[The Miracle Mongers<br> an Expos by Harry Houdini]@TWC D-Link book
The Miracle Mongers
an Expos

CHAPTER NINE
9/13

An interesting account of this man may be found in my book The Unmasking of Robert Houdin.
A pupil of Manfrede's, by the name of Floram Marchand, who seems to have been fully the equal of his master, appeared in England in 1650.
The following description of Marchand's performance is from The Book of Wonderful Characters, edition of 1869, page 126: In the summer of 1650, a Frenchman named Floram Marchand was brought over from Tours to London, who professed to be able to "turn water into wine," and at his vomit render not only the tincture, but the strength and smell of several wines, and several waters.

He learnt the rudiments of this art from Bloise, an Italian, who not long before was questioned by Cardinal Mazarin, who threatened him with all the miseries that a tedious imprisonment could bring upon him, unless he would discover to him by what art he did it.

Bloise, startled at the sentence, and fearing the event, made a full confession on these terms, that the Cardinal would communicate it to no one else.
From this Bloise, Marchand received all his instruction; and finding his teacher the more sought after in France, he came by the advice of two English friends to England, where the trick was new.

Here--the cause of it being utterly unknown--he seems for a time to have gulled and astonished the public to no small extent, and to his great profit.
Before long, however, the whole mystery was cleared up by his two friends, who had probably not received the share of the profits to which they thought themselves entitled.

Their somewhat circumstantial account runs as follows.
To prepare his body for so hardy a task, before he makes his appearance on the stage, he takes a pill about the quantity of a hazel nut, confected with the gall of an heifer, and wheat flour baked.


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