I stared with such rude surprise at him that he began to laugh.
"It astonishes you to see me handle the brush so badly," said he, "after having heard, maybe, that I handled a sword passably? What would you have me do? I have an active hand and I must keep it always occupied somehow.... But come, as evidently, after the question you put to me just now, you have nothing to say to the painter, what do you want with the general?"
"I am the son of your old comrade-at-arms in Egypt, General Dumas."
He turned round quickly towards me, and looked at me earnestly; then, after a moment's silence, he said—
"By the powers, so you are! You are the very image of him." Tears immediately came into his eyes, and, throwing down his brush, he held out his hand to me, which I longed to kiss rather than to shake.
"Ah! You remember him, then?"
"Remember him! I should think I do: the handsomest and the bravest man in the army! You are the very spit of him, my lad: what a model he would have made any painter!"
"Yes, you are right; I remember him perfectly."
"And what brings you to Paris, my dear boy? for, if my memory serves me, you lived with your mother, in some village or other."
"True, General; but my mother is getting on in years, and we are poor."