ve never tasted elsewhere. Its
recuperative qualities were vouched for by such men as Alfred de Musset,
Balzac, and Alexandre Dumas. The former partook of it whenever it was on
the bill; the others often came, after a spell of hard work, to recruit
their mental and bodily strength with it, and maintained that nothing
set them up so effectually.

These three men were particularly interesting to me, and their names
will frequently recur in these notes. I was very young, and, though
perhaps not so enthusiastic about literature as I was about painting and
sculpture, it would indeed have been surprising if I had remained
indifferent to the fascination experienced by almost every one in their
society: for let me state at once that the great poet, the great
playwright, and the great novelist were even something more than men of
genius; they were men of the world, and gentlemen who thought it worth
their while to be agreeable companions. Unlike Victor Hugo, Lamartine,
Chateaubriand, and Eugene Sue, all of whom I knew about the same time,
they did not deem it necessary to stand mentally aloof from ordinary
mortals. Alfred de Musset and Alexandre Dumas were both very handsome,
but each in a different way. With his tall, slim figure, auburn wavy
hair and beard, blue eyes, and finely-shaped mouth and nose, De Musset
gave one the impression of a dandy cavalry officer in mufti, rather than
of a poet: the "Miss Byron" which Preault the sculptor applied to him
was, perhaps, not altogether undeserved, if judged intellectually and
physically at first sight. There was a feminine grace about all his
movements. The "Confessions d'un Enfant du Siecle," his play, "Frederic
and Bernerette," were apt to stir the heart of women rather than that of
men; but was it not perhaps because the majority of the strong sex
cannot be stirred except with a pole? And the poet who was so sensitive
to everything rough as to leave invariably the coppers given to him in
exchange, was unlikely to take voluntarily to such an unwieldy and
clumsy instrument to produce his effects.[4]

[Footnote 4: This reluctance to handle coppers proved a sore
grief to his more economical and less fastidious brother Paul,
who watched like a guardian angel over his junior, whom he
worshipped. It is on record that he only said a harsh word to
him once in his life, namely, when they wanted to make him,
Paul, a member of the Academ