from what Decastro calls "the universal devastation of the ravages committed by the people of the French nation." This she did, as well as she could, but the building was commandeered for barracks. When the war ended, Astley appealed to the First Consul for the rent, and it was paid just before the landlord had to fly the country because of another war. Astley returned to Paris in 1814, but his fame as a circus proprietor had long been supplanted by that of another.

The Franconi became to Paris what the Astleys were to London. The first of the family to turn showman was Antonio (later Antoine), who was born in 1738 of a noble family of Venice. When he was twenty years of age his father killed a senator in a duel, was condemned to death, and lost all his family possessions to the State. As an exile, Antonio arrived in France without money or friends, and in desperation offered himself to the owner of a menagerie at Lyons as a tamer of wild beasts. The same night he entered the cage of a lion, was seized by the arm in a grip that left its mark throughout his long life; but he triumphed. People flocked to see the man who could make a lion obey his will. Franconi had, however, a passionate temperament that made enemies for him. After a quarrel, he left Lyons for Bordeaux, where he made the acquaintance of the Duc de Duras, under whose patronage he journeyed to Spain and back to fetch bulls and bull-fighters. The show was the delight of the country for miles round. But the toreadors, being jealous of the wealth Franconi was accumulating, refused to appear in the ring, and threatened to set up on their own account. Nothing daunted, Franconi turned bull-fighter, and by appearing in black silk without the cuirass, then customary, he startled the spectators with his courage.

For a long time he practised as a toreador; for half the season at Bordeaux and for the other half at Lyons. But the public tired of bull-fighting, and ran after another new thing. When Franconi was not using his ring at Lyons, he had let it to a famous horseman named Balpe, who made so strong an impression on the Lyonnais that they absented themselves when Franconi arrived. Balpe defied rivalry, but Franconi accepted the challenge. He bought a horse at once and trained it himself. After a month he exhibited his horsemanship at Lyons amid cries of admiration, and from that time he devoted himself to horsemanship. In 1783

he joined Astley in the amphitheatre of the Faubourg du Temple, afterwards returning to Lyons with young Astley as his partner, to display new ideas of showmanship in his wooden bull-ring. His enterprise was noted by a nobleman, who interested himself in his affairs and advanced the necessary funds for a stone amphitheatre. Here profitable shows were given until 1791, when it was burned down.

Then Franconi returned to Paris, where he found the Amphithéâtre Anglais deserted. There had been a company, les Comédiens sans titre, bold enough to open its doors on March 20, 1791; but they closed down three days later. In that year a decree of the National Assembly proclaimed the freedom of the theatres, and the Boulevard became crowded with new shows. At mid-day the parades began. First there would be an harangue, spoken by a type of clown who, because he wore a garment like the covering of a mattress, was called a paillasse (somewhat after the manner the Italians named their mummer pagliaccio literally chopped straw "). Hardly had one finished than another began two steps away. Cries of orange-sellers and others mingled with the banging of the big drum, the ear-splitting clash of cymbals, and the shriek of shrill trumpets. As part of this wild carnival, Franconi re-opened the amphitheatre from April 14 until June 5. But while every theatre was free to open, no spectators were free even as much as to listen to the cry of the paillasse to "walk up." If any man stopped, he would have his pocket picked, without hope of redress.

Furthermore, events were too stirring to let the need of entertainment make itself felt. The mob swarmed into the Tuileries; what theatres survived closed during the massacres of September. Some but not the Amphithéâtre-opened at the end of the month, playing to audiences intoxicated with blood. One night a refugee, the nobleman whose open purse had enabled the stone cirque to be built at Lyons, asked Franconi for shelter and his prayer was not refused. After hiding for a month he was tracked down and captured. Franconi was absent at the time; on his return, he knew that he would be arrested. Determined not to be taken alive, since the punishment for harbouring an aristocrat was the guillotine, he fortified himself in the foyer of the amphitheatre. Fortunately for him the local Committee of Public Safety consisted of friendly neighbours, who, when kept in the

street by his threat to shoot the first to cross the threshold, merely promised to return in force-and forgot to do so. Their minds were distracted by more momentous matters. At nine o'clock on the morning of January 21, 1793, a show began in the Faubourg that drew the people from all other shows. To loud rolling of drums, Louis XVI came out of the gate of the Temple, amid faint cries, on his way to the guillotine. At three o'clock in the morning of August 2, 1793, in a carriage with closed blinds, Marie Antoinette was taken away from the Temple to the Conciergerie, a stopping-place for a month or two, on her way to the guillotine. On March 21, Franconi again opened the Amphithéâtre d'Astley. On the bills of July 27, the historic 9 thermidorat a time, that is, when old Astley was serving as a volunteer with the dragoons at the siege of Valenciennes-le citoyen Franconi announced that he would celebrate the fête civique with all possible pomp, winding up with the entry of a car bearing an illuminated tente nationale, drawn by four richly caparisoned coursers.

