Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 12

by Unknown

(1822-1894)

hy have I always felt happy, filled with the spirit of content and of infinite independence, whenever I have slept in the tent or in the ruins of foreign lands?" The love of change and adventure has been the spring of Du Camp's life, a life whose events are blended so intimately with his literary achievement, that to know the one is to know the other. This practical man of the world has an imaginative, beauty-loving side to his nature, which craves stimulus from tropical unfamiliar nature and exotic ways.

Maxime Du Camp

So, after the usual training of French boys in lycée and college,—"in those hideous houses where they wearied our childhood," as he says,—the just-emancipated youth of twenty-two left his home in Paris for an eighteen-months' trip in the far East. The color and variety of the experience whetted his love of travel, and very soon after his return he began a serious study of photography in view of future plans.

Then came the revolution of 1848, the overthrow of Louis Philippe; and Du Camp had an opportunity to prove his courage and patriotism in the ranks of the National Guard. In his 'Souvenirs de l'Année 1848,' he tells the story with color and interest, and with the forceful logic of an eye-witness.

His bravery and a serious wound won him the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor, bestowed by General Cavaignac. This drew attention to him, and led the minister of public instruction to intrust him a few months later with a mission of exploration to Egypt, Nubia, Palestine, and Asia Minor; a result of which trip was his first literary success. Utilizing his photographic knowledge, he collected a great many negatives for future development. Upon his return he published a volume of descriptive sketches, 'Le Nil, Egypte, et Nubie,' generously illustrated with printed reproductions of these pictures. This first combination of photography and typography was popular, and was speedily imitated, initiative of many illustrated books.

Later, Du Camp's warlike and exploring instincts led him at his own expense into Sicily with Garibaldi, where he collected matter and photographs for 'Les Deux Siciles', another successful volume. In 1851 he associated with others to found the Revue de Paris, for which he wrote regularly until its suspension in 1858. He has also written a great deal for the Revue des Deux Mondes, in which for several years he continued a series of historical studies upon the government of Paris. The six volumes upon 'Paris: its Organs, its Functions, its Life, during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century,' form one of his chief achievements. His personal knowledge on the subject, and his access to valuable unpublished documents, give it authoritative value.

In 'Les Ancêtres de la Commune,' and 'Les Convulsions de Paris,' he has accomplished much more in the same line. The latter, a brilliant circumstantial exposition of the Commune, a logical condemnation of its folly and ignorance, brought him gratitude from the French Academy, and aided his election to that body in 1880. For this extensive work on contemporary politics, for his illustrated travels, and his artistic and literary criticism, he is better known than for his two or three novels and volumes of poetry.

Du Camp's may be characterized as a soldierly style, strong, direct, and personal. He loves to retrace old scenes with the later visible sequence of cause and effect. Always straightforward, sometimes bluntly self-assertive, he is sometimes eloquent. Perhaps his great charm is spontaneity.

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A STREET SCENE DURING THE COMMUNE

From 'The Convulsions of Paris'

There were strange episodes during this terrible evening. At half-past eight, M. Rouville, a Protestant minister, was at home in a house he owns on the Rue de Lille. He heard an alarm, the cry, "Everything is burning! Escape!" Then he went down, saw the street in flames, and the poor people weeping as they escaped. Just as he was returning to rescue a few valuables, some federates rushed into the court, crying, "Hurry! They are setting the place on fire!" He took some money and the manuscript of the sermons he had preached. Mechanically he seized his hat and cane. Then, throwing a last look around the apartment where he had long lived, invoking the memory of the great Biblical destructions familiar to him in Holy Writ, weak and trembling with emotion, he descended the staircase from his home.

There was indescribable tumult in the street, dominated by the cry of women; a shrill wordless involuntary cry of terror, vibrating above the uproar like a desperate appeal to which no supernatural power replied. Pastor Rouville stopped. The house next his own was in flames. They were setting fire to the one opposite. The houses between the Rue de Beaune and the Rue du Bac, red from cellar to garret, were vomiting flame from all the broken windows.

The pastor's family were not at Paris. He was alone with a faithful maid, who did not leave him for a moment. This doubtless determined his resolution, and gave him courage to brave all to save his house. If he had felt his wife and daughter near, he would have thought only of their safety, and would have hastened to get them away from the place, where, he said, "One could die of horror."

Pastor Rouville is a small man, whose great activity keeps him young and remarkably energetic. He belongs to the strong race of Southern Protestants, which has resisted everything to guard its faith. I should not be surprised if he has had some nimble Cévennole, companion of Jean Cavalier, among his ancestors. Chaplain in the prisons of the Seine, accustomed to sound doubtful spirits, to seek in vicious hearts some intact fibres which could re-attach them to virtue; fervent in faith, eloquent, with a high voice which could rise above the tumult, knowing by experience that there is no obscurity so profound that light cannot be made to penetrate it,—he had remained on duty at his post during the Commune; for the prisoners had more need of spiritual aid, now that the regular administration no longer watched over them. He had been indignant at the incarceration of Catholic priests, and had signed the fine protest demanding the liberty of the archbishop, which the ministers had carried to the Hôtel de Ville.

Alone in the presence of the great disaster which threatened him, he commended his spirit to God, remembering that the little stone of David had killed the giant Philistine, and he decided to fight for his home. He encamped energetically before the door, to forbid access; and using the weapons bestowed upon him by Providence and study, he spoke. The federates stopped before this man, whose simplicity rendered him heroic. One may guess what he said to them:—

"Why strike the innocent and tender, as if they were execrable? Why be enraged with a Protestant, a minister, whose religion, founded on the dogma of free examination, is naturally allied to republican ideas? The faith he teaches is that promulgated by Christ: Christ said to Peter, 'Sheathe thy sword;' he said to men,'Love one another!' No, the people of Paris, this people whose sufferings have been shared, whose unfortunates have been succored during the siege; this people, so good when not led astray by the wicked; this people will not burn the house of a poor minister, whose whole life has been passed in the exercise of charity."

The pastor must have been eloquent and have spoken with profound conviction, for the federates who were listening to him began to weep, then seized and embraced him. Meantime the tenants of the shops in his house had lowered the iron curtains, which at least was an obstacle against the first throwing of petroleum. This lasted an hour. The federates, evidently softened and touched by the pastor's despair, remained near him and had pity upon him. An old sergeant of the National Guard stayed beside him, as if to bring him help in case of need, and to maintain a little order among his subordinates. Some hope revived in M. Rouville's heart, and he was saying to himself that perhaps his house would be spared, when some young men, wearing the braided caps of officers, arrived as if to inspect the fires. Seeing one house intact, emerging like a little island from an ocean of flames, they exclaimed. The pastor sprang forward and wanted to argue with them. It was trouble wasted. One of these young scamps said to him, "You are an old reactionist: you bore us with your talking. If you don't like it, we will pin you to the wall." Then, turning toward the federates and pointing to the houses on the Rue de Lille, he cried, "All that belongs to the people. The people have the right to burn every thing."

This had perhaps decided the fate of the pastor's house, when the sergeant of federates interfered, and addressing the officer said to him, "I have received orders to stop the fire just here." "Show me your order," answered the officer. The sergeant replied, "It is a verbal order." Then there was a lively quarrel between the two men. The sergeant was firm. The officer insisted, and according to the custom of the moment, threatened to have the rebel shot.

The situation was becoming grave, when an incident resolved it. A mounted officer galloped up and ordered all the federates to retreat, because they were about to be surrounded by the troops from Versailles.

Nearly all the National Guards hurried away. The sergeant who had remained near the pastor said, "Get away, scurry, father! You will get yourself killed, and that will not save your camp."

The other officers passed, commanded everything to be burned, and when the sergeant resisted, compelled him to leave. For half an hour the unhappy pastor remained alone, holding back the incendiaries, passing from supplications to threats, and gaining time by every possible artifice. The sergeant returned with tearful eyes, and showed the dismayed pastor a written order to burn the house, sent by his chiefs. Not yet discouraged, the pastor roused the compassion of the old sergeant, and so moved him that the rebel cried, "Ah, well! so much the worse! I'll disobey. No, I won't let your house be burned. They'll shoot me. It's all the same. I deserve to be." Then raising his hand toward the sky, where the stars shone like sparks through the veil of wind-driven smoke, he cried "O my father, I believe in God! Fear nothing; I will stay here. They shan't touch your house. I shall know how to keep off plunderers!"

O strange deceiving people; ready for all crimes, ready for all good actions, according to the voice which speaks to thee and the emotion which carries thee away! This sergeant was indeed thy likeness, and one need not despair of thee, although thou dishearten those who love thee best!

The brandy at the wine merchants'; the ether at the druggists'; the powder and shot forgotten in stations, or secreted in cellars, burst with terrible explosions and scattered flaming coals. The pastor looked at his house, still miraculously intact. He gave it a last look, and departed sobbing. It was eleven o'clock. For three hours in the midst of this furnace he had resisted the incendiaries. His strength was exhausted. The faithful servant, who went back again and again to rescue one thing more from the burning, dragged him away. In the Rue des Saints-Pères they plunged into darkness, all the deeper for the brazier of sparkling lights behind them. They groped their way over the barricades through a shower of bullets. More than once they fell down. Finally, safe and sound despite the dangers braved, they reached the Rue de Seine, near the Rue de Bucy, where they found refuge in a lodging-house.

Next day Pastor Rouville ran towards the Rue de Lille. His house was standing intact. The old sergeant had kept his word. What became of this brave man, who at the risk of his life saved the property of a man whose speech had touched him? Perhaps he perished. Perhaps he received his due reward. Perhaps he drags out a wretched life in some workshop of a penitentiary. I know not his fate, nor even his name.

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ALEXANDRE DUMAS, SENIOR

(1803?-1870)

BY ANDREW LANG

o author is less capable of being illustrated by extracts than Alexandre Dumas. Writers like Prosper Mérimée or Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson can be not inadequately represented by a short story or a brief scene. Even from Scott's work we can detach 'Wandering Willie's Tale,' or 'The Tapestried Chamber,' or the study of Effie Deans in prison, or of Jeanie Deans before the Queen. But Dumas is invariably diffuse; though, unlike other diffuse talkers and writers, he is seldom tedious. He is long without longueurs. A single example will explain this better than a page of disquisition. The present selector had meant to extract Dumas's first meeting with Charles Nodier at the theatre. In memory, that amusing scene appeared to occupy some six pages. In fact, it covers nearly a hundred and thirty pages of the Brussels edition of the 'Memoirs' of Dumas. One reads it with such pleasure that looked back upon, it seems short, while it is infinitely too long to be extracted. In dialogue Dumas is both excellent and copious, so that he cannot well be abbreviated. He is the Porthos of novelists, gigantic, yet (at his best) muscular and not overgrown. For these reasons, extracts out of his romances do no justice to Dumas. To read one of his novels, say 'The Three Musketeers,' even in a slovenly translation, is to know more of him than a world of critics and essayists can teach. It is also to forget the world, and to dwell in a careless Paradise. Our object therefore is not to give an "essence of Dumas," but to make readers peruse him in his own books, and to save them trouble by indicating, among these books, the best.

It is notorious that Dumas was at the head of a "Company" like that which Scott laughingly proposed to form "for writing and publishing the class of books called Waverley Novels." In legal phrase, Dumas "deviled" his work; he had assistants, "researchers," collaborators. He would briefly sketch a plot, indicate the authorities to be consulted, hand his notes to Maquet or Fiorentino, receive their draught, and expand that into a romance. Work thus executed cannot be equal to itself. Many books signed by Dumas may be neglected without loss. Even to his best works, one or other of his assistants was apt to assert a claim. The answer is convincing. Not one of these ingenious men ever produced, by himself, anything that could be mistaken for the work of the master. All his good things have the same stamp and the same spirit, which we find nowhere else. Again, nobody contests his authorship of his own 'Memoirs,' or of his book about his dogs, birds, and other beasts—'The Story of My Pets.' Now, the merit of these productions is, in kind, identical with many of the merits of his best novels. There is the same good-humor, gayety, and fullness of life. We may therefore read Dumas's central romances without much fear of being grateful to the wrong person. Against the modern theory that the Iliad and Odyssey are the work of many hands in many ages, we can urge that these supposed "hands" never did anything nearly so good for themselves; and the same argument applies in the case of Alexandre Dumas.

A brief sketch of his life must now be given. "No man has had so many of his possessions disputed as myself," says Dumas. Not only his right to his novels, but his right to his name and to legitimate birth, was contested. Here we shall follow his own account of himself in his 'Memoirs,' which do not cover nearly the whole of his life. Alexandre Dumas was born at Villers-Cotterets-sur-Aisne, on July 24th, 1803(?). He lived to almost exactly the threescore and ten years of the Psalmist. He saw the fall of Napoleon, the restoration of the rightful king, the expulsion of the Legitimate monarch in 1830, the Orleans rule, its overthrow in 1848, the Republic, the Empire, and the Terrible Year, 1870-1871. Then he died, in the hour of the sorrow of his

"Immortal and indomitable France."

ALEXANDRE DUMAS.

Dumas's full name was noble: he was Alexandre Dumas-Davy de la Pailleterie. His family estate, La Pailleterie, was made a marquisate by Louis XIV. in 1707. About 1760 the grandfather of Dumas sold his lands in France, and went to Hayti. There in 1762 was born his father, son of Louise Cossette Dumas and of the Marquis de la Pailleterie. The mother must have been a woman of color; Dumas talks of his father's "mulatto hue," and he himself had undoubted traces of African blood. Yet it appears that the grandparents were duly married. In 1772, his wife having died, the old marquis returned to France. The Revolution broke out, and the father of Alexandre Dumas fought in the armies of the Republic. The cruel mob called him by way of mockery, "Monsieur Humanity," because he endeavored to rescue the victims of their ferocity. He was a man of great courage and enormous physical strength. Napoleon, in honor of one of his feats of arms, called him in a dispatch "The Horatius Cocles of the Republic." He was with Napoleon in Egypt, where a quarrel arose, as he suspected and opposed the ambition of the future emperor. Though Dumas found a treasure in a bey's house, he honorably presented it to his government. He died in France, a poor man, in 1806.

Dumas was not at home when his father died. He was staying, a child of four, with his cousin Marianne.

"At midnight I was awakened, or rather my cousin and I were awakened, by a great blow struck on the door of our room. By the light of a night lamp I saw my cousin start up, much alarmed. No mortal could have knocked at our chamber door, for the outer doors were locked. [He gives a plan of the house.] I got out of bed to open the door. 'Where are you going, Alexandre?' cried my cousin.

"'To let in papa, who is coming to say adieu.'

"The girl dragged me back to bed; I cried, 'Adieu, papa, adieu!' Something like a sighing breath passed over my face.... My father had died at the hour when we heard the knock!"

This anecdote may remind the reader of what occurred at Abbotsford on the night when Mr. Bullock died in London. Dumas tells another tale of the same kind ('Memoirs,' Vol. xi., page 255: Brussels, 1852). On the night of his mother's death he in vain sought a similar experience. These things "come not by observation"; but Dumas, like Scott, had a mind not untuned to such themes, though not superstitious.

Young Dumas, like most men of literary genius, taught himself to read. A Buffon with plates was the treasure of the child, already a lover of animals. To know more about the beasts he learned to read for his own pleasure. Of mythology he was as fond as Keats. His intellectual life began (like the imaginative life of our race) in legends of beasts and gods. For Dumas was born un primitif, as the French say; his taste was the old immortal human taste for romance, for tales of adventure, love, and war. This predilection is now of course often scouted by critics who are over-civilized and under-educated. Superior persons will never share the love of Dumas which was common to Thackeray and Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson. From Buffon he went on to the 'Letters to Émil' (letters on mythology), and to the 'Arabian Nights.' An imaginative child, he knew the "pains of sleep" as Coleridge did, and the terrors of vain imagination. Many children whose manhood is not marked by genius are visionaries. A visionary too was little Dumas, like Scott, Coleridge, and George Sand in childhood. To the material world he ever showed a bold face. "I have never known doubt or despair," he says; his faith in God was always unshaken; the doctrine of immortality he regarded rather with hope than absolute belief. Yet surely it is a corollary to the main article of his creed.

At ten, Dumas went to a private school kept by an Abbé Grégoire. At the Restoration, a boy of twelve, he made and he adhered to an important resolution. He chose to keep his grandmaternal name of Dumas, like his father, and to drop the name and arms of De la Pailleterie, with all the hopes of boons from the restored Royalists. Dumas remained a man of the popular party, though he had certain relations of friendship with the house of Orléans. But he entertained no posthumous hatred of the old monarchy and the old times. His kings are nearly as good, in his romances, as Sir Walter's own, and his Henri III. and Henri IV. may be named with Scott's Gentle King Jamie and Louis XI.

Madame Dumas, marquise as she was by marriage, kept a tobacconist's shop; and in education, Dumas was mainly noted for his calligraphy. Poaching was now the boy's favorite amusement; all through his life he was very fond of sport. Napoleon returned from Elba; Dumas saw him drive through Villers-Cotterets on his way to Waterloo. Soon afterwards came in stragglers; the English, they said, had been defeated at five o'clock on June 18th, but the Prussians arrived at six o'clock and won the battle. What the English were doing between five and six does not appear; it hardly seems that they quitted the field. The theory of that British defeat at Waterloo was never abandoned by Dumas. He saw Napoleon return through Villers-Cotterets. "Wellington, Bülow, Blücher, were but masks of men; really they were spirits sent by the Most High to defeat Napoleon." It is a pious opinion!

At the age of fifteen Dumas, like Scott, became a notary's clerk. About this time he saw 'Hamlet' played, in the version of Ducis. Corneille and Racine had always been disliked by this born romanticist. 'Hamlet' carried him off his feet. Soon afterwards he read Bürger's 'Lenore,' the ballad which Scott translated at the very beginning of his career as an author.

"Tramp! tramp! along the land they rode,
Splash! splash! along the sea;
The scourge is red, the spur drops blood,
The flashing pebbles flee."

This German ballad, says Scott, "struck him as the kind of thing he could do himself." And Dumas found that the refrain

"Hurrah, fantôme, les morts vont vite,"

was more to his taste than the French poetry of the eighteenth century. He tried to translate 'Lenore.' Scott finished it in a night; Dumas gave up in despair. But this, he says, was the beginning of his authorship. He had not yet opened a volume of Scott or Cooper, "ces deux grands romanciers." With a friend named Leuven he began to try to write plays (1820-1821). He now poached his way to Paris, defraying his expenses with the game he shot on the road. Shakespeare too was a poacher; let us excuse the eccentricities of genius. He made Talma's acquaintance; he went to the play; he resigned his clerkship: "Paris was my future." Thither he went; his father's name served him with General Foy, and he obtained a little post in the household of the Duc D'Orléans—a supernumerary secretaryship at £60 a year. At the play he met Charles Nodier, reading the rarest of Elzevirs, and at intervals (like Charles Lamb) hissing his own piece! This delightful scene, with its consequences, occupies one hundred and thirty pages!

Dumas now made the acquaintance of Frederic Soulié, and became a pillar of theatres. He began to read with a purpose: first he read Scott; "The clouds lifted, and I beheld new horizons." Then he turned to Cooper; then to Byron. One day he entered his office, crying aloud, "Byron is dead!" "Who is Byron?" said one of his chiefs. Here Dumas breaks off in his 'Memoirs' to give a life of Byron! He fought his first duel in the snow, and won an easy, almost a bloodless victory. For years he and Leuven wrote plays together,—plays which were never accepted.

At last he, Rousseau (not Jean Jacques!), and Leuven composed a piece together. Refused at one house, it was accepted at another: 'La Chasse et l'Amour' (The Chase and Love) was presented on September 22d, 1823. It succeeded. A volume of three short stories sold to the extent of four copies. Dumas saw that he must "make a name" before he could make a livelihood. "I do not believe in neglected talent and unappreciated genius," says he. Like Mr. Arthur Pendennis, he wrote verses "up to" pictures. Thackeray did the same. "Lady Blessington once sent him an album print of a boy and girl fishing, with a request that he would make some verses for it. 'And,' he said, 'I liked the idea, and set about it at once. I was two entire days at it,—was so occupied with it, so engrossed by it, that I did not shave during the whole time.'" So says Mr. Locker-Lampson.

