With plaster-composition head, original paint, blue-tipped nose and a telegraph motif decorating his forehead, brown glass eyes, articulated eyelids and lower lip, seated on trapezoidal stool containing large going-barrel motor with seven cams and intermittent two-air cylinder movement, the clown dressed in original worn red satin tailcoat with black lapels, yellow silk shirt, bowtie and checked silk trousers, ht. 30 in. (76 cm), (leather on eyelids and lip split, replacement stop/start lever). With steel key and (faded) label of "Henry Vichy, 36 rue Montmorency, Paris". – The clown sleeps whenever he gets the chance. The intermission bell interrupts his slumber, not once but three times. After the first two rings, the clown wakes briefly, opens his eyes and then returns to sleep. The third ring reminds him of his audience and finally obliges him to start playing again. He lifts his head, raises the banjo and strums while looking from side to side, nodding, fluttering his eyelids, swinging his right leg and moving his lower lip as if singing with such animation that he soon becomes tired again and drifts slowly back to sleep. – The musical movement has two special features: an intermittent driving-gear that times the music to play only when the clown is awake and a paper roll 'zither' on the comb that reproduces the sound of a banjo. – Literature: Bailly, "Automata, the Golden Age", p. 262. – "Sonnette de l'Entracte" was described by Léo Claretie in "Les Jouets, Histoire-Fabrication" in 1893: "This famous clown attracted great crowds. Children were on their best behaviour when they were promised a visit to see him, and indeed he was well worth the trouble, for he had a most pleasing appearance. Auguste is seated on a white stool, his left leg folded under his right knee, and he plays the guitar (sic). After a pause … the head of the artist droops, the eyes blink sleepily … the arm again falls inert, the music stops, the clown sleeps. Suddenly a bell resounds and rouses him, his fingers begin again to strum furiously in shame over his drowsiness … until the next spell of sleepiness from which the next sounding of the bell will waken him." – We know of only four other examples of this automaton: one formerly in York Museum of Automata; two in private collections; one offered at Sotheby's New Bond St., 15 September 1993, Lot 329. This example, discovered with Lot 520 in a Mexican estate, is presented in rare unrestored original working condition.