Patriotic spectacles, with speeches by patriots wearing tricolour cockades on their breasts and Phrygian caps on their heads, were now the only entertainments to be given with safety. Franconi, therefore, had a great advantage over the companies of actors, particularly those of the Théâtre Français, who had narrowly escaped the guillotine. While they were in prison their theatre was empty. Here, then, was the chance for Franconi to occupy the centre of the town. Taking his horses and men to the Théâtre Nationale before the end of the year, he presented there a spectacle called the "Constitution à Constantinople," admirably suited to the temper of the times.

Three years later the combats and tournaments in his pantomimes at the Théâtre de la Cité highly gratified the martial ardour aroused by Napoleon's first years of victory. Apparently, however, the most celebrated of these pantomimes was not his handiwork. After the Peace of Amiens, a manager named Gougisbus presented at the Théâtre de la Cité a spectacle on the subject of the "Knights of the Sun." It was performed before the First Consul Bonaparte, and ran for 200 successive nightsan unprecedented success. Then it was exported to Astley's Lambeth house, where the bills boasted of its "grand uncommon Combats, Military Evolutions, Siege by Land and Sea, widespreading Conflagration, etc.," and of the opening exhibition of a

"Splendid and Nouvelle Tournament."

In the spring of 1803,

"The Knights of the Sun; or, Love and Danger" was performed by the French company at Astley's amphitheatre in Dublin, still in celebration of the happy return of peace. In that spring, war broke out again.

Meanwhile, Franconi had transported his establishment to the ancient garden of the Couvent des Capucines. There he continued four years, until in 1806 the construction of the Rue de la Paix necessitated the demolition of the walls, both of the Capucines and the cirque. Then Franconi handed over the reins to his two sons-Antoine Laurent (called Laurent), now twentynine years of age, and Henri, who was about a year younger. They erected a Cirque-Olympique between the Rue SaintHonoré and the Rue du Monthabor, in 1807. Here they played a famous pantomime called "La Lanterne de Diogène." The subject was simple but enthralling. Diogenes sought a man and could not find one. In vain there were set before his eyes the heroes of each century; he fanned his flame and continued to search. At last the bust of Napoleon was exhibited, surrounded by the trophies of his victories. Then the philosopher snuffed his light and cried: "I have found him." Perhaps this increased the Emperor's regard for Antoine, who, in any case, found high favour, partly because he was an Italian, partly because he was a fine horseman, and partly because his dandified appearance enabled the Emperor to tell his brother-in-law, Murat, that what with his furred and embroidered pelisse, his snow-white plume and diamond aigrette, his crimson morocco boots, white kid gloves, and jewelled riding-switch, he looked far less a king than the riding-master.

Every evening, Antoine rode several times round the ring at full gallop as if to demonstrate that he had not yet lost his horsemanship. Every evening the sons performed prodigies-the grand écart and the saut des rubans. Every evening, Laurent's horses acted some novelty. His Cheval gastronome opened a bottle of champagne, and his Jument coquette displayed her airs and graces. Old Franconi conducted grand manœuvres of cavalry en haute école, and at the end four horses danced a minuet. Likewise, in the early drame à cheval of Paris, the horse was the leading performer. In "Don Quichote," both the player of the name-part and Sancho Panza were eclipsed by Rozinante and

the faithful ass. In the "Voyages de Gulliver," the chief scene was the isle of the houyhnhnms, where men were the very humble valets of the noble beasts. Even in the military spectacles, they monopolized the heroics. While, in the "Bataille d'Aboukir," the troops of Franconi laid siege to a fortress with cannon, shell and grenade, and fought against Arabs in the arena, the horses acted a very moving drama of devoted courage. One saved his master by offering him his croup as a means of scaling a wall, found him wounded and restored him to consciousness with the warmth of its breath. Another "died " so thoroughly that an army corps passed before mount and rider as before two corpses. In " Les Français en Pologne," a piece celebrated for the immense amount of gunpowder discharged, an equine villain enabled a cossack to carry off an innocent girl beloved by a French officer. To speak was forbidden, unless it were by showing the words to the public on scrolls, but the horses overcame the ban. "Thanks to their trainers," it was said, " they spoke."

On May 27, 1816, the family returned to the Faubourg du Temple, and on February 8, 1817, they re-opened Astley's old haunt as a new Cirque-Olympique of grand proportions. As his age advanced, Antoine lost his sight through cataract. For seven years he was blind, until he underwent an operation, which was successful. In the delight of having the use of his eyes once more he used to watch every performance of the Cirque-Olympique from a special armchair in the first circle. Everybody noted this old man, whose fragile hands still strove to applaud the voltiges du manège. Outliving both Philip and John Astley, he became, ere he died in 1836, at the age of 98, the patriarch of the circus. While he feebly moved his shrivelled hands together with the delight of watching horses obey the crack of the chambrière in his grandson's establishment, showmen who had learnt their tricks from the pupils of his son's apprentices were risking death from cold in the northern regions of Russia, and from tomahawks on the outposts of civilization across the Atlantic.*

Long before his death, the minds of Frenchmen had become filled with disgust for their rulers and with regrets for the Empire. Both in London and Paris, the glories of that epoch of warfare

*Even to-day his influence is to be found in every circus of the world. Every ring is of regulation size-thirteen metres in diameterbecause wherever horses are taken they must be on familiar ground.