and found Dumas' novel, "Les Quarante Cinq" (one of the cycle about
the Valois kings) lying on her table. He expressed his wonder that
she was reading it for the first time.

"For the first time!--why, this is the fifth or sixth time I have
read 'Les Quarante Cinq,' and the others. When I am ill, anxious,
melancholy, tired, discouraged, nothing helps me against moral or
physical troubles like a book of Dumas." Again, M. About says that
M. Sarcey was in the same class at school with a little Spanish boy.
The child was homesick; he could not eat, he could not sleep; he was
almost in a decline.

"You want to see your mother?" said young Sarcey.

"No: she is dead."

"Your father, then?"

" No: he used to beat me."

"Your brothers and sisters?"

"I have none."

"Then why are you so eager to be back in Spain?"

"To finish a book I began in the holidays."

"And what was its name?"