ill, and I fear that the exertion will make her worse."

"Then it is not your special wish to leave the mountains, Mr. Stoddard?"

“Oh, no. It is entirely Agatha's wish. I suppose you know, by this time, that she rules me like a thorough young despot, in that quiet way of hers. I-"

"Papa!"

This interruption, clear, sharp, almost commanding, startles us both. We both turn. Agatha stands at the head of the stairs, whence, here at the doorway, she can see and be seen equally well.

"Yes, my daughter," Mr. Stoddard makes ready answer.

"I must ask you to come up here, papa, please. I can't quite get along in my pack. ing without you."

He looks at me with the soft, amiable smile that so often breaks sunnily from under his iron-gray mustache, and goes up-stairs while replying: "Then I am quite at your service, Agatha."

I walk out into the growing dusk. It is no hyperbole to say that I am suffering mental torments, now. Reflection is misery to me. Thought of the future brings only a dreary disgust. The exquisite dewy blue of the twilight presently makes me long to escape from it.

my summons in person. As she recognizes me, in the dim light of the little side-hall, her face takes a paler look than it already wore. I fix my eyes steadily on that face, and begin speaking in low tones.

"Mrs. Small has lost a valuable fan. In passing my room she said some unpleasant words, full of suspicion. Is she right?"

She lifts one hand, pressed together in a white knot, and rests it directly over her heart. Her lips tremble once or twice, having grown of a pallor that well matches her cheeks.

"What do you want to know?" she just manages, in a choked, effortful way. "Nothing that you do not choose to tell

Immediately afterward she turns away. I have not waited three minutes when she again appears in the space of the partiallyopen door, holding the fan. I take it, while I shiver under the pang of a terrible disapPerhaps my reason for sud-pointment; and as she is turning away once denly going up-stairs into my own rooin, and more I catch her hand. lighting the lamp and opening a book, is half "In God's name," I burst forth, LL because I am nearer to her while thus situ- nothing be done for you? ated; though her room is in a side-hall, at some little distance away from the one off which mine opens.

Three-quarters of an hour have probably passed, when I rise and throw aside my book; I have not read a word of it understandingly.

Just then I become aware of some rather loud and excited talking outside my door. It is a lady's voice, and one which I am prompt to recognize.

"Why, Aurelia, I left it on the mantel in the parlor about an hour before tea. It's that small jet fan, you know, with the heavy carvings you've often admired it. Why shouldn't I suspect her, after what has happened? Nobody else would dare touch it. I tell you-"

And then the voice becomes indistinct, as the speaker and her evident companion pass on to the farther end of the hall. A little later I hear a door close. The hall is now quite quiet again.

I think that both my hands are clinched tightly as I stand near my door for a brief space, after hearing those words. My face burns hotly, too, with shame-shame for the woman whom a few hours have shown me that I love with a strong, unconquerable passion. A little later my mind is made up. She shall be spared, this time, if it is in my power to spare her. They go to-morrow. She shall be spared.

Her room, as I have before said, is in a side-hall, communicating with the one outside. Her father's room is, however, on the next story above. I open my door, and without another moment of hesitation I pass directly on to hers.

It is closed. I knock. She responds to

can

Her whole face seems to harden; her hand draws itself from mine; and in a measured, frigid way that would sound utterly hopeless did it not sound so utterly without all feeling, she answers:

"Nothing."

And here she closes her door, quietly but quickly.

I wait until I am calm enough for the performance of my self-set task, and then I pass onward to the door of the room which I know Mrs. Mackenzie Small occupies.

The smart little widow opens it herself, a few seconds after I have knocked. She stares at me in astonishment while I extend her fan.

"Pray let me return this," I begin. "I took it by mistake from the parlor-mantel, thinking it belonged to Miss Stoddard, who had mislaid hers."

Mrs. Mackenzie Small receives the fan and looks bewilderedly from it to me.

