“I am going to Paris—will you come too?”
I accepted the invitation, and it was thus that on the spur of the moment, for the first time, I visited Paris, where I stayed one week. I had, needless to say, brought my manuscript, and after spending the first two days in sight-seeing and admiring, from Notre-Dame to the Louvre, and from the Place Vendôme to the great Arc de Triomphe, we went, as was proper, and paid our respects to the good Dumas.
“Well, and that Mireille,” he asked me, “is she finished?”
“She is finished,” I said, “and here she is—in manuscript.”
“Come now, since you are here, you will read me a song.”
And when I had read the first canto, “Go on!” said Dumas.
I read the second, then the third, then the fourth canto.
“That is enough for to-day,” said the good man. “Come to-morrow at the same time, we will continue the reading; but this much I may assure you,” he added, “if your work keeps up to this level, you may win finer laurels than at present you have any idea of.”
I returned the next day and read four more cantos, and the day after we finished the poem.
That same day (August 26, 1856) Adolphe Dumas wrote to the editor of the Gazette de France the following letter: