MY MEMOIRS BY ALEXANDRE DUMAS TRANSLATED BY E. M. WALLER WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ANDREW LANG VOL. III 1826 TO 1830 WITH A FRONTISPIECE METHUEN & CO. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON 1907 CONTENTS BOOK I CHAPTER I I become a fully fledged employé--Bad plays--Thibaut--My studies with him--Where they have been of use to me--_Amaury_ and the consumptives--My reading--Walter Scott--Cooper--Byron--The pleasure of eating _sauerkraut_ at the Parthenon. CHAPTER II Byron's childhood--His grief at being lame--Mary Duff--The Malvern fortune-teller--How Byron and Robert Peel became acquainted--Miss Parker--Miss Chaworth--Verses on her portrait--Mrs. Musters--Lady Morgan--_English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_--Byron's letters to his mother--He takes his seat in the House of Lords. CHAPTER III Byron at Lisbon--How he quarrelled with his own countrymen--His poem _Childe Harold_--His fits of mad folly and subsequent depression--His marriage--His conjugal squabbles--He again quits England--His farewell to wife and child--His life and amours at Venice--He sets out for Greece--His arrival at Missolonghi--His illness and death. CHAPTER IV Usurped celebrity--M. Lemercier and his works--Racan's white hare--_Le Fiesque_ by M. Ancelot--The Romantic artists --Scheffer--Delacroix--Sigalon--Schnetz--Coigniet--Boulanger --Géricault--_La Méduse_ in the artist's studio--Lord Byron's funeral obsequies in England--Sheridan's body claimed for debt. CHAPTER V My mother comes to live with me--A Duc de Chartres born to me--Chateaubriand and M. de Villèle--Epistolary brevity--Re-establishment of the Censorship--A King of France should never be ill--Bulletins of the health of Louis XVIII.--His last moments and death--Ode by Victor Hugo--M. Torbet and Napoleon's tomb--La Fayette's voyage to America--The ovations showered upon him. CHAPTER VI Tallancourt and Betz--The café _Hollandais_--My Quiroga cloak--First challenge--A lesson in shooting--The eve of my duel--Analysis of my sensations--My opponent fails to keep his appointment--The seconds hunt him out--The duel--Tallancourt and the mad dog. CHAPTER VII The Duc d'Orléans is given the title of _Royal Highness_--The coronation of Charles X.--Account of the ceremony by Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans--Death of Ferdinand of Naples--De La ville de Miremont--_Le Cid d'Andalousie_--M. Pierre Lebrun--A reading at the camp at Compiègne--M. Taylor is appointed a royal commissioner to the Théâtre-Français--The curé Bergeron--M. Viennet--Two of his letters--Pichat and his _Léonidas._ CHAPTER VIII