Torrini was a skillful performer with cards, as Robert-Houdin testifies. He invented a trick which he called “The Blind Man’s Game of Piquet.” While blindfolded he would play piquet and defeat adepts at the game. This trick was one of the features of his entertainments, and always gained him great applause. The secret consisted in substituting a prepared pack for the ordinary pack used. After the spectator had shuffled the cards and handed them to Torrini to cut, the conjurer would rest his hand momentarily upon the pack, while he made some observation to his opponent. Then it was that the substitution was artfully effected by means of a “magic box,” which the prestidigitateur had concealed in the sleeve of his coat. Pressure upon the table caused a spring in the box to shoot out a prepared pack of cards, while a pair of pincers at the same time seized the recently shuffled pack and drew it up into the hidden receptacle. This ingenious piece of apparatus Torrini had obtained from a gambler named Zilbermann.
While attempting to cheat an opponent, the apparatus had hung fire, and Zilbermann was detected _in flagrante delicto_. A duel was the result, and Zilbermann was mortally wounded. He sent for Torrini, whose conjuring abilities he greatly admired, and presented him with the box. Soon afterwards he died.
Torrini never used the apparatus except in his conjuring performances. He was a man of honor and not a _chevalier d’industrie_.
“The Age of Romance has not ceased; it never ceases; it does not, if we will think of it, so much as very sensibly decline.”—CARLYLE: The _Diamond Necklace_.
Paris! Time—the latter half of the eighteenth century!
Louis XVI is on the throne of France, relieving the ennui of court etiquette by working at locksmithing. His beautiful consort, Marie Antoinette, amuses herself playing at dairy-farming, _à̱ la_ Watteau, in the gardens of the little Trianon. Dr. Guillotin, as yet, has not even dreamed of that terrible machine of wood and steel to be called by his name. Danton, Marat and Robespierre—the “bloody triumvirate”—are unknown to fame.
It is the age of powder and patches, enormous hoop-skirts, embroidered coats, lace ruffles, cocked hats, silk stockings and swords. Gentlemen meet and exchange snuff boxes; fight duels at times, despite the royal edict; indulge in grandiose gallantries. Noblemen in their coaches-and-four, on their way to Versailles (which to them is heaven on earth), drive recklessly through the narrow streets of the capital, splashing the pedestrians with mud from the kennels, and knocking down citizens with impunity. The aristocracy live to be amused.