Pierrot the plot, which was interlarded with comically violent (and often scabrous) mayhem. As in the Bakken pantomimes, that plot hinged upon Cassander's pursuit of Harlequin and Columbine—but it was complicated, in Baptiste's interpretation, by a clever and ambiguous Pierrot. Baptiste's Pierrot was both a fool and no fool; he was Cassandre's valet but no one's servant. He was an embodiment of comic contrasts, showing imperturbable sang-froid [again the words are Gautier's], artful foolishness and foolish finesse, brazen and naïve gluttony, blustering cowardice, skeptical credulity, scornful servility, preoccupied insouciance, indolent activity, and all those surprising contrasts that must be expressed by
Charles Deburau a consequence, thrust himself into dramatic territory for which his talents were not altogether suited. Typical of his post-Funambules pantomimes is Champfleury's "Pantomime of the Attorney", which appears as the last piece in the Goby collection. Here we are in that "commonplace setting", an attorney's office, that Despot describes above, confronting a "light, small-scale" adventure. Pierrot is the clerk of Cassander, an attorney, and is in love with Columbine, the office assistant. Since Cassander is away for most of the piece, the lovers can indulge their appetites, and the pantomime turns out to be little more than a vehicle for