“Come and cut him down!”

By the time I had rushed down the staircase and the Jacob’s ladder, the man was no longer hanging from his rope!

A grievous accident spoiled the little party which MM. Debienne and Poligny gave to celebrate their retirement. I was in the manager’s office, when Mercier, the acting-manager, suddenly came darting in. He seemed half mad and told me that the body of a scene-shifter had been found hanging in the third cellar under the stage, between a farmhouse and a scene from the Roi de Lahore . I shouted:

“Come and cut him down!”