Why, yes, Mr. Embury," she stammers; "it is mine-sure enough-I thought-"

"You thought, no doubt, that you'd lost it forever," I break in, with a laugh. "Well, you are agreeably disappointed, perhaps? In the most absent-minded way I put it in my pocket, after having brought it to Miss Stoddard and ascertained that it was not her property; she had sent me to look for hers, you know, which she thought she had left somewhere in the parlor."

I speak with so much careless off-handedness of tone and manner that there is slight doubt of my words carrying full conviction, although I can detect a certain prim change of countenance in my hearer the last time that Miss Stoddard's name is mentioned.

Mrs. Small thanks me quite blandly, a

moment later, and I move away, answering with light and smiling words. Just as I reach my own room again, I hear her door closed.

And just then, also, I find myself face to face with Agatha Stoddard. She is standing at a short distance from my door. The dim lamp-light makes her countenance very indistinct.

"I heard you," she whispers, her words as slow as they are low. "It was most generous of you; and, if you value them, you have my best thanks."

The piazza is vacant to-night, also. The dew lies thick and silvery on steps and railing, and the air, windlessly tranquil, has almost a sting in its moonlit coldness.

She joins me, after I have waited about three minutes, dressed as if for a walk. "Not here," she whispers. "Let us stroll out into the garden."

I assent with only a movement of my head, and we go down the steps slowly together. We are about twenty yards from the house when she again speaks, calmly, but with the calmness of braced nerves and stimulated will.

"You are a man of cultured mind, of broad intelligence. You have read and studied more than most people: you are a thinker, unbigoted, catholic, unhampered by false prejudice."

There is a pause; but I feel that my time for speaking has not come.

"Your attention may perhaps have been called, Mr. Embury, toward some of those unfortunate insanities which now and then afflict human beings. I do not mean insanity in its more usual shapes; I mean those dreadful caprices of it which make the ordinary curse seem almost a blessing."

"Yes. He was in my room when you knocked at the door. He heard what passed between us. He insisted that I should tell you the whole truth."

It is impossible for me to convey an idea of how, just at the end of this last sentence, her composure wholly forsakes her how her voice grows one succession of stifled sobshow her eyes, shining with a rich fire in the suave moonlight, rivet upon my face their brilliant fixity.

"Some one told you about that brooch," she speeds on, the words rushing from her

"I

lips in a pell-mell of eager utterance. suppose it was Miss Bostwick, although she promised me that she would tell no one. Papa took it; and I discovered that he had done so. I meant, at the earliest opportunity, to replace it, but because Miss Bostwick locked her door afterward I almost despaired of doing this. Then it was taken from my drawer-doubtless by the girl, Margaret, who had seen it and suspected me. Miss Bostwick met me in the hall the night of its disappearance-"

"I know, I know! You need tell me no more of that! Thank God!"

I have turned and caught both her hands in both of mine as those two final words are spoken. Each hand is trembling within my close clasp, but she makes no attempt to free them.

“And you have acted this way to shield your father! And I-I have dared to believe so differently! How can I ever dream of getting your pardon?"

"I give it without the asking," she mur murs, while bright tears besiege her beautiful uplifted eyes. "I saw how you admired, almost loved him, and this made me strong, you know. It is an insanity with him—an awful insanity, that lies like a black blot on his pure, honorable life! Very few people know about it. When it first developed itself, several years ago, he voluntarily went to a private asylum and has remained there, under strict medical care, ever since. The physicians thought him cured, and indeed recommended this change. I would have left at once, when the first symptoms of the old trouble was manifested to me, but for fear of rousing more suspicion by so very sudden a departure. Miss Bostwick met me in the hall this morning, as you know, and insisted on our leaving to-morrow. When you knocked at my door to-night I-I had just discovered about the fan-”

Her shaken voice falters into silence.

The tears are streaming down her pale cheeks-I lift her hands, hardly knowing what I do, and cover them with many kisses -and then, as she draws away, I follow her, speaking passionate, headlong words, that would sound like exaggeration-like fatuity, perhaps if I wrote them down now- - but they are words that imperiously demand their answer, and that receive it, not much later. And it is an answer which makes me supremely happy!

