The story goes that Nostradamus, the great trickster of France in the
days of Francis and the Henries, showed the Queen Dowager Marie de
Medicis a throne occupied by Henry the Fourth.
Upon a throne he had a confederate, costumed and “made up” to resemble
the _Béarnais_. In the wall of the room, at a point opposite him, an
opening was made by which a plane mirror hidden in a canopy in another
room should reflect the figure upon a second mirror naturally visible.
As the two reflectors were set at the same angle, the picture presented
by the second was an exact counterpart of the counterfeit prince.
PROTEUS.
THE INCREDIBLE TRANSFORMATION.
Memoirs are but too often dull reading, but those of Robertson, the
French perfector of phantasmagorian exhibitions under the Revolution,
contain some valuable revelations. That of the mode of executing
transformations of a human being beyond the wildest dreams of the
fabulist who created Proteus, is here given.
In the partition between two rooms make a horizontal slit, and apply on
one side a sliding frame containing a flint-glass prism, and a piece of
ordinary white glass, which can be moved up and down by wires set in
motion in the room overhead, so as to present at will one or the other
of the glasses, through which may be seen the interior, or scene of the
experiment. But the rays from an object entering a prism are deflected,
and as a consequence, the whole apartment is reversed, so that the
ceiling and floor change places. If a chair is lowered through a hole in
the ceiling, it will seem to be standing on the floor.
The audience are allowed to inspect the inner room, and see that the
wall and floor are solid and the chair there is without secret
machinery. Then, on their withdrawal into the adjoining apartment, and
looking through the plain glass, they will see the performer seat
himself in the chair.
He asks—in a prearranged order—what transformation is desired, such as
that he shall be capped, in Bottom’s fashion, with an ass’s head, a
bear’s, lion’s, wolf’s, and so forth, and, on receiving an answer,
declaims a magical formula, as:
“Aroonel intabbara, marandizala tafmaquirisolon—Zambelara!”
At the last word a pistol is fired unawares, and, as the lookers
involuntarily start, the prism is substituted for the plain glass, and
there is seen a duplicate chair let down from the ceiling, in which is
seated a puppet dressed like the magician, but with an animal’s head.
_Observation._—The slit must not permit the ends of the legs of the
chair to be seen, or the vision would see the floor at the same time as
the prism was showing the ceiling, which would be ruinous.
All the room must be of the same colour, and without ornaments or
hangings, for the prism turns them topsy turvy.
It is to be added that the change of the plain glass for the other
replaces the performer before the eye, for, indeed, he has not stirred.
[Illustration]