We cannot all be Dumas or Thackeray. But if any literary beginner reads these lines, let him take Dumas's advice; let him disbelieve in neglected genius, and do the work that comes in his way, as best he can. Dumas had a little anonymous success in 1826, a vaudeville at the Porte-Saint-Martin. At last he achieved a serious tragedy, or melodrama, in verse, 'Christine.' He wrote to Nodier, reminding him of their meeting at the play. The author of 'Trilby' introduced him to Taylor; Taylor took him to the Théâtre Français; 'Christine' was read and accepted unanimously.

Dumas now struck the vein of his fortune. By chance he opened a volume of Anquetil, and read an anecdote of the court of Henri III. This led him to study the history of Saint Megrin, in the Memoirs of L'Estoile, where he met Quelus, and Maugiron, and Bussy d'Amboise, with the stirring tale of his last fight against twelve men. Out of these facts he made his play 'Henri III.,' and the same studies inspired that trilogy of romances 'La Reine Margot' (Queen Margot), 'La Dame de Monsoreau' (The Lady of Monsoreau), and 'Les Quarante-Cinq' (The Forty-Five). These are, with the trilogy of the 'Mousquetaires,' his central works as a romancer, and he was twenty-five when he began to deal with the romance of history. His habit was to narrate his play or novel, to his friends, to invent as he talked, and so to arrive at his general plan. The mere writing gave him no trouble. We shall later show his method in the composition of 'The Three Musketeers.'

'Christine' had been wrecked among the cross-currents of theatrical life. 'Henri III.' was more fortunate. Dumas was indeed obliged to choose between his little office and the stage; he abandoned his secretaryship. In 1829 occurred this "duel between his past and his future." Just before the first night of the drama, Dumas's mother, whom he tenderly loved, was stricken down by paralysis. He tended her, he watched over his piece, he almost dragged the Duc d'Orléans to the theatre. On that night he made the acquaintance of Hugo and Alfred de Vigny. Dumas passed the evening between the theatre and his mother's bedside. When the curtain fell, he was "called on"; the audience stood up uncovered, the Duc d'Orléans and all!

Next morning Dumas, like Byron, "woke to find himself famous." He had "made his name" in the only legitimate way,—by his work. Troubles followed, difficulties with the Censorship, duels and rumors of duels, and the whole romantic upheaval which accompanied the Revolution of 1830. Dumas was attached again to the Orléans household. He dabbled in animal magnetism, which had been called mesmerism, and now is known as hypnotism. The phenomena are the same; only the explanations vary. About 1830 there was a mania for animal magnetism in Paris; Lady Louisa Stuart recounted some of the marvels to Sir Walter Scott, who treated the reports with disdain. When writing his romance 'Joseph Balsamo' (a tale of the French Revolution), Dumas made studies of animal magnetism, and was, or believed himself to be, an adept. The orthodox party of modern hypnotists merely hold that by certain physical means, a state of somnambulism can be produced in certain people. Once in that state, the patients are subject, to "suggestion," and are obedient to the will of the hypnotizer. He for his part exerts no "magnetic current," no novel unexplained force or fluid. Some recent French and English experiments are not easily to be reconciled with this hypothesis. Dumas himself believed that he exerted a magnetic force, and without any "passes" or other mechanical means, could hypnotize persons who did not know what he was about, and so were not influenced by "suggestion." In a few cases he held that his patients became clairvoyant; one of them made many political prophecies,—all unfulfilled. Another, in trance, improved vastly as a singer; "her normal voice stopped at contre-si. I bade her rise to contre-re, which she did; though incapable of it when awake." So far, this justifies the plot of Mr. Du Maurier's novel 'Trilby.' Dumas offers no theory; he states facts, as he says, including "post-hypnotic suggestion."

These experiments were made by Dumas merely as part of his studies for 'Joseph Balsamo' (Cagliostro); his conclusion was that hypnotism is not yet reduced to a scientific formula. In fiction it is already overworked. Dumas got his 'Christine' acted at last. Then broke out the Revolution of 1830. Dumas's description of his activity is "as good as a novel," but too long and varied for condensation. It seems better to give this extract about his life of poverty before his mother died, before fame visited him. (I quote Miss Cheape's translation of the passage included in her 'Stories of Beasts,' published by Longmans, Green and Company.)

He had, in later years, named a cat Mysouff II.

"If you won't think me impertinent, sir," said Madame Lamarque, "I should so like to know what Mysouff means."

"Mysouff just means Mysouff, Madame Lamarque."

"It is a cat's name, then?"

"Certainly, since Mysouff the First was so-called. It is true, Madame Lamarque, you never knew Mysouff." And I became so thoughtful that Madame Lamarque was kind enough to withdraw quietly, without asking any questions about Mysouff the First.

That name had taken me back to fifteen years ago, when my mother was still living. I had then the great happiness of having a mother to scold me sometimes. At the time I speak of, I held a situation in the service of the Duc d'Orléans, with a salary of 1500 francs. My work occupied me from ten in the morning until five in the afternoon. We had a cat in those days, whose name was Mysouff. This cat had missed his vocation; he ought to have been a dog. Every morning I started for my office at half-past nine, and came back every evening at half-past five. Every morning Mysouff followed me to the corner of a particular street, and every evening I found him in the same street, at the same corner, waiting for me. Now the curious thing was that on the days when I had found some amusement elsewhere, and was not coming home to dinner, it was of no use to open the door for Mysouff to go and meet me. Mysouff, in the attitude of the serpent with its tail in its mouth, refused to stir from his cushion. On the other hand, on the days I did come, Mysouff would scratch at the door until some one opened it for him. My mother was very fond of Mysouff; she used to call him her barometer.

"Mysouff marks my good and my bad weather," my dear mother would say: "the days you come in are my days of sunshine; my rainy days are when you stay away."

When I came home I used to see Mysouff at the street corner, sitting quite still and gazing into the distance. As soon as he caught sight of me, he began to move his tail; then as I drew nearer, he rose and walked backward and forward across the pavement with his back arched and his tail in the air. When I reached him, he jumped up upon me as a dog would have done, and bounded and played round me as I walked towards the house; but when I was close to it he dashed in at full speed. Two seconds after, I used to see my mother at the door.

Never again in this world, but perhaps in the next, I shall see her standing waiting for me at the door.

That is what I was thinking of, dear readers, when the name of Mysouff brought back all these recollections; so you understand why I did not answer Madame Lamarque's question.

The life of Dumas after 1830 need not be followed step by step; indeed, for lack of memoirs, to follow it is by no means easy.

Dumas, by dint of successful plays, and later of successful novels, earned large sums of money—£40,000 in one year, it is said. He traveled far and wide, and compiled books of travel. In the forties, before the Revolution of 1848, he built a kind of Abbotsford of his own, named "Monte Cristo," near St. Germains, and joyously ruined himself. "Monte Cristo," like Abbotsford, has been described as a palace. Now, Abbotsford is so far from being a palace that Mr. Hope Scott, when his wife, Scott's granddaughter, inherited the place, was obliged to build an additional wing.

At Monte Cristo Dumas kept but one man-servant, Michel (his "Tom Purdie"), who was groom, keeper, porter, gardener, and everything. Nor did Dumas ruin himself by paying exorbitant prices for poor lands, as Scott did. His collection of books and curios was no rival for that of Abbotsford. But like Scott, he gave away money to right and left, and he kept open house. He was eaten up by parasites,—beggars, poor greedy hangers-on of letters, secretaries, above all by tribes of musical people. On every side money flowed from him; hard as he worked, largely as he earned, he spent more. His very dog brought in thirteen other dogs to bed and board. He kept monkeys, cats, eagles, a vulture, a perfect menagerie. His own account of these guests may be read in "My Pets"; perhaps the most humorous, good-humored, and amusing of all his works.

The Revolution of 1848 impoverished him and drove him from Monte Cristo; not out of debt to his neighbors. Dumas was a cheerful giver, but did not love to "fritter away his money in paying bills." He started newspapers, such as The Musketeer, and rather lost than gained by a careless editorship. A successful play would enrich him, and he would throw away his gains. He went with Garibaldi on his expedition against the King of Naples, and was received with ingratitude by the Neapolitans.

A friend of Daniel Dunglas Home, the "medium," he accompanied him to Russia, where Home married a lady of a noble and wealthy family. Returned to France, Dumas found his popularity waning. His plays often failed; he had outlived his success and his generation; he had saved nothing; he had to turn in need to his son Alexandre, the famous dramatist. Finally he died, doubting the security of his own fame, in the year of the sorrows of France.

Dumas is described by Michelet as "a force of nature." Never was there in modern literature a force more puissant, more capricious, or more genial. His quantity of mind was out of all proportion to its quality. He could learn everything with ease; he was a skilled cook, a fencer; he knew almost as if by intuition the technique and terminology of all arts and crafts. Ignorant of Greek, he criticized and appreciated Homer with an unmatched zest and appreciation. Into the dry bones of history he breathed life, mere names becoming full-blooded fellow-creatures under his spell. His inspiration was derived from Scott, a man far more learned than he, but scarcely better gifted with creative energy. Like Scott he is long, perhaps prolix; like him he is indifferent to niceties of style, does not linger over the choice of words, but serves himself with the first that comes to hand. Scott's wide science of human nature is not his; but his heroes, often rather ruffianly, are seldom mere exemplary young men of no particular mark. More brilliantly and rapidly than Scott, he indicates action in dialogue. He does not aim at the construction of rounded plots; his novels are chronicles which need never stop while his heroes are alive. His plan is to take a canvas of fact, in memoir or history, and to embroider his fantasies on that. Occasionally the canvas (as Mr. Saintsbury says) shows through, and we have blocks of actual history. His 'Joan of Arc' begins as a romance, and ends with a comparatively plain statement of facts too great for any art but Shakespeare's. But as a rule it is not historical facts, it is the fictitious adventures of characters living in an historical atmosphere, that entertain us in Dumas.

The minute inquirer may now compare the sixteenth-century 'Memoirs of Monsieur D'Artagnan' (fictitious memoirs, no doubt) with the use made of them by Dumas in 'The Three Musketeers' and 'Twenty Years After.' The 'Memoirs' (reprinted by the Librairie Illustrée, Paris) gave Dumas his opening scenes; gave him young D'Artagnan, Porthos, Athos, Aramis, Rosnay, De Treville, Milady, the whole complicated intrigue of Milady, D'Artagnan, and De Vardes. They gave him several incidents, duels, and "local color." By making Milady the wife of Athos, Dumas knotted his plot; he added the journey to England, after the Queen's diamonds; from a subordinate character he borrowed the clerical character of Aramis; a mere hint in the 'Memoirs' suggested the Bastion Saint-Gervais. The discrimination of character, the dialogue, and many adventures, are Dumas's own; he was aided by Maquet in the actual writing. In a similar way, Brantôme and L'Estoile, in their 'Memoirs,' supply the canvas of the tales of the Valois cycle.

The beginner in Dumas will assuredly find the following his best works. For the Valois period, 'The Horoscope' (a good deal neglected), 'Queen Margot,' 'The Lady of Monsoreau,' 'The Forty-Five.' 'Isabeau of Bavière,' an early novel, deals with the anarchy and misery before the coming of Jeanne d'Arc. For Henri II., 'The Two Dianas' is indicated. For the times of Richelieu, Mazarin, Louis XIV., we have 'The Three Musketeers,' 'Twenty Years After,' and 'The Viscount of Bragelonne.' These deal with the youth, middle age, old age, and death of D'Artagnan, Porthos, Athos, and Aramis. The Revolutionary novels, 'Joseph Balsamo,' 'The Queen's Necklace,' and others, are much less excellent. The Regency is not ill done in 'The Regent's Daughter'; and 'The Chevalier of Harmenthal,' with 'Olympe of Cleves,' has many admirers. Quite apart from these is the immense modern fantasy of 'The Count of Monte Cristo'; the opening part alone is worthy of the master. 'The Black Tulip,' so warmly praised by Thackeray, is an innocent little romance of the days of Dutch William. Les jeunes filles may read 'The Black Tulip': indeed, Dumas does not sacrifice at all to "the Goddess of Lubricity," even when he describes very lax moralities.

With a knowledge of these books, and of 'My Pets' and the 'Memoirs,' any student will find himself at home in Dumas, and can make wider ranges in that great wilderness of fancy. Some autobiographical details will be found in the novel called 'Ange Pithou.' 'Isaac Laquedem' was meant to be a romance of the Wandering Jew; only two volumes are published. Philosophy a reader will not find, nor delicate analysis, nor "chiseled style"; but he will be in touch with a great sunny life, rejoicing in all the accidents of existence.

---

THE CURE FOR DORMICE THAT EAT PEACHES

From 'The Count of Monte Cristo'

Not on the same night he had intended, but the next morning, the Count of Monte Cristo went out on the road to Orléans. Leaving the village of Linas, without stopping at the telegraph, which at the moment the count passed threw out its long bony arms, he reached the tower of Montlhéry, situated, as every one knows, upon the highest point of the plain of that name. At the foot of the hill the count dismounted, and began to ascend the mountain by a little winding path about eighteen inches wide; when he reached the summit he found himself stopped by a hedge, upon which green fruit had succeeded to red and white flowers.

Monte Cristo looked for the door of the inclosure, and was not long in finding it. It was a little wooden gate, working on willow hinges, and fastened with a nail and string. The count soon understood its mechanism, and the door opened. He then found himself in a little marvelously well-kept garden, about twenty feet long by twelve wide, bounded on one side by part of the hedge, in which was formed the ingenious machine we have named a door; and on the other by the old tower, covered with ivy and studded with wild flowers. Monte Cristo stopped, after having closed the door and fastened the string to the nail, and cast a look around.

"The man at the telegraph," said he, "must either keep a gardener or devote himself passionately to horticulture." Suddenly he struck himself against something crouching behind a wheelbarrow filled with leaves; the something rose, uttered an exclamation of astonishment, and Monte Cristo found himself facing a man about fifty years old, who was plucking strawberries, which he was placing upon vine-leaves. He had twelve leaves and about as many strawberries, which, on rising suddenly, he let fall from his hand. "You are gathering your crop, sir?" said Monte Cristo, smiling.

"Excuse me, sir," replied the man, raising his hand to his cap; "I am not up there, I know, but I have only just come down."

"Do not let me interfere with you in anything, my friend," said the count; "gather your strawberries, if indeed there are any left."

"I have ten left," said the man, "for here are eleven, and I had twenty-one, five more than last year. But I am not surprised; the spring has been warm this year, and strawberries require heat, sir. This is the reason that, instead of the sixteen I had last year, I have this year, you see, eleven already plucked—twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. Ah, I miss three! they were here last night, sir—I am sure they were here—I counted them. It must be the son of Mother Simon who has stolen them; I saw him strolling about here this morning. Ah! the young rascal! stealing in a garden; he does not know where that may lead him to."

"Certainly, it is wrong," said Monte Cristo, "but you should take into consideration the youth and greediness of the delinquent."

"Of course," said the gardener, "but that does not make it the less unpleasant. But, sir, once more I beg pardon; perhaps you are an official that I am detaining here?" And he glanced timidly at the count's blue coat.

"Calm yourself, my friend," said the count, with that smile which at his will became so terrible or benevolent, and which this time beamed only with the latter expression; "I am not an inspector, but a traveler, conducted here by curiosity he half repents of, since he causes you to lose your time."

"Ah! my time is not valuable," replied the man, with a melancholy smile. "Still, it belongs to the government, and I ought not to waste it; but having received the signal that I might rest for an hour" (here he glanced at a sun-dial, for there was everything in the inclosure of Montlhéry, even a sun-dial), "and having ten minutes before me, and my strawberries being ripe, when a day longer—by-the-by, sir, do you think dormice eat them?"

"Indeed, I should think not," replied Monte Cristo: "dormice are bad neighbors for us who do not eat them preserved, as the Romans did."

"What! did the Romans eat them?" said the gardener; "eat dormice?"

"I have read so," said the count.

"Really! They can't be nice, though they do say 'as fat as a dormouse.' It is not a wonder they are fat, sleeping all day, and only waking to eat all night. Listen: last year I had four apricots—they stole one; I had one nectarine, only one—well, sir, they ate half of it on the wall; a splendid nectarine—I never ate a better."

"You ate it?"

"That is to say, the half that was left—you understand; it was exquisite, sir. Ah, those gentlemen never choose the worst morsels; like Mother Simon's son, who has not chosen the worst strawberries. But this year," continued the horticulturist, "I'll take care it shall not happen, even if I should be forced to sit up the whole night to watch when the strawberries are ripe." Monte Cristo had seen enough. Every man has a devouring passion in his heart, as every fruit has its worm; that of the man at the telegraph was horticulture. He began gathering the vine-leaves which screened the sun from the grapes, and won the heart of the gardener. "Did you come here, sir, to see the telegraph?" he said.

"Yes, if not contrary to the rules."

"Oh no," said the gardener; "there are no orders against doing so, providing there is nothing dangerous, and that no one knows what we are saying."

"I have been told," said the count, "that you do not always yourselves understand the signals you repeat."

"Certainly, sir; and that is what I like best," said the man, smiling.

"Why do you like that best?"

"Because then I have no responsibility. I am a machine then, and nothing else; and so long as I work, nothing more is required of me."

"Is it possible," said Monte Cristo to himself, "that I can have met with a man that has no ambition? That would spoil my plans."

"Sir," said the gardener, glancing at the sun-dial, "the ten minutes are nearly expired; I must return to my post. Will you go up with me?"

"I follow you." Monte Cristo entered the tower, which was divided into three stages. The lowest contained gardening implements, such as spades, rakes, watering-pots, hung against the wall; this was all the furniture. The second was the usual dwelling or rather sleeping-place of the man; it contained a few poor articles of household furniture, a bed, a table, two chairs, a stone pitcher, and some dry herbs hung up to the ceiling, which the count recognized as sweet-peas, and of which the good man was preserving the seeds, having labeled them with as much care as if he had been a botanist.

"Does it require much study to learn the art of telegraphing, sir?" asked Monte Cristo.

"The study does not take long; it was acting as a supernumerary that was so tedious."

"And what is the pay?"

"A thousand francs, sir."

"It is nothing."

"No; but then we are lodged, as you perceive."

Monte Cristo looked at the room. They passed on to the third stage; it was the room of the telegraph. Monte Cristo looked in turns at the two iron handles by which the machine was worked. "It is very interesting," he said; "but it must be very tedious for a lifetime."

"Yes. At first my neck was cramped with looking at it, but at the end of a year I became used to it; and then we have our hours of recreation, and our holidays when we have a fog."

"Ah, to be sure."

"Those are indeed holidays to me; I go into the garden, I plant, prune, trim, and kill the insects all day long."

"How long have you been here?"

"Ten years, and five as a supernumerary make fifteen."

"You are—"

"Fifty-five years old."

"How long must you serve to claim the pension?"

"Oh, sir, twenty-five years."

"And how much is the pension?"

"A hundred crowns."

"Poor humanity!" murmured Monte Cristo.

"What did you say, sir?" asked the man.

"I was saying it was very interesting."

"What was?"

"All you were showing me. And you really understand none of these signals?"

"None at all."

"And have you never tried to understand them?"

"Never. Why should I?"

"But still there are some signals only addressed to you."

"Certainly."

"And do you understand them?"

"They are always the same."

"And they mean—"

"Nothing new; You have an hour; or To-morrow."

"This is simple enough," said the count; "but look! is not your correspondent putting himself in motion?"

"Ah yes; thank you, sir."

"And what is it saying—anything you understand?"

"Yes; it asks if I am ready."

"And you reply?"

"By the same sign, which at the same time tells my right-hand correspondent that I am ready, while it gives notice to my left-hand correspondent to prepare in his turn."

"It is very ingenious," said the count.

"You will see," said the man, proudly; "in five minutes he will speak."

"I have then five minutes," said Monte Cristo to himself; "it is more time than I require. My dear sir, will you allow me to ask you a question?"

"What is it, sir?"

"You are fond of gardening?"

"Passionately."

"And you would be pleased to have, instead of this terrace of twenty feet, an inclosure of two acres?"

"Sir, I should make a terrestrial paradise of it."

"You live badly on your thousand francs?"

"Badly enough; but yet I do live."

"Yes; but you have only a small garden."

"True, the garden is not large."

"And then, such as it is, it is filled with dormice, who eat everything."

"Ah! they are my scourges."

"Tell me, should you have the misfortune to turn your head while your right-hand correspondent was telegraphing—"

"I should not see him."

"Then what would happen?"

"I could not repeat the signals."

"And then?"

