In her naïve way Laura told him her story. The gentleman, who was rich, suddenly touched and taken with her beauty and simplicity, made her get into his carriage, took her to a convent, had her carefully educated, and then married her. But the beautiful bride, who had a noble heart, did not forget her own relations. She sent for her little brother Adolphe to Paris, and gave him a good education, and that is how Adolphe Dumas, a poet by nature and an enthusiast, one day found himself in the midst of the literary movement of 1830. Verses of all sorts, dramas, comedies, poems, bubbled forth one after another from his seething brain: “La Cité des Hommes,” “La Mort de Faust et de Don Juan,” “Le Camp des Croisés,” “Provence,” “Mademoiselle de la Vallière,” “L’Ecole des Familles,” “Les Servitudes Volontaires,” &c. But, just as in the army, though all may do their duty every one does not receive the Legion of Honour, in spite of his pluck and the comparative success of his plays in the Paris theatres, the poet Dumas, like our drummer-boy of Arcole, remained always the undecorated soldier. This it was, no doubt, which made him say later on in Provençal: “At forty years and more, when every one is angling, still I dip my bread in the poor man’s soup. Let us be content if we have a soul at peace, a pure heart and clean hands. ‘What has he earned?’ the world will ask, ‘He carries his head erect.’ ‘What does he do?’ ‘He does his duty.’” But if Dumas had gained no special laurels, he had won the esteem of the most distinguished brothers-in-arms, and Hugo, Lamartine, Béranger, De Vigny, the great Dumas, Jules Janin, Mignet, Barbey d’Aurevilly were among his friends. Adolphe Dumas, with his ardent temperament, his experience of struggling days in Paris, and the memory of his childhood on the Durance, came to the determination to issue a passenger’s ticket to Félibrige between Avignon and Paris. My poem of Provence was at last finished, though not yet printed, when one day my friend Frédéric Legré, a young Marseillais who formerly frequented Font-Ségugne, said to me: “I am going to Paris--will you come too?” I accepted the invitation, and it was thus that on the spur of the moment, for the first time, I visited Paris, where I stayed one week. I had, needless to say, brought my manuscript, and after spending the first two days in sight-seeing and admiring, from Notre-Dame to the Louvre, and from the Place Vendôme to the great Arc de Triomphe, we went, as was proper, and paid our respects to the good Dumas. “Well, and that _Mireille_,” he asked me, “is she finished?” “She is finished,” I said, “and here she is--in manuscript.” “Come now, since you are here, you will read me a song.” And when I had read the first canto, “Go on!” said Dumas. I read the second, then the third, then the fourth canto.