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THE COMPRACHICOS

I

Who now knows the word Comprachicos, and who knows its meaning? The Comprachicos, or Comprapequeños, were a hideous and nondescript association of wanderers, famous in the 17th century, forgotten in the 18th, unheard of in the 19th. The Comprachicos are part of old human ugliness. They belong to the colossal fact of slavery. Joseph sold by his brethren is a chapter in their story. The Comprachicos have left their traces in thepenal laws¹⁰ of Spain and England. You find here and there in the dark confusion of English laws the impress of this horrible truth, like the foot-print of a savage in a forest.

Comprachicos, the same as Comprapequeños, is a compound Spanish word signifying Child-buyers. The Comprachicos traded in children. They bought and sold them. They did not steal them. The kidnapping of children is another branch of industry. And what did they make of these children? Monsters. Why monsters? To laugh at.

The populace must laugh, and kings too. The mountebank is wanted in the streets, the jester at the Louvre. The one is called a Clown, the other a Fool. The efforts of man to procure himself pleasure are at times worthy of the attention of the philosopher.

A child destined to be a plaything for men – such a thing has existed; such a thing exists even now. In order that a human toy succeeds, he must be taken early. The dwarf must be fashioned when young. We play with childhood. But a well-formed child is not very amusing; a hunchback is better fun.

Hence grew an art. There were trainers who took a man and made him amisshapen creature¹¹. They took a face and made a muzzle; they stunted growth; they kneaded the features. Where God had made harmony, they made discord; where God had made the perfect picture, they re-established the sketch; and, in the eyes of connoisseurs, it was the sketch which was perfect. They debased animals as well; they invented piebald horses. Nature is our canvas. Man has always wished to add something to God’s work. Man retouches creation, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.

To degrade man tends to deform him. The suppression of his state was completed by disfigurement. Certain vivisectors of that period succeeded marvellously well in effacing from the human face the divine effigy. The inventor of this branch of surgery was a monk named Avonmore – an Irish word signifying Great River.

II

The manufacture of monsters was practised on a large scale. Scarcely human beings, they were useful to voluptuousness and to religion. They knew how to produce things in those days which are not produced now; they had talents which we lack. We no longer know how to sculpture living human flesh. Men were once virtuosi in that respect, but the art has become so simplified that it will soon disappear. The surgeons were cutting the limbs of living men, opening their bellies and dragging out their entrails. The vivisection of former days was not limited to the manufacture of phenomena for the market-place, of buffoons for the palace, and eunuchs for sultans and popes. One of its triumphs was the manufacture of cocks for the king of England.

It was the custom, in the palace of the kings of England, to have a watchman, who crowed like a cock. This watcher, awake while all others slept, ranged the palace, and raised from hour to hour the cry of the farmyard, repeating it as often as was necessary.

The memoirs of Catherine II. inform us that at St. Petersburg, scarcely a hundred years since, whenever the czar or czarina was displeased with a Russian prince, he was forced to squat down in the great antechamber of the palace, and to remain in that posture a certain number of days, mewing like a cat, or clucking like a sitting hen, and pecking his food from the floor. These fashions have passed away; but not so much, perhaps, as one might imagine.

The commerce in children in the 17th century was connected with a trade. The Comprachicos engaged in the commerce, and carried on the trade. They bought children, worked a little on the raw material, and resold them afterwards.

The venders were of all kinds: from the wretched father, getting rid of his family, to the master, utilizing his stud of slaves. The sale of men was a simple matter.

For a long time the Comprachicos only partially concealed themselves. Under the Stuarts, the Comprachicos were welcome at court.

The Comprachicos had a genius for disfiguration. To disfigure is better than to kill. There was, indeed, the iron mask, but that was a mighty measure. Besides, the iron mask is removable; not so the mask of flesh. You are masked for ever by your own flesh – what can be more ingenious? The Comprachicos worked on man as the Chinese work on trees.

Not only did the Comprachicos take away his face from the child, they also took away his memory. This frightful surgery left its traces on his countenance, but not on his mind. The Comprachicos deadened the little patient by means of a stupefying powder, and suppressed all pain. This powder has been known in China, and is still employed there in the present day. This is convenient: by ordering your dwarf betimes you are able to have it of any shape you wish.