In fact, I soon became the General’s _avant courier_, though not doing the duties of an _avant courier_ to an ordinary exhibition, since these duties generally consist in largely puffing the “coming man” and expected show, thus endeavoring to create a public appetite and to excite curiosity. My duties were quite different; after engaging the largest theatre or saloon to be found in the town, I put out a simple placard, announcing that the General would appear on such a day. Thereafter, my whole energies were directed, apparently, to keeping the people quiet; I begged them not to get excited; I assured them through the public journals, that every opportunity should be afforded to permit every person to see “the distinguished little General, who had delighted the principal monarchs of Europe, and more than a million of their subjects,” and that if one exhibition in the largest audience room in the town would not suffice, two or even three would be given. This was done quietly, and yet, as an advertisement, effectively, for, strange as it may seem, people who were told to keep quiet, would get terribly excited, and when the General arrived and opened his exhibitions, excitement would be at fever heat, the levees would be thronged, and the treasury filled! Numerous were the word battles I had with mayors, managers of theatres, directors of hospitals, and others, relative to what I considered--justly, I think--the outrageous imposition which the laws permitted in the way of taxes upon “exhibitions.” Thus the laws required, for the sake of charity, twenty-five per cent of my gross receipts for the hospitals; while to encourage a local theatre, or theatres, which might suffer from an outside show, twenty per cent more must be given to the local managers. Of course this law was nearly a dead letter; for, to have taken forty-five per cent of my gross receipts at every exhibition would soon have driven me from the provinces, so the hospitals were generally content with ten per cent, and five or ten francs a day satisfied the manager of a provincial theatre. But at Bordeaux the manager of the theatre wished to engage the General to appear in his establishment, and as I declined his offer, he threatened to debar me from exhibiting anywhere in town, by demanding for himself the full twenty per cent the law allowed, besides inducing the directors of the hospitals to compel me to pay them twenty-five per cent more.