For a time, I contented myself with admiring and believing in the great master’s work, but, in 1844, Vaucanson’s duck was exhibited in a room at the Palais Royal.[B] Of course I was one of the first to visit it, and was much struck by its skillful and learned formation. Some time after, one of the wings having been injured, the duck was sent to me to repair, and I was initiated into the famous mystery of digestion. To my great surprise, I found that the illustrious master had not disdained to have recourse to a trick which a conjurer would have been proud of. The digestion, so pompously announced in the memoir, was only a mystification--a real _canard_, in fact. Decidedly, Vaucanson was not only my master in mechanism, but I must bow before his genius for juggling. The trick was as simple as it was interesting. A vase, containing seed steeped in water, was placed before the bird. The motion of the bill in dabbling crushed the food, and facilitated its introduction into a pipe placed beneath the lower bill. The water and seed thus swallowed fell into a box placed under the bird’s stomach, which was emptied every three or four days. The other part of the operation was thus effected: Bread-crumb, colored green, was expelled by a forcing pump, and carefully caught on a silver salver as the result of artificial digestion. This was handed round to be admired, while the ingenious trickster laughed in his sleeve at the credulity of the public. But, before leaving this subject, I must give a short biographical notice of this illustrious man. Jacques de Vaucanson was born at Grenôble on the 24th February, 1709, of a noble family, and his taste for mechanism was developed at an early age. In 1730, the flute-player at the Tuilleries suggested to him the idea of constructing on this model an automaton which should really play the flute, and he spent four years in perfecting it. The story runs that Vaucanson’s valet was the only person acquainted with his secret, and at the first notes produced by the flute-player, the faithful servant fell at his master’s feet, as if he were more than mortal, and they embraced with tears of joy. The duck and tambourine-player soon followed, and were chiefly intended to speculate on public curiosity. Though noble by birth, Vaucanson exhibited his automata at the fair of Saint Germain and at Paris, where his receipts were enormous. He is also said to have invented a loom on which a donkey worked cloth; this he made in revenge upon the silk-weavers of Lyons, who had stoned him because he attempted to simplify the ordinary loom. We also owe to Vaucanson a chain that still bears his name, and a machine to make meshes of equal size.