Every member of the royal family bore a gift for General Tom Thumb, and none of the ladies of the royal household missed an opportunity to kiss his pink cheeks. A quaint history of General Tom Thumb written for young children and published at Philadelphia in 1849 made this comment on the reception at the Court of Louis Philippe: “Other and valuable presents were heaped upon the little traveler by the royal family. How the world changes! Louis Philippe has, since that time, been driven from his throne, and with his wife and children is in England; and it is very likely that the money which the gifts were worth, which were given to the little dwarf, would have been many times within the last year [1848] very acceptable to the dethroned monarch. Tom Thumb is Tom Thumb still, but Louis Philippe is a king no longer.” In Paris Barnum picked up a bargain, which pleased him so much that he mentioned it in all the editions of his autobiography. The effects of a Russian prince were sold at auction, and Barnum bought among other things a gold tea-set and a silver dining-service. What delighted him most, however, was that the initials of the nobleman were engraved on the plate, and that therefore it was sold for its weight value; and the initials were “P. T.,” which needed only an addition of “B” to make them appropriate for Phineas’s and Charity’s table. After a long engagement in Paris, Barnum and General Tom Thumb visited with great financial success Rouen, Orléans, Bordeaux, Brest, Toulon, Montpellier, Nîmes, Marseilles, Nantes, and other cities. Barnum had turned his acquisition into something of an actor, for throughout France he appeared in a comedy called “Petit Poucet,” and the revenue authorities recognized the General’s histrionic ability by classifying him officially as subject to only the theatrical tax of eleven per cent. instead of the twenty-five per cent. tax for natural curiosities. General Tom Thumb visited Spain, where he was received by Queen Isabella, with whom he attended a bull fight. On his return trip to France, many European newspapers of the day report, he was held up by brigands, one of whom mounted the box of the coach and drove off rapidly with his prize. It was rumored, according to the _Illustrated London News_ for September 20, 1845, that “a lady, from excess of fantasy, has eloped with him to the neighborhood of Guilligomach.” The fact that seemed certain to the _Illustrated London News_ was that the General had not been seen or heard of since his departure from the Spanish border. Possibly this was Barnum’s foreign publicity, but he neglects to say so, and if it were an example of his successful cunning, he would have mentioned it in his autobiography.