His modesty surprised me all the more, because of all performers
who are generally infatuated with their own skill, he was the
most wonderfully clever one I had met. Certainly I had frequently
seen him, for everybody had seen him in some circus or other, or
even in traveling shows, performing the trick that consists of
putting a man or woman with extended arms against a wooden
target, and in throwing knives between their fingers and round
their heads, from a distance. There is nothing very extraordinary
in it, after all, when one knows THE TRICKS OF THE TRADE, and
that the knives are not the least sharp, and stick into the wood
at some distance from the flesh. It is the rapidity of the
throws, the glitter of the blades, and the curve which the
handles make toward their living object, which give an air of
danger to an exhibition that has become commonplace, and only
requires very middling skill.

But here there was no trick and no deception, and no dust thrown
into the eyes. It was done in good earnest and in all sincerity.
The knives were as sharp as razors, and the old mountebank
planted them close to the flesh, exactly in the angle between the
fingers. He surrounded the head with a perfect halo of knives,
and the neck with a collar from which nobody could have
extricated himself without cutting his carotid artery, while, to
increase the difficulty, the old fellow went through the
performance without seeing, his whole face being covered with a
close mask of thick oilcloth.

Naturally, like other great artists, he was not understood by the
crowd, who confounded him with vulgar tricksters, and his mask