. A horn lantern, slung over the stair-head, was the only light vouchsafed this thronged assembly of dummies. Its rays danced weakly in corners, and lent some of the waxen faces a spurious life. A ticket was before each effigy--generally, as I hurriedly gathered, a quite indispensable adjunct. I had my desperate plan; but perhaps I was too particular to select my complete double. Here, a button or the cut of a collar were the pregnant conditions of history. The clothes made the man, and Mirabeau had written ‘Le Tartufe’ on the strength of a flowing wig. I saw Necker personating our unhappy monarch in that fatal Phrygian cap that was like the glowing peak of a volcano; stuttering Desmoulins waving a painted twig, his lips inappropriately inseparable; the English Pitt, with a nose blown to a point; Voltaire; Rousseau; Beaumarchais--many of the notabilities and notorieties of our own times--and before the last I stopped suddenly. I would not for the world insult the author of ‘Figaro’; but it was my distinction to be without any; and in a waxwork the ticket makes the man. Pierre Augustin was represented pointing a Republican moral--in dress a _pseudo petit-maître_--at his feet a broken watch. One recalls the incident--at Versailles--when a grand seigneur requests the ex-horologist to correct his timepiece for him. “Monsieur, my hand shakes.” “_Laissez donc, monsieur!_ you belittle your professional skill.” Beaumarchais flings the watch on the floor. “_Voilà, monsieur!_ it is as I said!” Now I saw my hope in this figure and (it was all a matter of moments with me) whipped it up in my arms and ran with it to the end of the platform. A flounce of baize hung therefrom to the floor, and into the hollow revealed by the lifting of this I shot the invertebrate dummy, and then scuttled back to the ropes to take its place. There were sounds as I did so--a noise below that petrified me in the position I assumed. My heart seemed to burr like the winding-wheel of a mechanical doll. I pray M. Beaumarchais to forgive me that travesty of a dignified reproof.