riodically or when in company. It was what the French have so aptly
termed "la joie de vivre," albeit that they rarely associate the phrase
with any one not in the spring of life. With Dumas it was chronic until
a very few months before his death. I remember calling upon him shortly
after the dinner of which I spoke just now. He had taken up his quarters
at Saint-Germain, and come to Paris only for a few days. "Is monsieur at
home?" I said to the servant.

"He is in his study, monsieur," was the answer. "Monsieur can go in."

At that moment I heard a loud burst of laughter from the inner
apartment, so I said, "I would sooner wait until monsieur's visitors are
gone."

"Monsieur has no visitors; he is working," remarked the servant with a
smile. "Monsieur Dumas often laughs like this at his work."

It was true enough, the novelist was alone, or rather in company with
one of his characters, at whose sallies he was simply roaring.

Work, in fact, was a pleasure to him, like everything else he undertook.
One day he had been out shooting, between Villers-Cotterets and
Compiegne, since six in the morning, and had killed twenty-nine birds.
"I am going to make up the score and a half, and then I'll have a sleep,
for I feel tired," he said. When he had killed his thirtieth partridge
he slowly walked back to the farm, where his son and friends found him
about four hours later, toasting himself before the fire, his feet on
the andirons, and twirling his thumbs.

"What are you sitting there for like that?" asked his son.

"Can't you see? I am resting."

"Did you get your sleep?"

"No, I didn't; it's impossible to sleep here. There is an infernal
noise; what with the sheep, the cows, the pigs, and the rest, there is
no chance of getting a wink."

"So you have been sitting here for the last four hours, twirling your
thumbs?"

"No, I have been writing a piece in one act." The piece in question was
"Romulus," which he gave to Regnier to have it read at the
Comedie-Francaise, under a pseudonym, and as the work of a young unknown
author. It was accepted without a dissentient vote.

It is a well-known fact, vouched for by the accounts of the Compagnie
du Chemin de Fer de l'Ouest, that during the three years Dumas lived at
Saint-Germain, the receipts increased by twenty thousand francs per
annum. Of course, it has been objected that railways being then in their
infancy the increment would have been just the same without Dumas'