Before Rollo left Paris, he went, one Tuesday afternoon, with his mother and Jennie and his uncle George, to see the performances at the Hippodrome, and he enjoyed the spectacle very much indeed. Besides the performances which have already been described, there were two others which astonished him exceedingly. In one of these a man came into the middle of the area, and there the assistants lifted up a large and heavy pole, which they poised in the air, and then set the lower end of it in a sort of socket which was made in an apron which the man wore, which socket was fastened securely to the man's hips and shoulders by strong straps, so that he could sustain the weight of the pole by means of them. The pole was about thirty feet high, and the top was branched like a pitchfork. It was shaped, in fact, exactly like a pitchfork, except that there was a bar across from the top of one branch to the top of the other, and a rope hanging down from the middle of the bar half way down to the place of bifurcation-that is, to the place where the straight part of the pole ended and the branches began. Things being thus arranged, a boy, who was about twelve years old, apparently, came out, and, leaping up upon the man's shoulders, began to climb up the pole. When he reached the top of it he took hold of the rope, and by means of the rope climbed up to the bar. Here he began to perform a great variety of the most astonishing evolutions, the man all the time poising the pole in the air. The boy would climb about the bar in every way, drawing himself up sometimes backwards and sometimes forward, and swinging to and fro, and turning over and over in every conceivable position. He would hang to the bar sometimes by his hands and sometimes by his legs-sometimes with his head downward, sometimes with his feet downward. He would whirl round and round over the bar a great many times, till Rollo and Jane were tired of seeing him, and then he would rest by hanging to the pole by the back of his head, without touching the bar with any other part of his body. All this time the man who held the pole kept it carefully poised, moving to and fro about the area continually in following the oscillations.
[Illustration: THE HIPPODROME.]
The other performance was in some respects more extraordinary still. There was a mast set up in the ground, thirty or forty feet high. At the ground, ten feet from the foot of the mast, there commenced an inclined plane, formed of a plank about a foot or eighteen inches wide, which ascended in a spiral direction round and round the mast till it reached the top. A man ascended this plane by means of a large ball, about two feet in diameter, which he rolled up standing upon it, and rolling it by stepping continually on the ascending side. There was no ledge or guard whatever to keep the ball from rolling off the plane-nothing but a narrow plank ascending continually, and winding in a spiral manner around the mast. This experiment it was quite frightful to see. Several of the children who were sitting near Mr. George's party began to cry, saying, "O, he will fall-he will fall!" In fact, Jennie could not bear to look at him, and so she shut her eyes; and even Mrs. Holiday looked another way. But Rollo watched it through, and saw the man go on up to the very top of the mast, and stand there on his ball on the top, forty feet above the ground, with his hands extended in triumph. After remaining there a short time, he came down as he had gone up; and when he reached the ground, he rolled his ball along, keeping on it all the time, till he came to a chariot which was waiting to receive him. He stepped from the ball off to the chariot, and was then driven all around the ring, being received every where, as he passed, with the acclamations of the spectators.
CHAPTER VII. CARLOS.
One morning, just after breakfast, when Rollo and Jennie were sitting at the window of their hotel, looking at a band of about forty drummers that were arranging themselves on the Asphaltum, in the Place Vendome, in front of the column, preparatory to an exercise of practice on their instrument, Mr. George came into the room. Mr. George took up a newspaper which was lying upon the table, and, seating himself in a large arm chair which was near, he read from it for a few minutes, and then, laying down the paper, said,-
"Rollo, how do you pronounce L-o-u-v-o-i-s?"
Mr. George did not speak the word, but spelled it letter by letter.
"I don't know," said Rollo.
"Because," said Mr. George, "that is the name of the hotel where I have gone."
"What made you go away from this hotel, uncle George?" asked Jennie. "Didn't you like it?"
"Yes," replied Mr. George, "I liked it very much. But I wanted to change the scene. I had become very familiar with every thing in this part of the city, and with the modes of life in this hotel. So I thought I would change, and go to some other quarter of the city, where I could see Paris, and Paris life, in new aspects."
"I wish I had gone with you," said Rollo. "I wonder if my father would not let me go now. Is there a room for me at your hotel?" he added, looking up eagerly.
"I don't know," said Mr. George. "You can ask when you go there. But to day I am going to see the Garden of Plants; and you may go with me, if you like."
"Well," said Rollo, "I should like to go very much."
"And may I go, too?" said Jennie.
"Yes," said Mr. George, "if your mother is willing."
"Well," said Jennie, joyfully, "I'll go and ask her. Only I wish it was a garden of flowers instead of a garden of plants."
So Jennie went to ask her mother if she might go with her uncle George. She soon returned with her shawl and bonnet on, and then, Mr. George leading the way, they all went together down stairs, and got into a carriage which was waiting for them at the door. The carriage was an open one, with the top turned back, so that they all had a fine opportunity to see the streets and the persons passing as they rode along.
Mr. George directed the coachman to drive first to his hotel; and the carriage, leaving the Place Vendome on the northern side, entered into a perfect maze of narrow streets, through which it advanced toward the heart of the city.
After a time, they came to a long, straight street, which led across the city, through the centre of it, from the river to the Boulevards; and when they were about in the middle of this street, the attention of the children was attracted by a very long and gloomy-looking building, which formed one side of the street for a considerable distance before them. It had no windows toward the street, but only a range of square recesses in the walls, of the form of windows, but without any glass. Jennie asked Mr. George if it was the prison.
"Not exactly," said Mr. George; "and yet there is one room in it where there are more than a hundred men, and they are not permitted to speak a loud word."
"Let's go and see them," said Rollo.
"Very well," said Mr. George; "we will."
So saying, he called upon the coachman to stop opposite to a great archway which opened through the building near the middle of it. Mr. George and the children descended from the carriage and went in under the archway. Looking through, they saw a large court yard, with grass, and trees, and a fountain. They did not, however, go on into this court yard, but turned to the right to a very broad flight of steps which seemed to lead into the building. There was a man in uniform, with a cocked hat upon his head, who stood in the passage way to guard the entrance. He made no objection, however, to the party's going in; and so they all went on up the stairway.
After passing through a series of magnificent passages and vestibules, with very broad staircases, and massive stone balustrades, and other marks of a very ancient and venerable style of architecture, Mr. George led the way through an open door, where the children saw extended before them, as far as the eye could reach, a long range of rooms, opening into one another, and all filled with bookshelves and books. The rooms had windows only on one side; that is, on the side next the courtyard; and the doors which led from one room to the other were all near that side of the room. Thus three sides of each room were almost wholly unbroken, and they were all filled with bookshelves and books. The doors which led from one room to another were all in a range; so that standing at one end, opposite to one of these doors, the spectator could look through the whole range of rooms to the other end. The distance was, moreover, so great, that, though there was a group of several persons standing at the farther end of the range of rooms at the time that Rollo entered, they looked so small and so indistinct that Rollo could not count them to tell how many there were.