adherent of Louis XVI., lost his life at the storming of the Tuileries, on that fatal day in August, ever memorable in the annals of French history. Profiting by the disorders in the French capital, the young De Grisi was enabled to pass the barriers and reach the family chateau in Languedoc. He dug up a secret treasure his father had concealed for any emergency, and proceeded to Italy to study medicine. He established himself at Naples, where he soon became a physician of note. Here his noble birth and aristocratic manners gave him the entrée into the best society of the city. Like many enthusiastic amateurs he became interested in legerdemain, and performed for the amusement of his friends. A peculiar incident led him to adopt the profession of a magician. At the Carnival of 1796, the Chevalier Pinetti arrived in Naples to give a series of magical entertainments. Pinetti was the idol of the Italian public. The Comte de Grisi, having unraveled the secrets of most of Pinetti’s illusions, performed them for his friends. Pinetti, who was furious at having a rival, set about revenging himself on the audacious amateur. Without much difficulty he succeeded in ingratiating himself with De Grisi, and complimented him on his success as a prestidigitateur. One evening, he persuaded the young Count to take his place at the theater and give a performance for the benefit of the poor of the city. Intoxicated with flattery, to say nothing of numerous glasses of champagne, De Grisi consented. The greater number of Pinetti’s tricks were performed by the aid of confederates in the audience, who loaned various objects of which the magician had duplicates. A diabolical trap was laid for De Grisi. One of the accomplices declared that he had loaned the young magician a valuable diamond ring to use in a trick, and had had returned to him a pinchbeck substitute. Here was a dilemma, but De Grisi put the man off with an excuse until after the entertainment. Approaching the box where the king and his family were seated, De Grisi begged the monarch to draw a card from a pack. No sooner, however, had the king glanced at the card he had selected, than he threw it angrily on the stage, with marks of intense dissatisfaction. De Grisi, horror-struck, picked up the card and found written on it a coarse insult. The conjurer rushed off the stage, picked up his sword, and searched in vain for the author of the infamous act of treachery; but Pinetti had fled. De Grisi was so utterly ruined, socially and financially, by this fiasco, that he came near dying of brain fever, the result of overwrought emotions. On his recovery he vowed vengeance on Pinetti, a most unique vengeance. Says De Grisi: “To have challenged him would be doing him too much honor, so I vowed to fight him with his own weapons, and humiliate the shameful traitor in my turn. This was the plan I drew up: I determined to devote myself ardently to sleight-of-hand, to study thoroughly an art of which I as yet knew only the first principles. Then, when quite confident in myself—when I had added many new tricks to Pinetti’s repertoire—I would pursue my enemy, enter every town before him, and continually crush him by my superiority.”

De Grisi sold everything he possessed, took refuge in the country, and toiled for six months at sleight-of-hand. Then with splendid apparatus and elaborate printing, he took the field against his hated enemy. He succeeded in accomplishing his ends: Pinetti had to retire vanquished. Pinetti died in a state of abject misery at the village of Bastichoff, in Volhynia, Russia. De Grisi determined to proceed to Rome as a finish to his Italian performances. Pinetti had never dared to enter the Eternal City, since he laid claims to genuine necromancy to encompass his tricks. Remembering the fate of the Comte de Cagliostro, he apprehended a trial for sorcery, and a possible auto da fé.

De Grisi, however, had no such fears, as his entertainment was professedly a sleight-of-hand performance and did not come under the denomination of witchcraft and necromancy. The Frenchman set his wits to work to concoct a trick worthy to set before a Pope. Happening one day to drop into a jeweler’s shop, he espied a magnificent watch lying on the counter undergoing repairs. “Whose chronometer?” inquired the wizard nonchalantly. “His Eminence, the Cardinal de ——’s watch, worth ten thousand francs, and made by the renowned Brègnet of Paris,” said the jeweler. “Is there another timepiece similar to this in Rome?” continued De Grisi, examining the watch. “But one,” replied the jeweler, “and that owned by an improvident young noble who spends his time in the gambling hells wasting his ancestral estates.”

That was enough for the juggler. He commissioned the jeweler to purchase the watch at any cost and engrave the Cardinal’s coat-of-arms inside of the case. The expensive recreation cost De Grisi a thousand francs. When the evening of the performance arrived the magician appeared before the Pope and a brilliant assemblage of red-robed Cardinals and executed his astonishing experiments in conjuring. As a culminating feat he borrowed the Cardinal’s chronometer, which had been returned by the jeweler. After many promises to handle it carefully, he dropped it on the floor of the audience chamber as if by accident and set his heel upon it. Smash went the priceless timepiece. The Cardinal turned pale with rage, and all were horror-struck at the unfortunate fiasco. But the Frenchman smiled at the consternation of the spectators, picked up the fragments of the watch, had them fully identified in order to preclude any idea of substitution, and then proceeded to pulverize them in a big brass mortar. A detonation took place and red flames leaped up from the mortar in the most approved order of diabolism; all crowded around to watch the result. Watching his opportunity, the wizard surreptitiously slipped the duplicate chronometer into a pocket of the Pope’s cassock. The mystification was complete when De Grisi pretended to pass the ingot of melted gold from the mortar into the pocket of His Holiness, resulting in the discovery of the watch, which was produced intact. This seeming marvel made the lifelong reputation of the French artist. The Pontiff presented him the day after the séance with a magnificent diamond-studded snuff-box as a mark of esteem.

Years after this event, De Grisi’s son was accidentally shot by a spectator in the gun trick. A real leaden bullet got among the sham bullets and was loaded into the weapon. The wretched father did not long survive this tragic affair. He died in the city of Lyons, France, in the early part of this century. De Grisi was a superb performer with cards, his “blind man’s game of piquet” being a trick unparalleled in the annals of conjuring.

After De Grisi came a host of clever magicians, among whom may be mentioned Döbler, whose principal trick was the lighting of one hundred candles by a pistol shot; Philippe, the first European performer to present the “bowls of gold fish” and the “Chinese rings”; Bosco, expert in cup and ball conjuring; and Comte, ventriloquist and expert in flower tricks. Comte was the most distinguished of these artists, being noted for his wit and audacity. He was a past master in the art of flattery. The following good story is told of him: During a performance at the Tuileries given before Louis XVIII, Comte asked the king to draw a card from a pack. The monarch selected the king of hearts, by chance, or by adroit forcing on the part of the magician. The card was torn up, and rammed into a pistol.

“Look, your majesty,” said Comte, pointing to a vase of flowers which stood upon a table in the center of the stage. “I shall fire this pistol at the vase and the king of hearts will appear just above the flowers.”

The weapon was fired, whereupon a small bust of Louis XVIII appeared instantaneously out of the center of the