when they discovered, not a living man, but a corpse! Three or four days
must have passed since the death of the burly man in the Chinese tunic
and painted cap. Some people thought it was a trick designed to insult
the Allies, in whose honor the ball was got up. Others were of opinion
that it was nothing worse than a daring and cynical jocularity which,
shocking as it was, might yet be forgiven to the high spirits and
irrepressible buffoonery of youth. Others, again, fewer in number, and
mystically given, insisted that the corpse was _bona fide_
necessary to the exhibition, and that the disclosures and allusions
which had astonished so many people were distinctly due to necromancy.

"The matter, however, is now in the hands of the police," observed
Monsieur Carmaignac, "and we are not the body they were two or three
months ago, if the offenders against propriety and public feeling are
not traced and convicted, unless, indeed, they have been a great deal
more cunning than such fools generally are."

I was thinking within myself how utterly inexplicable was my colloquy
with the conjuror, so cavalierly dismissed by Monsieur Carmaignac as a
"fool"; and the more I thought the more marvelous it seemed.

"It certainly was an original joke, though not a very clear one," said
Whistlewick.

"Not even original," said Carmaignac. "Very nearly the same thing was
done, a hundred years ago or more, at a state ball in Paris; and the
rascals who played the trick were never found out."

In this Monsieur Carmaignac, as I afterwards discovered, spoke truly;
for, among my books of French anecdote and memoirs, the very incident is