Whatever might be my satisfaction in enjoying the freedom I had so long desired, it would soon have undergone the fate common to all our pleasures, and have grown flat by the mere effect of enjoyment, had I not reserved for these blessed hours of leisure studies in which I hoped to find a perennial source of amusement. After gaining a fortune by labors unjustly regarded as futile, I was about to devote myself to serious researches, as I had been formerly advised by a member of the Institute. The circumstances to which I allude date back to the Exposition of 1844, when I submitted my automata and mechanical curiosities. The jury entrusted with the examination of mechanical instruments, and designs had come to my productions, and I had repeated the little performance I had given a few days previously in the presence of Louis Philippe. After listening with interest to the details of the numerous difficulties I had to overcome in making my automata, one of the members of the jury said to me: “It is a great pity, Monsieur Robert-Houdin, that you did not apply the talent you have evinced in fancy objects to serious labors.” This criticism wounded me the more, because at that period I considered nothing superior to my works, and in my fairest dreams of the future I desired no greater glory than that of the skillful inventor of the “automaton duck.” “Sir,” I replied, in a tone that betrayed my pique, “I know no works more serious than those which give a man an honest livelihood. Still, I am ready to change my views, if you give me the same advice after you have heard me. “At the period when I devoted myself to chronometers, I hardly earned enough to live upon; at present, I have four workmen to help me in making my automata; and as the least skillful among them earns six francs a day, you can easily form an idea what I earn myself. “Now, sir, I ask you, if I ought to return to my old trade?” My critic was silent, but another member of the jury coming up to me, said, in a low voice, “Go on, Monsieur Robert-Houdin--go on; I am convinced that your ingenious works, after leading you to success, will conduct you straight to useful discoveries.” “Monsieur le Baron Séguier,” I replied, in the same key, “I thank you for your encouraging prediction, and will do my best to prove its correctness.”[E] I have followed the advice of the illustrious savant, and find myself all the better for it. CHAPTER XX. Travels in Algeria--Convocation of the Chieftains--Performances before the Arabs--A Kabyle rendered powerless--Invulnerability--A Moor disappears--Panic and Flight of the Audience--Reconciliation--The Sect of Aïssaoua--Their pretended Miracles.