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The Memoirs of Alexandre Dumas(pere) (v. 2)
The Memoirs of Alexandre Dumas - pere - v. 2 Author:Alexandre Dumas Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XVIII. AN EVENTFUL NIGHT AT THE THEATRE (1823). I establish myself in Lodgings—A Dinner, gratis, enables me to go to the Theatre—My Entry into the ... more »Pit—Effect of Long Hair—I am Ejected—I have to Pay for Three Places to get One—A Polite Gentleman who is reading an Elzevir—The Pastissier Francois—Bibliomania—The Style of The Vampire displeases my Neighbour—His Criticisms—Further Discontent on his part — Vampires and Vampirism—Nero and the Claqueurs—My Neighbour leaves me—He is Ejected from the Theatre. The very day of my return to Paris I set myself to look for lodgings. After going up and down many staircases, I came to a halt in a little room on a fourth story. This room, which possessed the luxury of an alcove, belonged to that immense pile of houses called the Pate des Italiens, and it formed part of house No. 1. The walls were covered with a yellow paper, at twelve sous the roll. The room looked out on the courtyard, and I was to have it for 120 francs per annum. Then I took a stroll along the Boulevards—the only place where I ran no risk of losing myself; and in the course of my stroll I had reached the Cafe" of the Porte St. Honored when, looking through its windows, I suddenly caught sight of a person I knew. This was Hiraux, the son of the good old man who had once tried so unsuccessfully to make a musician of me. I entered Vol. n. c the Cafe, and found that young Hiraux had lately bought it. He was the proprietor, and I was in his house ! Though he was rather the elder, we had been close friends in our boyhood. He insisted on my staying to dinner, and while dinner was getting ready he put all the newspapers in the establishment at my disposal. As my dinner cost me nothing, I determined to utilize what I should have paid for it by procuring a ...« less