The Marabout priests constantly boasted of their invulnerability. They were reputed to be possessed of powerful talismans which caused loaded weapons to flash in the pan when fired at them. Houdin counteracted these claims by performing his celebrated bullet-catching feat, in which a marked bullet apparently shot from a gun is caught by the magician in a plate or between his teeth. There are two ways of accomplishing this trick. One is by substituting a bullet of hollow wax for the real leaden bullet. The explosion scatters the wax into minute fragments which fly in all directions and do not come in contact with the person shot at; provided he stands at a respectable distance from the individual who handles the pistol or gun. The second method is to insert into the barrel of the weapon a small tube open at one end. Into this receptacle the bullet falls, and the tube is withdrawn from the gun in the act of ramming it, forming as it were a part of the ramrod. The performer, once in possession of the little tube, secretly extracts the marked bullet and produces it at the proper time. Houdin had recourse to both ways of performing this startling trick. Sometimes he filled the wax bullet with blood, extracted from his thumb. When the bullet smashed against a white wall it left a red splash. Houdin, after traveling into the interior of Algeria, visiting many prominent chieftains, returned to France, and settled down at St. Gervais, a suburb {153} of Blois. He relinquished his theatre to his brother-in-law, Pierre Chocat (M. Hamilton), and devoted himself to scientific work, and writing his _Confidences_ and other works on natural magic. VI. Houdin called his villa at St. Gervais the “Priory,” a rather monastic title. It was a veritable palace of enchantments. Electrical devices played an important part in its construction, as well as automata. The Pepper ghost illusion was rigged up in a small pavilion on the grounds. A mechanical hermit welcomed guests to a grotto: Houdin’s friends jestingly called the place “_L’Abbaye de l’Attrape_ (_la Trappe_),” or “Catch’em Abbey.” The pun is almost untranslatable. “_Attrape_” is a trap, in French. You have a Trappist Monastery. I need say no more. During the Franco-Prussian War, Houdin’s neighbors brought their valuables to him to be concealed. He had a hiding place built which defied detection. But the Prussians never bothered him. Says William Manning (_Recollections of Robert-Houdin_, London, 1891): “Robert-Houdin’s employment of electricity, not only as a moving power for the performance of his illusions, but for domestic purposes, was long in advance of his time. The electric bell, so common to us now, was in every-day use _for years_ in his own house, before its value was recognized by the public.