Pinetti eventually revealed the process by which this surprising result was obtained. He was moved to do so, because all those who saw the trick performed in the Theatre des Menus-Plaisirs held the conviction that the other party to it was in collusion with him. The public was not to be blamed for this erroneous conclusion, for not only at that time, but much later, many of the astonishing feats of the magician were effected through the complicity of assistants seated among the audience. Such confederates were called by the French, _Compères_ and _Commères_, which translated into the vulgar vernacular, stand for “pals,” “cronies.” These gentlemen brought articles, of which the magician possessed duplicates, and loaned them—apparently as unrelated spectators—when such articles were asked for in { 30} the course of the experiments. Robert-Houdin ended this régime of confederacy. When he asked for the loan of an article, he genuinely borrowed it, and exchanged it for a substitute by sleight of hand. This is the modern method. The following is Pinetti’s explanation of the shirt trick: “The means of performing this trick are the following—only observing that the clothes of the person whose shirt is to be pulled off be wide and easy: Begin by making him pull off his stock and unbuttonning his { 31} shirt at the neck and sleeves, afterwards tie a little string in the buttonhole of the left sleeve; then, passing your hand behind his back, pull the shirt out of his breeches and slip it over his head; then, pulling it out before in the same manner, you will leave it on his stomach; after that, go to the right hand and pull the sleeve down, so as to have it all out of the arm; the shirt being then all of a heap, as well in the right sleeve as before the stomach, you are to make use of this little string fastened to the buttonhole of the left sleeve to get back the sleeve that must have slipt up, and to pull the whole shirt out that way. To hide your way of operating from the person whom you unshift, and from the assembly, you may cover his head with a lady’s cloak, holding a corner of it in your teeth. In order to be more at your ease, you may mount on a chair and do the whole operation under the cloak.”