of electors at Joigny, he was challenged by a M. de
Bonneliere to reconcile his title of republican with his title of
Marquis de la Pailleterie, and the fact of his having been a secretary
to the Duc d'Orleans, although he had never occupied so important a
position in the Duc d'Orleans' household. His reply was simply scathing,
and I give it in full as the papers of the day reproduced it. "No
doubt," he said, in an off-hand, bantering way, "I was formerly called
the Marquis de la Pailleterie, which was my father's name, and of which
I was very proud, being unable then to claim a glorious one of my own
make. But at present, when I am somebody, I call myself Alexandre Dumas
and nothing more; and everybody knows me, you among the rest--you, you
absolute nobody, who have merely come to be able to boast to-morrow,
after insulting me to-night, that you have known the great Dumas. If
such was your ambition, you might have satisfied it without failing in
the common courtesies of a gentleman."

When the applause which the reply provoked had subsided, Dumas went on:
"There is also no doubt about my having been a secretary to the Duc
d'Orleans, and that I have received all kinds of favours from his
family. If you, citizen, are ignorant of the meaning of the term, 'the
memory of the heart,' allow me at least to proclaim here in my loudest
voice, that I am not, and that I entertain towards this royal family all
the devotion an honourable man can feel."

It is, however, not my intention to sketch Alexandre Dumas as a
politician, for which career I considered him singularly unfit; but the
speech from which I extracted the foregoing contains a few lines which,
more than thirty-five years after they were spoken, cannot fail to
strike the reader with his marvellous foresight. "Geographically," he
said, commenting upon the political state of Europe, "Prussia has the
form of a serpent, and, like it, she seems to be asleep, and to gather
her strength in order to swallow everything around her--Denmark,
Holland, Belgium, and, when she shall have swallowed all that, you will
find that Austria will be swallowed in its turn, and perhaps, alas,
France also."

The last words, as may be imagined, provoked a storm of hisses;
nevertheless, he kept his audience spellbound until midnight.

A parliamentary candidate, however eloquent, who flings his constituents
into the river when they happen to annoy him, must have been a novelty
even in those da