He said to me:
“Hold them back. They will have to become of age before they will learn that one should not go up hill on the gallop.”
When I asked, “What is it that urges them to run this way,” he replied:
“They are like men. They want to hurry and get through with whatever annoys them.”
Once Alexandre Dumas came to call on me at the Grand Hotel, and from that time on the people about the house looked upon me as a being apart, for it was commonly said that Alexandre Dumas paid as few visits as the Queen of England.
The last time that I saw him was in Paris, Rue Ampère, where he lived in a magnificent appartement.
I remember that there was with him a certain M. Singer, an old friend of Dumas’, who asked him if he was “indiscreet” and who rose to take leave. Dumas took him by the arm and extending his free hand to me, said:
“Indiscreet! Certainly not. All my friends ought to know Loie and be fond of her.”
When I took leave of him he kissed me on the forehead and gave me a big photograph, enlarged after a portrait of him when he was a child. On the photograph were these words:
“From your little friend Alexandre.”