disagreeable to any one;
even when provoked, he managed to disarm his adversary with an epigram,
rather than wound him. One evening, a professor at one of the provincial
universities had been dining at the Cafe de Paris, as the guest of Roger
de Beauvoir. He had a magnificent cameo breastpin. It elicited the
admiration of every one, and notably that of Dumas. He said at once that
it was a portrait of Julius Caesar.

"Are you an archaeologist?" asked the professor.

"I," replied Dumas, "I am absolutely nothing."

"Still," insisted the visitor, "you perceived at once that it was a
portrait of Julius Caesar."

"That is not very wonderful. Caesar is essentially a Roman type; and,
besides, I know Caesar as well as most people, and perhaps better."

To tell a professor of history--especially a provincial one--that one
knows Caesar as well as most people and perhaps better, is naturally to
provoke the question, "In what capacity?" As a matter of course the
question followed immediately.

"In the capacity of Caesar's historian," said Dumas imperturbably.

We were getting interested, because we foresaw that the professor would,
in a few minutes, get the worst of it. Dumas' eyes were twinkling with
mischief.

"You have written a history of Caesar?" asked the learned man.

"Yes; why not?"

"Well, you won't mind my being frank with you: it is because it has
never been mentioned in the world of savans."

"The world of savans never mentions me."

"Still, a history of Caesar ought to make somewhat of a sensation."

"Mine has not made any. People read it, and that was all. It is the
books which it is impossible to read that make a sensation: they are
like the dinners one cannot digest; the dinners one digests are not as
much as thought of next morning." That was Dumas' way of putting a
would-be impertinent opponent _hors de combat_, and his repartees were
frequently drawn from the pursuit he loved as well, if not better than
literature, namely, cooking. It may sound exaggerated, but I verily
believe that Dumas took a greater pride in concocting a stew than in
constructing a novel or a play. Very often, in the middle of the dinner,
he would put down his knife and fork. "Ca, c'est rudement bon: il faut
que je m'en procure la recette." And Guepet was sent for to authorize
Dumas to descend to the lower regions and have a consultation with his
chefs. He was the only one of the _habitues_ who had ever been in the
kitchens of