Modern Magic: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Conjuring

The Cook of the Palais Royal was a very amusing piece of mechanical application. It consisted of a faithful representation of a detached villa. Houdin handed round a list of wines and liquors, requesting his audience to select which they liked best on the bill of fare. When one was mentioned, a figure of a young maid emerged from the doorway, descended the steps, and brought forward on a tray a glass of the desired wine. When the person at whose order the wine was brought removed the glass from the tray, the figure turned and glided back into the house, again emerging with another glass of wine, and so on until the list was exhausted or the bibulous propensities of the audience were fully satisfied. The same basis of machinery used in the Magic Harlequin was also employed in the Cook of the Palais Royal, each piston working a tap containing one kind of wine. The operator at the back of the stage could hear the wine asked for, and thus knew which string to pull, and which tap to open, when the figure, which was made to pass under every tap, re-entered the house. Houdin’s Orange Tree was a capital trick, and, although exceedingly simple in its mechanism, produced the most startling effects. Houdin borrowed a handkerchief, which he burnt, or rather which he led the audience to think he burnt, at the sacrifice of a duplicate, in front of a plant placed in a box upon a table, which, at word of command, gradually began to bloom. White blossoms were seen to emerge from four or five different shoots. These disappeared, giving place to oranges, which Houdin removed from the tree and distributed among his audience, with the exception of one, which he left on. This one opened, and out from it sprang two butterflies, and in the middle of the orange was found the burnt handkerchief.