violent inclination to laugh that assailed us, convinced as we were that
if the worthy man really had recognized the voice, he had been the
victim of a prank of Alexandre Dumas, who had doubtless enjoyed the fun
of seeing the rout of his former chief and his brave "guernadiers"!

When our father did not take us to the Theatre Francais, we spent our
evenings in those beautiful rooms in the Palais-Royal where he had
gathered together so many admirable pictures and works of art, plundered
and dispersed since by the revolutionists and their tribe, together with
the splendid furniture which was used to burn a detachment of the 14th
Regiment of the Line alive, on the 24th of February, on which day it was
on guard at the Palais-Royal. And to think that a French Chamber
actually voted national rewards to people who had made an AUTO DA FE of
French soldiers who were guilty of defending till death the post which
duty and honour at once made sacred to them! But let that pass; worse
things happen nowadays, but at the happy time I speak of nobody thought
of the possibility of such shameful doings. This is what men call
progress! As far as we ourselves were concerned, we spent our evenings
in all the carelessness of our youth, playing together merrily and
noisily in the family drawing-room, a large gallery running from the
courtyard to the Rue de Valois. The games were liveliest on Sundays and
Thursdays, because, those days being school holidays, our merry band was
reinforced by my brothers' class-mates, MM. de Laborderie, Guillermy,
d'Eckmul, Albert, &c., &c., and by Alfred de Mussetas well, whom I still
seem to see, with his blue coat and gilt buttons, his fair curly hair,
and his melancholy and somewhat affected ways. We generally played
"prisoners' base"--a game to which the great gallery was very well
suited. Sometimes there was dancing, and then my mother's eye was always
on de Musset, who seemed to scorn our games and to be inclined to pay
assiduous court to my big sisters.