Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/156

 Two years later, when the Prussians had departed, Alexandre Dumas was able to take his father home to Villers-Cotterets, where he had wished to lie. A host of distinguished authors and actors came to bid their old confrère farewell, but the simple reverence and affection shown by the dead man's old village friends was a far truer token of the love that he had won. When the train arrived with the coffin, the people were quietly waiting in the streets to greet it, and young and old pressed forward to contend with the bearers for the honour of carrying the body of their lost, dear friend. There, with the father of whom he was so proud, with the mother whom he so tenderly loved, he lies, in the little town from which he set out on the pilgrimage of life, and to which he so often looked wistfully back.

In the words of the man whom he reverenced most,