as crowning the
living pyramid, his smiling face nearly touching the rough ceiling of
the chamber, and clapping his little hands with practised triumph, as
Baroni walked about the stage with the breathing burden.

He stopped, and the children disappeared from his shoulders, like birds
from a tree when they hear a sound. He clapped his hands, they turned
round, bowed, and vanished.

'As this feat pleases you,' said the father, 'and as we have a gentleman
here to-night who has proved himself a liberal patron of artists, I will
show you something that I rarely exhibit; I will hold the whole of
the Baroni family with my two hands;' and hereupon addressing some
stout-looking fellows among his audience, he begged them to come forward
and hold each end of a plank that was leaning against the wall, one
which had not been required for the quickly-constructed stage. This they
did with some diffidence, and with that air of constraint characteristic
of those who have been summoned from a crowd to perform something which
they do not exactly comprehend.

'Be not afraid, my good friends,' said Baroni to them, as Francis
lightly sprang on one end of the plank, and Josephine on the other; then
Alfred and Adelaide skipped up together at equal distances; so that the
four children were now standing in attitude upon the same basis, which
four stout men endeavoured, with difficulty, to keep firm. At that
moment Madame Baroni, with the two young children, came from behind the
curtain, and vaulted exactly on the middle of the board, so that the
bold Michel on the one side, and the demure Carlotta on the other,
completed the group. 'Thank you, my friends,' said Baroni, slipping
under the plank, which was raised to a height which just admitted him to
pass under it, 'I will release you,' and with his outstretched hands he
sustained the whole burthen, the whole of the Baroni family supported by
the father.

After this there was a pause of a few minutes, the stage was cleared and
Baroni, in a loose great-coat, appeared at its side with a violin. He
played a few bars, then turning to the audience, said with the same
contemptuous expression, which always distinguished him when he
addressed them, 'Now you are going to hear a scene from a tragedy of the
great Racine, one of the greatest tragedy writers that ever existed, if
you may never have heard him; but if you were at Paris, and went to the
great theatre, you would find that what I am telling y