talks of his son who has been out there for the last ten, and who has just
returned home. There is the Italian comtesse of sixty summers, who dresses
like a girl of sixteen and smokes a cigar after dinner,--if there are not
too many strangers in the room. She terms a stranger any one whom she has
not seen at least once before. The little fat, neckless man, with the great
bald head, fringed below the ears with hair, is M. Duval. He is a dramatic
author--the author of a hundred and sixty plays. He does not intrude
himself on your notice, but when you speak to him on literary matters he
fixes a pair of tiny, sloe-like eyes on you, and talks affably of his
collaborateurs.

I was soon deeply interested in M. Duval, and I invited him to come to the
_café_ after dinner. I paid for his coffee and liqueurs, I offered him
a choice cigar. He did not smoke; I did. It was, of course, inevitable that
I should find out that he had not had a play produced for the last twenty
years, but then the aureole of the hundred and sixty was about his poor
bald head. I thought of the chances of life, he alluded to the war; and so
this unpleasantness was passed over, and we entered on more genial subjects
of conversation. He had written plays with everybody; his list of
collaborateurs was longer than any list of lady patronesses for an English
county ball; there was no literary kitchen in which he had not helped to
dish up. I was at once amazed and delighted. Had M. Duval written his
hundred and sixty plays in the seclusion of his own rooms, I should have
been less surprised; it was the mystery of the _séances_ of
collaboration, the rendezvous, the discussion, the illustrious company,
that overwhelmed me in a rapture of wonder and respectful admiration. Then
came the anecdotes. They were of all sorts. Here are a few specimens: He,
Duval, had written a one-act piece with Dumas _père_; it had been
refused at the Français, and then it had been about, here, there, and
everywhere; finally the _Variétés_ had asked for some alterations, and