The moon is very low over the mountain before we reënter the house, and has changed from silver to mellowest gold, bringing to my then mood the sweet suggestion of a hope that has ripened into rich golden reality!

"One thing I must exact of you," I murmur, a little while before we pass in-doors: "to let me tell Miss Bostwick and her friend the whole truth."

She smiles very faintly, and I see that her eyes, dim in the failing moonlight, are filled with soft regret.

"Well, as you please. It is only just to you now, perhaps, that they should know. But oh" (and never voice took lovelier pleading into its tones than hers takes at this moment), "promise me that you will try and rouse in both of them all the sympathy

IT

T was my good fortune, when in London several years ago, to form the acquaintance of Sir John Bowring. This learned and agreeable man, who had been known so widely as an Asiatic traveler and scholar, had been living in England many years, enjoying the cultured leisure which he had so well earned. His home was in the country, but he came to London for the "season," as is the custom of the English gentry, who regard the city merely as a temporary abode, not the place for gentlemen to live in.

Sir John Bowring was my learned “cicerone" to many of the sights of London.

It is in June, when England, rural England, is at its loveliest, when the roses and rhododendrons and every flowering shrub and tree are in fullest flower, when the hedgerows are the sweetest, when the pheasant stalks lazily like a moving gem through the tall grass, that the English people forsake their country-places and come to Londonthat great and motley thing called London, which is not a city, but a nation. "It is to the politician merely a seat of government, to the grazier merely a cattle-market, to the merchant a huge exchange, to the dramatic enthusiast a congeries of theatres, to the man of pleasure an assemblage of taverns. The intellectual man is struck with London as comprehending the whole of human life in all its variety, the contemplation of which is inexhaustible." Such was the summing up of London by one who knew it well. In fact, London is all you know, and a great deal more-a lifetime would not exhaust it, nor need any man's taste go a-begging. There is ample food for every one's spirit of inquiry.

Finding that, as Americans, we had an indomitable curiosity, and wanted to see every thing that was improving and agreeable that we could compass in six weeks, Sir John kindly gave us of his time, which was undoubtedly very valuable, two or three days. We went first to the British Museum, which is itself an encyclopædia of useful and entertaining knowledge. The inexhaustible purse of this great place enables it to buy every thing it wants; the admirable management, the gravitation toward it of all the learning, wit, and research of the great English nation, make it a répertoire of the most endless value. Sir John's knowledge enabled us to skip judiciously, and to see superficially the best things; for, had we attempted to see all, we should have been there now vainly struggling with all that the world has of human acquisition.

Professor Owen, appropriately-not exactly gnawing the bone of a megatherium, but examining it—was pointed out as one of the curiosities. Many of the learned men connected with the institution passed before our vision, as did the illuminated manuscripts (the best collection in the world) and the letters of distinguished men, and the Elgin marbles and the Museum of Natural History-all, all merely arousing that vain regret of all travelers that human faculties are so limited that eye cannot see, nor ear hear, half that the mind would gladly grasp did it possess supernatural powers of endurance.

Sir John also kindly took us to the Zoological Gardens of a Sunday afternoon, where we saw much fashion, much people, many animals. The huge hippopotami, Frank Buckland's pets, were disporting themselves in their basin, for the dukes and duchesses and common clay to laugh at. Nature had abandoned herself to her love of the grotesque when she made these animals. Then we went to the monkeys, Nature's effectual attempts at caricature and parody. Then to see the giraffes. I said:

"What a useless animal, with its long neck!"

"Ah," said Sir John, "you must not say that. What do you suppose the giraffe thinks of us? Remember the lines:

"What is this animal, and what's its use?" "Man's made for mine," returned the pampered goose.'"

And so, with many an apt quotation and witty speech, he led us round, and showed us the pleasant spot where Londoners meet of a Sunday afternoon.

