A Country Idler--Dr. Carlosbach, Conjurer and Professor of Mystification--The Sand-bag and the Stirrup Trick--I turn Lawyer’s Clerk, and the Minutes appear to me very long--A small Automaton--A respectful Protest--I mount a Step in the Office--A Machine of Porter’s Power--The Acrobatic Canaries--Monsieur Roger’s Remonstrances--My Father decides that I shall follow my bent. In the story I have just narrated, only simple events were noticeable--hardly worthy, perhaps, of a man who has often passed for a sorcerer--but grant me a few pages’ patience, reader, as an introduction to my artistic life, and what you seek in my book will be displayed before your eager gaze. You will know how a magician is produced, and you will learn that the tree whence my magic staff was cut was only that of persevering labor, often bedewed by the sweat of my brow: soon, too, when you come to witness my labors and my anxious hours of expectation, you will be able to appreciate the cost of a reputation in my mysterious art. On leaving college, I at first enjoyed all the liberty I had been deprived of for so many years. The power of going right or left, of speaking or remaining silent, as I listed, of getting up sooner or later, according to my fancy, was an earthly paradise for a collegian. I enjoyed this ineffable pleasure to the fullest extent: thus, in the morning--although habit made me wake at five--when the clock announced that once so dreaded hour, I burst into a loud laugh, and offered ferocious challenges to any number of invisible superintendents; then, satisfied by this slight retrospective vengeance, I went to sleep again till breakfast. After that meal I went out to indulge in a pleasant lounge about the streets; and I preferred walking in the public promenades, for thus I had better chances of finding something to attract my attention. In a word, not an event happened which I did not know, and I was the real amateur “penny-a-liner” of my native town. Many of these incidents afforded very slight interest; one day, however, I witnessed a scene which produced a lasting effect upon me. One after-dinner, while walking along the side of the Loire, engaged with the thoughts suggested by the falling autumn leaves, I was aroused from my reverie by the sound of a trumpet, evidently blown by a practised performer. It may be easily supposed that I was not the last to obey this startling summons, and a few other idlers also formed a circle round the performer.