Page:The life and writings of Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) (IA lifewritingsofal00spurrich).pdf/182

 in my memories; I am like one of those trees, crowned with bushy foliage, which at noon is full of silent birds, that wake up towards the close of the day. Then, when evening has come, they will fill my old age with the beating of wings and with songs; with their joy, their loves, and their clamour they will enliven it until death, in its turn, lays its hand upon their hospitable home; and the tree, in falling, frightens away all these merry singers, of which each is simply an hour of my life.

It is this man whom most of his critics denounced as an idler! In his boyhood, the peasants, with more reason and less malice, said the same of him. He tells us as much, and overhears in imagination the neighbours shaking their heads over him, muttering:—

"See the idler; he prefers rambling along the high-roads to going to college. He will never do anything!"

"I don't know that I have done much," comments our author, "but I know that I have worked deuced hard since then!"

"Truly, this work has had no brilliant result; I should have done better, I believe, instead of piling up volume on volume, if I had bought a corner of land, and put pebble upon pebble, there. At any rate I should have had a house of my own, to-day."

"Bah! Have I not the house of the good God—