Aldridge's diary entries for April 8–10, 1867, reveal that he spent some of his time in London visiting old friends and associates, establishing contacts at the Italian Opera and Sadler's Wells, and calling at his family home at Luranah Villa. Before the end of that month he and Amanda were back in Paris, attending the Universal Exhibition. “Never had there been so resplendent an exhibition. There were 42,237 exhibitors—over three times as many as at the Crystal Palace [in 1851]—and the 11,000,000 visitors included two emperors and more than eighty other royal personages.”

On Tuesday, April 30, they happened to meet Hans Christian Andersen on the exhibition grounds, an event recorded in Andersen's autobiography:

However, Andersen was mistaken about Aldridge's appearance at the Odeon. Jackson C. Boswell has discovered that “not a single paper in Paris recorded his appearance in any scheduled performance in any of the various theaters of the city” during this period. Apparently despite Aldridge's success at Versailles a few months earlier, Kuschnick had been unable to arrange an engagement for him in the capital, which must have been a great disappointment to Aldridge, who had been longing to perform there for at least fifteen years, ever since his first Continental tour.

Instead, he started playing Othello in a few towns about one hundred fifty miles north of Paris near the Belgian border—first at Boulogne-sur-Mer on May 9, then at Roubaix and Lille the following week, in all of which he played his part with his accustomed vigor, even though he was supported by mediocre companies.