Character Analysis
The Evil Magician
Gaspare Grisini, or Professor Grisini (as he calls himself), is quite the seedy character. He's basically the embodiment of an evil magician—someone who is power-hungry and will do anything to gain riches and power, including kidnapping innocent children and turning them into puppets. He's also an expert liar; as a young man, he tricked Cassandra into believing he was in love with her so that he could learn all of her magical secrets:
He spoke her name as he once had, lingering over each syllable. He remembered how her eyes used to kindle when he spoke like that. She had fought against her love for him like a fish on the hook, but he had once had the power to soften her. (19.26)
He also manipulates the children that he lives with, Lizzie Rose and Parsefall. Although he acts like he's a magnanimous benefactor for taking them in, he makes money off of them by making them work for his puppet theater, and he even pawns Lizzie Rose's earrings for money, taking the one thing she had left from her dead parents. And, later on, the children discover that at one point, he turned Parsefall into a puppet and shaved off his finger, just to teach him a lesson. That's why Parsefall is now missing a finger. What a nasty, mean man.
A Devious Scheme
With Grisini's horrible personality, it's no wonder he has come up with a completely despicable scheme in order to make money. He uses his magical powers to turn rich children into puppets and then holds them for ransom. This is exactly what he does when he encounters the Wintermute family:
He congratulated himself on the excellence of his plan. He had chosen his victim well. Dr. Wintermute could be relied upon to pay Clara's ransom; a man who had lost four children and would stop at nothing to rescue the fifth. Not until the following morning would the doctor understand that his daughter was never coming home. (14.5)
Grisini doesn't care that he's causing these families so much grief and anguish, or even that in the early days of his scheme, he ended up permanently damaging some children because he hadn't yet perfected the process of turning them into puppets and back again. He just wants to make money off of vulnerable people. When he falls through the ice, it's no wonder no one is sad.