He further declares that M. Séguin, who had been employed by him to paint phantasmagoric figures, had based his toy, the Polyoscope, upon the principle of his (Robin’s) spectres. Robin was one of the managers who brought out the illusion in Paris, despite the protests of M. Hostein. He opposed Hostein with the patent of the Polyoscope and some of his old theatre posters of the year 1847, advertising the “living phantasmagoria.” Houdin is rather severe on M. Robin when he classes him among the plagiarists and pirates. But the two conjurers were great rivals. M. Caroly, editor of the _Illusioniste_, in an article on Robin, suggests that perhaps Pepper had seen and examined a Polyoscope, and built upon it the theatrical illusion of the ghost. My personal belief is that Professor Pepper was ignorant of the existence of the toy as well as of Robin’s former exhibitions of phantasmagoria, and independently thought out the ghost illusion. This frequently happens among inventors, as every one knows, who has dealings with the U. S. Patent Office. In the year 1868, there was exhibited in Paris, at the Ambigu Theatre, the melodrama of “La Czarine,” founded on Robert-Houdin’s story of Kempelen’s Automaton Chess Player. In this play was a remarkable use of the “ghost illusion,” arranged by Houdin, as well as a chess-playing automaton. I quote as {96} follows from Houdin’s _Les Secrets de la prestidigitation et de la magie_, Chapter VI: “My collaborators, Messrs. Adenis and Gastineau, had asked me to arrange a ‘ghost effect’ for the last act. I had recourse to the ‘ghost illusion’, but I presented it in such guise as to give it a completely novel character, as the reader will be enabled to judge from the following description: The scene is laid in Russia, in the reign of Catherine II. In the last act, an individual named Pougatcheff, who, on the strength of a personal likeness to Peter III, attempts to pass himself off as the deceased monarch, is endeavoring to incite the Russian populace to dethrone Catherine. A learned man, M. de Kempelen, who is devoted to the Czarina, succeeds, by the aid of scientific expedients, in neutralizing the villainous designs of the sham prince.