THE NOSTRADAMUS TRICK.
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.
