theatre, exhibited large marionettes, which he called _bamboches_, and which were striking likenesses of the performers at the Opéra Comique, Laruette, Clairval, Madam Bérard, and himself. Polichinelle appeared amongst them in the character of a gentleman of the bedchamber, and found the same sort of popularity that Cassandrino has since enjoyed at Rome. The monarchy was in its decline, the follies and vices of the courtiers of the 18th century had brought them into contempt, and a parody of them was welcome to the people. The fair over, Audinot installed his puppets in a little theatre on the boulevard, which he called the _Ambigu Comique_, to indicate the variety of the entertainments there given, and there he brought out several new pieces, one, amongst others, entitled _Le Testament de Polichinelle_. It was quite time for Punch to make his will; his theatre was in a very weakly state. It became the fashion to replace puppets by children; and one hears little more of marionettes in France until Seraphin revives them in his _Ombres Chinoises_. Few persons who have been in Paris will have failed to notice, when walking round the Palais Royal between two and three in the afternoon, or seven and nine in the evening, a shrivelled weary-looking man, standing just within the railings that separate the gallery from the garden, and continually repeating, in a tone between a whine, a chant, and a croak, a monotonous formula, at first not very intelligible to a foreigner. This man has acquired all the rights that long occupation can give: the flagstone whereon, day after day, as long as we can remember—and doubtless for a score or two of years before—he has stood sentry, is worn hollow by the shuffling movement by which he endeavours to retain warmth in his feet. He is identified with the railings against which he stands, and is as much a part of the Palais Royal as the glass gallery, Chevet’s shop, or the cannon that daily fires itself off at noon. A little attention enables one to discover the purport of his unvarying harangue. It begins with “_Les Ombres Chinoises de Seraphin_”—this very drawlingly spoken—and ends with “_Prrrrenez vos billets_”—a rattle on the _r_, and the word _billets_ dying away in a sort of exhausted whine. In 1784, the ingenious Dominique Seraphin exhibited his Chinese shadows several times before the royal family at Versailles, was allowed to call his theatre “_Spectacle des Enfans de France_,” and took up his quarters in the Palais Royal, in the very house opposite to whose door the monotonous and melancholy man above described at the present day “touts” for an audience. There for seventy years Seraphin and his descendants have pulled the strings of their puppets. But here, as M. Magnin observes, it is no longer movable _sculpture_, but movable _painting_—the shadows of figures cut out of sheets of pasteboard or leather, and placed between a strong light and a transparent curtain.