But the most amusing and unique of our explorations was to two London clubs. These haunts of masculine appropriation and retirement are supposed to be sacred and inapproachable to the foot of woman, and yet they are not. Once a week a gentleman may bring lady friends to see their lofty, splendid rooms, their rare pictures, their beautiful libraries, and well-appointed kitchens.

The Athenæum was the first we visited. It is most beautifully arranged. Its large windows looked out on a broad street, ornamented (if that is a proper word) by statues of royal dukes and a monument commemorating English victories. The library, a most quiet, opulent, learned, and Russia-leather-feeling apartment, had in it, as we entered, two English bishops, to both of whom Sir John introduced us. They were quiet, unpretending gentlemen, these lords spiritual, and both greeted us with most unhesitating and flattering cordiality. In fact, we found the word "American" a good letter. Hearing that we were going to Oxford, one of the reverend gentlemen turned to his desk and wrote us a letter of introduction which afterward unlocked for us the treasures of the Bodleian Library. The other asked us to his country-house for a visit. I mention these facts because I often hear that English people are inhospitable, cold, and forbidding. I found them exactly the contrary-in fact, willing to take more trouble than we are as a rule.

From the learned, grave Athenæum, we went to the Reform Club, where we met

so well as on horseback; we thought them less handsome than our young American women, but they had fine figures, and were very stately. The men are superb, and the bestdressed men in the world.

The Crystal Palace at Sydenham is a great source of amusement. There one hears those monster concerts of a thousand, sometimes five thousand, voices. There one can see the models of the Alhambra, the famous sculptures, and almost, I had said, buildings of Europe; there the best flowers, birds, beasts, and curiosities of the world: There can one, after a day of music and sight-seeing, get a comfortable dinner, luncheon, tea, or any thing, and drive back to London comfortably tired, in time for a theatre, opera, and two or three balls. There is no doubt that London taken in this way is fatiguing, and requires a robust love of pleasure, and a strong constitution to do it, and to do it well.

The theatres in London are not on a par with her other splendors. They are small, dingy, ill-lighted, compared with ours, with few exceptions; but the acting, especially of the women, is far better. Last winter, however, certain excellent plays were produced in New York with great care. But in London, where competition is so enormous, the theatrical as well as all other business must be well done, or it does not succeed.

The dinners of London are very late, never before eight o'clock; this allows of a long drive in the park, but it effectually loses you the evening for any entertainment. It is one of the sights of. London to see its welldressed pairs, in a neat clarence or brougham, going out to dinner, each gentleman carrying his hat in his hand for fear of disturbing his well-dressed hair. The late twilight in that high latitude leaves London as bright almost as morning at eight o'clock, and the whole city seems to be going out to dine with somebody else. You almost wonder if there is a house of a respectable grade where the people are staying at home and dining off their own shoulder-of-mutton. Should you wish to go to the theatre or opera, you must refuse your dinner-party, and dine humbly at six o'clock.

It was always a sight to us to see the enthusiasm of the crowd when the Prince of Wales or any member of the royal family drove through the streets in state. Loyalty is a new sight to us here in free America, and it takes us out of our reckoning. The "Guards"-splendid men, in the most brilliant dress in the world-were another glittering and pompous sight. All this was to be had for nothing, merely a part of your day, and your own participation in it was to keep your eyes open. So with the handsome English children playing in the parks with their dogs, groups right out of Punch; so with the equipages, with their faultless turnout, the servants chosen for their good looks, clean limbs, and the coachmen necessarily stout, the neatness of the livery, and the perfection of the horses, harness, and belongings -all is charming.

This intense care bestowed on the equipage produces a result which is not reached anywhere on the Continent. The state-carriages of emperors and kings may flash past

you in a Continental city, but then comes shabbiness. In England the elegance never ceases, the pride of the nation seems to be in its "turn-out." The English love of horses is inextinguishable.

