From A Bibliography of Alexandre Dumas père by Frank Wild Reed: This article appeared in "Le Pays," Nos. for July 5th and 14th and August 2nd, 1853, and was then reprinted in the "Revue de Paris," if one follows a manuscript note in the copy of the former, which is now before me. It commences :—
"Vous m'avez invité, lors de mon départ de Paris, à vous écrire quelques lettres datées de Bruxelles. Il y a plus d'un an que je suis parti et je vous adresse aujourd'hui ma première lettre." ("To the Manager of the 'Pays.' You invited me, at the time of my departure from Paris, to write you some letters dated from Brussels. It is more than a year since I left, and to-day I am addressing my first letter to you.")
He goes on to speak of the work he has already accomplished during his residence in Belgium ; of his arrival ; of previous visits and of friends he had then made ; of the pirating of French works ; of his meeting with Méline and Charles Hen ; he tells how he was then working at the third and fourth volumes of "Charny," and had made a start at "Isaac Laquedem," while "Conscience" was taking shape in his mind ; then he goes on to speak of Belgian authors, and in particular of Belgian poets, giving a number of quotations from their works.
This "Causerie," for such it really is, does not appear to have been reprinted since 1853, and is certainly not included in any of the collections of Dumas' miscellaneous writings in the Calmann-Lévy editions.
