"Dumas," he wrote, "had no more need to husband his strength and his vitality than a river has to economise with its waters, and it seemed, in fact, that he held in his strong hands inexhaustible urns, whence flowed a stream always clear and limpid. In what formidable metal had he been cast? Once he took it into his head to take his son, Alexandre, to the masked ball of Grados, at the Barrière Montparnasse, and, attired as a postilion, the great man danced all night without resting for a moment, and held women with his outstretched arm, like a Hercules. When he returned home in the morning, he found that his postilion's breeches had, through the swelling of the muscles, become impossible to remove; so Alexandre was obliged to cut them into strips with a penknife. After that what did the historian of the Mousquetaires do? Do you think he chose his good clean sheets or a warm bath? He chose work! And having taken some _bouillon_, set himself down before his writing paper, which he continued to fill with adventures till the evening, with as much 'go' and spirit as if he had come from calm repose.
"Nature has given up making that kind of man; by way of a change, she turns out poets, who, having composed a single sonnet, pass the rest of their lives contemplating themselves and--their sonnets."
Prodigious! It is gratifying to think that this indefatigable worker had always two sincere admirers--himself and his son. The latter, it is true, would have his joke at the former's expense. "My father," remarked the son, "is so vain that he would be ready to hang on to the back of his own carriage, to make people believe he kept a black servant." Notwithstanding, the two loved each other tenderly. Innumerable anecdotes bear witness to the paternal fondness of the one, the filial devotion of the other. Yet their relation was more that of two sworn friends, as is so touchingly expressed in these lines from the "Père Prodigue":--
"... I have sought your affection, more than your obedience and respect.... To have all in common, heart as well as purse, to give and to tell each other everything, such has been our device. We have lost, it seems, several hundred thousands of francs; but this we have gained--the power of counting always on one another, thou on me, I on thee, and of being ready always to die for each other. That is the most important thing between father and son."