"Not having repeated them, through negligence, I should be fined."

"How much?"

"A hundred francs."

"The tenth of your income—that would be fine work."

"Ah!" said the man.

"Has it ever happened to you?" said Monte Cristo.

"Once, sir, when I was grafting a rose-tree."

"Well, suppose you were to alter a signal, and substitute another?"

"Ah, that is another case; I should be turned off, and lose my pension."

"Three hundred francs."

"A hundred crowns; yes, sir; so you see that I am not likely to do any of these things."

"Not even for fifteen years' wages? Come, it is worth thinking about?"

"For fifteen thousand francs!"

"Yes."

"Sir, you alarm me."

"Nonsense!"

"Sir, you are tempting me?"

"Just so; fifteen thousand francs, do you understand?"

"Sir, let me see my right-hand correspondent!"

"On the contrary, do not look at him, but on this."

"What is it?"

"What! do you not know these little papers?"

"Bank-notes!"

"Exactly; there are fifteen of them."

"And whose are they?"

"Yours, if you like."

"Mine!" exclaimed the man, half suffocated.

"Yes; yours—your own property."

"Sir, my right-hand correspondent is signaling."

"Let him."

"Sir, you have distracted me; I shall be fined."

"That will cost you a hundred francs; you see it is your interest to take my bank-notes."

"Sir, my right-hand correspondent redoubles his signals; he is impatient."

"Never mind—take these;" and the count placed the packet in the hands of the man. "Now, this is not all," he said; "you cannot live upon your fifteen thousand francs."

"I shall still have my place."

"No! you will lose it, for you are going to alter the sign of your correspondent."

"Oh, sir, what are you proposing?"

"A jest!"

"Sir, unless you force me—"

"I think I can effectually force you;" and Monte Cristo drew another packet from his pocket. "Here are ten thousand more francs," he said; "with the fifteen thousand already in your pocket, they will make twenty-five thousand. With five thousand you can buy a pretty little house with two acres of land; the remaining twenty thousand will bring you in a thousand francs a year."

"A garden with two acres of land!"

"And a thousand francs a year."

"Oh heavens!"

"Come, take them!" and Monte Cristo forced the bank-notes into his hand.

"What am I to do?"

"Nothing very difficult."

"But what is it?"

"To repeat these signs;" Monte Cristo took a paper from his pocket, upon which were drawn three signs, with numbers to indicate the order in which they were to be worked.

"There, you see it will not take long."

"Yes; but—"

"Do this, and you will have nectarines and all the rest." The mark was hit: red with fever, while the large drops fell from his brow, the man executed, one after the other, the three signs given by the count; notwithstanding the frightful contortions of the right-hand correspondent, who, not understanding the change, began to think the gardener had become mad. As to the left-hand one, he conscientiously repeated the same signals, which were definitively carried to the Minister of the Interior. "Now you are rich," said Monte Cristo.

"Yes," replied the man, "but at what a price!"

"Listen, friend," said Monte Cristo. "I do not wish to cause you any remorse; believe me, then, when I swear to you that you have wronged no man, but on the contrary have benefited mankind." The man looked at the bank-notes, felt them, counted them; he turned pale, then red; then rushed into his room to drink a glass of water, but he had no time to reach the water-jug, and fainted in the midst of his dried herbs. Five minutes after the new telegram reached the minister, Debray had the horses put to his carriage, and drove to Danglars's.

"Has your husband any Spanish bonds?" he asked of the baroness.

"I think so, indeed! He has six millions' worth."

"He must sell them at whatever price."

"Why?"

"Because Don Carlos has fled from Bourges, and has returned to Spain."

"How do you know?"—Debray shrugged his shoulders. "The idea of asking how I hear the news!" he said. The baroness did not wait for a repetition; she ran to her husband, who immediately hastened to his agent and ordered him to sell at any price. When it was seen that Danglars sold, the Spanish funds fell directly. Danglars lost five hundred thousand francs; but he rid himself of all his Spanish shares. The same evening the following was read in Le Messager:—

"Telegraphic dispatch. The King, Don Carlos, has escaped the vigilance exercised over him at Bourges, and has returned to Spain by the Catalonian frontier. Barcelona has risen in his favor."

All that evening nothing was spoken of but the foresight of Danglars, who had sold his shares, and of the luck of the stock-jobber, who only lost five hundred thousand francs by such a blow. Those who had kept their shares, or bought those of Danglars, looked upon themselves as ruined, and passed a very bad night. Next morning Le Moniteur contained the following:

"It was without any foundation that Le Messager yesterday announced the flight of Don Carlos and the revolt of Barcelona. The King (Don Carlos) has not left Bourges, and the peninsula is in the enjoyment of profound peace. A telegraphic signal, improperly interpreted owing to the fog, was the cause of this error."

The funds rose one per cent, higher than before they had fallen. This, reckoning his loss, and what he had missed gaining, made the difference of a million to Danglars. "Good!" said Monte Cristo to Morrel, who was at his house when the news arrived of the strange reverse of fortune of which Danglars had been the victim. "I have just made a discovery for twenty-five thousand francs, for which I would have paid a hundred thousand."

"What have you discovered?" asked Morrel.

"I have just discovered the method of ridding a gardener of the dormice that eat his peaches."

---

THE SHOULDER OF ATHOS, THE BELT OF PORTHOS, AND THE HANDKERCHIEF OF ARAMIS

From 'The Three Musketeers'

Furious with rage, D'Artagnan crossed the ante-room in three strides, and began to descend the stairs four steps at a time, without looking where he was going; when suddenly he was brought up short by knocking violently against the shoulder of a musketeer who was leaving the apartments of M. De Treville. The young man staggered backwards from the shock, uttering a cry, or rather a yell.

"Excuse me," said D'Artagnan, trying to pass him, "but I am in a great hurry."

He had hardly placed his foot on the next step, when he was stopped by the grasp of an iron wrist on his sash.

"You are in a great hurry!" cried the musketeer, whose face was the color of a shroud; "and you think that is enough apology for nearly knocking me down? Not so fast, my young man. I suppose you imagine that because you heard M. De Treville speaking to us rather brusquely to-day, that everybody may treat us in the same way? But you are mistaken, and it is as well you should learn that you are not M. De Treville."

"Upon my honor," replied D'Artagnan, recognizing Athos, who was returning to his room after having his wound dressed, "upon my honor, it was an accident, and therefore I begged your pardon. I should have thought that was all that was necessary. I repeat that I am in a very great hurry, and I should be much obliged if you would let me go my way."

"Monsieur," said Athos, loosening his hold, "you are sadly lacking in courtesy, and one sees that you must have had a rustic upbringing."

D'Artagnan was by this time half-way down another flight; but on hearing Athos's remark he stopped short.

"My faith, monsieur!" exclaimed he, "however rustic I may be, I shall not come to you to teach me manners."

"I am not so sure of that," replied Athos.

"Oh, if I was only not in such haste," cried D'Artagnan; "if only I was not pursuing somebody—"

"Monsieur, you will find me without running after me. Do you understand?"

"And where, if you please?"

"Near Carmes-Deschaux."

"At what hour?"

"Twelve o'clock."

"Very good. At twelve I will be there."

"And don't be late, for at a quarter past twelve I will cut off your ears for you."

"All right," called out D'Artagnan, dashing on down-stairs after his man; "you may expect me at ten minutes before the hour."

But he was not to escape so easily. At the street door stood Porthos, talking to a sentry, and between the two men there was barely space for a man to pass. D'Artagnan took it for granted that he could get through, and darted on, swift as an arrow, but he had not reckoned on the gale that was blowing. As he passed, a sudden gust wrapped Porthos's mantle tight round him; and though the owner of the garment could easily have freed him had he so chosen, for reasons of his own he preferred to draw the folds still closer.

D'Artagnan, hearing the volley of oaths let fall by the musketeers, feared he might have damaged the splendor of the belt, and struggled to unwind himself; but when he at length freed his head, he found that like most things in this world the belt had two sides, and while the front bristled with gold, the back was mere leather; which explains why Porthos always had a cold and could not part from his mantle.

"Confound you!" cried Porthos, struggling in his turn, "have you gone mad, that you tumble over people like this?"

"Excuse me," answered D'Artagnan, "but I am in a great hurry. I am pursuing some one, and—"

"And I suppose that on such occasions you leave your eyes behind you?" asked Porthos.

"No," replied D'Artagnan, rather nettled; "and thanks to my eyes, I often see things that other people don't."

Possibly Porthos might have understood this allusion, but in any case he did not attempt to control his anger, and said sharply:—

"Monsieur, we shall have to give you a lesson if you take to tumbling against the musketeers like this!"

"A lesson, monsieur!" replied D'Artagnan; "that is rather a severe expression."

"It is the expression of a man who is always accustomed to look his enemies in the face."

"Oh, if that is all, there is no fear of your turning your back on anybody," and enchanted at his own wit, the young man walked away in fits of laughter.

Porthos foamed with rage, and rushed after D'Artagnan.

"By-and-by, by-and-by," cried the latter; "when you have not got your mantle on."

"At one o'clock then, behind the Luxembourg."

"All right; at one o'clock," replied D'Artagnan as he vanished around the corner.

But he could see no one either in the street he had passed through, or in the one his eager gaze was searching; however slowly the stranger might have walked, he had gone his way, or perhaps into some house. D'Artagnan inquired of everybody he met, but could find nothing at all about him. This chase however did him good in one way; for in proportion as the sweat started out on his forehead, his heart began to cool.

He began to think over the many unlucky things which had happened. It was scarcely eleven in the morning, and yet this morning had already brought him into disgrace with M. Treville, who must think the way D'Artagnan had left him was rather boorish.

Moreover, he had gotten himself into two fierce duels with two men, each able to kill three D'Artagnans; in a word, with two musketeers,—beings he set so high that he placed them above all other men.

It was a sad lookout. To be sure, as the youth was certain to be killed by Athos, he was not much disturbed about Porthos. As hope is the last thing to die in a man's heart, however, he ended by hoping that he might come out alive from both duels, even if dreadfully injured; and on that supposition he scored himself in this way for his conduct:—

"What a rattle-headed dunce I am! That brave and unfortunate Athos was wounded right on that shoulder I ran against head-foremost, like a ram. The only thing that surprises me is that he didn't strike me dead on the spot; he had provocation enough, for I must have hurt him savagely. As to Porthos—oh! as to Porthos—that's a funny affair!"

And the youth began to laugh aloud in spite of himself; looking round carefully, however, to see if his laughing alone in public without apparent cause aroused any suspicion.

"As to Porthos, it is funny enough, to be sure, but I am a crazy blockhead all the same. Are people to be run into without warning? No! And have I any right to peep under their cloaks to see what they haven't got? He would have forgiven me, I am sure, if I had said nothing to him about that cursed cloak,—with a double meaning, it is true, but too broad a joke in one of them! Ah! cursed Gascon that I am, I believe I should crack a joke if I was being roasted over a slow fire. Friend D'Artagnan," he went on, speaking to himself with the gentleness he thought fair, "if you get away, which there is not much chance of, I would advise you to practice entire politeness for the future. You must henceforth be admired and quoted as a model of it. To be obliging and civil does not necessarily make a man a coward. Look at Aramis, now: mildness and grace embodied; and did anybody ever dream of calling Aramis a coward? No indeed, and from this instant I will try to model myself after him. And luckily, here he is."

D'Artagnan, walking and soliloquizing, had come within a few steps of the Aiguillon House, and in front of it saw Aramis chatting gayly with three of the King's Guards. Aramis also saw D'Artagnan; but not having forgotten that it was in his presence M. de Treville had got so angry in the morning, and as a witness of the rebuke was not at all pleasant, he pretended not to see him. D'Artagnan, on the other hand, full of his plans of conciliation and politeness, approached the young man with a profound bow accompanied by a most gracious smile. Aramis bowed slightly but did not smile. Moreover, all four immediately broke off their conversation.

D'Artagnan was not so dull as not to see he was not wanted; but he was not yet used enough to social customs to know how to extricate himself dexterously from his false position, which his generally is who accosts people he is little acquainted with, and mingles in a conversation which does not concern him. He was mentally casting about for the least awkward manner of retreat, when he noticed that Aramis had let his handkerchief fall, and (doubtless by mistake) put his foot on it. This seemed a favorable chance to repair his mistake of intrusion: he stooped down, and with the most gracious air he could assume, drew the handkerchief from under the foot in spite of the efforts made to detain it, and holding it out to Aramis, said:—

"I believe, sir, this is a handkerchief you would be sorry to lose?"

The handkerchief was in truth richly embroidered, and had a cornet and a coat of arms at one corner. Aramis blushed excessively, and snatched rather than took the handkerchief.

"Ha! ha!" exclaimed one of the guards, "will you go on saying now, most discreet Aramis, that you are not on good terms with Madame de Bois-Tracy, when that gracious lady does you the favor of lending you her handkerchief!"

Aramis darted at D'Artagnan one of those looks which tell a man that he has made a mortal enemy; then assuming his mild air he said:—

"You are mistaken, gentlemen: this handkerchief is not mine, and I cannot understand why this gentleman has taken it into his head to offer it to me rather than to one of you. And as a proof of what I say, here is mine in my pocket."

So saying, he pulled out his handkerchief, which was also not only a very dainty one, and of fine linen (though linen was then costly), but was embroidered and without arms, bearing only a single cipher, the owner's.

This time D'Artagnan saw his mistake; but Aramis's friends were by no means convinced, and one of them, addressing the young musketeer with pretended gravity, said:—

"If things were as you make out, I should feel obliged, my dear Aramis, to reclaim it myself; for as you very well know, Bois-Tracy is an intimate friend of mine, and I cannot allow one of his wife's belongings to be exhibited as a trophy."

"You make the demand clumsily," replied Aramis; "and while I acknowledge the justice of your reclamation, I refuse it on account of the form."

"The fact is," D'Artagnan put in hesitatingly, "I did not actually see the handkerchief fall from M. Aramis's pocket. He had his foot on it, that's all, and I thought it was his."

"And you were deceived, my dear sir," replied Aramis coldly, very little obliged for the explanation; then turning to the guard who had professed himself Bois-Tracy's friend—"Besides," he went on, "I have reflected, my dear intimate friend of Bois-Tracy, that I am not less devotedly his friend than you can possibly be, so that this handkerchief is quite as likely to have fallen from your pocket as from mine!"

"On my honor, no!"

"You are about to swear on your honor, and I on my word; and then it will be pretty evident that one of us will have lied. Now here, Montaran, we will do better than that: let each take a half."

"Perfectly fair," cried the other two guardsmen; "the judgment of Solomon! Aramis, you are certainly full of wisdom!"

They burst into a loud laugh, and as may be supposed, the incident bore no other fruit. In a minute or two the conversation stopped, and the three guards and the musketeer, after heartily shaking hands, separated, the guards going one way and Aramis another.

"Now is the time to make my peace with this gentleman," said D'Artagnan to himself, having stood on one side during all the latter part of the conversation; and in this good spirit drawing near to Aramis, who was going off without paying any attention to him, he said:—

"You will excuse me, I hope."

"Ah!" interrupted Aramis, "permit me to observe to you, sir, that you have not acted in this affair as a man of good breeding ought."

"What!" cried D'Artagnan, "do you suppose—"

"I suppose that you are not a fool, and that you knew very well, even though you come from Gascony, that people do not stand on handkerchiefs for nothing. What the devil! Paris is not paved with linen!"

"Sir, you do wrong in trying to humiliate me," said D'Artagnan, in whom his native pugnacity began to speak louder than his peaceful resolutions. "I come from Gascony, it is true; and since you know it, there is no need to tell you that Gascons are not very patient, so that when they have asked pardon once, even for a folly, they think they have done at least as much again as they ought to have done."

"Sir, what I say to you about this matter," said Aramis, "is not for the sake of hunting a quarrel. Thank Heaven, I am not a swashbuckler, and being a musketeer only for a while, I only fight when I am forced to do so, and always with great reluctance; but this time the affair is serious, for here is a lady compromised by you."

"By us, you mean," cried D'Artagnan.

"Why did you give me back the handkerchief so awkwardly?"

"Why did you let it fall so awkwardly?"

"I have said that the handkerchief did not fall from my pocket."

"Well, by saying that you have told two lies, sir; for I saw it fall."

"Oh ho! you take it up that way, do you, Master Gascon? Well, I will teach you how to behave yourself."

"And I will send you back to your pulpit, Master Priest. Draw, if you please, and instantly—"

"Not so, if you please, my good friend; not here, at least. Do you not see that we are opposite Aiguillon House, full of the Cardinal's creatures? How do I know that it is not his Eminence who has honored you with the commission to bring him in my head? Now, I entertain an absurd partiality for my head, it seems to suit my shoulders so finely. I have no objection to killing you, you may be sure, but quietly, in a snug, distant spot, where you will not be able to boast of your death to anybody."

"I agree, but don't be too confident; and take away your handkerchief—whether it belongs to you or somebody else, perhaps you may stand in need of it to bandage up a wound. As a Gascon, I don't put off engagements for prudence's sake."

"Prudence is a virtue useless enough to musketeers, I know, but indispensable to churchmen; and as I am only a temporary musketeer, I hold it best to be prudent. At two o'clock I shall have the honor of expecting you at Treville's. There I will point out the best place and time to you."

The two bowed and separated. Aramis went up the street which led to the Luxembourg; while D'Artagnan, seeing that the appointed hour was coming near, took the road to the Carmes-Deschaux, saying to himself, "I certainly cannot hope to come out of these scrapes alive; but if I am doomed to be killed, it will be by a royal musketeer."

---

THE DEFENSE OF THE BASTION SAINT-GERVAIS

From 'The Three Musketeers'

When D'Artagnan arrived, he found his three friends all together. Athos was thinking deeply, Porthos was twirling his mustache, and Aramis was reading his prayers out of a beautiful little book bound in blue velvet.

"My faith, gentlemen!" exclaimed he, "I hope that what you have to tell me is very important, or I shall owe you a grudge for dragging me here, out of my bed, after a whole night passed in taking and dismantling a bastion! Ah, it is a thousand pities you were not there! It was warm work!"

"We were somewhere else, where it was not very cold either," replied Porthos, giving his mustache another twist....

"Aramis," said Athos, "didn't you breakfast the other day at Parpaillot's?"

"Yes."

"Were you comfortable there?"

"No, I did not like it at all. It was a fast day, and they had nothing but meat."

"What, no fish to be had in a seaport town?"

"They say," replied Aramis, taking up his book, "that they have all taken to the deep sea, since the Cardinal built that dike."

"That is not what I was asking," replied Athos. "Were you quite free and at your ease, or did any one pay attention to you?"

"Oh, nobody paid any attention to me. And if that is your object, Athos, Parpaillot's will suit us very well."

"Let us go at once then," said Athos, "for these walls are like paper."

On the way they met Grimaud [the valet of Athos], whom Athos beckoned silently to follow them. Grimaud, according to his custom, obeyed without a word. The poor fellow had almost forgotten how to speak!

It did not take them long to reach Parpaillot's, but unluckily the hour was ill chosen for a private conference. The réveille had just been sounded, and the sleepy soldiers were all pouring into the inn. This state of matters delighted the landlord, but was hardly so agreeable to the four friends, who merely nodded sulkily at the salutations of the crowd.

"If we are not careful," said Athos, rousing himself, "we shall find ourselves landed in some quarrel, which would be highly inconvenient at this moment. D'Artagnan, tell us about your night's work, and then we will tell you about ours."

"Ah yes," said a light-horse soldier, who was slowly sipping a glass of brandy, "you were down at the trenches last night, I think, and I believe you had a brush with the Rochellois."

D'Artagnan looked at Athos, to see if he ought to answer or not.

"My dear fellow," replied Athos, "I don't think you are aware that M. De Busigny did you the honor to address you! Since these gentlemen are interested in last night's affair, tell them about it."

"Is it true that you captured a bastion?" asked a Swiss, who had filled his beer up with rum.

"Yes, monsieur," replied D'Artagnan, "we had that honor. We also introduced a barrel of powder into a corner, which in exploding opened a really beautiful breach; and as the bastion was not built yesterday, the whole building was severely shaken."

"What bastion was it?" said a dragoon, who was holding a goose on the point of his sword, and cooking it at the fire.

"The Bastion Saint-Gervais," replied D'Artagnan; "the Rochellois behind it were always annoying our men."

"And there was a good deal of sharp-shooting?"

