The Marionnettes admitted into Spain
were naturalised, and put to Swinish business,
excepting only Punch. Punch was, however,
so far nationalised as to be ennobled and
adorned with the sonorous style and title of
Don Cristoval Pulichiiiula; though his title
did not raise him out of the base society,
in the market-place, of dogs and dancing
monkeys.

The love of puppet-shows in Spain still
survives. Even the most aristocratic grandees,
with prodigious pedigrees, do not deem it
undignified to fill the puppet theatres. One
of the most illustrious French savans, who
was in Spain in 1808, relates that when he
was present at a representation of Titeres, in
Valencia, the impassioned and even turbulent
excitement of the audience, half popular, half-
aristocratic, arrested his attention no less
forcibly than the Marionnettes themselves. The
piece represented was the " Death of Seneca,"
and the hero, by order of Nero, was bled to
death. The streams of blood which flowed
from his arms were very cleverly imitated
by the motion of a red riband. An
unexpected miracle closed the play. On the
discharge of a miniature piece of artillery,
the pagan sage was raised to Heaven,
surrounded by a glory, in the midst of which,
to the general satisfaction of the audience, he
pronounced, in a tone of extreme penitence
and devotion, his adherence to the Christian
faith.

In France, puppets had the same foundation
in religious feeling, as indeed our flesh-and-
blood dramatic representations had
throughout Europe. A play-bill, issued at
Rheims, so lately as the year 1775, is thus
set forth: " Explanation of the Universal
Judgment, a Tragedy, by the Sieur Ardax, of
Mount Lebanon. This piece will be composed
of three thousand five hundred figures, in low
relief, which will be made to shift and move
according to the intention of the author, who
has no other object in view than that of
edifying the public by an entertainment derived
from Holy Writ." We find, however, that,
in the year 1584, secular puppets had already
regular theatres of their own in many parts
of France. Their first masters of celebrity
in Paris were Jean and Francois Brioché,
fatheraud son, who enlivened the times of Louis
the Fourteenth. Jean Brioché, who was
moreover a tooth-drawer, exercised his profession in
company with a remarkable ape, called Fagotin,
at the foot of the Pont Neuf, near the Porte
de Nesle, which still existed in 1649. Brioché,
however, parted company with his ape shortly
after this period, and for a very good reason;
the unfortunate animal was killed by a madman,
named Cyrano de Bergerac, who took it
into his head that Fagotin was a lackey who
made faces at him as he passed, whereupon
the lunatic drew his sword and ran the ape
through the body. Yet the mistake might
have happened to any irascible man, not
absolutely mad; for, in a burlesque poem that was
written on the subject, Fagotin is described
as being of the height of a short man; a
perfect buffoon; and attired so like an over-
dressed lackey of the day, that, but for the
extravagance of the costume, he might well
have been taken for one. But, though the
original was sacrificed, the name of Fagotin
survived; and no puppet-man, during the
reign of Louis the Fourteenth, thought his
establishment complete without an ape so
called. Notwithstanding his loss, Brioché
continued to flourish with his Marionnettes;
and, in the same year that the Tartuffe made
its first appearance, Brioché was summoned
to amuse the Dauphin anil his little court,
at St. Germain. He continued there for the
space of six months, greatly to his individual
profit. Despite certain attempts of no less a
person than Bossuet, the celebrated bishop of
Meaux, and tutor to the Dauphin, to " put
him down "—Brioché continued to dandle his
puppets, until, full of years and honours, he
abdicated in favour of his son Francis, whom
the Parisians familiarly termed Fanchon.
Boileau has immortalised Fanchon in one of
his poetical epistles, addressed to Racine, in
1677. Fanchon, too, had friends at court; for,
when the commissary of police of the quarter
of St. Germain l'Auxerrois prohibited him
from exhibiting his Marionnettes in that
locality, he obtained an order from the minister,
Colbert, granting him permission, in the
name of the king, to play on the spot he had
selected.

Still, the Briochés were not without
competition for public favour, and the list of
their rivals, which we could give, would be a
long one. But the Marionnettes of the city
were soon afterwards completely eclipsed
by the puppets which were annually exhibited
in the suburbs at the great fairs of Saint
Germain and Saint Laurent; and the directors
of these establishments, emboldened by
success, went so far as to wage war upon
the regular theatres, and to associate real
actors with their Marionnettes. They
betook themselves to a habit of burlesquing
the Comédie Française; parodying its chief
pieces, and exaggerating the gestures of
its actors. A literature of travesty was,
therefore, at this time—about one thousand
seven hundred and twenty—being
created for the puppets, to the great horror
of the legitimate drama, and to the great joy
of Paris.

For forty years the Marionnettes throve on
their wit; and when that was exhausted, wit
had come to be superseded by magnificence.
Sieges and bombardments—such pieces as we
see at Astley's—and mechanical marvels, were
looked to as the chief sources of attraction.
At length puppets became so much the rage,
that the great world, tired of merely seeing
the strings pulled, took to pulling the strings
themselves. Dancing dolls stepped from the
show and performed in private life. Figures,
called Pantins and Calotins, were made of