during the last years of the Second Empire -a look which said: "We are Parisians, and we know how to be polite; but you are here in a disagreeable situation. It is your own fault; you will learn a lesson you will not soon forget."

He questioned me with bland condescension, and the nonchalance of his manner contrasted strangely with the supercilious expression of his face, and made me think of Joseph Hermans in his inimitable rôle of Mephistopheles in "Faust."

But the redoubtable Delaage! This face was wreathed in the smiles of a happy-go-lucky quarter of an hour of mingled apathy and expectation. He was the type incarnate of the boulevardier journalist of the period. He had consented to leave the precincts of his favorite boulevard in the center of Paris and come to the Faubourg St.-Germain, in the hope of picking up a bon mot to repeat the next day to his confrères of the press or to some witty countess at a dinner-party in the Champs-Elysées.

Sylvestre St.-Etienne was an elderly man with a distinguished face and the manners of a fashionable Parisian; but he looked blasé, indifferent, and he, too, had come to please the hostess.

Just before I took my seat at the piano a short, slender man of middle age arrived, who proved to be Léon Gastinel, the well-known composer of religious music. He had just come from a rehearsal of one of his masses to be given at Notre Dame and looked nervous and worried; and he, in his turn, regarded me with an air of absolute indifference. I was now made aware of the sort of audience I had to deal with; yet never in my life did I feel less anxious. "If I fail to interest them," I thought, "matters will be no worse than they were." I took my seat at the piano much as if I were surrounded by a company of old friends.

I had finished my first improvisation when a trifling incident occurred that suddenly changed the attitude of the apathetic audience. Samuel David, who was sitting near the piano, at my right, rose from his

seat and exclaimed, "What a hand for the piano!" an exclamation that caused Léon Gastinel and Henri Delaage to come forward.

Then the words, "C'est extraordinaire!" could be heard, and if some wand of enchantment had been waved over the company, the effect could not have been greater.

"No art can compete with life," says Henry James; but if he had written, "No art can compete with nature," the saying would have been just as true.

I had played once, and the company sat apparently unmoved, but now Samuel David's remark had wrought an instant change in my audience. When I began my second improvisation all eyes were riveted on the keyboard. Several persons stood up around me, where they could see my hands, and it seemed as if they were there to use their eyes instead of their ears; so I determined to do my utmost to induce them to listen. With this end in view I made my third number, a long adagio, so simple that the execution offered no technical difficulties, and I soon became aware that they were listening, to the music.

As soon as the recital was over, Delaage, in great good humor, patted me on the back, and then, eyeing the company with malicious raillery, said to Samuel David, "Suppose you take your seat at the piano and give us piece requiring stretches of an octave and a half with each hand"; then, in a burst of laughter, to Gastinel, "Think of an unknown stranger coming to us with a surprise like that!"

His manner and looks were so droll that we all laughed with him; his jokes at the expense of the company were amusing beyond anything I had ever heard, and, indeed, a dull evening was not possible with the presence of such a railleur.

Sylvestre St.-Etienne came to me and muttered some compliments in my ear, and Mme. de Valois was no longer anxious about the success of the evening; she had already begun to lay plans for receptions and dinner-parties at the houses of

her friends in the faubourg, but these things I wished to avoid as much as possible, my mind being set not on fashionable salons, but on literary and musical celebrities.

Henri Delaage, who was now a friend, said he would present me to Alexandre Dumas père, whom he knew well, while Samuel David, who from that evening became one of the best friends I have ever had, said he wished very much to present me to Auber.

AT that time Dumas occupied a handsome suite of rooms on the Boulevard Malesherbes, one of the newest and most fashionable avenues, and not far from the Madeleine.

Before arriving at Dumas's, on the evening fixed, Delaage prepared me for the sort of man I was about to meet.

"You see," he explained, "it is not for music we are going there; it is to introduce you to the real life of Paris. Otherwise you will never know what is going on. Paris is vast, and it is necessary to get at the center at once. You will meet in Dumas's salon many distinguished people. He welcomes every one who has talent, and he will not bore you by asking you to play."

"Then why present me?" "You don't understand. Dumas is a great favorite, besides being a celebrated author. Samuel David and Auber will do all that is necessary for your art, but going to see Dumas this evening will do more to make you known in Paris in one day than the others could do in two weeks. He has no piano; music would interfere with conversation, and, besides, let me say, he cares more for society than he does for art. It is the individual he wants to study; in this he is like me. What is art, anyhow? Art is the expression of the man. When you know the man, you know all."

It was a relief to be assured that no one would ask me to entertain the company with music, and that I could enjoy the evening unmolested, the thing of all I liked most.