"A good deal. We lost five men, and the Rochellois eight or ten."

"But this morning," went on the light-horseman, "they will probably send down some pioneers to rebuild the bastion."

"Yes, probably," answered D'Artagnan.

"Gentlemen," broke in Athos, "I want to propose a bet."

"What bet?" asked the light-horseman.

"I bet you, M. De Busigny, that I and my three friends Porthos, Aramis, and D'Artagnan, will breakfast in the Bastion Saint-Gervais, and will hold it an hour by the clock, against all comers."

Porthos and Aramis looked at each other. They were beginning to understand what Athos had in his head.

"But," objected D'Artagnan, leaning over to whisper to Athos, "we shall be killed without a chance of escape."

"We shall be killed a great deal more certainly if we don't go," replied Athos.

"Ah!" ejaculated Porthos, twirling his mustache, "that is a grand bet."

"I take it," said M. De Busigny; "let us fix the stakes."

"That is easily done," replied Athos. "We are four and you are four. The loser shall give the whole eight a dinner."

"Very well, let us agree to that," said M. De Busigny and the dragoon.

"Your breakfast is ready, gentlemen," broke in the landlord at this instant.

"Then bring it here," answered Athos.

The landlord obeyed, and Athos, making a sign to Grimaud, pointed out a large basket standing in a corner, which he was to fill with wine and food.

"But where are you going to eat it?" asked the landlord.

"What does that matter to you as long as you are paid?" replied Athos, throwing two pistoles on the table. Then, turning to M. De Busigny, he observed:—

"Will you have the kindness, monsieur, to set your watch by mine, or let me set mine by yours?"

"Certainly, monsieur," said the light-horseman, drawing out a beautiful watch incrusted with diamonds; "half-past seven."

"Five-and-twenty minutes to eight. So I am five minutes faster than you;" and bowing to the rest of the company, the four young men took the road to the Bastion Saint-Gervais, followed by Grimaud carrying the basket. He had not the faintest idea where they were going, or what they were to do, but Athos had given his orders, and he always obeyed without questioning.

As long as they were within the camp, the four friends remained silent; but once they had passed the wall of circumvallation, D'Artagnan, who was completely in the dark, thought it was time to ask for an explanation.

"And now, my dear Athos," said he, "will you be good enough to tell me where we are bound for?"

"Why, for the bastion, of course."

"And what are we to do when we get there?"

"I told you before. We are going to breakfast."

"But why didn't we do that at Parpaillot's?"

"Because we had some important matters to discuss, and it was impossible to talk for five minutes at that inn, with all those people coming and going, and perpetually bowing and speaking to you. Here at least," continued Athos, pointing to the bastion, "we shall not be interrupted."

"It seems to me," said D'Artagnan, with the caution which was as much his characteristic as his foolhardy courage, "it seems to me that we might have found some secluded place among the sand-hills on the sea-shore."

"Oh, somebody would have seen, and in a quarter of an hour spies would have informed the Cardinal that we were holding council."

"Yes," said Aramis. "Athos is right. Animadvertuntur in desertis."

"A desert would have done very well," replied Porthos; "but first we should have to find it."

"There is no desert where a bird cannot fly overhead, or a fish jump out of the water, or a rabbit run out of his hole; and bird, fish, and rabbit have all become spies of the Cardinal. Much better to go on with our adventure, which we cannot now give up without dishonor. We have made a bet, and a bet on the spur of the moment; a bet of which I defy any one to guess the true meaning. To win it, we must hold the bastion for an hour. Either they will attack us, or they won't. If we are left unmolested, we shall have plenty of time to talk without any one overhearing us, for I will answer for the walls of this bastion having no ears. If they try to dislodge us, we can talk all the same, and in defending our position shall cover ourselves with glory. You see that from every point of view we have the whip hand."

"Yes," said D'Artagnan, "but most certainly we shall attract some stray bullet."

"My good fellow," remarked Athos, "do you really think that the enemy's bullets are those we have most cause to fear?"

"But surely, if we were embarking on such an expedition, we ought to have brought our muskets?"

"Porthos, you are a goose! What would be the good of burdening ourselves with anything so useless?"

"I should hardly think that a heavy musket, a dozen cartridges, and a powder flask would be useless when one is in the presence of an enemy."

"Dear me!" said Athos, "didn't you hear what D'Artagnan was saying?"

"What did D'Artagnan say?" asked Porthos.

"He said that during last night's attack eight or ten Frenchmen were killed, and as many Rochellois."

"Well?"

"Well, hasn't everybody been too busy ever since to think of stripping the dead bodies?"

"What then?"

"What then? Why, we shall find their muskets, their flasks, and their cartridges, all waiting for us; and instead of four muskets and twelve charges, there will be fifteen pieces and a hundred bullets."

"O Athos," exclaimed Aramis, "you are a great man!"

Porthos nodded approval; only D'Artagnan did not seem to be convinced; and Grimaud appeared to have his doubts, for seeing they were still making for the bastion (which up to that moment he had declined to believe), he plucked his master by the coat.

"Where are we going?" he asked by a sign.

Athos pointed out the bastion.

"But," objected Grimaud, speaking always in pantomime, "we shall leave our bodies there."

Athos raised his hands and eyes to heaven. Grimaud placed his basket on the ground and sat down, shaking his head.

Athos took a pistol from his belt, looked to see if it was well primed, cocked it, and approached the barrel to Grimaud's ear. Grimaud was on his legs again, as if by magic. Athos then signed to him to take up the basket and go on.

Grimaud obeyed.

When they reached the bastion, the four friends turned round and beheld over three hundred soldiers assembled at the gate of the camp; M. De Busigny, the dragoon, the Swiss, and their silent companion forming a group apart.

Athos removed his hat, put it on the edge of his sword, and waved it in the air.

The spectators returned his salute and gave a great hurrah, which penetrated to their ears even at that distance. Then all four disappeared inside the bastion, where Grimaud had preceded them.

---

THE CONSULTATION OF THE MUSKETEERS

From 'The Three Musketeers'

As Athos had assumed, the bastion was only occupied by a dozen dead men, French and Rochellois.

"Gentlemen," said Athos, to whom the command of the expedition naturally fell, "while Grimaud lays out breakfast, we will begin by picking up the muskets and cartridges, and of course there is nothing in this employment to prevent our talking. Our friends here," he added, pointing to the dead, "will pay no attention to us."

"But after we have made sure they have nothing in their pockets, we had better throw them into the trench," said Porthos.

"Yes," replied Athos, "that is Grimaud's business."

"Well then," said D'Artagnan, "let Grimaud search them, and after he has done so, throw them over the wall."

"He shall do nothing of the sort," replied Athos; "we may find them useful yet."

"You are going mad, my good fellow! Of what use can these dead men be?"

"Don't judge hastily, say the gospel and the Cardinal," replied Athos. "How many guns have we got?"

"Twelve," said Aramis.

"How many charges?"

"A hundred."

"That will do. Now let us load."

They set to work; and as they finished loading the last gun, Grimaud made a sign that breakfast was ready.

By a gesture Athos replied that they were ready also, and then pointed out a pepper-box turret, where Grimaud was to keep watch. To help him pass the time Athos allowed him to take some bread, two cutlets, and a bottle of wine....

"Now," said D'Artagnan, "that there is no chance of our being overheard, I hope you will tell us your secret."

"I trust, gentlemen, to give you both pleasure and glory at once," replied Athos. "I have made you take a charming walk, and now here is an excellent breakfast; while below, as you may see through the loop-holes, are five hundred persons, who consider us to be either lunatics or heroes,—two classes of idiots who have much in common...."

"What is the matter, Grimaud? As the circumstances are grave, I will allow you to speak, but be short, I beg. What is it?"

"A troop."

"How many?"

"Twenty?"

"What are they?"

"Sixteen pioneers, four soldiers."

"How far off?"

"Five hundred paces."

"Then we have just time to finish this fowl and drink your health, D'Artagnan."

A few minutes later the troop hove in sight, marching along a narrow trench that connected the bastion and the town.

"Bah!" said Athos. "It was scarcely worth while disturbing ourselves for a mere handful of rascals armed with pickaxes, hoes, and shovels. Grimaud had only got to make them a sign to return whence they came, and I am sure they would have left us in peace."

"I doubt it," said D'Artagnan, "for they are advancing steadily. And besides the sappers, there are four soldiers and a brigadier, all armed with muskets."

"It is only because they have not seen us," replied Athos.

"Upon my honor," cried Aramis, "I feel quite ashamed to fire on poor devils like that."

"False priest!" exclaimed Porthos, "to have pity on heretics."

"Aramis is right," said Athos. "I will warn them."

"What on earth are you doing?" said D'Artagnan. "You will get yourself shot, my good fellow."

But Athos paid no attention to this remark, and mounting the breach, his hat in one hand and his musket in the other, he addressed the troop, who were so astonished at this unexpected apparition that they halted about fifty paces distant. "Gentlemen," he said, bowing courteously as he spoke, "I am at this moment breakfasting with some friends in the shelter of this bastion. As you know, there is nothing so unpleasant as to be disturbed during your meals; therefore we should be greatly obliged if you would postpone any business you may have here, till we have finished, or else call again. Unless, indeed, you have the happy inspiration to quit the side of rebellion, and to drink, with us, to the health of the King of France."

"Do take care, Athos!" exclaimed D'Artagnan; "don't you see they are aiming at you?"

"Oh, yes, of course," said Athos; "but they are only civilians, who don't know how to shoot; and they will never touch me."

He had scarcely uttered the words when four muskets fired simultaneously. The balls fell round Athos, but not one grazed him.

Four muskets immediately answered, but these were better directed than the others. Three of the soldiers fell dead, and one of the sappers was wounded.

"Grimaud, another musket," said Athos, who was still on the breach. Grimaud obeyed; a second volley was fired; the brigadier and two pioneers fell dead, and the rest of the troop took flight.

"Now we must make a sortie," cried Athos; and the four comrades dashed out of the fort, picked up the muskets belonging to the dead soldiers, and retreated to the bastion, carrying the trophies of their victory....

"To arms!" called Grimaud.

The young men jumped up and ran for their muskets.

This time the advancing troop was composed of twenty or twenty-five men, but they were no longer sappers, but soldiers of the garrison.

"Hadn't we better return to the camp?" said Porthos. "The fight is not equal at all."

"Impossible, for three reasons," said Athos. "First, because we haven't finished breakfast; second, because we have several important things to discuss; and third, because there are still ten minutes before the hour is up."

"Well, anyway," remarked Aramis, "we had better have some plan of campaign."

"It is very simple," replied Athos. "The moment the enemy is within reach, we fire. If they still come on, we fire again, and go on firing as long as our guns are loaded. If any of them are left, and they try to carry the place by assault, we will let them get well into the ditch, and then drop on their heads a piece of the wall, that only keeps poised by a kind of miracle."

"Bravo," cried Porthos. "Athos, you were born to be a general; and the Cardinal, who thinks himself a great commander, is not to be compared to you."

"Gentlemen," replied Athos, "remember, one thing at a time. Cover your man well."

"I have mine," said D'Artagnan.

"And I," said Porthos and Aramis.

"Then fire;" and as Athos gave the word, the muskets rang out and four men fell. Then the drum beat, and the little army advanced to the charge, while all the while the fire was kept up, irregularly, but with a sure aim. The Rochellois however did not flinch, but came on steadily.

When they reached the foot of the bastion, the enemy still numbered twelve or fifteen. A sharp fire received them, but they never faltered, and leaping the trench, prepared to scale the breach.

"Now, comrades!" cried Athos. "Let us make an end of them. To the wall!"

And all four, aided by Grimaud, began to push with their guns a huge block of wall, which swayed as if with the wind, and then rolled slowly down into the trench. A horrible cry was heard, a cloud of dust mounted upwards; and all was silent.

"Have we crushed them all, do you think?" asked Athos.

"It looks like it," answered D'Artagnan.

"No," said Porthos, "for two or three are limping off."

Athos looked at his watch.

"Gentlemen," he said, "an hour has elapsed since we came here, and we have won our bet." ...

"What is going on in the town?" asked Athos.

"It is a call to arms."

They listened, and the sound of a drum reached their ears.

"They must be sending us an entire regiment," said Athos.

"You don't mean to fight a whole regiment?" said Porthos.

"Why not?" asked the musketeer. "If we had only had the sense to bring another dozen bottles, I could make head against an army!"

"As I live, the drum is coming nearer," said D'Artagnan.

"Let it," replied Athos. "It takes a quarter of an hour to get from here to the town, so it takes a quarter of an hour to get from the town here. That is more than enough time for us to arrange our plans. If we leave this, we shall never find such a good position.... But I must first give Grimaud his orders;" and Athos made a sign to his servant.

"Grimaud," said he, pointing to the dead who were lying on the bastion, "you will take these gentlemen and prop them up against the wall, and put their hats on their heads and their guns in their hands."

"Great man!" ejaculated D'Artagnan; "I begin to see."

"You do?" asked Porthos.

"Do you understand, Grimaud?" said Aramis.

Grimaud nodded.

"Then we are all right," said Athos....

"On guard!" cried D'Artagnan. "Look at those red and black points moving down there! A regiment, did you call it, Athos?—it is a perfect army!"

"My word, yes!" said Athos, "there they come! How cunning to beat neither drums nor trumpets. Are you ready, Grimaud?"

Grimaud silently nodded, and showed them a dozen dead men, arranged skillfully in various attitudes, some porting arms, some taking aim, others drawing their swords.

"Well done!" exclaimed Athos, "it does honor to your imagination."

"If it is all the same to you," said Porthos, "I should like to understand what is going on."

"Let us get away first," replied D'Artagnan, "and you will understand after."

"One moment, please! Give Grimaud time to clear away the breakfast."

"Ah!" said Aramis; "the red and black specks are becoming more distinct, and I agree with D'Artagnan that we have no time to lose before we regain the camp."

"Very well," rejoined Athos, "I have nothing to say against retreating. The wager was for an hour, and we have been here an hour and a half. Let us be off at once."

The four comrades went out at the back, following Grimaud, who had already departed with the basket.

"Oh!" cried Athos, stopping suddenly, "what the devil is to be done?"

"Has anything been forgotten?" asked Aramis.

"Our flag, man, our flag! We can't leave our flag in the enemy's hands, if it is nothing but a napkin." And Athos dashed again into the bastion, and bore away the flag unhurt, amid a volley of balls from the Rochellois.

He waved his flag, while turning his back on the troops of the town, and saluting those of the camp. From both sides arose great cries, of anger on the one hand and enthusiasm on the other, and the napkin, pierced with three bullet-holes, was in truth transformed into a flag. "Come down, come down!" they shouted from the camp.

Athos came down, and his friends, who had awaited him anxiously, received him with joy.

"Be quick, Athos," said D'Artagnan; "now that we have got everything but money, it would be stupid to get killed."

But Athos would not hurry himself, and they had to keep pace with him.

By this time Grimaud and his basket were well beyond bullet range, while in the distance the sounds of rapid firing might be heard.

"What are they doing?" asked Porthos; "what are they firing at?"

"At our dead men," replied Athos.

"But they don't fire back."

"Exactly so; therefore the enemy will come to the conclusion that there is an ambuscade. They will hold a council, and send an envoy with a flag of truce, and when they at last find out the joke, we shall be out of reach. So it is no use getting apoplexy by racing."

"Oh, I understand," said Porthos, full of astonishment.

"That is a mercy!" replied Athos, shrugging his shoulders, as they approached the camp, which was watching their progress in a ferment of admiration.

This time a new fusillade was begun, and the balls whistled close to the heads of the four victors and fell about their ears. The Rochellois had entered the bastion.

"What bad shooting!" said D'Artagnan. "How many was it we killed? Twelve?"

"Twelve or fifteen."

"And how many did we crush?"

"Eight or ten."

"And not a scratch to show for it."

"Ah, what is that on your hand, D'Artagnan? It looks to me like blood."

"It's nothing," replied D'Artagnan.

"A spent ball?"

"Not even that."

"But what is it, then?" As we have said, the silent and resolute Athos loved D'Artagnan like his own son, and showed every now and then all the anxiety of a father.

"The skin is rubbed off, that is all," said D'Artagnan. "My fingers were caught between two stones—the stone of the wall and the stone of my ring."

"That is what comes of having diamonds," remarked Athos disdainfully....

"Here we are at the camp, and they are coming to meet us and bring us in triumphantly."

And he only spoke the truth, for the whole camp was in a turmoil. More than two thousand people had gazed, as at a play, at the lucky bit of braggadocio of the four friends,—braggadocio of which they were far from suspecting the real motive. The cry of "Long live the musketeers," resounded on all sides, and M. De Busigny was the first to hold out his hand to Athos and to declare that he had lost his wager. The dragoon and the Swiss had followed him, and all the others had followed the dragoon and the Swiss. There was nothing but congratulations, hand-shakings, embraces; and the tumult became so great that the Cardinal thought there must be a revolt, and sent La Houdinière, his captain of guards, to find out what was the matter.

"Well?" asked the Cardinal, as his messenger returned.

"Well, monseigneur," replied La Houdinière, "it is about three musketeers and a guardsman who made a bet with M. De Busigny to go and breakfast at the Bastion Saint-Gervais, and while breakfasting, held it for two hours against the enemy, and killed I don't know how many Rochellois."

"You asked the names of these gentlemen?"

"Yes, monseigneur."

"What are they?"

"Athos, Porthos, and Aramis."

"Always my three heroes," murmured the Cardinal. "And the guardsman?"

"M. D'Artagnan."

"Always my young rogue! I must gain over these men."

And the same evening, the Cardinal had a conversation with M. De Treville about the morning's exploit, with which the whole camp was still ringing. M. De Treville, who had heard it all at first hand, gave his Eminence all the details, not forgetting the episode of the napkin.

"Very good, M. De Treville," said the Cardinal; "but you must get me that napkin, and I will have three golden lilies embroidered on it, and give as a banner to your company."

"Monseigneur," replied M. De Treville, "that would be an injustice to the guards. M. D'Artagnan does not belong to me, but to M. Des Essarts."

"Then you must take him," said the Cardinal. "As these four brave soldiers love each other so much, they ought certainly to be in the same regiment."

That evening M. De Treville announced the good news to the three musketeers and to D'Artagnan, and invited them all to breakfast the following day.

D'Artagnan was nearly beside himself with joy. As we know, it had been the dream of his life to be a musketeer.

---

THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK

From 'The Viscount of Bragelonne'

[Dumas adopts the theory that the Man in the Iron Mask was the suppressed twin brother of Louis XIV.]

"What is all this noise?" asked Philippe, turning towards the door of the concealed staircase. And as he spoke a voice was heard saying, "This way, this way. Still a few steps, sire."

"It is M. Fouquet's voice," said D'Artagnan, who was standing near the Queen Mother.

"Then M. D'Herblay will not be far off," added Philippe; but little did he expect to see the person who actually entered.

All eyes were riveted on the door, from which the voice of M. Fouquet proceeded; but it was not he who came through.

A cry of anguish rang through the room, breaking forth simultaneously from the King and the spectators, and surely never had been seen a stranger sight.

The shutters were half closed, and only a feeble light struggled through the velvet curtains, with their thick silk linings, and the eyes of the courtiers had to get accustomed to the darkness before they could distinguish between the surrounding objects. But once discerned, they stood out as clear as day.

So, looking up, they saw Louis XIV. in the doorway of the private stair, his face pale and his brows bent; and behind him stood Fouquet.

The Queen Mother, whose hand held that of Philippe, uttered a shriek at the sight, thinking that she beheld a ghost.

Monsieur staggered for a moment and turned away his head, looking from the King who was facing him to the King who was by his side.

Madame on the contrary stepped forward, thinking it must be her brother-in-law reflected in a mirror. And indeed, this seemed the only rational explanation of the double image.

Both young men, agitated and trembling, clenching their hands, darting flames of fury from their eyes, dumb, breathless, ready to spring at each other's throats, resembled each other so exactly in feature, figure, and even, by pure accident, in dress, that Anne of Austria herself stood confounded. For as yet the truth had not dawned on her. There are some torments that we all instinctively reject. It is easier far to accept the supernatural, the impossible.

That he should encounter such obstacles had never for one moment occurred to Louis. He imagined he had only to show himself, for the world to fall at his feet. The Sun-king could have no rival; and where his rays did not fall, there must be darkness—

As to Fouquet, who could describe his bewilderment at the sight of the living portrait of his master? Then he thought that Aramis was right, and that the new-comer was every whit as much a king as his double, and that after all, perhaps he had made a mistake when he had declined to share in the coup d'état so cleverly plotted by the General of the Jesuits.

