[p001]
CHAPTER I. ORGANIZATION.
Parisians live in scandalous ignorance of the beings who surround them and of the world in which they move. Although fond of curious entertainments, they have never made any serious inquiries about the origin, the private life, or the terms of enlistment of the skilful artists whom they applaud in the circus, the theatre-concert, or the playhouse. I have often heard persons who considered themselves well informed, and who spoke with much reserve and many hints of deeper knowledge, assert that secret manufactures of monstrosities exist in the world, training schools for acrobats, registry offices for mountebanks; and that by diligent search, with a little discreet assistance from the police, one might discover branches of these picturesque establishments in the thieves’ quarters of old Paris. [p002]
This story is enough to frighten children, but it must be allowed to pass away with the dust of other fabrications destroyed by time, whilst you may rely upon the accuracy of the information contained in this book; its sole ambition is to enlighten you on this mysterious subject by telling you the truth about it.
The collection of all these facts has been a work of time. The mountebank is too jealous of his freedom to talk openly to every one that approaches him. The same patience which travellers use in their relations with savages must be employed before one can hope for any intimacy with this people, who are still as much scattered, as varied, as strangely mixed, as vagabond, as their ancestors, the gipsies, who, guitar on back, hoop in hand, their black hair encircled with a copper diadem, traversed the Middle Ages, protected from the hatred of the lower classes and the cruelty of the great by the talisman of superstitious terror.
This tribe, recruited from every nation and every type, is called, in its particular argot, the banque;[1] there is the grande banque and the petite banque: its members are called banquistes.
Qualities transmitted through many generations, natural selection always tending in the same direction—of strength and dexterity—have, in course of time, endowed this [p003] international people with special characteristics. With regard to the superior instincts, they possess a taste for adventure, wonderful facility in acquiring languages, in assimilating every variety of civilization, and a strange amalgamation of qualities, which would seem incompatible with each other—Italian pliancy, Anglo-Saxon coolness, German tenacity. I do not quote the influence of French characteristics in the fabrication of these free citizens of the world: the soil of France is so dear to her children that, even if they tempt the glory and perils of an acrobat’s life, they rarely leave their native land. According to statistics, Frenchmen form a proportion of but five per cent, in the tribe of banquistes who travel round the world. But these mountebanks are not so numerous as one might imagine; in all there are only a few thousands. But earth contains no guests more free than these men, whom the poet Theodore de Banville greets as the “brothers of the birds, the inhabitants of the ideal city of Aristophanes.” Lords of their own will and time, they obey no laws except the terms of their voluntary engagements. They fly from war, pestilence, and ruin. When the heavens darken, they strap up their trunks, go on board a steamer and journey to other countries where gaiety and gold are to be found.
The sole disturbance in these careless lives is the question of engagements. The skill with which they have averted the difficulties, which their preference for a nomad life might have produced in their business, is a very remarkable example of that practical sense which constant travelling develops in the least cultivated individual.
Dispersed throughout the four quarters of the world, the [p004] banquistes have placed themselves in perpetual communication with, first, managers and impresarii, and then with their comrades, by means of a certain number of agencies and newspapers belonging to their corporation.