"Mysouff just means Mysouff, Madame Lamarque."
"It is a cat's name, then?"
"Certainly, since Mysouff the First was so-called. It is true, Madame Lamarque, you never knew Mysouff." And I became so thoughtful that Madame Lamarque was kind enough to withdraw quietly, without asking any questions about Mysouff the First.
That name had taken me back to fifteen years ago, when my mother was still living. I had then the great happiness of having a mother to scold me sometimes. At the time I speak of, I held a situation in the service of the Duc d'Orléans, with a salary of 1500 francs. My work occupied me from ten in the morning until five in the afternoon. We had a cat in those days, whose name was Mysouff. This cat had missed his vocation; he ought to have been a dog. Every morning I started for my office at half-past nine, and came back every evening at half-past five. Every morning Mysouff followed me to the corner of a particular street, and every evening I found him in the same street, at the same corner, waiting for me. Now the curious thing was that on the days when I had found some amusement elsewhere, and was not coming home to dinner, it was of no use to open the door for Mysouff to go and meet me. Mysouff, in the attitude of the serpent with its tail in its mouth, refused to stir from his cushion. On the other hand, on the days I did come, Mysouff would scratch at the door until some one opened it for him. My mother was very fond of Mysouff; she used to call him her barometer.
"Mysouff marks my good and my bad weather," my dear mother would say: "the days you come in are my days of sunshine; my rainy days are when you stay away."
When I came home I used to see Mysouff at the street corner, sitting quite still and gazing into the distance. As soon as he caught sight of me, he began to move his tail; then as I drew nearer, he rose and walked backward and forward across the pavement with his back arched and his tail in the air. When I reached him, he jumped up upon me as a dog would have done, and bounded and played round me as I walked towards the house; but when I was close to it he dashed in at full speed. Two seconds after, I used to see my mother at the door.
Never again in this world, but perhaps in the next, I shall see her standing waiting for me at the door.
That is what I was thinking of, dear readers, when the name of Mysouff brought back all these recollections; so you understand why I did not answer Madame Lamarque's question.
The life of Dumas after 1830 need not be followed step by step; indeed, for lack of memoirs, to follow it is by no means easy.