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]