"Well, sire, Alexandre Dumas has lately been sentenced to a fortnight's imprisonment for neglecting his duty in the National Guards: make an order for him to spend that fortnight in Versailles, and I guarantee your Majesty that Versailles will be lively enough."
Louis-Philippe did not act upon the suggestion. The only member of the d'Orléans' family who was truly sympathetic to Dumas was the king's eldest son, whose untimely death shortly afterwards affected the great novelist very much, albeit that he frankly acknowledged to regretting the man and not the future ruler; for while loudly professing his republican creed, he never pretended to overlook his indebtedness to Louis-Philippe, when Duc d'Orléans, for having befriended him; nay, I am inclined to think that Dumas' gratitude was far greater than the case warranted. When, in 1847, the fancy took him to go into parliament, he naturally turned to the borough he had benefited so much by his stay there—Saint-Germain, and Saint-Germain denied him. They thought him too immoral. Dumas waited patiently for another opportunity, which did not come until the following year, when Louis-Philippe had abdicated. Addressing a meeting of electors at Joigny, he was challenged by a M. de Bonnelière to reconcile his title of republican with his title of Marquis de la Pailleterie, and the fact of his having been a secretary to the Duc d'Orléans, although he had never occupied so important a position in the Duc d'Orléans' household. His reply was simply scathing, and I give it in full as the papers of the day reproduced it. "No doubt," he said, in an off-hand, bantering way, "I was formerly called the Marquis de la Pailleterie, which was my father's name, and of which I was very proud, being unable then to claim a glorious one of my own make. But at present, when I am somebody, I call myself Alexandre Dumas and nothing more; and everybody knows me, you among the rest—you, you absolute nobody, who have merely come to be able to boast to-morrow, after insulting me to-night, that you have known the great Dumas. If such was your ambition, you might have satisfied it without failing in the common courtesies of a gentleman."
When the applause which the reply provoked had subsided, Dumas went on: "There is also no doubt about my having been a secretary to the Duc d'Orléans, and that I have received all kinds of favours from his family. If you, citizen, are ignorant of the meaning of the term, 'the memory of the heart,' allow me at least to proclaim here in my loudest voice, that I am not, and that I entertain towards this royal family all the devotion an honourable man can feel."
It is, however, not my intention to sketch Alexandre Dumas as a politician, for which career I considered him singularly unfit; but the speech from which I extracted the foregoing contains a few lines which, more than thirty-five years after they were spoken, cannot fail to strike the reader with his marvellous foresight. "Geographically," he said, commenting upon the political state of Europe, "Prussia has the form of a serpent, and, like it, she seems to be asleep, and to gather her strength in order to swallow everything around her—Denmark, Holland, Belgium, and, when she shall have swallowed all that, you will find that Austria will be swallowed in its turn, and perhaps, alas, France also."
The last words, as may be imagined, provoked a storm of hisses; nevertheless, he kept his audience spellbound until midnight.
A parliamentary candidate, however eloquent, who flings his constituents into the river when they happen to annoy him, must have been a novelty even in those days, and that is what Dumas did to two brawlers after said meeting, just to show them that his "aristocratic grip" was worth their "plebeian one."
A few years later, at a dinner at Dumas', in the Rue d'Amsterdam, I met a Monsieur du Chaffault who had been an eye-witness of this, as well as of other scenes during that memorable day. Until the morning of that day, M. du Chaffault had never set eyes on the great novelist; in the evening, he was his friend for life. It only proves once more the irresistible fascination Dumas exercised over every one with whom he came in contact, because the beginning of that friendship cost M. du Chaffault six hundred francs, the expenses of that part of the electoral campaign. The story, as told by M. du Chaffault the following afternoon in the Café Riche to Dr. Véron, myself, and Joseph Méry, is too good to be missed. I give it as near as I can remember.
"I was about twenty-four then, with nothing particular to do, and a moderate private income. They were painting and whitewashing my place, a few miles away from Sens, and I had taken up my quarters in the principal hotel in the town. The first elections under the second republic were being held. There was a good deal of excitement everywhere, and I liked it, though not taking the slightest interest in politics. This was in May, 1848; and about six, one morning while I was still in bed, the door of my room was suddenly opened without knocking, and what seemed to me a big black monster stood before me. There was a pistol lying by the side of me, and I was reaching towards it, when he spoke. 'Don't alarm yourself,' he said; 'I am Alexandre Dumas. They told me you were a good fellow, and I have come to ask you a service.'
"I had never seen Dumas in the flesh, only a portrait of him, but I recognized him immediately. 'You have often afforded me a great deal of amusement, but I confess you frightened me,' I said. 'What, in Heaven's name, do you want at this unholy hour?'
"'I have slept here,' was the answer. 'I landed here at midnight, and am starting for Joigny by-and-by, to attend a political meeting. I am putting up as a member for your department.'