The scene
opens with a little girl at a table, who, instead of attending to her lesson,
is trying what she can do with a paper and scissors. The pedagogue, coming in,
observing her inattention, admonishes her for the neglect of her studies,
commands her to put up the paper and take up her book, which she does until his
back is turned. His exit is the cause of the evolution of the usual child
satire of placing the thumb to the nose and outspreading the fingers. As soon
as she is certain that the coast is clear she commences her paper antics, and
from the paper in front of her cuts out a mitre of an archbishop, which she
places upon her head, and then, quickly forming a stole, she imitates the
gesticulations of an archbishop while blessing his flock. Disbanding this
costume, she cuts out another to represent a clerk of the justices, and looks
very comical as she starts to write down the charges as the clerk would do.
Tiring of this, she next produces a chapeau of an admiral, and forming a
miniature ship out of another piece of paper, she looks the part to perfection.
Cutting out a plume, she fixes it on the admiral's chapeau and makes a very
good imitation of a field marshal. This not being quite complete, she takes up
a box and empties on to the table a guard of toy soldiers, which immediately
follow into line, and then, taking up the baton, she directs her little army of
soldiers in a very comical fashion. Then with one fell sweep of her baton she
clears the table of the soldiers. Scissors and paper again come into active
use, and she then forms a clown. She next essays the part of a grandmother's
cap; then, with the spectacles on her nose and knitting in hand, she looks the
part to perfection. From the grandmother, she rapidly changes into a nun, and
from this into a barrister, and argues her case with great force and point. She
now essays a difficult task, and the better to perform this, she turns her back
on the audience, and on turning her face once more towards them, she looks the
embodiment of the illustrious Napoleon. Like him, she finds this great
attempt is her last, for the pedagogue coming in at this moment, when the
spirit of Napoleon is the strongest, he takes her on his knee and gives her a
spanking.
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