Eight o’clock struck and echoed through my heart like the peal that summons the culprit to execution; never in my life did I experience such emotion and torture. Ah! if I could only draw back! Had it been possible to fly and abandon this position I had so long desired, with what happiness would I have returned to my peaceful avocations! And yet, why did I feel this mad terror? I know not, for three-fourths of the room were filled with persons on whose indulgence I could rely.
I made a final attack on my pusillanimity.
“Come!” I said to myself, “courage! I have my name, my future, my children’s fortune at stake; courage!”
This thought restored me; I passed my hand several times over my agitated features, ordered the curtain to be raised, and without further reflection I walked boldly on the stage.
My friends, aware of my sufferings, received me with some encouraging applause; this kind reception restored my confidence, and, like a gentle dew, refreshed my mind and senses. I began.
To assert that I acquitted myself fairly would be a proof of vanity, and yet it would be excusable, for I received repeated signs of applause from my audience. But how to distinguish between the applause of the friendly and the paying public? I was glad to deceive myself, and my experiments gained by it.
The first part was over, and the curtain fell. My wife came directly to embrace me, to encourage me, and thank me for my courageous efforts. I may now confess it: I believed that I had been alone severe to myself, and that it was possible all this applause was sterling coin. This belief did me an enormous good; and why should I conceal it, tears of joy stood in my eyes, which I hastened to wipe away lest my feelings might prevent my preparations for the second part.
The curtain rose again, and I approached my audience with a smile on my lips. I judged of this change in my face by those of my spectators, for they began all at once to share my good humor.
How many times since have I tried this imitative faculty on the part of the public? If you are anxious, ill-disposed, or vexed, or should your face bear the stamp of any annoying impression, your audience, straightway imitating the contraction of your features, begins to frown, grows serious, and ill-disposed to be favorable to you. If, however, you appear on the stage with a cheerful face, the most sombre brows unwrinkle, and every one seems to say to the artist: “How d’ye do, old fellow, your face pleases me, I only want an opportunity to applaud you.” Such seemed to be the case with my public at this moment.
It was more easy for me to feel at my ease as I was beginning my favorite experiment, “the surprising pocket-handkerchief,” a medley of clever deceptions. After borrowing a handkerchief, I produced from it a multitude of objects of every description, such as sugar-plums, feathers of every size up to a drum-major’s, fans, comic journals, and, as a finale, an enormous basket of flowers, which I distributed to the ladies. This trick was perfectly successful, but, to tell the truth, I had it at my fingers’ ends.