THE SHOW.
To ensure this excursion passing off with due success, it is always preceded by a short conference held between two glasses of beer, in which, elbows on table, my guide gravely [p041] reminds me, that I must be careful to remember the distinction that exists between the forain and the banquiste, the grande and the petite banques.
A forain is technically a merchant, or the owner of a game. The sweetmeat-maker who, surrounded by a circle of admiring children, rolls serpentine rings of paste round a flexible wand laden with little bells is a forain, so is the fritter merchant; the same term describes the rich agent of the manufacturers of Rheims and Dijon, who travel round the world carrying with them the best brands of gingerbread. The celebrated M. Exaltier, the director of the American Galleries, is also a forain; by the ingenuity of his inventions he has revived the public interest in panoramas. The same term describes the clever M. Chable, the manufacturer of the finest hygienic horses that have ever been [p042] seen, splendid animals made of varnished poplar wood, stout as a Flemish mare, which cost him two hundred francs each.
“They were dearer than if they were alive,” cheerfully repeats M. Chable, caressing his steeds, “but I save it in the food.”
The post-master of hygienic horses is an important personage in the forain world, and so is also the proprietor of the “Crystal Palace,” the most luxurious roundabout of hobby-horses at present in the Fair du Trône or anywhere else. His tent contains no less than two organs; one of them cost him 5,000 fr., the other 12,000 fr. His daily expenses amount to eighty francs for his establishment; but a fine Sunday doubles his receipts in a marvellous way, and the “Crystal Palace,” when all the three sous a ride have been counted up, often makes a thousand francs in one day.
All the keepers of billiard-tables, the owners of wheels of fortune or lotteries, are forains. A complete and most curious book might be written on the fraudulent games of chance which swarm in a fair, in spite of the vigilance of the police. I shall write one some day when M. Carrabilliat, one of the most intelligent and most respected members of the syndicate, has completed my education. To begin with, he explained to me the mechanism of his race game, an amusement which, although forbidden for a time, is now permitted in the fair since the owners have proved the impossibility of tampering with the small horses or of preventing the slight bars upon which they move from turning freely round the course. The good-natured public more than suspects some tricks. It knows by experience that the rabbit is never won at the first shot, and that no one within [p043] the memory of man has ever carried off the clock with its glass shade. This fact does not prevent it from paying its pennies to the owner of the wheel of fortune, or check its eager competition with chance as a partner, for the possession of a little glass chandelier. Here, as at Monaco, you will find the gambler who gets excited and ruins himself—alas! the poor fellow loses all self-restraint if the bystanders gather round him, watching and discussing his luck!
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