As our conjuror, however, required money for the completion of his marriage, he resolved to work upon the fears of one Cornu, an old banker at Lyons, who had amassed immense wealth by usury and extortion. Having obtained an interview with the miser, he introduced the subjects of demons and spectres, and the torments of purgatory; and, during an interval of silence, the voice of the miser’s deceased father was heard complaining of his dreadful situation in purgatory, and calling upon his son to rescue him from his sufferings by enabling Louis Brabant to redeem the Christians that were enslaved by the Turks. The awe-struck miser was also threatened with eternal damnation if he did not thus expiate his own sins; but such was the grasp that the banker took of his gold, that the ventriloquist was obliged to pay him another visit. On this occasion, not only his father but all his deceased relatives appealed to him in behalf of his own soul and theirs; and such was the loudness of their complaints, that the spirit of the banker was subdued, and he gave the ventriloquist ten thousand crowns to liberate the Christian captives. When the miser was afterwards undeceived, he is said to have been so mortified that he died of vexation. The ventriloquists of the nineteenth century made great additions to their art, and the performances of M. Fitz-James and M. Alexandre, which must have been seen by many of our countrymen, were far superior to those of their predecessors. Besides the art of speaking by the muscles of the throat and the abdomen, without moving those of the face, these artists had not only studied with great diligence and success the modifications which sounds of all kinds undergo from distance, obstructions, and other causes, but had acquired the art of imitating them in the highest perfection. The ventriloquist was therefore able to carry on a dialogue in which the _dramatis voces_, as they may be called, were numerous; and when on the outside of an apartment, he could personate a mob with its infinite variety of noise and vociferation. Their influence over an audience was still further extended by a singular power over the muscles of the body. M. Fitz-James actually succeeded in making the opposite or corresponding muscles act differently from each other; and while one side of his face was merry and laughing, the other was full of sorrow and in tears. At one moment he was tall, thin, and melancholic, and after pausing behind a screen, he came out “bloated with obesity and staggering with fulness.” M. Alexandre possessed the same power over his face and figure; and so striking was the contrast of two of these forms, that an excellent sculptor, Mr. Joseph, has perpetuated them in marble.