[3] His parents were slaves in a Cuban plantation from which they escaped in 1878, leaving their son to a poor black woman who raised him in the slums of Havana.

[4] When Rafael was still a boy, she sold him to a Spanish businessman named Patricio Castaño Capetillo for 18 ounces of gold.

[1] The famous Auguste Tony Grice discovered Rafael working the docks of Bilbao, impressed by both his physical strength and his dancing.

In 1888, their partnership was ended when Henri Agoust, the manager of the Nouveau Cirque, hired Chocolat as the star of a nautical pantomime.

After Rafael's death, Marie asked to be buried as "Veuve Chocolat", but an anonymous official removed this wording, preferring 'Divorcee Grimaldi'.

[6] In 1895, Raoul Donval, director of the Nouveau Cirque, formed a new duo, teaming Chocolat with a British clown, George Foottit.

Chocolat, however, fought the stereotype by constantly diversifying his skills and careful observation of the skits shows a character not confined to the roles of the subject.

Their joint career reached its peak with the Folies Bergère until they were considered old fashioned with the arrival of a generation of American black artists bringing the cake walk to the stages of Europe.

On 19 November, in an article by writer and journalist Pierre Mille, Le Temps erroneously announced the death of Chocolat.

The next day, Le Temps retracted the error and published a letter from Rafael, curiously dated 17 November: Sir, The director read in your newspaper that Mr. Mille, the intelligent journalist wrote that I am dead like Augustus.

Please correct it, because it hurts me.Foottit and Chocolat split up in 1910, when Andre Antoine, director of the Odeon, hired Foottit to play the role of the Clown in Romeo and Juliet.

In 1911 he performed at the Cirque de Paris in the Revue burlesque, created by Foottit and in 1912 Tablette et Chocolat with his adoptive son Eugène Grimaldi, but he suffered a breakdown after the death of his 19 year old daughter caused by tuberculosis.

Alone or with Foottit, Chocolat made advertising posters for Le Bon Marché, the chocolate Félix Potin, the soap La Hêve or the tyres Michelin.