And then, it was equally the blood royal of Louis XIII. that Fouquet had determined to sacrifice to blood in all respects identical; a noble ambition, to one that was selfish. And it was the mere aspect of the pretender which showed him all these things.

D'Artagnan, leaning against the wall and facing Fouquet, was debating in his own mind the key to this wonderful riddle. He felt instinctively, though he could not have told why, that in the meeting of the two Louis XIV's lay the explanation of all that had seemed suspicious in the conduct of Aramis during the last few days.

Suddenly Louis XIV., by nature the most impatient of the two young men, and with the habit of command that was the result of training, strode across the room and flung open one of the shutters. The flood of light that streamed through the window caused Philippe involuntarily to recoil, and to step back into the shelter of an alcove.

The movement struck Louis, and turning to the Queen he said:

"Mother, do you not know your own son, although every one else has denied his King?"

Anne trembled at his voice and raised her arms to heaven, but could not utter a single word.

"Mother," retorted Philippe in his quietest tones, "do you not know your own son?"

And this time it was Louis who stepped back.

As for Anne, pierced to the heart with grief and remorse, she could bear it no longer. She staggered where she stood, and unaided by her attendants, who seemed turned into stone, she sank down on a sofa with a sigh.

This spectacle was too much for Louis. He rushed to D'Artagnan, whose brain was going round with bewilderment, and who clung to the door as his last hope.

"To me, musketeer! Look us both in the face, and see which is the paler, he or I."

The cry awoke D'Artagnan from his stupor, and struck the chord of obedience strong in the bosom of every soldier. He lifted his head, and striding straight up to Philippe laid his hand on his shoulder, saying quietly:—

"Monsieur, you are my prisoner."

Philippe remained absolutely still, as if nailed to the floor, his eyes fixed despairingly on the King who was his brother. His silence reproached him as no words could have done, with the bitterness of the past and the tortures of the future.

And the King understood, and his soul sank within him. His eyes fell, and drawing his brother and sister-in-law with him, he hastily quitted the room; forgetting in his agitation even his mother, lying motionless on the couch beside him, not three paces from the son whom for the second time she was allowing to be condemned to a death in life.

Philippe drew near to her, and said softly:—

"If you had not been my mother, madame, I must have cursed you for the misery you have caused me."

D'Artagnan overheard, and a shiver of pity passed through him. He bowed respectfully to the young prince, and said:—

"Forgive me, monseigneur; I am only a soldier, and my faith is due to him who has left us."

"Thank you, M. D'Artagnan. But what has become of M. D'Herblay?"

"M. D'Herblay is safe, monseigneur," answered a voice behind them; "and while I am alive and free, not a hair of his head shall be hurt."

"M. Fouquet!" said the prince, smiling sadly.

"Forgive me, monseigneur," cried Fouquet, falling on his knees; "but he who has left the room was my guest."

"Ah!" murmured Philippe to himself with a sigh, "you are loyal friends and true hearts. You make me regret the world I am leaving. M. D'Artagnan, I will follow you."

As he spoke, Colbert entered and handed to the captain of the musketeers an order from the King; then bowed, and went out.

D'Artagnan glanced at the paper, and in a sudden burst of wrath crumpled it in his hand.

"What is the matter?" asked the prince.

"Read it, monseigneur," answered the musketeer.

And Philippe read these words, written hastily by the King himself:—

"M. D'Artagnan will conduct the prisoner to the Îles Sainte-Marguerite. He will see that his face is covered with an iron mask, which must never be lifted on pain of death."

"It is just," said Philippe; "I am ready."

"Aramis was right," whispered Fouquet to D'Artagnan, "this is as good a king as the other."

"Better," replied D'Artagnan; "he only needed you and me."

---

A TRICK IS PLAYED ON HENRY III. BY AID OF CHICOT

From 'The Lady of Monsoreau'

The King and Chicot remained quiet and silent for the next ten minutes. Then suddenly the King sat up, and the noise he made roused Chicot, who was just dropping off to sleep.

The two looked at each other with sparkling eyes.

"What is it?" asked Chicot in a low voice.

"Do you hear that sighing sound?" replied the King in a lower voice still. "Listen!"

As he spoke, one of the wax candles in the hand of the golden satyr went out; then a second, then a third. After a moment, the fourth went out also.

"Oh, oh!" cried Chicot, "that is more than a sighing sound." But he had hardly uttered the last word when in its turn the lamp was extinguished, and the room was in darkness, save for the flickering glow of the dying embers.

"Look out!" exclaimed Chicot, jumping up.

"He is going to speak," said the King, shrinking back into his bed.

"Then listen and let us hear what he says," replied Chicot, and at the same instant a voice which sounded at once both piercing and hollow, proceeded from the space between the bed and the wall.

"Hardened sinner, are you there?"

"Yes, yes, Lord." gasped Henri with chattering teeth.

"Dear me!" remarked Chicot, "that is a very hoarse voice to have come from heaven! I feel dreadfully frightened; but never mind!"

"Do you hear me?" asked the voice.

"Yes, Lord," stammered Henri; "and I bow before your anger."

"Do you think you are carrying out my will by performing all the mummeries you have taken part in to-day, while your heart is full of the things of this world?"

"Well said!" cried Chicot; "you touched him there!"

The King's hands shook as he clasped them, and Chicot went up to him.

"Well," murmured Henri, "are you convinced now?"

"Wait a bit," answered Chicot.

"What do you want more?"

"Hush! listen to me. Creep softly out of bed, and let me take your place."

"Why?"

"Because then the anger of the Lord will fall first upon me."

"And do you think I shall escape?"

"We will try, anyway;" and with affectionate persistence he pushed the King out of bed, and took his place.

"Now, Henri," he said, "go and lie on my sofa, and leave all to me."

Henri obeyed; he began to understand Chicot's plan.

"You are silent," continued the voice, "which proves that your heart is hardened."

"Oh, pardon, pardon, Lord!" exclaimed Chicot, imitating the King's nasal twang. Then, stretching himself out of bed, he whispered to the King, "It is very odd, but the heavenly voice does not seem to know that it is Chicot who is speaking."

"Oh!" replied Henri, "what do you suppose is the meaning of that?"

"Don't be in a hurry; plenty of strange things will happen yet!"

"Miserable creature that you are!" went on the voice.

"Yes, Lord, yes!" answered Chicot. "I am a horrible sinner, hardened in crime."

"Then confess your sins, and repent."

"I acknowledge," said Chicot, "that I dealt wickedly by my cousin Condé, whose wife I betrayed; and I repent bitterly."

"What is that you are saying?" cried the King. "There is no good in mentioning that. It has all been forgotten long ago."

"Oh, has it?" replied Chicot; "then we will pass on to something else."

"Answer," said the voice.

"I acknowledge," said the false Henri, "that I behaved like a thief toward the Poles, who had elected me their king, in stealing away to France one fine night, carrying with me all the crown jewels; and I repent bitterly."

"Idiot!" exclaimed Henri, "what are you talking about now? Nobody remembers anything about that."

"Let me alone," answered Chicot, "I must go on pretending to be the King."

"Speak," said the voice.

"I acknowledge," continued Chicot, "that I snatched the throne from my brother D'Alençon, who was the rightful heir, since I had formally renounced my claims when I was elected King of Poland; I repent bitterly."

"Rascal!" cried the King.

"There is yet something more," said the voice.

"I acknowledge to have plotted with my excellent mother, Catherine de' Medicis, to hunt from France my brother-in-law the King of Navarre, after first destroying all his friends, and my sister Queen Marguerite, after first destroying all her lovers; and I repent bitterly."

"Scoundrel! Cease!" muttered the King, his teeth clenched in anger.

"Sire, it is no use trying to hide what Providence knows as well as we do."

"There is a crime unconfessed that has nothing to do with politics," said the voice.

"Ah, now we are getting to it," observed Chicot dolefully; "it is about my conduct, I suppose?"

"It is," answered the voice.

"I cannot deny," continued Chicot, always speaking in the name of the King, "that I am very effeminate, very lazy; a hopeless trifler, an incorrigible hypocrite."

"It is true," said the voice.

"I have behaved ill to all women, to my own wife in particular; and such a good wife too."

"A man should love his wife as himself, and above all the world," cried the voice angrily.

"Oh dear!" wailed Chicot in despairing tones; "then I certainly have sinned terribly."

"And by your example you have caused others to sin."

"That is true, sadly true."

"You very nearly sent that poor Saint-Luc to perdition."

"Bah!" said Chicot, "are you sure I did not send him there quite?"

"No; but such a fate may befall both of you if you do not let him go back to his family at break of day."

"Dear me!" said Chicot to the King, "the voice seems to take a great interest in the house of Cossé."

"If you disobey me, you will suffer the same torments as Sardanapalus, Nabuchodnosor, and the Marshal De Retz."

Henry III. gave a loud groan; at this threat he became more frightened than ever.

"I am lost," he ejaculated wildly; "I am lost. That voice from on high will be my death-warrant."

---

ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR

(1824-1895)

BY FRANCISQUE SARCEY

e shall not say much about the life of Alexandre Dumas the younger. The history of a great writer is the history of his works. He was born in Paris, on July 27th, 1824. His name on the register of births appears as "Alexandre, son of Marie Catherine Lebay, seamstress." He was not acknowledged by his father until he had reached his sixth year, March 7th, 1830. I emphasize this particular because it had great influence on the bent of his genius. During all his life Dumas was haunted by a desire of rehabilitating illegitimate children, of creating a reaction against their treatment by the Civil Code and the prejudice which makes of them something little better than outcasts in society.

"When seven years old," he himself says, "I entered as a boarder the school of Monsieur Vauthier, on Rue Montagne Saint-Geneviève. Thence I passed, about two years later, to the Saint-Victor School; the principal was Monsieur Goubaux, a friend of my father, with whom he collaborated under the nom de plume of Dinaux. This school, which numbered two hundred and fifty boarding pupils, and with the rather strange habits which I tried to depict in 'The Clémenceau Case,' occupied all the ground covered to-day by the Casino de Paris and the 'Pôle-Nord' establishment. When about fifteen I left the Saint-Victor School for Monsieur Hénon's school, which was situated in the Rue de Courcelles and has now disappeared. It is in the Collêge Bourbon (now the Lycée Condorcet) that I received all my instruction, as the pupils of the two schools where I lived attended the college classes. I never belonged to any of the higher State schools,—I have not even the degree of bachelor."

At the end of his years of study he returned to his father. He did not stay there more than six months. The rather tumultuous life which he saw in the house disturbed his proud mind, already filled with serious yearnings.

"You have debts," his father said to him. "Do as I do: work, and you will pay them."

Such was indeed the young man's intention. His first work was a one-act play in verse, 'The Queen's Jewel,' which no one, assuredly, would mention to-day but for his signature. The date was 1845, and the author was then twenty-one. Other works by him were published at various times in the Journal des Demoiselles.

"I was," he has said, "the careless, lazy, and spoilt child of all my father's friends. I believed in the eternity of youth, of strength, of joy. I spent the whole day laughing, the whole night sleeping, unless I had some reason for writing verses."

About 1846 he set resolutely to work. He turned to novel-writing, which seemed to him to offer greater facilities for reaching the public and greater chances of immediate income than dramatic composition. Only two of his novels have survived: 'La Dame aux Camélias' ('Camille': 1848), because from this book came the immortal drama by the same title; and 'The Clémenceau Case,' because the author wrote it when he was in complete possession of his talent, and because moreover it is a first-rate work.

It was in 1852 that the Vaudeville Theatre gave the first performance of 'Camille,' the fortune of which was to be so extraordinary. For two or three years the play had been tossed from theatre to theatre. Nobody wanted it. To the ideas of the time it seemed simply shocking, and the play was still forbidden in London after its performances in France were numbered by the hundreds.

There is this special trait in 'Camille'—it was a work all instinct with the spirit of youth. Dumas twenty years later sadly said: "I might perhaps make another 'Demi-Monde'; I could not make another 'Camille.'" There existed, indeed, other works which have all the fire and charm of the twentieth year. 'Polyeucte' is Corneille's masterpiece; his 'Cid' breathes the spirit of youth: Corneille at forty could not have written the 'Cid.' Racine's first play is 'Andromaque': Beaumarchais's is the 'Barber of Seville'; Rossini, when young, enlivened it with his light and sparkling airs. Fifteen years later he himself wrote his 'William Tell,' a higher work, but a work which was not young.

ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR.

If the theatrical managers had recoiled from 'Camille' in spite of the great names that recommended it, it is because it was cut after a pattern to which neither they nor the public were accustomed; it is because it contained the germ of a whole dramatic revolution. Now, the author was not a theatrical revolutionist. He had not said to himself, "I am going to throw down the old fabric of the drama, and erect a new one on its ruins." To tell the truth, he had no idea of what he was doing. He had witnessed a love drama. He had thrown it still throbbing upon the stage, without any regard for the dramatic conventions which were then imposed upon playwrights, and which were almost accepted as laws. He had simply depicted what he had seen. All the managers, attached as they were to the old customs, and respectful of the traditions, had trembled with horror when they saw moving around Camille the ignoble Prudence, the idiotic Due de Varville, the silly Saint-Gaudens. But the public—though the fact was suspected neither by them nor by the public itself—yearned for more truth upon the boards. When 'Camille' was presented to them, the play-goers uttered a cry of astonishment and joy: that was the thing! that was just what they wanted! From that day, which will remain as a date in the history of the French stage, the part of Camille has been performed by all the celebrated actresses. The part has two sides: one may see in it a degraded woman who has fallen profoundly in love, rather late in life; one may also see in it a woman, already poetical in her own nature, suddenly carried away by a great passion into the sacred regions of the Ideal.

Almost any young man in Dumas's place would have lost his head after so astounding a success, and might not have resisted the temptation of at once working out the vein. For on coming out of the theatre after the first performance, the author had all the managers at his feet, and the smallest trifle was sure to be accepted if it only had his signature. But he had learned, by the side of "a prodigal father," the art of husbanding his talent. He declined to front the footlights again, save with a work upon which he had been able to bestow all the care and labor it deserved: he waited a year before he gave, at the Gymnase theatre, 'Diane de Lys.'

'Diane de Lys' undoubtedly pleased the public, but its success was not exactly brilliant. It is full of great qualities, it is strongly conceived, constructed with rare power and logic, but it added nothing to his reputation. The play as a whole seemed long and melancholy. It is a curious subject for critical study, as one of the stages in which the genius of the author stopped awhile, on its way to higher works. It will leave no great trace in his career.

Two years later he gave at the Gymnase theatre—I do not dare to say his masterpiece, but certainly the best constructed and most enjoyable play he ever wrote, 'Le Demi-Monde' (The Other Half-World). In this play he discovered and defined the very peculiar world of those women who live on the margin of regular "society," and try to preserve its tone and demeanor. What scientific and strong construction are here! What an admirable disposition of the scenes, both flexible and logical! And through the action, which moves on with wonderful straightforwardness and breadth, how many portraits, drawn with a steady hand, each one bearing such distinctive features that you would know them if you met them on the street! Olivier de Jalin, the refined Parisian, the dialectician of the play, who is no other than Dumas himself; Raymond de Nanjac, handsome and honest, but not keen or Parisian; and that giddy Valentine de Sanctis, whose head turns with the wind, whose tongue cannot rest one moment; and especially Suzanne d'Ange, so witty, so complex, so devious in her motions, so roublarde, as a Parisian of to-day would say.

Between 'The Demi-Monde,' and 'La Question d'Argent' (The Money Question), which followed, Dumas spent two years at work. 'La Question d'Argent' is a favorite play with the connoisseurs; but its reception by the public was of the coldest. It is a noteworthy fact that plays turning upon money have never been successful. Le Sage's 'Turcaret' is a dramatic masterpiece: it never had the luck to please the crowd. Dumas's Jean Giraud is, however, a very curiously studied character. The author has represented in him the commonest type of the shady money-man, the unconscious rascal. And very skillfully he made an individual out of that general type, by giving to Jean Giraud a certain rough good-nature; the appearance of a good fellow, with a certain degree of fineness; a mixture of humility and self-conceit, of awkwardness and impudence, and even some ideas as to the power of money that do not lack dignity, and some real liberality of sentiment and act,—for wealth alone, though acquired by ignominious means, suggests and dictates to the great robbers some advantageous movements which the small rascal cannot indulge in: and around this Turcaret of the Second Empire how many pictures of honest people, every one of whom, in his or her way, is good and fine!

One year later Dumas carried to the Gymnase, his favorite theatre, 'Le Fils Naturel' (The Natural Son); and the next year 'Un Père Prodigue' (A Prodigal Father; known also in English through a free adaptation as 'My Awful Dad').

In 'Le Fils Naturel' Dumas for the first time wrote a theme-play, a kind of work in which he was to become a master. Hitherto we have seen him drawing pictures of manners. To be sure, philosophical considerations on the period depicted are not wanting, but the play has not the form and does not assume the movement of a thesis. It does not take up one special trait of our social order, one of our worldly prejudices, in order to show its strong and weak sides. 'Le Fils Naturel' is the work of a moralist as well as of a playwright; or rather, it is the work of a playwright who was a born moralist.

'Un Père Prodigue' originally excited great curiosity. It escaped no one that in his Count Fernand de la Rivonnière, Dumas had shown us some traits of his illustrious father, who had been a prodigal father; and that he had depicted himself in Viscount André. Every one made comparisons; some, of course, accused the author of filial disrespect. The accusation was ridiculous, and he did not even answer it. He had so well disguised the persons, he had transported them into such different surroundings, that no one could recognize in them their true prototypes. Then—and this is no small praise—if Count de la Rivonnière is guilty of one fault, that of throwing to the wind his fortune, he is a most amiable nobleman, full of broad ideas and generous sentiments,—has a warm heart. The fourth act, in which the father sacrifices himself in order to save his son's life, is pathetic in the extreme. But nothing equals the first act, which is a model of animated and picturesque composition. No one ever painted in more vivid colors the pillage of a household, and a family without so much as a shadow of discipline. It is an accumulation of small details, not one of which is of an indifferent nature, and which, taken together, drive into our minds the idea that this nobleman, so well-mannered, so charming in conversation, so sober for himself, is running to ruin as gayly as he can.

For four years after the production of 'Un Père Prodigue' Dumas wrote nothing. But in 1864 he reappeared at the Gymnase with a strange play, 'L'Ami des Femmes' (A Friend of the Sex), which completely failed. After 'L'Ami des Femmes' there was another interruption, not of Dumas's labors but of his dramatic production. Perhaps he was sick of an art which had caused him a cruel disappointment. He turned again to novel-writing, and published (1866) 'L'Affaire Clémenceau' (The Clémenceau Case), the success of which was not as great as he had hoped. In France, when a man is superior in one specialty people will not let him leave it. He is not allowed to be at once an unequaled novelist and a first-rate dramatist.

At that time Dumas hesitated which road to follow. An incident which created a great deal of comment threw him back towards the stage, and towards a new form of comedy.

M. Émile de Girardin, one of the best known publicists of the Second Empire, had bethought himself, when over fifty years of age, and knowing nothing of this kind of work, to write a play. He had been a great friend of Dumas père, and had kept up the most affectionate intercourse with his son. He had asked him to fit his play for the stage. It possessed one really dramatic idea. Dumas, in order to oblige his father's friend, made out of it 'Le Supplice d'une Femme' (A Woman's Torture). Émile de Girardin, who was self-conceited and somewhat despotic, refused to recognize his offspring in the bear that Dumas had licked. He declined to sign the play: "Neither shall I," Dumas retorted.

