Ballet-dancers are all dislocated, for their feet, legs, and loins have been disarticulated to obtain _beautiful points;_ the naturalist quadrille-dancers from Mabille, who are now seen at the _café_ concerts, are also dislocated.
There are some naturally disarticulated men. All Parisians will remember in their youth, a beggar who was celebrated as the "humpback of the Pont d'Austerlitz." This mountebank caused his hump to pass from his back to his chest as he liked. The vertebral column turned without any effort from back to front, and from front to back again. He was found drowned one day between two coal boats, and his skeleton is still shown in the Museum.
But he was an exception. One must begin early in order to manufacture a dislocated man like the "man in the ball."
A wooden ball, about one yard in diameter, is rolled into the arena. This huge sphere ascends an inclined plane, and rolls from right to left upon it, then descends and recommences the ascension like a living being. And truly, for it suddenly opens and a dislocated man appears, who, without any semblance of fatigue, bows to the astonished audience. [p248]
No one has yet guessed the secret which enables this wonderful contortionist to bend and move his body in so small a space. The bones, instead of being joined by articulations, are held together by a fibrous membrane which envelops them like a kind of muff and holds them in their sockets. This membrane, called "a capsule," is very flexible, [p249] and is capable of great elasticity of tension, during childhood particularly. By preserving and developing this natural disposition, the abnormal movements can be obtained which surprise us amongst acrobats.
The performances of Walter, called the _Serpent-man_, are not less extraordinary.
I will not insult you by supposing that you have not seen and applauded this wonderful artist; it is, therefore, for the [p250] inhabitants of hyperborean countries that I shall now describe his work.
J. H. Walter appears in black tights spangled with silver, classic as an Antinoüs, nervous as a stag. He looks as though he could reach the friezes with a bound, and one is quite surprised to find that he does not leave the "carpet." His performance opens by an important and novel act, in which the bust is reversed, and the head touches the back of the knees, whilst the right hand seizes one of the ankles, and the left is extended in an inverse sense, flat upon the ground. And the startling series of leaps, of movements, of contortions, which follow, end in an alarming pose, which recalls the monstrous gargoyles of Gothic sculpture; for the acrobat drops his feet, knots them under his head, and in this attitude, with starting eyes, and rigid, open lips, he resembles a skull supported on cross-bones.