dges as they journeyed toward Paris, and sold them to dealers
in game, and thus paid their expenses from day to day.

Leuven received him with open arms, and gave the delighted youth a
ticket to hear Talma. He was privileged to go behind the scenes between
the acts, and converse with the actors. He was filled with delight.
Talma saw him, and at once pronounced him a genius. In his memoirs, he
declares that he said, "Alexander Dumas, I baptize you a poet, in the
name of Shakspeare, Corneille, and Schiller. Return to your native
village, enter your study, and the angel of Poesy will find you there,
and will raise you by the hair, like the Prophet Habakkuk, and transport
you to the spot where duty lies before you."

Alexander soon came to Paris again, not this time supporting himself by
his gun, but with money which his mother gave him. He had letters of
recommendation to some of the old generals of the empire, and installed
himself comfortably in the _Place des Italiens_. Some of the men to whom
he had letters received him coldly, but in General Foy he found a warm
friend and protector. He introduced him to the notice of the duke of
Orleans, who finding that the young man possessed a good hand-writing,
which, by the way, he preserves to this day, he made him one of his
secretaries, and gave him a salary of twelve hundred francs. Alexander
now considered himself on the high road to fortune. He was in Paris--and
with a salary! It was small, to be sure, but he was where he could
frequent the theaters, and his patron was a man of eminence. He had
little to do, and read Shakspeare, Scott, Goethe, and Schiller. He said
to General Foy, "I live now by my hand-writing, but I assure you that
one day I will live by my pen." This shows that he looked forward to a
literary life--that he foresaw, in a measure, his after success in
literature. He soon began to write, and some of his plays were so well
liked by the managers of different theaters, that they bought them and
brought them out. He had already, while a secretary, begun to receive
money for his writings. He wrote for his mother who came up to Paris,
and the couple took up their residence in a humble apartment in the
faubourg St. Denis. For a time after this, his efforts were attended
with poor success, but he had the good fortune to please the
director-general of the theaters by a tragedy, and he promised him that
it should be brought out. Before this was done the director left