I also managed to escape from the annoyances aroused by certain subalterns of the stage, and, being determined that my voyage to Algiers should be a real pleasure-trip, I laughed at these puny attacks. Besides, my attention was directed to a matter far more interesting to me. The journals had announced my performances, and this statement immediately aroused a paper warfare in the Algerian press, the strangeness of which contributed no little to give increased publicity to my representations. “Robert-Houdin,” one paper said, “cannot be at Algiers, for we see daily announced in the Paris papers, ‘_Robert-Houdin every evening at eight o’clock_.’” “And why,” another journal asked, pleasantly, “should not Robert-Houdin perform in Algiers and yet remain all the while in Paris? Do we not know that this sorcerer possesses the gift of ubiquity, and that he often gives performances at Paris, Rome, and Moscow on the same evening?” The discussion went on thus, for several days, some denying my presence, others affirming it. The public of Algiers were willing to accept this fact as one of those pleasantries generally denominated _canards_, but they also wished to be sure of not being victims of a delusion if they came to the theatre. At length the matter was taken up seriously, and the editors explained that Mr. Hamilton, on succeeding his brother-in-law, had kept up the old title; so that _Robert-Houdin_ was a term equally applicable to the performer and to the style of performance. This curious discussion, the annoyances occasioned by M. D----, and, as I hope I may believe, the attraction of my performance, brought me an enormous audience. All the tickets were bought beforehand, and the house was stiflingly hot, for the centigrade thermometer denoted 35 deg., and we were in the middle of September. Poor spectators, how I pitied them! To judge from my own sensations, they must all have been mummified on the spot. I feared that the enthusiasm, as is the general rule, would be in an inverse ratio to the temperature; but I had no cause to complain of my reception, and I drew from this success a happy omen for the future. In order not to deprive my “official representations,” as M. de Neveu termed them, of the interest the reader will expect from them, I will give no details of those which preceded them, and were so many trial-balloons. I may say the Arabs who came were very few; for these men, with their indolent and sensual temper, consider the happiness of lying on a mat and smoking far above a spectacle. Hence the governor, guided by the profound knowledge he had of their character, never invited them to a fête: he sent them a military summons. This occurred for my representations.