'A Woman's Torture' was acted at the Comédie Française with extraordinary success. This success was for Dumas a warning and a lesson. 'A Woman's Torture' was a three-act play, short, concise, panting, which hurried to the coup de théâtre of the second act, upon which the drama revolved, and rushed to its conclusion. The time of five-act comedies, with ample expositions, copious developments, philosophical disquisitions, curious and fanciful episodes, was gone. Henceforth the dramatist had to deal with a hurried and blasé public, which, taking dinner at eight, could give to the theatre but a short time, and an attention disturbed by the labor of digestion. 'A Woman's Torture,' which lasted only an hour and a half, and proceeded only by rapid strokes, was exactly what that public wanted. After that time Dumas wrote only three-act and one-act plays; using four acts only for 'Les Idées de Madame Aubray' (Madame Aubray's Ideas); and these four acts are very short. In 1867 this play announced Dumas's return to the stage; and Dumas is here more paradoxical than he had ever been. His theme looked like a wager not simply against bourgeois prejudices, but even against good sense, and, I dare to say, against justice. This wager was won by Dumas, thanks to an incredible display of skill. He took up the thesis a second time in 'Denise,' and won his wager again, but with less difficulty. In 'Denise' the lover struggles only against social prejudices, and allows himself to be carried away by one of those emotional fits which disturb and confound human reason. In 'Madame Aubray's Ideas' the triumph is one of pure logic.

'Une Visite de Noces' (A Wedding Call) and 'La Princesse Georges' followed rather closely on 'Madame Aubray's Ideas.' 'A Wedding Call'!—what a thunderbolt then! It was of but one act, but one act the effect of which was prodigious, the echo of which is still heard. Time and familiarity have now softened for us the too sharp outlines of this bitter play. It has been acknowledged a masterpiece. It is certainly one of the boldest works of this extraordinary magician, who, thanks to his unerring skill and to the dazzling wit of his dialogue, brought the public to listen to whatever he chose to put upon the stage. It seemed that, like a lion tamer in the arena, Dumas took pleasure in belaboring and exasperating this many-headed monster, in order to prove to his own satisfaction that he could subdue its revolts.

'La Princesse Georges' is a work of violent and furious passion. We find in it Madame de Terremonde, the good woman who adores her husband, but who adores him with fury, who wants him all to herself, and who, when sure that she is betrayed, passes from the most exasperated rage to tears and despair. There is in the first act a scene of exposition which has become celebrated. No one ever so rapidly mastered the public; no one ever from the first stroke so painfully twisted the heart of the spectators.

Let us pass rapidly over 'La Femme de Claude' (Claude's Wife: 1873). Of all his plays it is the one Dumas said he liked best, the one he most passionately defended with all sorts of commentaries, letters, prefaces, etc.; the one which he insisted on having revived, a long time after it had failed. To my mind that play was a mistake; and the public, in spite of Dumas's arguments, in spite of the protests of the critics, who are often very glad to distinguish themselves by not yielding to the common voice,—the public insisted on agreeing with me.

Only a few months later, Dumas brilliantly retrieved himself with 'Monsieur Alphonse.' His Madame Guichard is the most cheerfully vulgar type of the parvenue which any one ever dared to put upon the stage. She can hardly read and write; she is no longer young, and she is "to boot" very proud of her money; she has no tact and no taste; but at heart she is a good sort of woman. Her morality is as primitive as her education. But deceit disgusts her; she hates but one thing, she says,—lying. She is not troubled by conventionalities; and her speech has all the color and energy of popular speech. But see! Dumas in depicting this woman preserved exquisite measure. Madame Guichard says many pert and droll things; she never utters a coarse word. Her language is picturesque; it is free from slang. Hers is a vulgar nature, but she does not offend delicate ears by the grossness of her utterance. Dumas never drew a more living picture; she is the joy of this rather sad play.

All that remain to be reviewed are 'L'Étrangère,' 'La Princesse de Bagdad,' and 'Françillon'; all of which were given at the Comédie Française. 'L'Étrangère' is indeed a melodrama, with an admixture of comedy. Had he gone further in that direction, Dumas might have made a new sort of play, which would perhaps have reigned a long time on the stage. But after this trial, successful though it was, he stopped. 'La Princesse de Bagdad' entirely failed. 'Françillon' was Dumas's last success at the Comédie Française.

After 1887 Dumas gave nothing to the stage. He had completed a great five-act play, 'The Road to Thebes,' which the manager of the Comédie Française hoped every year to put on the boards. Dumas kept promising it; but either from distrust of himself or of the public, or from fatigue, or fear of meeting with failure, he asked for new delays, until the day when he declared that not only the play would not be acted during his life, but that he would not even allow it to be acted after his death.

This death he saw coming, with sad but calm eyes. It was a sorrow for us to see this man, whom we had known so quick and alert, grow weaker every day, showing the progress of disease in his shriveled features and body. The complexion had lost all color, the cheeks had become flaccid, the eye had no life left.

On October 1st, 1895, he wrote to his friend Jules Claretie:—"Do not depend upon me any more; I am vanquished. There are moments when I mourn my loss, as Madame D'Houdetot said when dying." He was at Puys, by the seaside, when he wrote that despairing letter. He returned to Marly, there to die, surrounded by his family, on November 28th, 1895, in a house which he loved and which had been bequeathed to him years before by an intimate friend.

His loss threw into mourning the world of letters, and the whole of Paris. People discovered then—for death loosens every tongue and every pen—how kind and generous in reality was Dumas, who had often been accused of avarice by those who contrasted him with his father; how many services he had discreetly rendered, how open his hand always was. His constant cheerfulness and good-nature had finally caused him to be forgiven for his wit, which was sarcastic and cutting, and for his success, which had thrown so many rivals into the shade. This witty man, who was always obliging and even tender-hearted, had no envy, and gave his applause without a shadow of reserve to the successes of others. Every young author found in him advice and support; he did not expect gratitude, and therefore was soured by no disappointment. He was a good man, partly from nature, partly from determination; for he deemed that, after all, the best way to live happy in this world is to make happy as many people as possible.

If in this long essay I have not spoken of Dumas as a moralist, it is because, in my opinion, in spite of all that has been said, Dumas was a dramatist a great deal more than a philosopher. In his comedies he discussed a great many moral and social questions, without giving a solution for any; or rather, the solutions that he gave were due not to any set of fixed principles, but to the conclusion which he was preparing for this play or that. He said, indifferently, "Kill her" or "Forgive her," according to the requirements of the subject which he had selected; and he would afterwards write a sensational preface with a view to demonstrate that the solution this time given by him was the only legitimate one. These prefaces are very amusing reading; for he wrote them with all the fire of his nature, and he had the gift of movement. But they were a strange medley of incongruous and contradictory statements. Every idea that he expresses can be grasped and understood; but it is impossible to see how it agrees with those that precede and follow. It is a chaos of clear ideas.

Dumas was not a philosopher, but an agitator. He stirred up a great many questions; he drew upon them our distracted attention; he compelled us to think of them. Therein he did his duty as a dramatist.

He gave much thought to the fate of woman in our civilization. We may say, however, that though loving her much, he still more feared her, and I shall even add, despised her. All his characters who have the mission of defending morality and good sense are very attentive to her, but keep her at arm's-length. They are affectionate counselors, not lovers. They hold her to be a frail being, who must be controlled and guided. Some one has said that there was in Dumas something of the Catholic priest. It is true. He was to women a lay director of conscience.

He was a great connoisseur of pictures and a great art lover. Music, I think, is the only art that did not affect him much. He was a dazzling talker; his plays teem with bright sayings; his conversation sparkled with them. I did not know him in his prime, when he delighted his friends and companions by his unceasing flow of spirits. I became intimate with him only later. If you knew how to start him, he simply coruscated. I never knew any one, save Edmond About, who was as witty, and who, like About, always paid you back in good sounding coin.

Dumas was a member of the French Academy. He had not wished for that honor, because it had been denied to his father. He desired, in his reception speech, to call up the great spirit of this illustrious father and make it share his academician's chair. He had this joy; the two Dumas were received on the same day. Their two names will never perish.

[The editors have been compelled, for lack of space, to leave out that part of M. Sarcey's valuable essay which is a professional analysis of several of Dumas's plays, and which would be of interest, chiefly, to special students of the French drama and stage.]

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THE PLAYWRIGHT IS BORN—AND MADE

From the Preface to 'A Prodigal Father'

Of all the various forms of thought, the stage is that which nearest approaches the plastic arts—inasmuch as we cannot work in it unless we know its material processes; but with this difference: that in the other arts one learns these processes, while in play-writing one guesses them; or to speak more accurately, they are in us to begin with.

One can become a painter, a sculptor, a musician, by sheer study: one does not become a dramatic author in this fashion. A caprice of nature makes your eye in such a way that you can see a thing after a particular manner, not absolutely correct, but which must nevertheless appear, to any other persons that you wish to have so think, the only correct point of view. The man really called to write for the stage reveals what is an extremely rare faculty, in his very first attempts,—say in a farce in school, or a drawing-room charade. There is a sort of science of optics and of perspective that enables one to draw a personage, a character, a passion, an impulse of the soul, with a single stroke of the pen. Dramatic cheating of the eye is so complete that often the spectator, when he is a mere reader of the play, desiring to give himself once more the same emotion that he has felt as one of the audience, not only cannot recapture that emotion in the written words before him, but often cannot even distinguish the passage where the emotion lies hid. It was a word, a look, a silence, a gesture, a purely atmospheric combination, that held him spellbound. So comes in the genius of the playwright's trade, if those two words can be associated. One may compare writing for the stage in relation to other phases of literature, as we compare ceiling painters with [painters of] pictures for the wall or the easel. Woe to the painter if he forget that his composition is to be looked at from a distance, with a light below it!

A man without merit as a thinker, a moralist, a philosopher, an author, may turn out to be a dramatic author of the first class; that is to say, in the work of setting in motion before you the purely external movements of mankind; and on the other hand, to become in the theatre the thinker, the moralist, the philosopher, or the author to whom one listens, one must indispensably be furnished with the particular and natural qualities of a man of much lower grade. In short, to be a master in the art of writing for the stage, you must be a poor hand in the superior art....

That dramatic author who shall know mankind like Balzac, and who shall know the theatre like Scribe, will be the greatest dramatic author that has ever existed.

Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by E. Irenæus Stevenson

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AN ARMED TRUCE

From 'A Friend of the Sex'

[The following conversation in the first act of the play takes place in the pleasant morning-room of a country-house near Paris, the home of M. and Madame Leverdet. M. Leverdet is asleep in his chair. The speakers are Madame Leverdet, a coquettish, sprightly lady approaching middle age, and young M. De Ryons, a friend and neighbor. Madame Leverdet is determined to marry off De Ryons advantageously, and as soon as possible. Unfortunately he is a confirmed bachelor, not to say woman-hater, whose cynicism is the result of severely disappointing experiences. Under that cynicism there is however genuine respect and even chivalry as to the right sort of woman,—the superior and sincere type, which he does not happen often to encounter.]

Madame Leverdet—Let us come to serious topics while we are alone, my friend.

De Ryons—And apropos of them?

Madame Leverdet—Are you willing to be married off yet?

De Ryons [with a start of terror]—Pardon me, my dear lady! At what hour can I take the first train for Paris?

Madame Leverdet—Now listen to me, at least.

De Ryons—What! Here it is two years since I have called on you; I come to make you a little visit of a morning, in all good friendship, with the thermometer forty, centigrade; I am totally unsuspecting; all I ask is to have a little lively chat with a clever woman—and see how you receive me.

Madame Leverdet [continuing]—A simple, charming young girl—

De Ryons [interrupting her, and in the same tone]— —musical, speaks English, draws nicely, sings agreeably, a society woman, a domestic woman,—all at the choice of the applicant.

Madame Leverdet [laughing]—Yes, and pretty and graceful and rich; and, by-the-by, one who finds you a charming fellow.

De Ryons—She is quite right there. I shall make a charming husband—I shall; I know it. Only thirty-two years old; all my teeth, all my hair (no such very common detail, the way young men are nowadays); lively, sixty thousand livres income as a landed proprietor—oh, I am an excellent match: only unfortunately I am not a marrying man.

Madame Leverdet—And why not, if you please?

De Ryons [smiling]—It would interfere severely with my studies.

Madame Leverdet—What sort of studies?

De Ryons—My studies of—woman.

Madame Leverdet—Really! I don't understand you.

De Ryons—What! Do you not know that I am making women my particular, my incessant study, and that I am reckoning on leaving some new and very interesting documents dealing with that branch of natural history?—a branch very little understood just at present, in spite of all that has been written on the topic. My friend, I cannot sacrifice the species to the individual; I belong to science. It is quite impossible for me to give myself wholly and completely—as one certainly should do when he marries—to one of those charming and terrible little carnivora for whose sake men dishonor themselves, ruin themselves, kill themselves; whose sole preoccupation, in the midst of the universal carnage that they make, is to dress themselves now like umbrellas and now like table bells.

Madame Leverdet [scornfully]—So you really think you understand women, do you?

De Ryons—I rather think I do. Why, just as you see me this instant, at the end of five minutes' study or conversation I can tell you to what class a woman belongs,—whether to the middle class, to women of rank, artists, or whatever you please; what are her tastes, her characteristics, her antecedents, the state of her heart,—in a word, everything that concerns my special science.

Madame Leverdet—Really! Will you have a glass of water?

De Ryons—Not yet, thank you.

Madame Leverdet—I suppose, then, you are under the impression that you know me too.

De Ryons—As if I did not!

Madame Leverdet—Well, and I am—what?

De Ryons—Oh, you are a clever woman. It is for that reason that I call on you [aside: every two years].

Madame Leverdet—Will you kindly give me the sum of your observations in general? You can tell me so much, since I am a clever woman.

De Ryons—The true, the true, the true sum?

Madame Leverdet—Yes.

De Ryons—Simply that woman of our day is an illogical, subordinate, and mischief-making creature. [In saying this De Ryons draws back and crouches down as if expecting to be struck.]

Madame Leverdet—So then, you detest women?

De Ryons—I? I detest women? On the contrary, I adore them; but I hold myself in such a position toward them that they cannot bite me. I keep on the outside of the cage.

Madame Leverdet—Meaning by that—what?

De Ryons—Meaning by that, that I am a friend of the sex; for I have long perceived that just as truly as women are dangerous in love, just so much are they adorable in friendship, with men;—that is to say, with no obligations, and therefore no treasons; no rights, and in consequence no tyrannies. One assists, too, as a spectator, often as a collaborator, in the comedy of love. A man under such conditions sees before his nose the stage tricks, the machinery, the changes of scenes, all that stage mounting so dazzling at a distance and so simple when one is near by. As a friend of the sex and on a basis of friendship, one estimates the causes, the contradictions, the incoherences, of that phantasmagoric changeableness that belongs to the heart of a woman. So you have something that is interesting and instructive. Under such circumstances a man is the consoler, and gives his advice; he wipes away tears; he brings quarrelsome lovers together; he asks for the letters that must be returned; he hands back the photographs (for you know that in love affairs photographs are taken only in order to be returned, and it is nearly always the same photograph that serves as many times as may be necessary. I know one photograph that I have had handed back by three different men, and it ended its usefulness by being given for good and all to a fourth one, who was—not single).... In short, you see, my dear madam, I am above all the friend of those women—who have known what it is to be in love. And moreover inasmuch, just as Rochefoucauld says, as women do not think a great deal of their first experience,—why, one fine day or another—

Madame Leverdet—You prove to be the second one.

De Ryons—No, no; I have no number, I! A well-brought-up woman never goes from one experience of the heart to another one, without a decent interval of time, more or less long. Two railroad accidents never come together on the same railway. During the intervals a woman really needs a friend, a good confidant; and it is then that I turn up. I let her tell me all the melancholy affairs in question; I see the unhappy victim in tears after the traitor has called; I lament with her, I weep with her, I make her laugh with me: and little by little I replace the delinquent without her seeing that I am doing so. But then I know very well that I am without importance, that I am a mere politician of the moment, a cabinet minister without a portfolio, a sentimental distraction without any consequences; and some fine day, after having been the confidential friend as to past events, I become the confidential friend as to future ones,—for the lady falls in love for the second time with somebody who knows nothing of the first experience, who will never know anything about it, and who of course must be made to suppose he represents the first one. Then I go away for a little time and leave them to themselves, and then I come back like a new friend to the family. By-and-by, when the dear creature is reckoning up the balance-sheet of her past, when her conscience pours into her ear the names that she would rather not remember, and my name comes with the others, she reflects an instant,—and then she says resolutely and sincerely to herself, "Oh, he does not count!" My friend, I am always the one that does not count, and I like it extremely.

Madame Leverdet [indignantly]—You are simply a monster!

De Ryons—Oh no, oh no, oh no, I am not!

Madame Leverdet—According to your own account, you have no faith in women.... Wretch! Ungrateful creature! And yet it is woman who inspires all the great things in this life.

De Ryons—But somehow forbids us to accomplish them.

Madame Leverdet—Go out from here, my dear De Ryons, and never let me see you again.

De Ryons [rising promptly and making a mocking bow]—My dear lady—

Madame Leverdet—No, I will not shake hands with you.

De Ryons—Then I shall die of chagrin—that's all about it.

Madame Leverdet—Do you know how you will end, you incorrigible creature? When you are fifty years old you will have rheumatism.

De Ryons—Yes, or sciatica. But I shall find some one who will embroider me warm slippers.

Madame Leverdet—Indeed you will not! You will marry your cook.

De Ryons—That depends on how well she cooks. Again farewell, dear madam.

Madame Leverdet—No, stay one moment.

De Ryons—It is you who are keeping me; so look out.

Madame Leverdet—Let me have really your last word on the whole matter.

De Ryons—It is very easily given. There are just two kinds of women: those who are good women, and those who are not.

Madame Leverdet—Without fine distinctions?

De Ryons—Without fine distinctions.

Madame Leverdet—What is one to do in the case of those who are not—good women?

De Ryons—They must be consoled.

Madame Leverdet—And those who are?

De Ryons—They must be guaranteed against being anything else; and as to that process of guarantee I have taken a patent.

Madame Leverdet—Come now, if you are playing in parlor theatricals, say so. What are you trying to be,—Lovelace or Don Quixote?

De Ryons—I am neither the one nor the other. I am a man who, having nothing else to do, took to studying women just as another man studies beetles and minerals, only I am under the impression that my scientific study is more interesting and more useful than that of the other savant—because we meet your sex everywhere. We meet the mother, the sister, the daughter, the wife, the woman who is in love; and it is important to be well informed upon such an eternal associate in our lives. Now I am a man of my time, exercised over one theory or another, hardly knowing what he must believe, good or bad, but inclined to believe in good when occasion presents itself. I respect women who respect themselves.... It is not I who created the world; I take it as I find it.... And as to marriage, the day when I shall find a young girl with the four qualities of goodness of heart, sound health, thorough self-respect, and cheerfulness,—the squaring of the conjugal hypothenuse,—then I count for nothing all my long term of waiting; like the great Doctor Faust, I become young again, and such as I am, I give myself to her. My friend, if this same young girl of whom you have been speaking (and by the way, I know her just as well as you do) really unites these conditions,—I do not believe she does so, though I shall see very soon,—why then, I will marry her to-morrow—I will marry her to-night. But in the mean time, as I have positively nothing to do,—if you happen to know a self-respecting woman who needs to be kept from a bit of folly ... why, I am wholly at your service.

Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by E. Irenæus Stevenson

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TWO VIEWS OF MONEY

From 'The Money Question'

[The following passage occurs in the first act of Dumas's play. The characters include the young parvenu Jean Giraud, the aristocratic M. De Cayolle, and several others, all guests in the drawing-room of the country-house of Madame Durieu. In course of the conversation Giraud refers to his father, at one time a gardener on the estate of M. De Charzay.]

Jean Giraud—Oh, yes, yes, I have got along in the world, as people say. There are people who blush for their fathers; I make a brag of mine—that's the difference.

René de Charsay—And what is Father Giraud nowadays? Oh, I beg your pardon—

Jean—Don't be embarrassed—we keep on calling him Father Giraud all the same. He is a gardener still, only he gardens on his own account. He owns the house that your father was obliged to sell a while ago. My father has never had but one idea,—our Father Giraud,—and that is to be a land-owner; I bought that piece of property for him, and so he is as happy as a fish in the water. If you like, we will go and take breakfast with him to-morrow morning. He will be delighted to see you. How things change, eh? There, where a while ago we were the servants, now we are the masters; though we are not so very proud, for all that.

Countess Savelli [aside]—He has passed the Rubicon of parvenus! He has confessed his father! Now nothing can stop his way!

Jean [to De Charsay]—I have wanted to see you for a long time, but I have not been sure how you would meet me.

René—I would have met you with pleasure, as my uncle would have met you. One cannot utter reproaches to a man who has made his own fortune, except when he has made it by dishonest means; a man who owes it to his intelligence and his probity, who uses it worthily, everybody is ready to meet kindly, as you are met here.

