Under the Stuarts, the Comprachicos were by no means in bad odour at
court. On occasions they were used for reasons of state. For James II.
they were almost an _instrumentum regni_. It was a time when families,
which were refractory or in the way, were dismembered; when a descent
was cut short; when heirs were suddenly suppressed. At times one branch
was defrauded to the profit of another. The Comprachicos had a genius
for disfiguration which recommended them to state policy. To disfigure
is better than to kill. There was, indeed, the Iron Mask, but that was a
mighty measure. Europe could not be peopled with iron masks, while
deformed tumblers ran about the streets without creating any surprise.
Besides, the iron mask is removable; not so the mask of flesh. You are
masked for ever by your own flesh--what can be more ingenious? The
Comprachicos worked on man as the Chinese work on trees. They had their
secrets, as we have said; they had tricks which are now lost arts. A
sort of fantastic stunted thing left their hands; it was ridiculous and
wonderful. They would touch up a little being with such skill that its
father could not have known it. _Et que méconnaîtrait l'oeil même de son
père_, as Racine says in bad French. Sometimes they left the spine
straight and remade the face. They unmarked a child as one might unmark
a pocket-handkerchief. Products, destined for tumblers, had their joints
dislocated in a masterly manner--you would have said they had been
boned. Thus gymnasts were made.

Not only did the Comprachicos take away his face from the child, they
also took away his memory. At least they took away all they could of it;
the child had no consciousness of the mutilation to which he had been
subjected. This frightful surgery left its traces on his countenance,
but not on his mind. The most he could recall was that one day he had
been seized by men, that next he had fallen asleep, and then that he had