way as other children are taught to walk
and speak. Of course, mamma had often to
dry the rising mechanician's tears, when the
hammer smote the baby fingers by mistake.
Papa, laughing at these little accidents, was
delighted to witness the boy's juvenile
tendencies, and prophesied a brilliant horoscope,
somewhat vague in outline, though bright in
colour.

A neighbour, Monsieur Bernard, a retired
colonel, helped to fan the mechanical flame.
He had learned numberless arts during a
foreign captivity, which he taught the lad by
way of amusement during a long convalescence
from a dangerous illness; and so the
passion for tools rose to fever height, till
recovery put an end to it, by sending him to
school. On holidays the fit broke out with
redoubled violence; and the quantity of
instruments broken by the young beginner
brought Robert senior to serious reflection.
Aware that, in a small provincial town, the
watchmaking trade rarely leads to fortune,
he determined to give his son a liberal
education, and sent him to the College (grammar
school) of Orleans, where he continued from
eleven till eighteen years of age, learning
Latin and Greek, and getting into scrapes by
the construction of snares and mousetraps,
and by rat-catching for the sake of obtaining
the motive power to a one-rat hydraulic
machine. The superior attainments acquired
at Orleans rendered the greatest subsequent
service.

And now for the choice of a profession. It
was time. The son wanted to be a
watchmaker, an inventor and constructor of
automata, a professor of everything connected
with clockwork. The father willed him to be
a notary. To two notaries' offices, therefore,
he went, one after the other. At the second,
he busied himself, not with law, but with
complicated contrivances for a cage full of
canaries. If a bird jumped upon a stick, to
which it was tempted by a bit of sugar, it
was caught in a trap; if another bird perched
on another stick, it touched a spring which
set the prisoner free. In certain corners,
there were unexpected shower-baths; and
every inhabitant of the cage was made to
earn his living by dragging with his bill a
little cartful of seed. Young Robert,
pronounced incorrigible and unfit for the notariat,
was apprenticed at last to a watchmaking
cousin at Blois.

There he worked at horology with diligence,
and went to an old book-shop to purchase a
treatise thereon. The bookseller, thinking of
other things, handed instead to his customer
The Amusements of Science, containing
chapters on the Demonstration of tricks with
cards, How to guess anybody's thoughts,
How to cut off a pigeon's head and then bring
it to life again, and so on. The bookseller's
mistake turned out the most important event
of the young aspirant's life. He stole hours
from his sleep to devour its pages and to put
its precepts into execution. But although
the author explained his tricks in a manner
which was not difficult to understand, he
took it for granted that his reader was already
possessed of the skill to execute them. Robert
had not that skill, and there was nothing in
the book to help him to attain it. He was
like a man who should try to copy a picture
without the slightest knowledge of drawing
and painting. With no teacher to guide
his steps, he was obliged to create the
rudiments of the science which he wanted to
study.

As to the fundamental basis of prestidigitation,
he soon became aware that the agents
which play the principal part in the exercise
of this art are the organs of sight and touch.
He understood that, to attain perfection as
nearly as possible, the prestidigitator must
develope in himself a more rapid, delicate,
and certain action of those organs than is
possessed by the majority of mankind; for
the reason that, during his performances he
ought to embrace at a single glance everything
which is passing around him, and
should also execute his passes with infallible
dexterity. He had often been struck with
the facility with which pianists are able to
read and execute, at sight, a piece of vocal
music together with its accompaniment. It
was evident, for him, that, by practice, it
would be possible to create a faculty of
appreciative perception and readiness of
touch which should enable the artist to read
simultaneously several different things, at
the same time that his hands were occupied
with a complicated performance. That was
exactly the faculty which he was anxious
to acquire, in order to apply it to prestidigitation;
only, as music was unable to furnish
the requisite elements, he had recourse to the
juggler's art, in which he hoped to find, if not
similar, at least analogous results.

It is well known that practising with balls
wonderfully developes the sense of touch;
but is it not clear that it equally cultivates
the sense of sight? In fact, when a juggler
tosses into the air four balls which cross
each other's course in different directions,
must not this sense be trained to great
perfection, to enable his eyes, at a single glance,
to follow with the extremest precision each
one of the stubborn projectiles through the
various curves which the performer's hands
have impressed upon it?

Just at that time, there happened to be at
Blois a chiropodist of the name of Maous, who
possessed the double talent of juggling with
that of extracting corns. In spite of his abilities,
Maous was far from rich. The aspirant knew
it, and so managed to obtain lessons at a
price in accordance with his modest resources.
In fact, for ten francs he purchased his
initiation. He practised his exercises with
such persevering ardour, and his progress
was so rapid, that, in less than a month he
had nothing more to learn; he knew as much