"Shadows we are, and like shadows we depart,"

says the old sun-dial in the Temple, which Charles Lamb loved. Oh, that Inner Temple garden, right in the heart of smoky London! Here the Knights Templars have sat and talked of Jerusalem. Here may Shakespeare have sat, and thought out that law which the world now pronounces perfect. Here Sir Walter Raleigh sat and dreamed of glory, and of the poor maid - of- honor whom he loved, nor thought how brief was to be his hour of freedom and sunshine. Here came Beaumont and Fletcher, Wycherly and Congreve, and imprisoned the light, the fragrance, and the memories, which they afterward threw, with many a rainbow-tint, through the diamond lens of genius, on the pages of the drama. Here sat poor Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson, under yon famous sycamore-tree, which some one has called an august mummy." Here comes now the stranger, to enjoy the hospitality of the ages. Here come the children, “in search of the lost Eden;" and here blossoms England's rose and England's hawthorn in beautiful luxuriance. I know no word to describe these half-garden, half-park paradises of England, except the old word pleasaunce, which always came into my mind.

St. Paul's was the one sight of London that disappointed me. Perhaps it was too vast. It looked naked, and grim, and lonely. "The noblest church in its style of Christian Europe, the masterpiece of Wren, the glory and pride of London," overwhelmed me with its memories, its grandeur, and its fame. I could remember only the poorer and more foolish allusions to it in modern literature. The Roman Temple, which was its site; the legend of St. Paul preaching there; William the Conqueror's Norman bishop, who interceded with the monarch and recovered the lost privileges of London citizens; William Fitzosbert denouncing Richard Cœur de Lion from St. Paul's Cross; the meetings which led to Magna Charta; Old John of Gaunt, time-honored Lancaster, threatening to drag the bishop out of the church by his hair; Richard II., dissolute, rash, and unfortunate, coming in all his pomp and splendor; even the stories of the ruthless Wars of the Roses; even beautiful Jane Shore doing penance; even Wolsey coming to sing mass and celebrate peace between France, England, and Spain-even these great ghosts failed to move me. I thought of them afterward. It is one of the imperfections of the mind that it refuses sometimes to be great with greatness, and carries its own bitterness, as a peddler might wear his pack, in the presence of royalty. I could only think of Sydney Smith's witticism about the old lady who called the vergers virgins, and who asked Mr. Smith if it was true that he walked down St. Paul's with three virgins carrying silver pokers in front of him. He shook his head. Madame," said he, 'some enemy of the Church, some dissenter, has been misleading you."

66

It was after I came away that I remem

bered that Shakespeare haunts St. Paul's. He makes Falstaff here, Bardolph there; and Ben Jonson lays the third act of "Every Man in his Humor" in the middle aisle; then did I remember that "horrid, bloody, and malicious flame" which in 1666 destroyed St. Paul, and made way for Wren's genius, which raised the dome. "I build for eternity," said Wren, and it was a courageous speech.

Since 1697 the daily voice of prayer and praise has never ceased in St. Paul. One hour I do remember as fittingly spent there. In the chapel, near its historic dead, I heard service in St. Paul's. The boys' voices"those children of Paul's "-rent the air with their delicious soprano, and fitly bore the mind upward to the grand associations and ideas which should fill that noble dome.

M. E. W. S.

A DAY WITH DUMAS.

THE day before yesterday, at nine o'clock

in the morning, I rang at the door of the little hotel occupied by Alexandre Dumas, on the Avenue de Villiers-one of the wide and handsome streets that the seventeenth arrondissement owes to the skill of Baron Haussmann.

The house has quite a commonplace aspect. At the first glance it looks small, and one can scarcely realize that it can shelter so much talent! But on entering the house one perceives at once that one is not in the house of an ordinary person. The severely simple decoration of the antechamber, the vases filled with exotic plants, the portières of Gobelin tapestry, the thick carpet with its dark, rich coloring, the old lamp of wroughtiron, Bonnington's great composition representing the Rue Royale in 1825-all that impresses the spectator greatly. It is the porch of a temple, not the entrance of a dwelling. And at all events the god does not keep you waiting. Dumas likes to know at once the name of the indiscreet person who comes to disturb him, so he conceals himself behind the folds of the portière. Thence he can see the visitor without being seen himself, and a slight sign dictates his reply to the valet who has admitted you.