As soon as I entered the room I real

ized the romantic atmosphere of the place. In the center sat the huge figure of the host, taking up every inch of space in a great arm-chair, and looking absolutely insouciant, as if he were living by the hour. Hardly had I taken a good look at the extraordinary figure of Dumas than my eye was caught by the wonderful lifesized scenes from "Faust" painted on the walls, pictures the like of which I have seen nowhere else; and as there were no other decorations in the room, these scenes from Gounod's opera gave me a most singular impression. They dominated the salon. It was impossible not to see them. They loomed up in the background and gave color to the room; they imparted a note of mystery to the guests; they stood for the sensations and sentiments of the epoch; they harmonized with the social and political atmosphere of the time; and the whole scene formed a kind of tableau vivant that symbolized and summed up the art, the politics, the music, the fashion, the society, and the ethics of France during the last days of the empire.

The evening to me was like a tuningfork that emitted the key-note to the indescribable potpourri of social and intellectual decadence that began about 1860 and culminated ten years later. Never in the history of a great city or nation was the symbol more perfect, the setting more complete. Dumas sat like some bonze of a Buddhist temple, while his guests stood or moved about, conversing with him or among themselves. A famous comedian from the Gymnase exchanged jokes with a tragedian from the Théâtre Français; a witty journalist was conversing with a gifted singer from the Théâtre Lyric; an artist with flowing hair and a huge pincenez was begging a professional beauty to give him a series of sittings for her portrait; a novelist on the qui vive for copy seemed to see, hear, and appropriate everything and everybody all at once. A young poetess and an aged dramatist were discussing the latest plays. A Russian countess, tall, slender, insinuating, clad all in black, made me think of a character I had seen in a fantastic pantomime. She glided

about mysteriously, and, stopping at Dumas's chair, placed her long, thin hand on his shoulder for some moments, like a ghostly visitor with a fatal message, and then glided away. Austrians, Italians, Germans, mingled their accent with the accent of the true Parisian. But Dumas was more than a Parisian: he was a cosmopolitan at a time when there were no cosmopolitan Frenchmen, and he gave me the impression of a man who had seen life in every aspect. He might as well have said in so many words: "My mind is made up; do not give yourself the trouble to tell me what is going on in England or America or in the country of the grand Turk or among the nabobs of India; I know as much as they know. You see me sitting here contented enough as things are; all these charming women of talent are my friends [as a matter of fact, there was not an old woman in the room]; a man is not the author of books like 'Monte Cristo' without some recompense."

No one would have taken him for a celebrated author. He had the air of a man who had done nothing all his life but invent, taste, and prepare luxurious dishes at a restaurant patronized by wealthy gourmets. He was the greatest enigma in the literary world of Paris, for who has ever been able to explain just how and when all the books that bear his name were written? He loved the mysterious for its own sake. He told me how he had dabbled in magnetic and mesmeric experiments; he spoke with absolute conviction of the power of magnetism, and declared that the whole of life and society was, to his way of thinking, nothing but a manifestation of magnetic force. His talk was like the man himself, calm, nonchalant, without a trace of emotion. He was so far above discussion as to ignore it. When he was speaking, he seemed to imply by his look and manner that it made no difference to him whether you believed what he was saying or not. At times I thought that even a slight effort at conversation bored him, and yet he seemed to be moved by a spirit of curiosity concerning my artistic career.

All at once he asked me what put it into my head to come to Paris, and when I told him my plans, he added:

"With a musical gift you will not find it difficult to see the world; you will find all doors open."

I said I had found that to be true, but it was not music that occupied my thoughts, it being the one thing that troubled me least. I intended to see the world and give as little of my time to music as possible; that a gift for improvisation was all very fine in its way, but ephemeral and illusory, a mere amusement for others.

Dumas now became more animated. He said:

"If I had my life to live over again, I think I should elect to be a virtuoso, like Paganini. You are too young to have heard him. They said the devil was in his fiddle. They were stupid; the devil was in him," and Dumas laughed for the first time that evening. "Ce satané Italien," he said, "did what he pleased with his audience: he made people laugh and cry; he made them move their arms and nod their heads in time with the music. And then the man was still more amusing than his playing, and that is something. The artists of to-day are uninteresting. Still, there is Liszt; he is more habile. When he was a young man, beginning to make his name known, he used to promenade on the boulevards with a large red umbrella over his head while he held an open book in his hands. People stopped and asked, 'Who is that?' 'Franz Liszt, the celebrated pianist,' was the reply; and by these devices he made his name known even on the boulevards."

"Perhaps he had taken a hint from Eugène Sue, who wore high red heels on his boots," I ventured.

"Perhaps; but Sue would have turned himself into an authentic Mephistopheles, when he was only a polichinelle du boulevard. I counseled him to renounce it; there was only one man who could promenade on red heels, and that was Paganini. You must always possess the air of your rôle; without that one falls

good humor would be reëstablished, buc she was rudely deceived.

into ridicule." Then he added, with an interrogating look, "The piano is an instrument ingrat?"

General Geffrard, with the best inten

"Why did you learn it?"

"I did not learn it. It came to me naturally, and I let it develop as it would. I regret not having taken to the violin instead!"

Then he remarked:

"I have no piano here.. Music interferes with conversation."

