caused me always to take a great interest in him and to hear frequently about him I might almost say ever since my childhood.
Every Sunday morning after hearing mass in the wooden church of the Trinity in the Rue Clichy, which has been pulled down and rebuilt, I used to start off furnished with an exeat in due form from the principal of the school, who conducted me to the Lycée Bonaparte, and quickly emerged from the Rue Chaptol, where the scholastic, establishment, which has now been replaced by private houses, was situated, in order to find my way to Batignolles, some distance off, where my family resided, and running more than walking, I used to reach the Rue de Boulogne, now, I believe, the Rue Ballu. In that same street, the Rue de Boulogne, near the top as you go from the Rue Blanche on the right, and pass a row of small private hotels, more or less artistic, with frontages in the Renaissance style, and « terra-cottaed » according to the latest bad taste, with windows of doubtful mediajval style, stood an almost imperceptible house, with one window on the ground floor, one on the first floor, and a garret at the top. A story recently resuscitated says that Old Dumas (the only one, as Lecomte de Lisle said thoughtlessly when he was informed that he was about
