Another day I was driving two pretty Arab ponies that Dumas had bought for his grandchildren. We had reached the bottom of a hillock, and the horses were eager to climb it as quickly as they could. He said to me: “Hold them back. They will have to become of age before they will learn that one should not go up hill on the gallop.” When I asked, “What is it that urges them to run this way,” he replied: “They are like men. They want to hurry and get through with whatever annoys them.” Once Alexandre Dumas came to call on me at the Grand Hotel, and from that time on the people about the house looked upon me as a being apart, for it was commonly said that Alexandre Dumas paid as few visits as the Queen of England. The last time that I saw him was in Paris, Rue Ampère, where he lived in a magnificent _appartement_. I remember that there was with him a certain M. Singer, an old friend of Dumas’, who asked him if he was “indiscreet” and who rose to take leave. Dumas took him by the arm and extending his free hand to me, said: “Indiscreet! Certainly not. All my friends ought to know Loie and be fond of her.” When I took leave of him he kissed me on the forehead and gave me a big photograph, enlarged after a portrait of him when he was a child. On the photograph were these words: “From your little friend Alexandre.” And this is one of my most precious souvenirs. X M. AND MME. CAMILLE FLAMMARION In America we have a great actress named Modjeska. She is one of the most interesting women I have ever met. She is a Pole, exiled from her own country and married to Count Bozenta. Although she has a title and is very much of an aristocrat by birth, she is possessed of those conceptions of liberty that are generally attributed to the Nihilists. It was, indeed, on that account that her own estates and those of her husband were confiscated, and they themselves driven into exile. That must have occurred about 1880 or a little before. Then they found their way to free America, established themselves there, and the countess decided to go on the stage. To her great astonishment, and everybody else’s, it was soon evident that the sacred fire burned in her. She became a great actress. In America we are as fond of her as if she were a daughter of our own land. Shortly after my first appearance at the Folies-Bergère a lady asked to see me. It was the Countess Wolska, likewise a Pole, and a friend of Modjeska’s. She, too, was living in exile with her father, who had dared to write a revolutionary book called _The Polish Jew_.