he street corner,
sitting quite still and gazing into the distance. As soon as
he caught sight of me, he began to move his tail; then as I
drew nearer, he rose and walked backward and forward across
the pavement with his back arched and his tail in the air.
When I reached him, he jumped up upon me as a dog would have
done, and bounded and played round me as I walked towards the
house; but when I was close to it he dashed in at full speed.
Two seconds after, I used to see my mother at the door.

Never again in this world, but perhaps in the next, I shall
see her standing waiting for me at the door.

That is what I was thinking of, dear readers, when the name
of Mysouff brought back all these recollections; so you
understand why I did not answer Madame Lamarque's question.

The life of Dumas after 1830 need not be followed step by step;
indeed, for lack of memoirs, to follow it is by no means easy.

Dumas, by dint of successful plays, and later of successful novels,
earned large sums of money--L40,000 in one year, it is said. He
traveled far and wide, and compiled books of travel. In the forties,
before the Revolution of 1848, he built a kind of Abbotsford of his
own, named "Monte Cristo," near St. Germains, and joyously ruined
himself. "Monte Cristo," like Abbotsford, has been described as a
palace. Now, Abbotsford is so far from being a palace that Mr. Hope
Scott, when his wife, Scott's granddaughter, inherited the place, was
obliged to build an additional wing.

At Monte Cristo Dumas kept but one man-servant, Michel (his "Tom
Purdie"), who was groom, keeper, porter, gardener, and everything. Nor
did Dumas ruin himself by paying exorbitant prices for poor lands, as
Scott did. His collection of books and curios was no rival for that of
Abbotsford. But like Scott, he gave away money to right and left, and
he kept open house. He was eaten up by parasites,--beggars, poor
greedy hangers-on of letters, secretaries, above all by tribes of
musical people. On every side money flowed from him; hard as he
worked, largely as he earned, he spent more. His very dog brought in
thirteen other dogs to bed and board. He kept monkeys, cats, eagles, a
vulture, a perfect menagerie. His own account of these guests may be
read in "My Pets"; perhaps the most humorous, good-humored, and
amusing of all his works.

The Revolution of 1848 impoverished him and drove him from Monte
Cristo;