These authentic statements ought to have satisfied me; still, I wished to witness this singular phenomenon with my own eyes. Hence, I gave one of my house cats an enormous ball of meat seasoned with pounded glass. The animal swallowed it with the greatest pleasure, and seemed even to regret the end of this succulent meal. My family thought the cat booked for death, and began deploring my barbarity, but the next day the animal was perfectly well, and sniffed the spot where on the previous day it had enjoyed the meal.
Since that period, whenever I want to indulge a friend with this sight, I regale my three cats, in turn, so as not to excite any jealousy among them.
It took me some time, I confess, before I could decide on performing Dr. Lesauvage’s experiment on myself, and, indeed, I saw no necessity for it. Still, one day, in the presence of a friend, I performed this bravado, if it be so; I also swallowed my bolus, though I was careful to pound my glass much finer than what I gave to my cats. I know not whether it was the effect of imagination, but I fancied I enjoyed my dinner much more than usual: did I owe this to the pounded glass? At any rate, it would be a strange way of arousing the appetite.
When the trick of swallowing bottle-heels and pebbles was to be done, the Aïssaoua really put them in his mouth, but I believe, I may say certainly, that he removed them at the moment when he placed his head in the folds of the Mokaddem’s burnous. However, had he swallowed them, there would have been nothing wonderful about this, when we compare it with what was done some thirty years back in France by a mountebank called “the sabre swallower.”
This man who performed in the streets, threw back his head so as to form a straight line with his throat, and really thrust down his gullet a sabre, of which only the hilt remained outside the mouth.
He also swallowed an egg without cracking it, or even nails and pebbles, which he caused to resound, by striking his stomach with his fist.
These tricks were the result of a peculiar formation in the mountebank’s throat, but, if he had lived among the Aïssaoua, he would assuredly have been the leading man of the company.
Or what would the Arabs have said had they seen the conjurer who passed a sword right through his body, and when thus spitted, also thrust a knife into either nostril up to the handle? I witnessed this feat, and others have probably done the same.
This trick was, in reality, so terrifying, that the public would implore the man to leave off; but without troubling himself about their cries, he would reply, speaking frightfully through his nose, “that it did hib no harb,” and sing in this singular voice the “Fleuve du Tage,” which he accompanied on a guitar.
I could not endure the sight of this trick, and would turn my head away in horror when the troubadour drew out the sword, and begged us to notice that it was stained with blood.