Jean—Sir, it is not necessary that a man should use his fortune nobly, provided it is made—that is the main thing!

Madame Durieu—Oh, oh, M. Giraud! there you spoil everything that you have said.

Jean—I don't say that of my own case, madam, but I say just what I say,—money is money, whatever may be the kind of hands where it sticks. It is the sole power that one never disputes. You may dispute virtue, beauty, courage, genius; but you can't dispute money. There is not one civilized being, rising in the morning, who does not recognize the sovereignty of money, without which he would have neither the roof which shelters, him, nor the bed in which he sleeps, nor the bread that he eats. Whither are bound these masses of people crowding in the streets?—from the employé sweating under his too heavy burden, to the millionaire hurrying down to the Bourse behind his two trotters? The one is running after fifteen sous, the other after one hundred thousand francs. Why do we all have these shops, these railroads, these factories, these theatres, these museums, these lawsuits between brothers and sisters, between fathers and sons, these revelations, these divisions in families, these murders? All for pieces, more or less numerous, of that white or yellow metal which people call silver or gold. And pray who will be the most thought of at the end of this grand race after money? The man who brings back the most of it. Ah, nowadays a man has no business to have more than one object in life—and that is to become as rich as possible! For my part, that has always been my idea; I have carried it out: I congratulate myself on it. Once upon a time everybody found me homely, stupid, a bore; to-day everybody finds me handsome, witty, amiable,—and the Lord knows if I am witty, amiable, handsome! On the day when I might be stupid enough to let myself be ruined, to become plain "Jean" as before, there would not be enough stones in the Montmartre quarries to throw at my head. But there, that day is a good way off, and meantime many of my business acquaintances have been ruined for the sake of keeping me from ruin. The last word, too, the greatest praise that I could give to wealth, certainly is, that such a circle as I find myself in at present has had the patience to listen so long to the son of a gardener, who has no other right to their attention than the poor little millions that he has made.

Durieu [aside]—It is all absolutely true, every word that he has been saying—gardener's son that he is! He sees our epoch just as it really is.

Madame Durieu—Come now, my dear M. De Cayolle, what do you think of what M. Giraud has been telling us?

Cayolle—I think, madam, that the theories of M. Giraud are sound, but sound only as to that society in which M. Giraud has lived until now: a world of speculation, whose one object naturally ought to be to make money. As to wealth itself, it brings about infamous things, but it also brings about great and noble things. In that respect it is like human speech: a bad thing for some people, a good thing for others, according to the use they make of it. This obligation of our state of society that makes a man wake up each morning with taking thought of the necessary sum for his personal wants, lest he take what does not belong to him, has created the finest intelligence of all the ages! It is simply to this need of money every day that we owe Franklin, who began the world by being a printer's apprentice; Shakespeare, who used to hold horses at the door of the theatre which later he was going to immortalize; Machiavelli, who was secretary to the Florentine republic at fifteen crowns a month; Raphael, the son of a mere dauber; Jean Jacques Rousseau, a notary's clerk and an engraver,—one who did not have a dinner every day; Fulton, once upon a time a mechanic, who gave us steam: and so many others. Had these same people been born with an income of half a million livres apiece, there would have been a good many chances that not one of them would ever have become what he did become. [To M. Giraud.] This race after wealth, of which you speak, M. Giraud, has good in it: even if it enriches some silly people or some rascals, if it procures for them the consideration of those in a humble station of life,—of the lower classes, of those who have cash relations with society, on the other hand there is a great deal of good in the spur given to faculties which would otherwise remain stationary; enough good to pardon some errors in the distribution of wealth. Just in proportion as you enter into the true world of society—a world which is almost unknown to you, M. Giraud—you will find that a man who is received there is received only in proportion to his personal value. Look around here where we are, without taking the trouble to go any further, and you will see that money has not the influence you ascribe to it. For proof, here is Countess Savelli, with half a million francs income, who in place of dining out with millionaires besieging her house every day, comes quietly here to dine with our friends the Durieus, people without title, poor people measured by her fortune; and she comes here for the pleasure of meeting M. De Charzay, who has not more than a thousand crowns income, but who, for all the millionaires in the world, would never do a thing a man ought not to do; and she meets here M. De Roncourt, who has a business of fifteen hundred francs because he gave up his fortune to creditors who were not his own creditors. There is Mademoiselle De Roncourt, who sacrificed her dowry to the same sentiment of honor; yonder is Mademoiselle Durieu, who would never be willing to become the wife of any other than an honest man, even if he had for his rivals all the Croesuses present and to come; and last of all, one meets me here,—a man who has for money (in the acceptation that you give the word) the most profound contempt. Now, M. Giraud, if we listened to you for so long a time, it is because we are well-bred people, and besides, you talk very well; but there has been no flattery for your millions in our attention, and the proof is that everybody has been listening to me a longer time than to you,—listening to me, who have not like you a thousand-franc note to put along with every one of my phrases!

Jean—Who is that gentleman who has just been speaking?

Durieu—That is M. De Cayolle.

Jean—The railway director?

Durieu—Yes.

Jean [going to M. De Cayolle]—M. De Cayolle, I hope you will believe that I am very glad to meet you.

Cayolle—I dare say you are, monsieur. [M. De Cayolle as he utters the words turns his back upon Giraud and steps aside.]

Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by E. Irenæus Stevenson

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M. DE RÉMONIN'S PHILOSOPHY OF MARRIAGE

From 'L'Étrangère'

Madame de Rumières—See here, now, Rémonin, you who claim to explain everything as a learned man—can you solve this proposition? Why is it that with all the quantity of love in this world, there are so many unhappy marriages?

M. Rémonin—I could give you a perfect explanation, my dear lady, if you were not a woman.

Madame de Rumières—You mean that the explanation is not decent?

M. Rémonin—No, I mean that it is a matter based on the abstract.... It is this. The reason why marriages are rarely happy, in spite of the "quantity of love" in question, is because love and marriage, scientifically considered, have no relationship. They belong to two sorts of things, completely differing. Love is of the physical. Marriage is a matter of chemistry.

Madame de Rumières—Explain yourself.

Rémonin—Certainly. Love is an element of the natural evolution of our being; it comes to us of itself in course of our life, at one time or another, independent of all our will, and even without a definite object. The human creature can wish to be in love before really loving any one!... But marriage is a social combination, an adjustment, that refers itself to chemistry, as I have said; since chemistry concerns itself with the action of one element on another and the phenomena resulting: ... to the end of bringing about family life, morality, and labor, and in consequence the welfare of man, as involved in all three. Now, so often as you really can conform to the theory of such a blending of things, so long as you happen to have effected in marriage such a combination of the physical and chemical, all goes well; the experiment is happy, it results well. But if you are ignorant or maladroit enough to seek and to make a combination of two refractory chemical forces in the matrimonial experiment, then in the place of a fusion you will find you have only inert forces; and the two elements remain there, together but unfused, eternally opposed to each other, never able to be united!... Or else there is not merely inertia—there are shocks, explosions, catastrophes, accidents, dramas....

Madame de Rumières—Have you ever been in love?

M. Rémonin—I? My dear marquise, I am a scientist—I have never had time! And you?

Madame de Rumières—I have loved my children. M. de Rumières was a charming man all his life; but he didn't expect me really to love him. My son tells me his affairs of the heart; ... my daughter has already made me a grandmother ... I have little to reproach myself as to my past life, and now I look on at the lives of others, sometimes much interested. I am like the subscribers to the Opéra, who know the whole repertory by heart, but who can always hear some passages with pleasure and who encourage the débutants.

Condensed and translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by E. Irenæus Stevenson.

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REFORMING A FATHER

From 'A Prodigal Father'

[The ensuing dialogue occurs in the first act of the play. The Count de Ravonnieres and his son Andre reside together in their comfortable bachelor's establishment in Paris, and are devotedly attached to one another. The count, unfortunately, has only grown more careless of money, more a gay man of the world, as he has grown older; and blessed with a youthfulness of physique and temperament that nothing impairs, he is as thriftless as he is fascinating. His son, accordingly, has had to be the economist of their resources, which are at a dangerous ebb. As the scene opens, the count is preparing to take luncheon, with Joseph, the confidential servant of the house, in attendance.]

Joseph—Monsieur is served.

Count de Ravonnieres—Very well. You will please go to my florist Lemoine, the Opera florist,—you know who I mean,—and tell him to send, to-day, with my card,—he has a lot of cards of mine in advance,—to Mademoiselle Albertine de la Borde, 26 or 28 Rue de la Paix—I don't exactly remember the number that the lady gave me—

Joseph—No. 26.

Count—Ah! You know her address, do you?

Joseph—Yes, sir.

Count—To send her a bouquet of white lilacs and roses. And I don't need you any more: go at once. [Joseph bows, and hands the Count a large envelope.] What's all this?

Joseph—Some law papers that have come in your absence, sir, which I did not think ought to be forwarded to Dieppe.

Count [without taking the papers]—Quite right. Has my son seen them?

Joseph—No, sir.

Count—Very well; don't let him see them. Put them away with the others.

Joseph—May I beg monsieur to say a good word for me to his son?

Count—As to what, Joseph?

Joseph—Your son, sir, has just told me to look out for another situation; and I am so attached to the family—

Count—Oh, I will straighten all that out; if my son sends you away I will take you into our service again. Come now, get off to my florist; be quick about it.

As Joseph goes out, André enters. He does not at first perceive his father, but on turning toward the table discovers him.

André—Ah! you are here, are you?

Count—Yes, I have been here during an hour; and moreover, a very agreeable person has been doing the honors of your establishment on my behalf.

André—It is a fine time to talk about agreeable persons! You are a very agreeable person—

Count—What in the world is the matter with you?

André—I am perfectly furious.

Count—Against whom?

André—Against you.

Count—Why? What have I been doing?

André—You have drawn on me at sight this draft here.

Count—Oh yes, I know very well what that means. It comes from London; it is to pay for the boat, you know.

André—Oh yes, it comes from London, and it is to pay for the boat! That is no excuse for it. And what about the boat, if you please?

Count—But my dear fellow, they had no business to present it until the 15th.

André—Well?

Count—Why, to-day is the 15th!

André—You ought to know it.

Count—I thought that to-day was only the 14th! Have you paid it?

André—Of course.

Count—Ah! then I owe you six thousand francs. That's all there is to the matter.

André—Yes, that's all! But you never said a word to me about it; I had no money in the house: I had to send to our man of business. May I beg of you in the future to be so good as to—

Count—Poor boy! poor boy! Really, between ourselves, you would have done a great deal better (as it is a month since you have seen me, and since you are really very fond of me) to embrace me in meeting me again, rather than to say all these things to me that you have been saying!

André [embracing his father heartily]—Oh, of course they make no difference, when it comes to that!

Count—Your second impulse is a very good one; but you ought to have begun with it. All the same, I do not in the less ask pardon for the inconvenience that I have caused you, my boy. [Takes some bank-notes from his pocket.] Here are your six thousand francs, and [holding out the remainder of the notes to André] since you need money, help yourself.

André—Where in the world does that money come from?

Count—Oh, it is some money that I have received.

André—There was none coming to you from anywhere!

Count—There is always something to come to one, if he looks around carefully. And now let us speak of serious things.

André—Yes, by all means. Father, are you not disposed to settle down?

Count—What do you mean by "settle down"?

André—To save money, for one thing.

Count—Save money! I should be charmed to do so; but I really do not see how we can do it. We certainly live as modestly as possible. This house belongs to us; we have only four saddle horses, four carriage horses, a couple of extra horses for evening service (we could not get along with less), two coachmen, two valets, two grooms, one cook. Why, we haven't even a housekeeper.

André—No, we only want that!

Count—We never receive any except masculine society; we certainly are not extravagant as to the table. Look at me here: I am breakfasting this minute on two eggs and a glass of water. It seems to me that with our fortune—

André—Our fortune? Would you like to know in what condition our fortune is?

Count—You ought to know better than I, since it is you who have had the running of affairs since your majority.

André—Well then, I do know the expenses; and let me tell you that you have counted up only those that are part of our life in Paris, and you have not said a syllable of those that belong to our country one.

Count—Those that belong to our country one! Those are all just so much economy.

André—So then the place at Vilsac is just so much economy?

Count—Of course. We get everything from it, from eggs up to oxen.

André—Yes, and even to wild boars, when it suits you to shoot one. Now be so good as to consider the place at Vilsac, which you call a matter of economy. First of all, it brings us in absolutely nothing.

Count—It never has brought us in anything.

André—It is mortgaged for two hundred thousand francs.

Count—That happened when I was young.

André—Are you under the impression that there comes a time when mortgages wear themselves out? I wish they did. But I am afraid that you deceive yourself; and in the mean time, you are paying every year a mortgagor's interest. Furthermore, at Vilsac—

Count—Where, remember, we spend September, October, November, all of which is positively an economy—

André—Furthermore, as to Vilsac, this summer place where we pass September, October, and November,—all of which is positively an economy,—the proof of its being an economy is that here we are in the middle of September, and we are just setting out for Dieppe.

Count—For one time only, by chance! And moreover, we will have to go down to Vilsac by the end of the month, for I have asked those fellows to come down there for the shooting.

André—Yes, in this economical country place, where you have asked all those gentlemen to come down for the shooting, at the end of the month—

Count—Really, one would be bored to death without that!

André—In this same economical establishment, I say, you have twelve keepers.

Count—Quite true; but it is one of the best preserves in France, and really, there are so many poachers—

André—You have two masters of hounds, you have ten horses,—in short, a whole hunting equipage; and I don't speak of the indemnities that you pay year by year, if only for the rabbits that you kill.

Count—The fact is, there are thousands of rabbits; but shooting rabbits is such fun!

André—Add to that the entertainments that it occurs to you to give every now and then, with fireworks and so on, during the evening.

Count—Oh, yes, but that pleases all the peasants of the neighborhood, who adore me; between ourselves it is rather—Oh, my dear boy! if I had only been rich, what fine things I would have done! In France, people do not know how to spend money. In Russia it is quite another matter! Now, there you have people who understand how to give an entertainment. But then what can anybody do with two hundred thousand livres for an income?

André—Father, one can do exactly what you have done,—one can ruin himself.

Count—What! ruin himself?

André—Yes. When my mother died your personal fortune brought you, as you say, an income of two hundred thousand livres; and the money which my mother left to me, of which you have had the use until I came of age, amounted to a hundred and twenty thousand livres.

Count—I certainly have made an accounting to you in the matter.

André—A perfectly exact one, only—

Count—Only—?

André—Only in doing so you have seriously impaired your own capital.

Count—Why did you not say that to me at the time?

André—Because I too—I was thinking of nothing but spending money.

Count—You ought to have warned me about this before now.

André—But I—I was doing then just what I see you doing; I was taking life exactly as you had taught me to take it.

Count—André, I hope that is not a reproach.

André—God bless me, no. I am only saying to you why I have not looked after your interests better than you have ever done so yourself.

Count—Very good, Then I am going to explain to you why I brought you up—

André—Not worth while, my dear father. There is no good in going back to that, and I know quite well—

Count—On the contrary, you know nothing at all about the matter, and you will please allow me to speak. It will be a consolation. You are perfectly right as to things that have no common-sense in them; and if I have brought you up after a certain manner, it is just because I myself suffer from a different kind of education. I was brought up very severely; at twenty-two years I knew nothing of life. I was born, I was kept hanging on at Vilsac, with my father and my mother, who were saints on earth, with my great-uncle, who had the gout, and with my tutor, who was an abbé. I was born with a constitution like iron. I went hunting day by day for whole months, on foot or on horseback. I ate my meals like an ogre. I rode every sort of a horse, and I was a swordsman like St. George himself. As for other things, my dear fellow, there was no use dreaming about them: I had not a crown in my pocket. The other sex—well, I had heard it said that there was a world of women somewhere, but I certainly did not know where it was. One day my father asked me if I was willing to marry, and I cried out, "Oh yes, yes!" with such an explosion that my father himself could not help laughing—he who never laughed. I was presented to a young girl, virtuous and beautiful; and I fell in love with her with a passion which at first fairly frightened the delicate and timid creature. Such was your mother, my dear André, and to her I owe the two happiest years of my life; it is true that I owe to her also my greatest grief, for at the end of those two years she died. But it must be said, either to the blame or to the praise of nature, that organizations such as mine are proof against the severest shocks. At twenty-four years I found myself rich, a widower, free to do what I pleased, and thrown—with a child a year old—into the midst of this world called Paris, of which I knew nothing whatever. Ought I to have condemned you to this sort of life that I had led at Vilsac, and which had been for me so often an intolerable bore? No, I obeyed my real nature. I gave you my qualities and my shortcomings, without reckoning closely in the matter; I have sought in your case your affection rather than your obedience or your respect. I have never taught you economy, it is true, but then I did not know anything about that myself; and besides, I had not a business and a business name to leave you. To have everything in common between us, one heart and one purse, to be able to give each other everything and say everything to each other,—that has been our motto. The puritans will think that they have a right to blame this intimacy as too close: let them say so if they choose. We have lost, it seems, some hundreds of thousands of francs; but we have gained this,—that we can always count upon each other, you upon me and I upon you. Either of us will be ready at any moment to kill himself for the other, and that is the most important matter between a father and a son; all the rest is not worth the trouble that one takes to reason about it. Don't you think I am right?

André—All that is true, my dear father! and I am just as much attached to you as you are to me. Far be it from me to reproach you; but now in my turn I want to make a confession to you. You are an exception in our society; your fettered youth, your precocious widowerhood, are your excuses, if you need any. You were born at a time when all France was in a fever, and when the individual, as well as the great mass of people, seemed to be striving to spend by every possible means a superabundance of vitality. Urged toward active life by nature, by curiosity, by temperament, you have cared for things that were worth caring for,—for them only; for entertaining yourself, for hunting, for fine horses, for the artist world, for people of rank and distinction. In such an environment as this you have paid your tribute to your country, you have paid the debt of your rank in life and of your name. But I, on the other hand, like almost all my generation, brought in contact with a fashionable world from the time that I began life,—I, born in an epoch of lassitude and transition,—I led for a while this life by mere imitation in laziness.... It is a kind of existence that no longer amuses me; and moreover, I can tell you that it never did amuse me. To sit up all night turning over cards; to get up at two o'clock in the afternoon, to have horses put to the carriage and go for the drive around the Lake, or to ride horseback; to live by day with idlers and to pass my evenings with such parasites as your friend M. De Tournas—all that seems to me the height of foolishness. And at the bottom of your own thoughts you think just as I do. So now, now that you really have got to a serious explanation of affairs, let us reach a real irrevocable determination of them. Are you willing to let me arrange your life for you in the future exactly as I would wish to arrange my own life? Are you willing to have confidence in me, and after having brought me up in your way, are you willing that in turn, while there is still time for it, I should—bring you up in mine?

Count—Yes, go on.

André—Very well,—to severe diseases strong remedies. You think a great deal of our Vilsac estate?

Count—I was born there. I should not be sorry to end my days there.

André—Very well. We will keep Vilsac for you, and find money in some other way to pay off the mortgage.

Count—How?

André—That's my business; only you must send away the two piqueurs, and six of the keepers.

Count—Poor fellows!

André—And only four horses are to be kept. No more entertainments are to be given, no more fireworks. You will entertain only two or three intimate friends now and then,—if we find as many friends as that among all those that are about us nowadays here.—and you will stay at Vilsac seven or eight months of the year.

Count—Alone!

André—Wait a little. I have not finished yet. This house where we are must be sold. We must put out of doors these servants, who are just so many thieves; and we will keep at Paris only a very modest stopping-place.

Count—Will you kindly allow me to get my breath?

André—Don't stir, or my surgical operation will not be successful. Now that your debts are paid there will be left to you—

Count—There will be left to me—

André—Forty thousand livres income, and as much for me,—no more; and with all that, during three or four years you will not have the capital at your disposition.

Count—Heavens, what a smash!

André—Are you willing to accept my scheme?

Count—I must.

André—Very well, then: sign these papers!

Count—What are they?

André—They are papers which I have just got from the notary, and which I have been expecting to make you sign while at Dieppe and send to me; but since you are here—

Count [signs]—Since I am here, I may as well sign at once: you are quite right,—there you are.

André—Very well; now as, according to my notions, just as much as you are left to yourself you will slip back into the same errors as in the past—

Count—What are you going to do further?

André—Guess.

Count—You are going to forbid—

André—Are you out of your senses? I am going to marry you off.

