Next to the _courses des petits chevaux_, at some thirty yards’ distance, comes the large pavilion in which the excellent band sit and play for an hour in the forenoon and afternoon, and again at 8 P.M. Round the pavilion is a broad space, gravelled and well shaded, and furnished with chairs which are occupied all the afternoon by _baigneurs_ and visitors, mostly in family groups, the women knitting or sewing, and the children playing about in the intervals of the music, and before and after the regular concerts. Occasionally they have a _bal d’enfants_ in this space, controlled by a master of the ceremonies, a dancing-, master, I am told. Under him the children, boys and girls of thirteen or fourteen, down to little trots who can scarcely toddle, may enjoy polkas, galops, and the _taran-tole des postilions_, as well as the gravel allows; and now and again comes a _défilé_, in which, in couples carefully graduated according to size and age, the children march round the walks, and in and out amongst the approving sitters. A very pretty, and to me rather a curious sight, as I much doubt if the English boy could be induced to perform such a march, even in the hope of small packets of bonbons at the end, which are distributed to the best performers. The big orchestral platform in this pavilion is often occupied, when the band is not playing, by itinerant performers, who (I suppose) hire it from the Company in the hope of getting a few francs out of the sitting and circulating crowd. The performances are poor, so far as I have seen, though one conjurer certainly played a trick which entirely beat me at the time, and for which I am still quite unable to account. He produced what he called a _garotte_, made of two stout planks which shut one upon another (like our old stocks), and in which was a central hole for the neck, and two smaller ones for the wrists. This garotte he handed round, and though I did not get hold of it, I inspected it in the hands of a youth who was standing just in front of me, and satisfied myself that the planks were solid wood. Then he placed it on a stand, and called up a stout damsel in the flesh-coloured tights which seem to be _de rigueur_ for all female performers, who knelt down and laid her neck in the big hole, and a wrist in each of the smaller ones. The conjurer then let down the upper plank upon her, and having borrowed a signet ring from an elderly _décoré_ Frenchman who was sitting near the platform, proceeded to encircle the two planks with strips of stout paper or tape, which he sealed with the ring. Then he held up a screen for the space of twenty seconds, and on lowering it the damsel was posturing in her tights, while the _garotte_ remained _in situ_, with the tapes still there and the seals unbroken. By what trick she got her head and hands out I was utterly unable to guess, and strolled away with the rather provoking sense of having been fooled through my eyes. I hope a green