In his "Mémoires" Dumas states that it was at this time he had the temerity to call on the great Talma. "Talma was short-sighted," said he, "and was at his toilet; his hair was close cut, and his aspect under these conditions was remarkably un-poetic.... Talma was for me a god--a god unknown, it is true, as was Jupiter to Semele." And here comes a most delicious bit of Dumas himself, Dumas the egotist: "Ah, Talma! were you but twenty years younger or I twenty years older! I know the past, you cannot foretell the future.... Had you known, Talma, that the hand you had just touched would ultimately write sixty or eighty dramas ... in each of which you would have found the material for a marvellous creation...." Dumas may be said to have at once entered the world of art and letters in this, his third visit to Paris, which took place so early in life, but in the years so ripe with ambition. Having seen the great Talma in Sylla, in his dressing-room at the Theatre Français, he met Delavigne, who was then just completing his "Ecole des Viellards," Lucien Arnault, who had just brought out "Regulus;" Soumet, fresh from the double triumph of "Saul" and "Clymnestre;" here, too, were Lemercier, Delrien, Viennet, and Jouy himself; and he had met at the Café du Roi, Theadlon, Francis, Rochefort, and De Merle; indeed by his friend De Leuven he was introduced to the assemblage there as a "future Corneille," in spite of the fact that he was but a notary's clerk. Leaving what must have been to Dumas _the presence_, he shot a parting remark, "Ah, yes, I shall come to Paris for good, I warrant you that." In "The Taking of the Bastille" Dumas traces again, in the characters of Pitou and old Father Billot, much of the route which he himself took on his first visit to Paris. The journey, then, is recounted from first-hand information, and there will be no difficulty on the part of any one in tracing the similarity of the itinerary. Chapter I., of the work in question, brings us at once on familiar ground, and gives a description of Villers-Cotterets and its inhabitants in a manner which shows Dumas' hand so unmistakably as to remove any doubts as to the volume of assistance he may have received from others, on this particular book at least.