Singular accident in a French theatre.
The
Phare de la Loire of
Nantes gives the following account of a singular accident and lucky escape:
‘
An accident of a singular nature, the consequence of which might have been deplorable, has sensibly affected the numerous spectators attracted to the
Salle Graslin by the third performance of an unpublished play, entitled the ‘"
Chatean de Clisson."’ About the end of the second act, a youth of 17, dressed in a blouse and trousers, by trade a currier,
Rene Tessier by name, living at
Nantes, Place du Port Communeau, with his father, having gone out, returned, and wanted to resume his former seat in the front row of the fourth gallery on the right side and facing the stage.
But instead of placing his leg cantionsly over the upper bench he lent abruptly forwards towards the ralling, which he thought he should lay hold of. This support he missed, his hands slipped along the velvet of the rim, and the poor fellow found himself pitched forward by his own impetus.
The reader knows the usual construction of a theatre; the projections of the galleries recede from the base to the summit, so that any heavy object in falling from the fourth could hardly reach the pit. The best chance for
Tessier would have been, owing to this arrangement, to make a perpendicular fall and alight on some padded rim below, so as to remain within the enclosed tier.
This, perhaps, would have happened if there had been more empty seats in the sallie than was the case.
In his fall,
Tessier did in fact hit against the soldier,
Alphonse Bretel, shoemaker to the supernumerary company of the 76th, who was seated in the third gallery; then he fell against the head of a woman in the second, the wife of
M. Hortion, carpenter; then he brushed past the officer on duty, who was seated beneath in the last armchaired bench to the right of the front boxes and in his way the youth was precipitated a distance of several metres.
By an extraordinary chance,
Tessier, whose arms and legs were stretched out, and who, as persons who saw him during his frightful fall say, looked like a man swimming horizontally through space, found himself quickly eated on one of the front benches of the pit, near the or chestra, exactly on a spot which had been vacated between the acts, and in which he made his appearance like a messenger from the sky, having merely grazed the foot of the person sitting next to him. The general satisfaction may be easily imagined; it became yet greater when it was ascertained that the young workman had sustained no fracture.
Being carried out to the cafe of the theatre,
Tessier was able to sit upon a stool, his arms crossed on a table, and his head resting upon his arms.
Doctors Charvan and
Hignard came and exemined him; they only found a braise about the size of a florin.
Being asked how he was, Tesster said that all the pain he felt was in his thighs.
When they talked of removing him to the hospital, he had the strength to rise by himself, but soon fell back, and he had to be placed on a stretcher.
The soldier
Bretel was in the meantime brought into the cafe; he was still quite stunned by the shock he had received, and was very pale and haggard.
As he at first spit a little blood, it was thought there was some internal injury.
Such was, however, not the case.
He had merely bitten his own tongue, and his state was not of a nature to cause anxiety.
Madame Hortion escaped with a contusion on the back of her neck and a bump upon her head.
Accidents are by no means confined to French theatres.
Here in
Richmond, last Friday night, while the play of Richard III.
was progressing at the ‘"Varieties,"’ the frate monarch threw his truncheon beyond the wings, where it unfortunately came in contact with a lady's head, and inflicted quite a severe wound.
The circumstance occasioned some commotion behind the scencs, of which, however, the audience was not aware.
’