I looked about the room; there was no instrument to be seen, and I congratulated myself on being entertained instead of having to do the entertaining.

Dumas, when I knew him, was not interested in any particular phase of art. He lived to be amused by society, but despite all he experienced some disagreeable moments, as, for instance, his meeting with General Geffrard, the ex-president of Hayti. Mme. Audouard described to me the memorable meeting that occurred at her house. The two had never met, and the ex-president, who was a negro, wished very much to meet his illustrious cousin.

General Geffrard, being present at one of Mme. Audouard's regular Friday evening receptions, and not seeing Dumas, the hostess promised to have the novelist there for dinner the next evening. The general was the first to arrive, happy to think that at last he was about to make the agreeable acquaintance of the author of the "Three Musketeers." Shortly after the general's arrival, in walked Dumas, his face wreathed in smiles, looking a very Bacchus of gaiety and goodhumor; but hardly had he crossed the salon when his keen, ever-observing eye rested for a second on the black face of General Geffrard. There was a shock. The guests instantly perceived the blunder. committed by the hostess in having invited the two to meet, and not only to meet, but to dine together at the same table. Mme. Audouard, at her wits' end to know what to do, hastened the guests into the diningroom in the hope that with the champagne

tionship with Dumas; but the novelist replied in short, dry phrases, while he scowled at the general. The guests were ill at ease. Mme. Audouard tried her best to change the subject, her guests did their utmost to aid her; but all to no purpose; the dinner was a failure. It was hurried over, Dumas taking his leave at the earliest opportunity.

"Ah," said the general when Dumas left the house, "your great man is much more of a mulatto than he thinks he is: he hates the negro."

The novelist had imagined that Mme. Audouard had invited the ex-president for the sole purpose of humiliating him; but the fact was she never doubted that he would be pleased to meet the general.

Mme. Audouard had many interesting stories to tell of Dumas's passion for preparing tempting dishes for his friends, an art in which he took great delight. He would go into the kitchen and work there for hours, cooking dainty meals as a pleasant relaxation from his literary work.

I saw Dumas several times in his own salon and at the houses of friends, but a dinner he gave at his apartment-for all I know, it may have been the last of the kind-struck me as typical of the epoch and the hour, and symbolized once more the extraordinary affinity between the pleasures of the intellect and the pleasures of the table. On this occasion there were guests present from the aristocratic Faubourg St.-Germain and representatives of the art, musical, and literary worlds of Paris and elsewhere, and famous beauties, admired almost as much for their intellect and wit as for their personal attractions. Dumas began to prepare the dinner early in the afternoon. Everything went smoothly from the very beginning. The guests arrived exactly at the hour, the whole company being animated in advance in anticipation of the amusement and gaiety that were certain to follow. The host, with his sleeves rolled up and

attired in the costume of a real chef de cuisine, greeted his guests for a moment previous to their entrance into the dining

room.

It was not long before Dumas found means to begin the merrymaking. He had prepared more than twenty dishes for this dinner-party, and between each course he had some device to encourage his guests to display their wit, to say nothing of their knowledge of cookery and their taste in wines. He had in his cellar a rare stock of wine of the best vintages, and the table was supplied with the wine that suited the course being served. It should be noted that Dumas's dishes were so highly spiced that many of the guests could hardly satisfy their thirst, a circumstance that, in the host's eyes, only added extra gaiety to the occasion.

All of a sudden he shouted:

"I will give a dinner in honor of the one who guesses which wine is the oldest served during the repast."

Now, there were several of the guests known as excellent judges of wine, and those without an exception took it for granted that Dumas would serve the oldest during the courses when fine old Bordeaux or Burgundy is usually served. But he reversed the order of things. He did his best to bewilder. A discussion soon began on the question at issue, and the company, especially the guests prone to look at the comical side of things, was kept in roars of laughter, the Comte de D

becoming toward the last so confused in his judgment that his face had a bewildered and droll expression most amusing to look at. When it came to the critical time, as many thought, exclamations could be heard, such as, "It is for this course"; or, "No, I'll lay a wager it will be for the course after the next." The count, guessing at the age of the Château Margaux at that moment under discussion, made a mistake of several years, while others made still wilder guesses for other wines. The bare announcement that such guessing would be the order of the evening bewildered at the outset some of the most critical gourmets present, and so cleverly did the host reverse the usual custom in such matters that it took a long time before the right guess was made, and quite by chance, by a foreigner, a Polish countess with the strange name of Dindonoska, which would mean, transposed into English, Turkeyoska. Amid peals of laughter Dumas announced the honors of the evening for this lady.

The dinner was given in due time. In the middle of the banquet the company was thrown into spasms of gaiety by the appearance of Dumas himself, emerging from the kitchen with an immense dindon (turkey), with a huge paper tail on which was painted the coat of arms of the countess. Before the plate of the Countess Dindonoska was a bottle of Château Margaux of the vintage that the countess had correctly guessed.