His modesty surprised me all the more, because of all those performers who are generally infatuated with their own skill, he was the most wonderfully clever one that I had ever met.  Certainly, I had frequently seen him, and everybody had seen him in some circus or other, or even in traveling shows, performing the trick that consists of putting a man or a woman with extended arms against a wooden target, and in throwing knives between their fingers and round their head, from a distance.  There is nothing very extraordinary in it, after all, when one knows the tricks of the trade, and that the knives are not the least sharp, and stick into the wood at some distance from the flesh.  It is the rapidity of the throws, the glitter of the blades, the curve which the handles make towards their living aim, which give an air of danger to an exhibition that has become common-place, and only requires very middling skill.

But here there was no trick and no deception, and no dust thrown into the eyes.  It was done in good earnest and in all sincerity.  The knives were as sharp as razors, and the old mountebank planted them close to the flesh, exactly in the angle between the fingers, and surrounded the head with a perfect halo of knives, and the neck with a collar, from which nobody could have extricated himself without cutting his carotid artery, while to increase the difficulty, the old fellow went through the performance without seeing, his whole face being covered with a close mask of thick oil-cloth.

Naturally, like other great artists, he was not understood by the crowd, who confounded him with vulgar tricksters, and his mask only appeared to them a trick the more, and a very common trick into the bargain.  “He must think us very stupid,” they said.  “How could he possibly aim without having his eyes open?” And they thought there must be imperceptible holes in the oil-cloth, a sort of lattice work concealed in the material.  It was useless for him to allow the public to examine the mask for themselves before the exhibition began.  It was all very well that they could not discover any trick, but they were only all the more convinced that they were being tricked.  Did not the people know that they ought to be tricked?

I had recognized a great artist in the old mountebank, and I was quite sure that he was altogether incapable of any trickery, and I told him so, while expressing my admiration to him; and he had been touched, both by my admiration, and above all by the justice I had done him.  Thus we became good friends, and he explained to me, very modestly, the real trick which the crowd cannot understand, the eternal trick compromised in these simple words:  “To be gifted by nature, and to practice every day for long, long years.”

He had been especially struck by the certainty which expressed, that any trickery must become impossible to him.  “Yes,” he said to me; “quite impossible!  Impossible to a degree which you cannot imagine.  If I were to tell you!  But where would be the use?”