Whatever the manner of his death, his fame lived long after him; and even as certain famous French comedians have transmitted their names to the particular class of parts they filled during their lives, so did Fagotin bequeath his to all monkeys attached to puppet-shows. Loret, in his metrical narrative of the wonders of the fair of St Germain’s in the year 1664, talks of “the apes and fagotins;” La Fontaine praises _Fagotin’s tricks_ in his fable of _The Lion and his Court_, and Molière makes the sprightly and malicious Dorine promise Tartuffe’s intended wife that she shall have, in carnival time, “Le sal et la grand ’branle, à savoir deux musettes, Et parfois _Fagotin et les marionnettes_.” Great honour, indeed, for a quadrumane comedian, to obtain even incidental mention from France’s first fabulist and greatest dramatist. It was at about the time of Tartuffe’s performance (1669) that puppet-shows appear to have been at the zenith of their popularity in France, and in the enjoyment of court favour. In the accounts of expenditure of the royal treasury is noted a payment of 1365 livres “to Brioché, player of marionettes, for the stay he made at St Germain-en-Laye during the months of September, October, and November, to divert the royal children.” Brioché had been preceded by another puppet-showman, who had remained nearly two months. The dauphin was then nine years old, and evidently very fond of Polichinelle—to whose exploits and drolleries, and to the tricks of Fagotin, it is not, however, to be supposed that the attractions of Brioché’s performances were confined. He and his brother showman had doubtless a numerous company of marionettes, performing a great variety of pieces, since they were able to amuse the dauphin and his juvenile court for nearly five months without intermission. Like all distinguished men, Brioché, decidedly one of the celebrities of his time, and to whom we find constant allusions in the prose and verse of that day, had his enemies and his rivals. Amongst the former was to be reckoned no less a personage than Bossuet, who denounced marionettes (with a severity that might rather have been expected from some straight-laced Calvinist than from a prelate of Rome) as a shameful and impure entertainment, calculated to counteract his laborious efforts for the salvation of his flock. M. Magnin’s extensive researches in puppet chronicles leave him convinced that the eloquent bishop must have been in bilious temper when thus attacking the poor little figures whose worst offences were a few harmless drolleries. Anthony Hamilton, in a letter, half verse and half prose, addressed to the daughter of James II. of England, describes the fête of St Germain-en-Laye, and gives us the measure of the marionettes’ transgressions. “The famous Polichinelle,” he says, “the hero of that stage, is a little free in his discourse, but not sufficiently so to