Count—Marry me off!

André—Without permission.

Count—And how about yourself?

André—I am going to marry myself off—afterwards. You must begin as an example.

Count—André, do you know something?

André—What?

Count—Some one has told you the very thing I have had in mind.

André—Nobody has told me anything.

Count—Your word on it?

André—My word on it.

Count—Explain yourself. You, all by yourself, have had this idea of marriage?

André—I myself.

Count—Deny now the sympathy between us!

André—Well?

Count—It exists [putting his arms around his son]. There, embrace me!

André—And you accept?

Count—As if I would do anything else!

Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by E. Irenæus Stevenson

---

MR. AND MRS. CLARKSON

From 'L'Étrangère'

[These scenes, the final ones of the drama, occur in the private drawing-room of Catherine, the young Duchess of Septmonts. Mr. Clarkson, a wealthy American man of business, a Californian, has just received a note from the Duke of Septmonts, a blasé young roué of high family, requesting him to call at once. He has come, in some bewilderment, to find the duke. Mr. Clarkson has only a formal acquaintance with the duke, but Mrs. Clarkson, who resides much of the time in Paris, acting as Mr. Clarkson's business representative, knows the duke confidentially. The Duchess of Septmonts receives Clarkson.]

Mr. Clarkson—I beg your pardon, madam, for having insisted on making my way in here; but a few moments ago I found on returning to my house, a letter from your husband. It asked me for a rendezvous as soon as possible, without giving me a reason for it. I find M. de Septmonts not at home. May I ask you if you know how I can be of service to him?

Catherine—I was under the impression that in his letter, M. de Septmonts explained to you the matter in which he wishes your assistance.

Clarkson—No.

Catherine—Did not his letter contain another letter, sealed, which he purposed leaving in your hands?

Clarkson—No.

Catherine—Are you really telling me the truth?

Clarkson—I never lie, madam: I have too much business on my hands; it would mix me up quite too much in my affairs.

Catherine—Then perhaps it is to Mrs. Clarkson that my husband has intrusted that letter.

Clarkson—No. She would have mentioned it; for I told her that I had received a line from the Duke, and was on my way to this house.

Catherine—Perhaps your wife did not tell you—all.

Clarkson—She has no earthly reason to conceal anything from me!

Catherine—True! I know very well that she is your wife only in name; she told me as much when I was at her house yesterday.

Clarkson—Really! She must be very much pleased with you, for she does not talk readily about her personal affairs.

Catherine—Unfortunately, it is quite otherwise as far as I am concerned; she has not hidden from me the fact that she detests me, and that she will do me all the injury she possibly can.

Clarkson—You? Injury? For what reason? Pray, what have you done to her?

Catherine—Nothing! I have known her only two days. Nevertheless—

Clarkson—Nevertheless—

Catherine—What I was going to say is not my secret, sir, it is hers, and she alone has the right to tell it to you. But as to this letter that my husband has told my father he has sent to you—it is I who wrote that letter. You may as well know, too, that it was abstracted from my possession; and moreover, that with that letter any one can indeed do me all the mischief with which your wife, Mrs. Clarkson, has threatened me.

Clarkson [very gravely]—Then we must know at once if my wife has that letter. I will write her to come here immediately and join us—that I have something very important to communicate to her—here. Are you willing to have her come? [He writes while he speaks.]

Catherine—Certainly.

Clarkson—Then we can have a general explanation. You may be sure, madam, that I shall never lend my hand to anything that means harm to you, or to any woman: I come from the country where we respect women.

Catherine [rings the bell, and says to a servant who answers it]—See that this letter is sent immediately. Be careful that it does not go astray. It is not my letter. This gentleman has written it. [Exit servant.]

Clarkson—And now, madam, do you know why M. de Septmonts wishes to have an interview with me?

Catherine—Yes, I can guess. It concerns me, perhaps; but I have no right to discuss the matter. It is something which belongs to the Duke, and he alone has the right to impart it to you. All I can do is to beg of you to have all details thoroughly explained to you, and to look into them very carefully.

A Servant enters

Servant—M. le Duc has come in; he will be glad to have Mr. Clarkson come to him.

Clarkson—Very good. [Going.] I bid you good evening, madam.

Catherine [to the servant]—Wait a moment. [Going to Clarkson and speaking in a low voice.] Suppose I were to ask you a very great service.

Clarkson—Ask it, madam.

Catherine—Suppose I were to ask you to say to my husband that you are waiting for him here in this drawing-room—that you will be glad to speak with him here.

Clarkson—Nothing but that? With great pleasure. [To the servant.] Say to M. de Septmonts that I shall be obliged if he will join me—here. [Servant goes out.]

Catherine—I shall leave you; for if I know what is going to be discussed in this interview, I neither could nor should take part in it; but whatever may come of it, I shall never forget that you have done everything that you could do as a courtesy to me,—and that you are a gentleman. [Exit Catherine.]

Clarkson [alone]—Charming! She is charming, that little woman; but may I be hanged if I understand one word of what is going on here.

The Duke of Septmonts comes in hastily, and advances to Clarkson.

Septmonts—I have just come from your house, Mr. Clarkson. Mrs. Clarkson told me you were here. I returned at once. Pardon me for troubling you. If when I came in I asked you to come to my own drawing-room, and have thus troubled you once more, it is because I was told you were expecting me here, with the duchess. This is her private parlor; and as what we have to say is a matter for men—

Clarkson—Therefore the duchess went to her own room when your return here was announced.

Septmonts—Mr. Clarkson, did she tell the servant that you would prefer to hold our conversation here?

Clarkson—No, I told him.

[Septmonts goes to the door of the room by which Catherine went out, and closes the portière.]

Clarkson [in a scornful aside]—What an amount of mystery and precaution!

Septmonts—The matter is this, Mr. Clarkson. I must fight a duel to-morrow morning. This duel can terminate only in the death of one or other of the contestants. I am the insulted one, therefore I have the choice of weapons. I choose the sword.

Clarkson—Do you fence well?

Septmonts—I believe I am one of the best fencers in Paris. But another friend on whom I could count is one of those men of the world who discuss all the details of an affair, and with whom the preliminaries of such a meeting might last several days. I want to get through with the matter at once.

Clarkson—Ah! The fact is, you do give an importance and a solemnity to such things in France that we don't understand, we Americans, who settle the question in five minutes on the first corner of the street, in the sight of everybody.

Septmonts—That is just the reason that I allowed myself to apply to you, Mr. Clarkson. Now, are you disposed to be present as my second?

Clarkson—Bless me, with all my heart! Besides, when I mentioned your letter to Mrs. Clarkson she told me to do all I could to serve you. Have you and my wife known each other long?

Septmonts—About four years; and I owe your wife a great deal, morally speaking. I have no desire to conceal the fact. I was not yet married when I met Mrs. Clarkson. One day I had lost a large sum at play,—a hundred and fifty thousand francs,—which I did not have, and tried in vain to procure; for at that time I was completely ruined. Mrs. Clarkson very generously lent me the sum, and I repaid it, with interest equivalent to the capital.

Clarkson—But as you were ruined, duke, how could you pay this large capital and this large interest? Did your father or mother die? In France the death of parents is a great resource, I know.

Septmonts—No. I was an orphan, and I had no expectations. I married.

Clarkson—Ah, true! You French people make much of marriages for money! It's a great advantage over us Americans, who only marry for love. Now with us, in such a case as yours, a man goes into some business or other; he goes to mining; he works. But every country has its own customs. I beg your pardon for interrupting you. After all, it doesn't concern me. Come back to our duel.

Septmonts—I have a letter here in my hands—

Clarkson—Ah! You have a letter in your hands—

Septmonts—A letter which compromises my wife—

Clarkson—Ah! I am completely at your service. I belong to the sort of men who do not admit any compromises in matters of that kind.

Septmonts—I may be killed—one has to look ahead. If I lose my life, I lose it by having been so injured by my wife that I intend to be revenged on her.

Clarkson—And how?

Septmonts—I wish that the contents of this letter, which I have in my possession, shall become public property if I am killed.

Clarkson [coldly]—Ah! And how can I serve you as to that?

Septmonts—I will intrust this sealed letter to you. [He takes the letter from his pocket.] Here it is.

Clarkson [still more coldly]—Very well.

Septmonts—Now, if I survive, you will restore it to me as it is. If not, then in the trial which will follow, you will read it in a court. I wish the letters to become public. Then it will be known that I avenged my honor under a feigned pretext; and M. Gérard and the duchess will be so situated that they will never be able to see each other again.

Clarkson—Nonsense! Once dead, what does it matter to you?

Septmonts—I am firm there. Will you kindly accept the commission?

Clarkson [in a formal tone]—Surely.

Septmonts—Here is the letter.

Clarkson [takes it and holds it as he speaks]—But, duke, now that I think about it, when this trial occurs it is probable, even certain, that I shall not be in France. I was expecting to leave Paris on business to-morrow morning at the latest. I can wait until to-morrow evening to please you, and to help you with this duel of yours; but that is really all the time I can spare.

Septmonts—Very well; then you will have the goodness to give this letter to Mrs. Clarkson with the instructions I have just given you, and it will be in equally good hands.

Clarkson [looking at the letter]—All right. A blank envelope. What is there to indicate that this letter was addressed to M. Gérard?

Septmonts—The envelope with his name on it is inside.

Clarkson—You found this letter?

Septmonts—I found it—before it was mailed.

Clarkson—And as you had your suspicions you—opened it?

Septmonts—Yes.

Clarkson—I beg your pardon for questioning you so, but you yourself did me the honor to say that you wished me to be fully informed. Do you know whether the sentiments between M. Gérard and the duchess were of long standing?

Septmonts—They date from before my marriage.

Clarkson [looking toward the apartment of the duchess]—Oh, I see. That is serious!

Septmonts—They loved each other, they wanted to marry each other, but my wife's father would not consent.

Clarkson [reflectively]—M. Gérard wanted to marry her, did he?

Septmonts—Yes; but when he learned that Mademoiselle Mauriceau was a millionaire, as he had nothing and had no title other than his plain name Gérard, he withdrew his pretensions.

Clarkson—That was a very proper thing for the young man to do. It doesn't surprise me!

Septmonts—Yes; but now, Mr. Clarkson, this young gentleman has come back—

Clarkson—And is too intimate a friend to your wife?

Septmonts—Ah, I do not say that!

Clarkson—What do you say, then?

Septmonts—That as the letter in question gives that impression, the situation amounts to the same thing as far as a legal process is concerned.

Clarkson [thoughtfully and coldly]—Oh-h-h!

Septmonts—Don't you agree with me, Mr. Clarkson?

Clarkson—No, not at all. I can understand revenge on those who have injured us, but not on those who haven't done so. And I don't like vengeance on a woman anyway, even when she is guilty; and certainly not when she is innocent; and you owe your wife a great deal—between ourselves, you owe your wife a great deal, duke. I understand now why, for once, your father-in-law M. Mauriceau sides with his daughter and M. Gérard against you. He is sure they both are innocent. By-the-by, does M. Mauriceau also know of this letter?

Septmonts—Yes. He even tried to take it from me by force.

Clarkson—Why did he not take it?

Septmonts—Ah, because you see, I had the presence of mind to tell him that I did not have it any longer—that I had sent it to you!

Clarkson [ironically]—That was very clever!

Septmonts—And then when M. Gérard had challenged me, M. Mauriceau thought he would make an impression by saying to him before me, "I will be your second."

Clarkson—Well, is that the whole story?

Septmonts—Yes.

Clarkson—Very well, my dear sir: to speak frankly, all those people whom you characterize so slightingly seem to me the right kind of people—excellent people. Your little wife seems to be the victim of prejudices, of morals, and of combinations about which we mere American savages don't know anything at all. In our American society, which of course I can't compare with yours, as we only date from yesterday,—if Mademoiselle Mauriceau had loved a fine young fellow like M. Gérard, her father would have given her to the man she loved; or if he had refused that, why she would have gone quite simply and been married before the justice of the peace! Perhaps her father wouldn't have portioned her; but then the husband would have worked, gone into business, and the two young people would have been happy all the same. As to your M. Gérard here, he is an honest man and a clever one. We like people who work, we Americans, and to whatever country they belong, we hold them as compatriots—because we are such savages, I suppose. So you understand that I don't at all share your opinion of this question.

Septmonts—And so speaking, you mean—?

Clarkson—That if I give you this explanation, it is because I think I understand that in paying me the honor of choosing me as a second, you thought that the men of my country were less clear-sighted, less scrupulous than the men of yours. In short, duke, you thought I would lend my hand to all these social pettinesses, these little vilenesses which you have just recounted with a candor that honors you.

Septmonts—Do you happen to remember, Mr. Clarkson, that you are talking to me—in this way?

Clarkson—To you. Because there are only two of us here! But if you like, we will call in other people to listen.

Septmonts—Then, sir, you tell me to my face—

Clarkson—I tell you to your face that to squander your inheritance—to have gambled away money you did not have—to borrow it from a woman without knowing when or how you could return it—to marry in order to pay your debts and continue your dissipations—to revenge yourself now on an innocent woman—to steal letters—to misapply your skill in arms by killing a brave man—why, I tell you to your face that all that is the work of a rascal, and that therefore a rascal you are. Oh, what astonishes me is that fifty people haven't told you so already, and that I have had to travel three thousand leagues to inform you on the subject! For you don't seem to have ever suspected it, and you don't look thoroughly convinced even now.

Septmonts [controlling himself with the greatest difficulty]—Mr. Clarkson, you know that I cannot call you to account until I have settled with your friend M. Gérard. You take a strange advantage of the fact, sir. But we shall meet again. Please return me the paper you have had from me.

Clarkson—Your wife's letter? Never in the world! As it was addressed to M. Gérard, it belongs to M. Gérard. I intend to give it to M. Gérard. If he wants to return it to you, I won't stand in the way; but I doubt whether he will return it.

Septmonts—You will fight me, then, you mean?

Clarkson—Oh! as for that; yes, fight as much as you like.

Septmonts—Very well; when I have finished with the other, you and I will have our business together.

Clarkson—Say the day after to-morrow, then?

Septmonts—The day after to-morrow.

Clarkson—Stop; I must start off by to-morrow night, at the latest.

Septmonts—You can wait. And while waiting, leave me!

Clarkson—Duke, do I look like a man to whom to say "leave" in that tone, and who goes? Now look at me; it isn't hard to see what I have decided. I don't mean you to fight with Gérard before you have fought with me. If Gérard kills you, I shan't have the pleasure of crossing swords with "one of the first fencers in Paris," which it will amuse me to do. If you kill him, you cause irreparable misfortunes. If you think I'm going to let you kill a man who has saved me twenty-five per cent. in the cost of washing gold, you are mistaken! Come, prove you are brave, even when you aren't sure of being the stronger! Go and get a good pair of swords from your room (since the sword is your favorite weapon—mine, too, for the matter of that), and follow me to those great bare grounds back of your house. On my way here I was wondering why in goodness's name they were not utilized. In the heart of the city they must be worth a good deal! We will prove it. As for seconds, umpires of the point of honor, we'll have the people who pass by in the street—if any do pass.

[Septmonts rushes in a fury toward the door, but when there stretches his hand toward the bell. Clarkson throws himself between him and the bell.]

Clarkson—Ah! no ringing, please! Don't play the Louis XV. gentleman, and order your servants to cudgel a poor beggar! or as sure as my name is Clarkson, I'll slap your face, sir, before all your lackeys!

Septmonts—Very well, so be it! I will begin with you. [Angrily hastens from the room for the weapons.]

Clarkson—Quite right! [Looking coolly at his watch.] Let me see; why, perhaps I can get away from Paris this evening after all. [He goes calmly out at the back toward the darkened garden.]

[The Duchess of Septmonts has pulled aside the portière and looks toward the door by which her husband and Mr. Clarkson have gone out. She is very much agitated, and can hardly walk. She rings the bell, and then makes an effort to appear calm. The servant comes in.]

Catherine [tremulously, to the servant]—Ask my father to come here, immediately. [The servant goes out. Catherine looks toward the window and makes a movement to go to it.] No, I will not look out! I will not know anything! I do not know anything; I have heard nothing; the minutes that that hand marks upon the clock, no one knows what they say to me. One of them will decide my life! Even if I had heard nothing, things would take the turn that they have, and I should merely be amazed in knowing of them. Instead of knowing nothing, I have merely to remember nothing. But no, no,—I am trying in vain to smother the voice of my own conscience! What I am doing is wicked. From the moment that I have known anything about this, I am an accomplice; and if one of these two men is killed he has been killed with my consent. No, I cannot and I will not. [She runs toward the door. As she does so Mrs. Clarkson enters hastily.] You, you, madam!

Mrs. Clarkson—Were you not really expecting me to-day, madam? My husband sends me a note to say that you—and he—wish to speak to me immediately.

Catherine—Madam, since Mr. Clarkson has written you, there has occurred a thing which neither your husband, nor I, nor you yourself could foresee.

Mrs. Clarkson—What do you mean?

Catherine—While my husband the duke has been explaining to Mr. Clarkson the reasons of the duel,—which you, you, madam, have provoked,—your husband, who did not find these reasons either sufficient or honorable, has undertaken to defend us—Gérard, yes, Gérard, and me,—and so very forcibly, that at this instant—

Mrs. Clarkson—They are fighting?

Catherine—Yes, yes, only a few steps away from here!

Mrs. Clarkson—Ah! That sounds like Clarkson! [She takes a step toward the door.]

Catherine—Madam, that duel must not go on.

Mrs. Clarkson—Why not?

Catherine—I will not permit these two men to lose their lives on my account.

Mrs. Clarkson—You? What difference does it make to you? They are not doing anything but what they chose to do. "Hands off," as the officials at the gaming-tables say when the ball has stopped rolling. You have wished to be free, haven't you? and you are perfectly right; you never said so to anybody, but you begged it all the same of One who can do anything. He has heard your prayer, and he has made use of me to save you; of me, who have been anxious to destroy you! That is justice; and do you think that I object—I who am to be the loser? In the game that I play with Destiny, every time I make up my mind that God is against me, I bow my head and throw up the game. I don't fear any one except God. He is on your side. Let us talk no more about it.

[Just as she is speaking the last words, Clarkson comes in. He is very grave.]

Mrs. Clarkson—See there. You are a widow.

Clarkson [to Mrs. Clarkson]—My dear Noémi, will you be so kind as to hand that paper to our friend the duchess. She will perhaps feel some embarrassment in taking it directly from my hand—and it is a thing that must be returned to her. Such was the last wish of her husband; he really did not have time to tell me as much, but I fancy that I guess it right.

[Mrs. Clarkson calmly takes the letter and goes to Catherine.]

Mrs. Clarkson—I once said to your friend M. Rémonin that if I lost my game I would lose like one who plays fair. Madam, it was through me that your marriage came to pass; and now it is through me that your marriage—is dissolved. [Turning to Clarkson.] And now, Clarkson, my dear, let us get out of this. You are a good and a brave fellow. I will go anywhere with you. I have had enough of Europe—things here are too small. Do you know, I really believe I am going to find myself in love with you! Come, let us go! I am positively smothering.

Clarkson—Yes, let us go.

[At the moment that Mr. and Mrs. Clarkson are going out, servants and police officials, accompanied by a commissioner of the police service, appear in the door. Clarkson is pointed out.]

Commissioner—I beg your pardon, monsieur,—there seems to have been—a murder here.

Clarkson—Oh no, monsieur, not at all a murder—only a duel.

Commissioner—And am I to understand, monsieur, that it is you who—

Clarkson—Oh yes, monsieur, it is I. You have come to take me into custody?

Commissioner—Yes, monsieur.

Clarkson—What a ridiculous country! I am ready to follow you, monsieur. But I am an American citizen. I shall give you bail—but of course, the law before anything....

Mrs. Clarkson—Reckon on me, Clarkson. I shall take charge of this matter.

Clarkson—How are you going to do that?

Mrs. Clarkson—Oh, that's my affair.

[Mrs. Clarkson crosses the stage and whispers a word to the commissioner. The commissioner bows very respectfully. Mrs. Clarkson goes out.]

Commissioner [to Dr. Rémonin]—You are a doctor, monsieur?

Rémonin—Yes, monsieur.

Commissioner—Will you have the goodness to give a certificate of death?

Rémonin [significantly]—With great pleasure!

Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by E. Irenæus Stevenson

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GEORGE DU MAURIER