In spite of the early hour, I knew that I would find the great author already up and dressed. He rises earlier than any one else in Paris. On the other hand, there are very few who retire earlier.

"I do not think that I have gone to bed after ten o'clock more than twice during eighteen years," he once said to me. "And I am the awakener of the whole house, I always light the fires in all the rooms. I have never been able to find a servant who would save me that trouble. I have often engaged servants who, finding me, when they came down-stairs, sitting on the floor before the hearth and arranging the fagots, have complimented me on my skill at that task, and who were evidently saying to themselves, 'If it amuses him we will not disturb him!' I even think of the kitchen-fires, so that, when my cook comes down to his domain, he has nothing to do but to put on the blazing fire the soup that I take every morning regularly

before setting to work. I have tried every thing-tea, coffee, chocolate-but it is soup which is honest food when it is well madewhich has gained the preference. No matter how strong it may be, or how much there is of it, it is easy to digest. It has, moreover, that advantage which doctors, who so rarely agree about any thing, unanimously attribute to it it whets the appetite, and puts the stomach into a good humor for the breakfast."

Having finished his soup, Dumas passes into his study, which occupies the groundfloor with the dining-room, the library, and the parlor. This study is a place where statuettes, manuscripts, pictures, books, and arms, are heaped together in picturesque disorder. Some are on the floor, others lie in confusion on the tables. There is scarcely enough room for the visitor's arm-chair and the cane-stool on which the dramatist always sits. But you will say he must have an iron bar in his spine to enable him to pass whole hours in a seat without a back, and without support of any kind. To this remark I will answer by stating the fashion in which Dumas works. He sits at his desk just long enough to concentrate his thoughts. Then he rises, walks about, returns to his manuscript, writes again, rises again, goes to kiss his children or to change the place of one of his beloved knick-knacks, takes up the pen once more, and so on.

In the middle of the room stands the desk-an enormous piece of furniture of the time of Louis XVI., with shelves, compartments, and drawers. On the top-shelf stands an iron candlestick with three branches-four less than the sacred candlestick of Jerusalem. Its three tapers, half burned out, show that Dumas does not believe the superstition of the "three lights," and that can be readily believed when we remember that he was lighted by them while writing "Monsieur Alphonse," and the preface to "Manon Lescaut." Beside this candlestick is a hand in bronze displayed on a black-marble pedestal. This hand is small-to call it short would be more correct. Its slender, tapering fingers, whose nails are distinguished by their perfect oval, are spread apart like the claws of an eagle. The palm is fleshy, large, and powerful. One can understand that this hand had grasped almost all styles, and had treated them all with an equal vigor. It is the hand of the elder Dumas, moulded at Puy from his corpse, in 1870.

After having shown me not without emotion-this eloquent bronze, the author drew out before my eyes the drawers of a small piece of furniture whose form recalled that of those cabinets in which coin-collectors keep their collections. I saw these hands in marble, in plaster, and in stearine; hands of men and hands of women; the ignoble hands of assassins and the slender hands of duchesses; the hand of Troppmann and that of the eldest Mademoiselle Damain-the perfection of its kind.

"I like hands," said Dumas. "They are more expressive to me than faces; I have had hands under my eyes which have revealed infamous actions, and others that have told me of great actions."

the desk, whereon I perceive a large sheaf of quill-pens, the only kind that the great author uses. It gives him a strange pleasure to hear them scream on the smooth, blue paper which he always uses. We must not forget the inkstand-a prosaic block of glass.

"It is the inkstand that belonged to the Countess Dash," said Dumas. "The poor woman bequeathed it to me in her will. I shall use it all my life. But I changed the inks. I am satisfied with my own; the publishers are not dissatisfied, and the theatrical managers seldom complain.-But what are you looking at?"

I had caught sight of a pile of letters ready for the mail. On the top envelope, which was larger than the others, I read distinctly, "To Monseigneur Dupanloup."

"Do you know what I am sending there to the eminent prelate?" asked the author of "La Dame aux Camélias." "Well, it is my preface to 'Manon Lescaut.' I ask him to read it, and to let me know what he thinks of it. As for the others, they are of no account. I receive an enormous number of letters, and I am weak enough to answer them. Most of them are alike. Out of ten letters of my correspondents, there are seven people, of whom I had never heard, who ask me for something, two people whom I know slightly who ask me for something, and one person whom I know very well, and whothanks me for something. You will say that the aid of a secretary would save me all this labor; that is true, but I have a horror of secretaries. I do not like that gentleman who rummages among your papers, keeps a copy of your correspondence, and who, after having lived on you during your life, continues to live on you after your death by selling to the papers, the day after your funeral, revelations more or less authentic concerning your private life. A secretary is rarely a friend; he is usually an enemy, who never forgives you for the kindness you have shown him, and who willingly allows it to be under-, stood that he has been your collaborator. As, before telling this lie, he waits until you are six feet underground, you cannot protest against the falsehood. One's best secretary is one's self. He at least does not betray you, and he has the great advantage of dying at the same time as yourself."

After having sent off his mail, Dumas works till noon. Four hours a day (and that not every day) have sufficed for him to produce in twenty years the books and the dramas which both worlds have read and applauded. It must not be imagined that he reaches at once the clear, sparkling, and imaginative style which is the distinguishing quality of his genius.

in book-form. The interest is not managed as it is in the works that are published in divisions, and in which the action advances by leaps. I thought at first that it was possible, but, while I was copying my manuscript for the fourth time-"

"You copied that huge volume four times over? You are jesting."

"I am telling the truth. It is by copying my productions again and again that I give them those qualities which people are kind enough to attribute to them. I find each time changes to make, expressions to modify, incidents to make more dramatic, without counting all the superfluities which I cut out. These successive revisions, made word by | word, pen in hand, are wearisome, fastidious even, but I will never renounce them, for I appreciate too well what I owe to them. Whenever I deliver up one of my manuscripts into the hands of Michel Levy, I have frantic desires to tear it away from him and to copy it all over again."

I have said that there are arms in Dumas's study. The one which he takes great pride in showing is the breech-loading gun constructed by Devisme, to be used in La Femme de Claude." At first I took this instrument of destruction for a fowling-piece, and I asked Dumas if he was a sportsman.

"Not at all," he answered. "While I admit that it is right to kill an adulterous man or woman, I do not admit that it is right to kill a rabbit."

Dumas pointed out to me an admirable picture of still-life which hung over the mantel-piece of his study.

"Vollon paints marvelously," he said. "Well, he can do still better. His genius is lazy; it needs a stimulant. It is like a horse whose action is only developed under the influence of the spur. I had reflected for a long time how to get from Vollon a Vollon superior to himself, when one day, as I was walking along the Rue d'Amsterdam, I saw, in the window of a dealer in second-hand furniture, the frame of carved wood in which the picture is set. Look at it!"

I examined the frame, whose artistic beauty had escaped me, and I uttered a cry of admiration at the sight of its two wreaths of flowers, wrought with unequaled finish, and caught together at the top by a slight knot of ribbons.

"I bought that frame," continued Dumas, "I had it regilded, and sent it to Vollon, with these words: You will be very good if you will put in this the dish of fruit that you promised me, and which you have not yet commenced.' To execute a picture which would make that frame forgotten, was not an easy thing to do. One does not put

The following anecdote will prove the vinegar into a silver flask. Vollon undercontrary:

stood that he would have to surpass himself to prevent his canvas from being annihilated by its setting, and you see he has succeeded."

Time passes swiftly in such a house and with such a host. The clock struck the hour of noon while I was admiring a composition by Madame Lemaire, one of Chaplin's best pupils.

"You must breakfast with us," said Dumas. "I have the usual disease of collectors, I like to show my picture-gallery, so I will keep that for dessert. And then I will intro